Life is fragile

It is actually somewhat scary that in recent weeks there are a number of people I know personally that have died!

It came as quite a sad thing and a shock that someone whom I knew from when I was 5 years old passed away last week. I had seen her just a couple of weeks ago and she had looked fine. She was only in her late 50s.

Then this past week there was an old lady of 98 years old, who I happen to be friends with her family, passed away. She was old and sickly, and I could see it coming.

But still, Life seems so fleeting sometimes. It is so fragile and delicate. As a famous author once said "...you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then disappears."

None of us truly want to die, and those who do, well they are in great pain.

Of course with death comes mourning, grief and funerals. I have lost people I care about. I grieve for them and miss them dearly.

But I am not one for funerals. Its just one of those things that I cannot face. I have friends who have lost loved ones, and as dearly as I love those friends, I just cannot bring myself to attend those funerals.

I am a living, breathing being. The dead know nothing. So what good is my moping around and weeping and wailing at a funeral going to be? How will my attending a funeral help anyone? How will anyone attending a funeral help?

I would rather love you, give you flowers, talk to you, laugh and cry with you, than do all those things "in memory" of you.

I know that saying all of this probably sounds crass and harsh and cruel and unkind, but I dont get why that is our social common. Death is unnatural, there is no escaping that fact. Therefore the way that each individual living person deals with death is unique, and yet there is no true "correct way" to deal with it, there is no wrong way either.

Possibly my darkest and harshest thought as far as funerals goes is my grandmother who died nearly 3 years ago. I loved her dearly, and spent many days with her. When she got cancer I was at her bedside at least part of every day for about 2 months. But then she decided (who knows why!) that she wanted to go to America to die. I was devastated, it tore me up inside to say goodbye to her, because the day she climbed on that plane, we knew that was the last time we would ever see her.

And yet as tragic as it was when she died, I was relieved. Relieved that her intense pain was gone. But also relieved that she was on the other side of the world when she died and that I didnt have to attend her funeral. Because if she had died here, I dont know if I could have dragged myself to her funeral. My own grandmother's funeral I dont believe I would have actually attended!

So, when I tell my friends that if they are doing something stupid and dangerous I will not attend their funeral, they can know its true. If someone I care about dies, I will still do everything I can for their loved ones who are mourning, I will still support them and love them and help them. But I will not attend that funeral.

My friends and loved ones know this and yet they still love me. Aren't they the best!

As for me personally, I don't want you guys to have a funeral for me. Funerals are miserable and depressing. Wakes, well those sound awesome, but are rather unscriptural, so that is out of the question.

What I would prefer is that you all have some form of happy event, celebrate that you knew me rather than mourn my being gone. Laugh about the good times, and be happy that I'll be back before you know it. 

Or even better, message me now, right this minute. Or come visit me now, while I am alive and well. Dont say you'll wait till tomorrow, dont say you'll wait to visit next year, because life is so fleeting and everything changes.

Maybe you or I will get into a car accident this week, perhaps I'll suddenly get terminal cancer, or heaven forbid you catch ebola. My dear friends, life is fleeting, let us be friends now, not after we're dead and gone and have to think of all the "what ifs".

A Blog A Week

According to all the blogging and social media gurus, its good to become dependable and make your blog or social networks have some form of routine. You know, so that if people do want to follow you, they know what to expect.

Now I know I have not been very good with that. Even in the last month or so, I do a post every single day for about a week, then leave it with nothing for about two weeks. Even one of my good friends who I have always trusted to read my blog said yesterday that they are not reading it because of my erratic blogging behaviour.

So I have decided to do something different. I don't have time to write every week, but normally when I do get writing, I write a few posts. So, thanks to the awesome "scheduling" settings on blogger, I will now attempt to set a post to go online every week on Friday at 4pm (South African Time). I may have other randomly urgent or special posts to put online during the week, but now you can rely on Fridays as being the day of the blog post.

Yeah yeah, i know that is thinking a lot of myself. The truth is that there really is no-one reading this lot anyway and I am just writing a rather embarrassing diary that is open to the world and I will look back on in ten years and cringe at. But anyways......

Pets

Pets can be pretty cool. There is always a story to tell when it comes to being a pet owner.

I sit here, looking at the fat and furry 11 year old cat, "Lil Kitty" on my lap and begin to reminisce how she came into our lives.

Late one Tuesday night I was fast asleep in my bed. Then the stupid cat woke me up, that same darn cat that we had picked up in an illegal dump spot 3 weeks back. The gorgeous little calico was skin and bone at the time, scrounging around in the rubbish looking for anything to eat.

