This is my actual toothbrush timer. Note the 4 stars
I think it may be the abyss of your blogging career when you decide one morning to devote a whole post to tooth brushing. Unless of course you are a dentist or an oral hygienist – then it’s probably the pinnacle of your career. But stay with me, even though I have no dental qualifications.
This weekend my husband and I had Saturday and Sunday nights to ourselves, in fact we’ve had a lot of time without our son recently. Now that he is a teen with the social skills of a talk show host and a social calendar to match, he seems to be out more than he is in. And when he’s in he’s more than likely to be found swamped by friends.
It takes a bit of getting used to, not always factoring him into our plans when he has plans of his own because, I will be the first to admit, Little Pencil has been, and continues to be the centre of our lives. He was that way from the minute he was born and will no doubt be in the same position the minute we take our last breaths. I make no apologies for that because it’s exactly the way we wanted it, it’s been our choice to place him there and it’s worked remarkably well – he is an amazingly centred and confident teenager and we are a very happily married couple.
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When I was younger, (much, much, much younger) I was completely in love with Princesses Stephanie and Caroline of Monaco. Possibly “in love” is the wrong phrase because I obviously never met them but obsessed sounds so ominous, and I swear I wasn’t going to hurt them, I just wanted to know every single thing about them and possibly have them as my best friends.
I devoured every magazine article about them and that was about all because there was no internet and I lived in Johannesburg, South Africa and they lived in Monaco. (Although when I was in my late teens I travelled to Monaco and stared at their castle for hours, I even saw a car enter the gates.)
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Right now, all over the world Jews are celebrating the festival of Passover (or Pesach). Passover commemorates the emancipation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt, in order to make it really symbolic and to drum that message of freedom home, there are seemingly hundreds of rituals that accompany the Passover festival. It is believed that following these, we have the ability to relive and experience the true freedom that our ancestors gained.
I am not incredibly religious (and by that I mean I am not at all religious) but I do come from a traditional family and so every year we get together to celebrate the Jewish festivals in the traditional way – meaning we celebrate mostly by eating.
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This is how I found my son hanging out today.
It is the beginning of the school holidays. Sadly it’s also the beginning of adolescence in our family and my son is acting like he’s been mainlining testosterone with added shots of attitude.
It’s not pretty.
It’s at times like this that my cheery positive attitude (said with only a hint of irony) tells me that it’s more important to focus on all the good things that he does than all the testosterone disguised as attitude that is trying to escape his body at the moment.
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I have seen so many different versions of the songs from Frozen that I was actually forced to see the movie. And it was very cute.
But I think this version that ties in the Jewish festival of Passover is by far the cleverest…
The Huffington Post reports “Jewish acapella group Six13 is celebrating “our freedom, our favorite festival, our fabulous fans, and aspiring Disney princesses everywhere” with a Passover-themed cover of “Let It Go” and “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?”
Passover (or Pesach) celebrates the liberation of the Jewish people from Egypt and the English name Passover refers to the fact that God is said to have passed over” the houses of the Jews when he was slaying the firstborn of Egypt (it’s a complicated story).
Teeth With diabetes problem, gum generic levitra online view that related diseases also become a possibility. After many tests and hospital admittances’ patient without gallbladder get diagnose postcholecystectomy syndrome with online viagra order pain, indigestion, bile reflux, bile diarrhea, chronic pancreatitis, hepatitis, fatty liver, etc. order generic cialis visit my shop now Twenty-nine percent of participants were classified as having moderate to severe ED, based on their answers to questions about how disruptions in circadian rhythm can contribute to metabolic disease, and if fixing dysfunctional rhythms could help treat conditions like diabetes and obesity. In most cases, the penile organ mastercard cialis online does not receive adequate blood for an erection, causing impotence. But I think the song encapsulates everything you need to know. [Read more…]
I was sitting in a café late on Friday afternoon talking to my beautiful friend Fiona. I was grumpy though, I hadn’t been sleeping very well and the medication I am taking for one of my various ailments, which you can just summarise as ageing, was making me feel nauseous.
For weeks now I’ve been feeling this low grade nausea which is heightened by stress – did I mention that we are about to put our house on the market? There’s some stress that I added to my nausea right there.
Fiona had mentioned that I looked very pale and because she has a medical background I didn’t take this as an insult. She also tried to scare me into looking after my health better but I just gazed at her glumly and sipped my tea. [Read more…]
It’s been such a super quick week this week that I kind of forgot to update my blog. Technically I have two excuses
1. I had a colonoscopy this week and so tried to pretend that two days this week did not exist
2. I have been writing every day for Kidspot (and loving it) so my brain is full of “other” words and it seems that I do have a limited number of words after all (even though Mr Pencil would not agree with that)
But I am back too play my favourite game of what made me sad, what made me glad and what had me thinking
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This is present house….
I really love my house. And so does everybody else who comes to visit (although maybe they ‘re just being polite when they say that). Even though I loved it when we first moved in, we renovated about three years ago and I adored it even more. We chose the tiles that we liked, built the shelves that we loved, chose the fixtures that suited us perfectly, the colours that made us relaxed, the carpets that padded our feet and the walls that housed our every day adventures.
About a year ago we started to get itchy feet. As my husband says (way too often) we always seem to want just that bit more than we already have. We did not love the street we lived in, we wanted just a little bit more space, somewhere Little Pencil could hang with his friends without being in our faces, somewhere we could park our cars where they wouldn’t get covered in bird poo, somewhere we could retreat to – I really wanted my sleeping space distinctly different to our living space.
I realise that I sound like a brat and that these are very first world problems. Everything I say in this post is tinged with a bit of guilt at how much I have when other people have so little and also a huge amount of gratitude for what I do have. So back to the house….
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Last week I started a long-standing tradition on my blog, okay maybe it’s not REALLY long standing because it started last week, but admit “long-standing” sounds more impressive.
This is the post where I talk about what’s had me thinking, what made me glad and what’s made me sad. And then I implore you to do the same.
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