Monday

I was going to do a little perky Monday post, mainly because I didn't have to report that the children had gone sailing , yet again, over the weekend, but it's not going to happen. I now wish to relocate to Switzerland, and if they wont let me in - Antarctica.

It's the middle of May, but it's already hot. And buggy. And everything seems to fall apart when it's hot and buggy, or maybe that's just me.

Having dispatched the children to bed, I was looking forward to spending a leisurely hour or so writing up this blog. I was going to post some chirpy Jamaican music (Movado Delilah) which we are all listening too on our little car radios as we grind up and down the volcano with potholes (otherwise known as Tortola) and a couple of photos of our lovely weekend (which for once, as we know, didn't include sailing). I was also going to write some upbeat dingetjies about motherhood.

To treat myself, I thought I would switch on the brand new air conditioner in our new home and pour myself a little glass of cold, dry white. This would mean that it would be beautifully cool, there would be no mozzies and I could receive my husband, who is working tonight, in serene surroundings when he got home from a cheffing gig. I was looking forward to YouTubing (there you go Joburg Book Club, another verb!) some new music that I like, since the radio stations here never seem to announce the songs, and I never know who the hell I'm listening to.

Well.

None of this happened.

For starters - I couldn't find how to switch on the friggin music on the computer, which Tyler has now expertly wired up through the new sound system. Audio On. Audio Off. On Off On Off. Fiddle fiddle. I thought of phoning him, but that's never a good idea in mid-service (but has been known to happen before). I switched to the new laptop (which I'm forbidden to use) but it had the same bloody set-up. No amount of things on/off or in/out seemed to work.

Now irritated, I had to pour myself another glass of dry white, remembering that this was meant to be accompanied by the icy-cold air conditioner which is brand, brand new. This should have been a warning (ie a bit like the brand new dishwasher, which had also been "installed" ie pushed into its space in the kitchen). After a lot of on/off and in/outs with the AC, all that happened was the knob-thingy came away in my hand. Just like that. Broken. As in "she is not wacking".

Since I was now being eaten alive, I frantically tried to hunt down the can of "Off" which had completely vanished. Gone. Nowhere to be found. The last known mortals to use it were the children. That was the nice piece on motherhood gone. Sometimes I really don't like my children, especially when been chomped by man-eating mosquito's.

By which stage I was furious. Being a complete sucker for punishment, I decided that I definitely needed some music to cheer me up. And another glass of icy, dry white since it was the only thing that was cold.

So I decided to use James' little laptop, hoping like hell that this hadn't also been inveigled into our new wireless entertainment system I wasn't aware we had and certainly dont know how to work. (as in all I want to do is Switch The Music On).  This was my biggest mistake. I Googled 'New Music 2012' or something stupid like that and clicked on MTV's Top 40 Hits.

Please, don't do this at home. It's very bad for both your soul and sanity. Oh my goodness me. To see Snoop Dog (at least 50 years old and father of twenty-somethings) singing with Kanye West "We're Young and Wild and Free", oh puuuhleasse. No you're not: You're old and rich and probably a grandfather. Not one but two songs by the ghastly Katy Perry who sounds just like Jesse J, who looks just like Lady Gaga who sounds and looks just like Nicki Minaj. And actually also Madonna (who all the afore-mentioned look like anyway) who we definitely know is over 50 but at least wasn't signing "I'm Young & Wild & Free" but some silly duo with Nicki Minaj and someone else, probably Drake.  Last week on Isle 95's Hot Caribbean Charts, the number one hit was Rihanna ft Drake and number two was a song by Drake ft Rihanna. S'trues Bob. I don't feel old or anything watching all this rubbish, just superior.

Anyway needless to say I couldn't find the cable to download the pics from the weekend (the old computer dosn't have a chip/memory disk thingy) and it's now almost 12:30pm and I need to be up again at 4:45am to have my daily bout of internet-wrangling. In trying to load an arbitrary image to go with the blog, everything hung, nothing uploaded and I almost lost the entire thing. I swear I would have given up blogging on the spot, had this been the case.

I suppose the outcome of this rather depressing Monday evening is (a) I'm now pleased that we do live on a remote island (b) I'm even more pleased that I'm not a 50 year old + popstar and (c) I should always write my blog on a Sunday.

Monday is a disaster.