I went and picked her up, and unlike a regular stray who would want to squirm and runaway, she purred. I climbed back in the car, turned to my mom and said "we've just got to take her home with us mommy". How stupid was I? We got home, and I jumped out to open the gate, our dogs used to chase cats, so we carefully kept the car windows and doors closed. She looked out the window, saw the dogs, and I swear, from outside the closed car I heard that little fireball hissing at the dogs.

We tried to catch her in the car to take her into the house, but she wouldnt be caught. So we opened the door and hoped the dogs wouldnt catch her. Boy were we wrong, the stupid cat jumped out the car, tail and back all fluffed up, and ran straight at the barking dogs, like a little ninja kitty she swiped and pricked both dogs on their noses. It was like something out of a slapstick cartoon, the dogs yelped and went running the other direction and this skinny little cat hissing and chasing after them. Well, that solved the whole problem with the dogs chasing cats.

So we let the cat follow us into the house, to come meet our big fat ginger cat. Old Prince was not impressed at having this new cat in the house, and this new cat, rather than try to make friends with Prince (our big fat ginger) decided to attack him. So we opened the window and let her out. She went outside, used the sand pit, and came back inside. We had never felt so owned by a cat! After a few days she made peace with Prince.

Me, Mommy Cat and Kentucky the Chicken

Jump forward 3 weeks, this stupid cat has taken to sleeping on my bed. She's also gotten fairly fat and healthy now, and she sleeps on my feet. If I dare move, she attaches my feet. So I learn to sleep really still. Then she starts bringing in "kills", snakes, mice, and birds in the middle of the night. So the one night when I was particularly tired at about 2am, I rolled over and heard yet another thud and a bird screaming, turned on my light and got the fright of my life. It wasn't a bird, it was a brand new kitten, and the second one was half way out of the cat. This cat was actually having kittens on my bed. We got a box, put a towel in it and put the cat and her kittens into the box.

We didnt get much sleep that night, and the cat had 5 kittens.

She mellowed out becoming a much nicer cat in time, and earned herself the name Mommy Cat, for obvious reasons. We let all but one of the kittens go to new homes.

The one we kept was a "mini-me" of Mommy Cat and got the name "Lil Kitty". 

Mommy Cat and Lil Kitty

But the story of Lil Kitty's character will come another day. 

Work and other things

"Being an animal owner means you do what it takes to care for those helpless beings in your responsibility."

Its true that I love working for myself and it affords me freedoms that working for a boss does not. Like I get to arrange my own schedule, and I can refuse to cater to certain unreasonable clients.

I know that sometimes I tell people that we only work weekends, but the truth is we dont work ONLY weekends. I work EVERY SINGLE DAY. The reason I say I work weekends only is because that is when I see clients.

However 25 horses dont feed themselves, fences dont repair themselves, and admin (sadly) does not auto send. Ok, well admin does auto-reply to a certain extent, but when clients ask detailed questions and when clients want to actually book, I cant very well ignire them, as much as I want to.

Every day there are horses to bring in and feed, every day there is fencing to do, every day there are emails to reply to. When horses come in with injuries, it cant "wait till Monday", it needs to be dealt immediately. Horses cannot just be deflated and packed into the wardrobe for a month holiday. Its a monotonous, never ending, "day in and day out" kind of work.

I'm not saying its a bad job to have, I mean I totally would take this any day over office work. I'm just saying that all these people who assume that our family is doing nothing because we

1. Work for ourselves,
2. Only See clients on weekends,
3. Work on a farm,
4. And numerous other reasons,

should please think twice before assuming nonsense.

Heck animals dont decide that they will only break out of fences between 8am and 4pm, take last night for example. Yesterday morning we checked on all the horses, fed them all, ensured they all had water and were healthy. Then went to Pietermaritzburg for the afternoon to visit family. We got home after 10pm, coming down our front road, still 2kms from our gate, we came around the corner and nearly drove into two of our horses who had gotten out of their paddock and were happily grazing on the road. So we got out and walked the two horses home, fixed and checked on fences, checked on all the other horses too, fed some that needed feeding, and eventually got into bed after 1am. That could not have waited until this morning, it had to be done Immediately.

