Let's Catch Up...

There are few things as frustrating as really wanting to sit down for a good blog session, but having neither time nor inspiration to do so. A fellow blogger would understand.

So let's have some coffee, and catch up. I've got my coffee, where's yours?

It's been a hectic few weeks since my last post in August. I think the problem is that there is just so much going on right now, that I haven't got the time to really sit and think about one particular thing. My mind seems to be in a permanent race with itself, and I'm not sure I'm winning.

That was "Bubble Girl". You may have seen her before - she's one of those internet sensations. In reality, she is really just running away from bubbles, but if you Google search "Bubble Girl", you will find her photo-shopped into all manner of scenes. My favourite is her running away from Prince Charles.

So, back to catching up.

 The last time we chatted, I was telling you about boxing, and how cool I've become now that I have new boxing gloves. I'm still boxing, a few times a week or as often as possible, but I think the cool-factor has most certainly worn off. I'm back to being a bit of a nerd. I know this because I managed to trip over nothing this week, and I also walked straight into a table, inspiring a snort of laughter from a friend. When cool people walk into things, people look away and graciously pretend it didn't happen. When nerds do it, the world stops to point and laugh. Yes... I'm back.

It's Spring in South Africa, which means that people are whopping out their braai's (barbeques, for my foreign readers) and getting ready for the Season we all love. People complain about South Africa. The crime. The government. Taxes. Fuel prices. Corruption. Potholes in the roads.

Gosh. Take a look around Fellow Inhabitants of this Planet! That's why I don't listen to the radio anymore - we get so caught up in the bitching and moaning, that we completely miss the beauty of our immediate lives. We reside in one of the most exquisite countries, with what is notoriously the most beautiful Summer weather. And you want to let a few cents on the fuel price ruin your day?

No, thank you! I'm going to LOVE this Spring, embrace it, smell it, sneeze at it, and then smell it again. I'm going to wear dresses, and skip through the flowers. Carefully. I'm going to skip through the flowers carefully. Or maybe I'll just walk. I'm likely to trip over a tulip if I skip.

Gah! My coffee's gone cold. How's yours?

People have been looking at me a bit weird this last week because I'm on a diet of sorts. Now if you know me, you know that I am already rather slender. But here's the thing: I don't want to lose weight. I actually want to gain weight.  I just want to lose a few centimetres around the places that matter - IE, my hips, bottom and thighs - but I'm exercising really hard to gain some muscle to make up for it.

So, I'm having my Herbalife shake for breakfast and for lunch - to lose the wobbly bits - but adding some protein to the shake so that my body is equipped to build up some lean muscles. Something like this...

I'll bet she has no wobbly bits.

Ha ha! I'm sorry, that was uncalled for. Now you'll have to Google search "Puppies" and "Bunnies" to try get that image out of your head. With all due respect to female body builders, who work exceptionally hard to get where they are.... I guess it's just not everyone's cup of tea. Or coffee. Even cold coffee. To her credit, she does have a beautiful face, and she'd be an amazing addition to The Avengers team.

In other news... I've been listening to Justin Timberlake lately. (What?! That is news! When have I ever liked R&B?!)

Well, this is the point in the coffee date where the coffee is gone, and conversation is awkwardly silent. You've not said a word, and quite honestly left all the hard work up to me.

*Smiles*
*Hugs*
We really must do this again sooner!
*Smiles again* Gosh, my cheeks are hurting.
No I'll call you, I promise! Do stay in touch!

Ok, bye!
*Smiles*

Bye!

The Flying Scissors, and being generally flipping cool

Got new boxing gloves this week.

Golly, it's exciting. My old gloves were almost ten years old, and starting to cause a wrist injury. I used the new ones for the first time this evening, woweeeeeeeeee :) *happy dance*

So my gloves look kinda like this...

...Twins Special is a top brand in martial arts apparel, these particular gloves being hand-made from genuine leather in Thailand. They are used by professionals all over the world.

At one point this evening, I really felt like I had spontaneously become a more awesome boxer. I felt faster and stronger, my punches felt like they carried more weight, I thought my posture had improved and that maybe, just maybe, I looked as wicked-cool-dangerous as I feel when I'm boxing. Oh yeeeaaah, these gloves have definitely made me a more proficient boxer. Move out the way Ali, I'm about to float like a butterfly and sting  like a bee. 