There was once a few years ago when we had some family visiting and one of the horses got west nile virus. Its a horrid virus that affects the brain, and in this case this horse went in about 2 days from a happy & healthy young horse to a brain dead walking zombie. I say that because he lost all sight or comprehension of what he saw. He got to the stage of not eating or drinking, but just walking. He would walk into and through anything and just keep walking, he literally walked through a big electric fence, got tangled and shocked but kept walking. We didnt want him to hurt himself more, so we put him into a small paddock enclosed with wooden poles (the big telephone poles that dont just break), he walked into the fence, stumbled over it, and carried on walking. Talking to him, calling him, nothing worked. We couldnt call the vet out, because it was christmas day (I may not celebrate christmas, but apparently the rest of the world does and they refuse to do anything on December 25th) and no one, not the vet or anyone else would come out. So we put a halter on him and a lunge rein ( thats a 6 - 10 meter long webbing strap used in training horses to keep them going in a circle), and found an open piece of lawn with nothing to hurt him and stood there letting him walk in circles. For about 15 hours we took shifts, this stupid zombie horse just kept walking, he never stopped and slept, he never drank or ate, he just walked. Eventually we were able to get the vet out to come and put him down the next day. However, the moral of this story is that something like that cannot just be "ignored for the week".

It is something that has to be dealt with.

I hear of people going away for a weekend to the berg, or for a 3 week holiday driving around the country, and I am dead jealous. Because we as a family cannot just do that, the most we can ever do is feed and water all the animals early in the morning, go away for that day and night, and come back the next afternoon in time to feed and water them again. Then even when we do that there is always the constant worry that one of them may get injured, or fences may break and they get out while we are away.

So, no. We work every single day, we work hard and long. We do have a lot of free time, but we do pay for that by working often into the night.

It doesnt matter if we have plans for the day, plans sometimes have to be changed. It doesn't matter if we are sick, we still gotta look after them too. Because being an animal owner means you do what you have to, you do whatever it takes, to care for those helpless beings in your responsibility.

And in the end, it can be very rewarding. 

Newspapers and Bulletins Good vs Bad news

 Have you read or watched the news lately? I dont watch the news on tv much anymore, I think I last saw it 4 or 5 weeks ago. I do every few days check on the news on the web, read a few of the eye catching headlines.
  

Honestly being up to date with the news is pretty miserable. The headlines on my news feed recently have been "Male Teacher paid boy for sex" (ugh), "Gambia allowed to jail gays for life" (finally some country is doing something about the gay epidemic, yes I am VERY anti-gay), "Bomb rips through packed Chile station" (glad I wasnt their, but hopelessly sorry for those who were), Ebola outbreak worsens (goodness I hope it never gets to us), "Oscar Pistorius" (yeah well thats a whole blog post on its own, right?), another "Royal Baby" (who cares?), and numerous other stories.

I cannot stand to try and dwell on these. They are the truth that is the world we live in nowadays. I check the news now and again so as to know what is happening in the world around us, but I dont enjoy it. There are much better things to dwell on in life.

Its not that I'm trying to be like the proverbial ostrich who sticks his head in the ground and thinks the danger does not exist (FYI, ostriches dont actually do that, its a myth), no, I just choose to focus on what truly matters.

Why do I want to care about another sports star who let the fame and fortune to get to his head? He's an idiot for doing what he did, and his dead girlfriend is an idiot for sticking around with him for that long. I dont blame the victim, and I never will. Fact is a victim is still a victim. But at the same time, I cannot understand a woman who is in an abusive relationship and does not tell anyone and does not get out.

Or how about the Teacher who paid for sex with his male students, how can people expect to stop that from happening when they are legalizing same-sex marriages?  So, at least I am female and dont need to worry about that, plus there is nothing I can do about it. And if I do dwell on it, I want to throw up.

And as far as a royal baby goes, everyone looks at the royals with all their glitz and glamour and wants to be them, but honestly, who wants to be in the public eye 24/7? Being literally stalked just because you are a somebody, and not even a somebody that did anything to become a somebody (at least actors, politicians and the like worked their way to the top) but just being a somebody because you were born that way? And dont forget that 90% of those who are constantly watching you are not rooting for you, but are rather just sitting there waiting for you to take a false step and then to immortalize that. No thank you! 

In the end, all of it spells out one thing, it spells out that we are living in the last days of this wicked world as prophesied by Jesus in Matthew chapter 24 and especially the moral decay of people as described by the Apostle Paul in 2 Timothy chapter 3. The good news is that there is soon going to be an end to all of these disgusting things, not only that but also that God does not appreciate these bad things and if those who are doing these things do not change, they will not survive. The best thing though is that very very soon the entire world will be restored to a paradise and all these "former things" (the terrible and horrendous acts by human moral decay) will "not be called to mind".

So tell me this, why should I dwell on all those negative things, on the bad news, when I have thebest news out! In fact I have such good news that I am happy to go out and tell others about it. Find out more for yourself by heading over to www.jw.org

If Life Was a Song

I listen to a lot of music.

In the morning to help me get my lazy butt out of bed, in the car for the joy that I get, while I am cooking (yes, sadly I do cook - but I also tend to flop most of it), while I am sitting on the pc doing admin, and every other time I can.

From Bryan Adams to Tracy Chapman, from Roxette to Taylor Swift, from Chris DeBurgh to Bonnie Tyler, from Cat Stevens to Snow Patrol, I have a very wide range of musical taste. Every musician or band that I like has some music that I dont like and will not listen to. From the 50s all the way to today, there is something I enjoy from every era. I have playlists for when I'm driving, for when I need to escape to another place in my mind and regain my power, for when I'm feeling down, and for when I just want to listen to hopelessly sickening love songs.

I sometimes wonder though, if my life had a theme song, what would it be? With my constant wanderlust busrning, it would probably be something like Bryan Adams' "Open Road". Or perhaps with my love of Africa as a gorgeous continent it would be Toto's "Africa". Or perhaps the real comeback song from Cher "Last Of Me".

I had to laugh recently, I did one of those fun (time-wasting) online quizzes which actually was, "what should be your theme song?" and after some really random questions it came out saying my theme song should be "Let It Go" from the movie Frozen.

What about you? What would you think of as a theme song for your life?

A Rhyme and a Riddle

It is not a secret that I get pretty upset with certain clients sometimes. I know I am working in a public relations area here, but the truth is that the client is NOT "always right" and for his or her own safety I often times have to get really strict. And heck it can be stressful. But I had to laugh when yesterday a friend of mine wanted to make me smile and sent me this little story.

"I have this friend called slightly awesome Amelia, 

Who despite battles internal, could still feel for ya

Certain homo sapiens drive her mad, 

giving rise to rage that left her sad

If she heard "where's the brakes, the horn,  the go faster switch?" Just one more time ...

Well she would do what I couldn't possibly put into rhyme. 

"Lucky saddle!  - do you do one on one lessons? you could ride me any time!" Amelia had heard them all, 

It's not that hard to wish that some folk would have a very hard fall.

The sand, the sea, the wind in her hair, she could almost feel alive,

Apart from what her ears & eyes percieved, ignoramus sat like a sack of ☆◇□◇☆ abusing equine

Mine's the wrong colour, wrong sex, the wrong shape, too fast no I mean too slow

I know I said what I definately want, but now I definately don't know

I've changed my mind, can I go back, what do you mean what about the others,

I've paid you to deliver a good time & my time is worth more than other's

So, it's understandable that my awesome friend would really much rather avoid

The self centered type that dictate such terms that leave her so annoyed

It's unbelievable that these city types would ever dare cause such strife

If they only knew the willingness brewing to demonstrate the ultimate use of a pocket knife

So be of good cheer my eye smiling friend

To be victim of such trials

Surely means you are under attack for wanting to make your God smile"

 You know who you are, thank you for bringing on the smile, actually it was more like a full out belly laugh :-)

The Day NYC Went Dark

It wasn't as big as the start of world war one, or even world war two. It wasn't as destructive as the hiroshima blast and it certainly wont be the last "big thing". But in the last 40 odd years this is probably the single biggest manmade disaster the world has ever known.

I remember that day so well, despite being an 11 year old kid. I was busy with my schoolwork in the lounge, dad was busy doing admin on the pc and mom was busy making lunch, when gran phoned. She just said "turn on the tv, its huge news!", mom asked her which channel, she said every channel. We thought it was strange but turned on the tv anyway.

Every channel showed the same thing, footage of a world landmark having an airplane flown into it. Speculation was that the pilot had flown the wrong direction, until a few minutes later when another plane flew into the sister tower.

That day had such an impact on people all around the world. My other grandparents had actually toured the world trade centre just less than two weeks prior.

For days that was all anyone spoke about, for weeks it was repeated on the tv. The day nearly 3000 people died in a single city.

As a child I felt hopelessly sorry for them, but I also understood even then that this was just another sign of the time of the end as spoken of in Matthew 24. I was so glad my family was safe, I couldn't help but to imagine what would have happened if anyone I knew or was related to had been there at the time. And to this day my heart goes out to the victims of that senseless action.

It affected everyone in some way or another, even as far as seemingly insignificant South Africa, we watched it, we felt hurt, pity and even fear here.

Some thought is was the start of ww3 (considering USA's war efforts thereafter, not too wrong they were), others thought this was the start of Armageddon, some thought it was the start of the fall of the USA. 