So, I was well into my training this evening, and increasingly convinced that I have been transformed into the next Baby Jake. I've been working on a wicked combo for the past few weeks, one that I've nicknamed "The Flying Scissors". It sounds dangerous, doesn't it? Yes. I'm impressed too. My husband assures me that it is rather intimidating to watch as well. I don't care that he's biased and trying to win brownie points.

The Flying Scissors consists of a back-hand, followed closely by a some weird kung fu sweeping backhand by the other hand. I then use the momentum from this sweeping motion to perform one final, lethal, spinning backhand with the same hand that delivered the first back-hand. Ok, I know I've lost you, but essentially, it's three back-hands one after the other in a Tekken-style spinning motion, probably highly illegal in most martial arts, and very aggressive. And it feels pretty flipping cool.

This particular combo requires several things that I naturally fall short of...
Grace. (usually bestowed on those who don't habitually trip over their own feet)
Hand-eye coordination. (not the kind where you hit yourself in the eye - that's the kind I do have)
Balance. (Yeah, right!)
Aim. (There's nothing quite as awkward and humiliating as missing the punching bag at full speed.. Doh!)

Being the clumsy, nerdy girl I am, I was quite surprised this evening to find myself delivering the Flying Scissors with such grace, coordination, balance and aim. Such precision. Wow. If I were my punching bag, I would have been profoundly terrified of me.

If I had known that my intrinsic clumsiness could be cured with a new pair of boxing gloves, I would have acquired these a long time ago.  I officially feel kick-ass cool.

For now anyways.


Bruce Lee: Fear not the man who has practiced a thousand kicks once; but the man who has practiced one kick a thousand times.

Steve Turner (who may or may not have been stoned) #3

Yes.
It is time for another moment of literary genius.
We are due for another Steve Turner gem.
Overdue, in fact.

SO. Here is a little something for a glorious Sunday like today...


Untitled - by Steve Turner

We say there is no God
   (quite easily)
when amongst the curving
steel and glass of our own
   proud creations.

They will not argue.

Once we were told of a
   heaven
but the last time we strained
   to look up
we could see only skyscrapers
shaking their heads
   and smiling no.

The pavement is reality.

We say there is no God
   (quite easily)
when walking back through
Man's concreted achievements
but on reaching the park
our attention is distracted
by anthems of birds coming
from the greenery.
We find ourselves shouting
a little louder now because
   of the rushing streams.
Our voices are rained upon by
   the falling of leaves.

We should not take our arguments
   for walks like this.
The park has absolutely no manners.


Peace out, Fellow Inhabitants of this Planet; may your ears be filled with the sounds of birds and falling leaves.

Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner

I just curled up on the couch for two hours and became a teenage girl again. 


As a young girl, I used to believe that somehow, by some irrational misfortune, I was born into the wrong era. Because I have grown up with the love of music deeply intertwined into my soul, and such a great part of this love was for the likes of the Righteous Brothers and the Beatles, surely I was supposed to be born into the 1950's and 60's? What went wrong? How on earth on did I land up being born in 1984?


Anyway, I've learned to embrace my era, the late 80's rock, the crazy 90's and now the ultra-cool 00's. But still... sometimes I still think about those golden years, at the birth of rock and roll. The greased back hair.. the puffy skirts... the dance halls alive with swing... Girls waiting to be asked to dance... Boys learning to be gentlemen... And I still wish, with a tiny part of me, that I'd been born thirty years earlier. 


Tonight I watched "Dirty Dancing" again. Admittedly, it's an 80's movie, but so well-set in the 60's era - it really made me smile. Now I'd never watched Dirty Dancing until I was around 23 years old, so you must know, it's still a novelty for me, even now after watching it a few times since then. You see, beforehand, even just the phrase "dirty dancing" might have made me blush, never mind the actual dancing itself. But from the first moment that I watched it, I fell in love with it, as have so many women before me. 

The idea that an innocent young lamb of a girl could fall so deeply in love with a troubled bad-boy, and with her wonder-filled, soulful eyes and unscathed ideals, pull him out of the pit of nothingness that has become his life. 
And likewise, the idea of this dangerously sexy man becoming obsessed with a naive, timid girl, to the point where he can do nothing but leave all his foolishness behind in order to dote on her, protect her, and teach her to dance. And to "let go".


You see, every girl wants to be Baby. And the thing that makes me love this movie so much is that I have always felt a lot like Baby did. As a teenager, I was always such a good girl. So well behaved, so well-meaning. So afraid of letting people down. I was geeky, nerdy, incredibly clumsy, awkward, hopeless at socializing, and I couldn't dance. I was nice, and people liked me. But I wasn't ever popular, and that's made me feel... forgettable. 