No matter who you are, or where you are from, if you were more than 5 years old (possibly even under) you would have those images permanently engraved on your mind. 

Where were you that day? 

How were you affected? 

What thoughts ran through your mind?

Winter 2014

Durban, the city that is always green. With a subtropical climate and the ocean breeze, its always warm and moist. Its the place I grew up in, and until I visited Jo'Burg I never understood the value of moisturizer.

The coldest we ever get in winter in about 8 degrees Celsius, and we're generally still comfortable to walk around in jeans and a t-shirt.

It is often said of Durbs that it never gets winter, it only has 3 seasons - Spring, Summer and Autumn. Our summers get so hot that you wish you could peel your skin off, alas it is not a recommended solution however. And they last 6-7 months long. I often watch movies and TV where you see a stark contrast between winter and spring, where almost overnight everything starts flowering, but I have never before seen it in Durban.

Things have changed as the years go by though. Each year the summer has been getting hotter and the winter colder. This year it was not so cold, surprisingly. This year, it has just been dry!

Your average Durbanite may know it is dry because his grass is gone brown, but then he just turns on the hosepipe. Those living in the city might not even have noticed it, other than the pollution in the air.

But I have noticed it, because I have 25 hungry horses who need to eat. They live on grass and other vegetation. And usually winters are a tad tough, but nothing to worry about. This year has been different. This year we haven't had any rain at all to speak of (5 minutes of hail in Umhlanga every few months doesn't count or a ten minute drizzle every few weeks), not since about May 2013!

The city that I know, the one that is always green and turned to brown. Well brown and black where there have been fires. I've never known this place to get so many fires! I also have never experienced static electricity like this before, every day I'm getting little shocks and sparks with this lack of humidity, and everyone is needing moisturizer at the moment!

Worst off though, the grass is all gone. There is just sand everywhere. The horses have nothing left to eat in the fields. We are bringing in hay to feed them every day. But the province is even experiencing a hay shortage right now.

My garden, or what was once a garden is now nonexistent and the jungle I one lived in now looks like a typical "forest in fall" like you would see in pictures of America or Europe.

The streams and marshlands I once rowed a boat in are now solid ground that the car can drive along!

Its scary, and if the rains don't come soon, there will be no more food for the horses.

But in all of that, I can feel spring is in the air again. The birds are giving a chorus in the morning, the trumpet trees are all blooming bright yellow. The saringa trees are just starting to bud, the scent of their lilac flowers wafting through the air.

In the evenings even the crickets and fireflies are out and about. And somehow, with a prayer, a hope and a wish, I know the rains will come, I know things will get better soon.

CFS

Have you ever felt like an 85 year old, with aches and pains all over your  body, feeling tired all the time, and constantly highly emotional?
Perhaps if you are over 65 years old you have some idea of this feeling.

But imagine you are a young and healthy teenager, you are happy, active and always busy, but one day you suddenly become physically debilitated, having no energy and constant body aches, but no physical signs of it.

The cause is neither depression or loneliness. In fact the cause is unknown. Your own family and friends believe you are lying or pretending. The doctors cannot pinpoint the problem, and prescribe unorthodox remedies, such as "go have sex" or "go to a night club".

Because of this whole situation, your friends abandon you, not because they do not love you, but because whenever they invite you for activities, you are too tired to join them. You become incredibly lonely and begin to wonder if your sickness is all in your mind. So you decide to push through the exhaustion and force your poor body to do some or other physical activity, but instead of feeling refreshed and invigorated you end up bed ridden for 3 weeks.

The sickness has no set time limit, it feels like it lasts forever. For some people it lasts a year or two, for others it lasts up to twenty or more years.

It is a very real illness called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (doctors tend to call anything that they cant understand a "syndrome") and it affects thousands of people. You likely know someone with it, perhaps your workmate, you neighbor, or even someone in your own family. You  wont be able to tell they have it by just looking at the, as there are no physical signs. That doesn't mean they don't have it.

I know all of this because I have been the victim of this horrible sickness for 3.5 years, from 16 to nearly 20. I am one of the lucky ones, I am back to regular health and can go on with my life. But I have great empathy for those who do indeed have CFS. I have many friends who are sufferers or have suffered with it. I also can tell if you're just shamming and actually do not have it, as a sufferer from it, one tends to be able to see these little "tell tale signs".

So, if you know someone who does have CFS, please show them a little kindness. If you have got CFS, give me a shout and we can chat, I know sometimes you just need to talk about it. And if you have had it, reach out and let people know that this is a real illness, but that with time it can and will pass.