And that's what I've come to love so much about Baby, is that she changes from the girl that I've always felt like, into all the things a girl wants to be...


Brave.
The apple of someone's eye.
Someone worth fighting for.
Bold.
Sexy.
Self-assured.
Willing to stick up for others even at her own cost.
Loved intensely.
Desired. 
Someone who can dance without abandon.




Yes, every girl wants to be Baby. And it's got nothing to do with dancing with a ripped 1980's Patrick Swayze, although that wouldn't hurt. 


Just sayin. 


So anyways, I'm feeling all fuzzy inside, and thought I'd share two of my favourite scenes:


Of course the one is the legendary "Last Dance" of the movie, which is fun and heart-warming... and what a timeless song!


But even more so, I'm just crazy about the "Lover Boy" scene, which is simply adorable to watch. Over and over. And over. 


Anyways, wouldn't it be nice if we all had someone to be our Johnny or our Baby, someone who helps brings out the best in us? Someone who opens your eyes to all that you have to offer this world... and them. And that at the end of each day you could say... or sing...


I've had the time of my life...

Everybody *dance* now! Part 2

I had the pleasure of going out on Friday night with some colleagues. We went to a place called Molly Malone's in Fourways, which is your typical Irish pub. They had a DJ there that sent a notebook around and had people write their favourite songs - now that's my kind of DJ, there were some hot tracks played that night, both old and new. 


Anyways, after a few hours of lazing in the setting sun, letting our core temperatures drop from a hot day, we decided that we had the itch to go dancing. *Ntsi-ntsi-ntsi-ntsi* (sound of dance music) 


Now let me tell you a little something about myself: I am a professional nerd. And as a long-standing nerd, I haven't done the whole clubbing thing. Maybe once. Ever. As a young adult, I did not see the fun in staying out late in a crowded room, making an idiot of myself, and spending the next two days recovering. I am not a friendly person without sleep. And so while my generation was out living it up, I was curled up in bed trying to keep my eyes open long enough to reach the end of a chapter in a murder mystery. 


But now I've hit 27 and it's as though something in my psyche has gone "What the... Wait a minute.... Wait, wait, did I miss something....???" I actually feel like dancing. That's not to say I'm a very good dancer - I actually suck on a whole new level - but it's fun, right?


So back to Friday night, we went to a nearby place called Billy the Bums... you may know it. It's hard to play it cool in a place where so many new exciting things cross your path. Like, for instance, the bar-tender who juggles with bottles and flicks them and throws them up then spins them behind his back then, oh my, he's doing it with two at once and.... I'm like a kitten chasing the red light of a laser-pen, I just can't play it cool. Ok, deep breath, so what, he's chucking a bottle around. So what? Puh-lease. Impress me if you can. 


We stood around for an hour, which brings me to my next problem with clubbing... Why can't you start dancing whenever you want? Why must you wait until 11PM? Who decided that it's only nerds who dance before 11PM?? Whoever they are, they stink. They really, really do stink.


So yes, we stood around for a hour, during which time, my gracious companions warned me about Billy the Bums. It's a rough crowd, apparently. Lots of people picking people up, lots of guys getting too close to girls they don't know (I think 'grinding' was the word used, gross) and lots of girls getting in your space... kind-of like a battle for territory. So, considering myself duly warned, we eventually hit the dance floor, which was populated by people who did not look like nerds. 


First song, cool, no issues. Second song, short fat old man bops his way across dance floor. Short fat old man gives nerdy-girl (me) cheesy grin. *shudder* Short fat old man utters the line that has failed so many of his kind before him: "So can I buy you a drink?" 
Why!? Why do you do it, short fat old man??? You could be at home, reading the paper, ageing with grace. People would think you're adorable. Why??????
Short fat old man bops away, and goes to play it cool by the juggling bar-tender. 


Which brings me to my next irritation... why must it always be a sad old man picking me up? It's not my first pick-up, and it's always some old fool who's disillusioned with life, grasping on desperately to his youth. Why can't it be a virile young stallion of a man with straight teeth and perfect hair? Look, I'm utterly happily married, so the answer would always be a big fat no-thank-you, but for once, it would be far more flattering to be picked up by Robert Pattinson or someone equally acceptable-looking. 


*SIGH*


I danced a little longer, but soon realized that perhaps Billy the Bums is not for me, and excused myself shortly after 11PM. 


Man, I'm a nerd.