PTA-types



Paris, October 2009


My Mother* was 34 years old when I was born, which was considered old for having children in those days. Not being in the first flush of motherhood when I came along and after a 13 year gap from rearing my brothers, she did in fact have a rather jaundiced view of it all, swiftly dismissing a long list of things such as camping, kiddy birthday parties and school sports days with a shudder saying she’d already “done her bit”.

She also did not have too much time for the mothers of my peers. High on her list of irritating mothers were “The Young Mums” who only spoke about babies at birthday parties (boring). Special horror was reserved for “PTA-Types” whom she found equally boring and slightly alarming. But at the top of the list were “Pushy Mothers”. Her much-used example of a Pushy Mother were the ones who would sit with stop-watches at my brothers Western Province swimming training, haranguing their children to do better. This my mother viewed as rather scandalous, not to mention a bit vulgar. The concept of Tiger Mothers would probably render my Mother speechless.

Needless to say, I did not grow up in a fluffy fug of Barbie Doll Cakes, although I did have my fair share of ballet and Guides and all that. Nothing then to explain this born-again motherhood thing which I'm currently experiencing and am struggling to reconcile. Even as I write this, I’m wearing my Halloween Witchy earrings, having just finished a Halloween Costume Sale at the school in my role as a Grade 5 ‘Class Parent”. I’m hanging around waiting for a PTA “meet the Board” meeting – practicing my Count-to-10-Deep- Breathing-excercises, on the off-chance that I may find the meeting a little bit patronizing. I am ‘transitioning’ the experts will tell you from my old life to my new one. I read these things on the Internet, so I know. I  may however, just have become my Mothers worst nightmare, and I havn't even factored in the Sunday School teaching bit either.

"Did I move to a tropical island to join the PTA?” I ask myself, late at night. It wasn't quite what I had in mind. I was thinking more Cowboy-hat-wearing-yoga-on-beach-Mom when I got here and then I went and joined the PTA.  What was I thinking?

It is true that I have a sneaky admiration for Tiger Mothers (although I’m frankly too lazy to be one myself) and I don't feel productive unless I've tried to enhance or improve just about everything around me and then worried about the kids future SAT scores - but does this make me a Pushy PTA Mother?

The biggest compliment that women seem to pay each other these days is to say that “so and so is really organized”. We all glow with that kind of affirmation and feel like we're actually getting somewhere in our rather chaotic lives.

Maybe I've detoxed just a little too much, and have become far too balanced. Happiness is actually quite a tricky state of mind to be in all the time. You sort of worry that you arn't worrying. So then you go and organise something else and pile it on, in order to give yourself something to worry about. It's like writing out lists only so that you can then cross out the things you've aleady done. I do things like this.

I realise that I definetly need to get to a big city fast** and go shopping for random girly clothes and stop worrying. I'm starting to scare myself.

* My mother reads my blog,and since this is all true, she will not be offended, hey Ma? 
** I arrive in Cape Town on November 4th and Joburg on the 9th November.

Things to do with boys

Georgie by Eben Meyers

Last week was a good one with the boys sailing everyday and William at Willows Summer Camp, with field trips to the Airport and Fire Station where he got to spray the hose and go on our one and only fire engine ( a lovely 50’s Richard Scary-type affair). Little Boy Bliss.

I’m not quite sure why we signed up for mountain biking on Norman Island on Sunday, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. So there we were at 6am – me with a slight hangover having only finished the washing up from the night before at 1am. The Channel was very choppy and we were bounced around a bit, the result of a low pressure tropical wave and all thinking that we would rather be home watching Rango.

Big efforts do reap big rewards however, and Norman Island, which is uninhabited and very beautiful, turned out to be a sparkler.  It was calm with lots of shade in amongst the steep climbs, cliff hanging tracks with dramatic views and pure wilderness (Norman Island is the island which RL Stevenson based Treasure Island on).

After action, satisfaction!

The boys rode the Cadet course, with me hiking some of it with William. Georgie, who really struggled in the beginning, went on to cycle almost 6kms and won with James coming in second.  It was a tough course with real mountain biking, and challenging even for the experienced, grown up riders.

In our politically correct culture which tends to hand out medals just for breathing (we are all winners) it was genuinely rewarding for the boys to achieve something they had really pushed themselves hard to do, and we are proud of them. It was a lovely morning, well worth the slog and we still had time for an afternoon snooze and a quick tidy up before Dad got home from cooking for the Caribbean Heads of State.

My long-term abiding impression of Moms Who Only Have Boys has always been of the hearty, jolly hockey sticks persuasion with booming voices and VW Kombi’s loaded full of sporty stuff, cheering on their team.  It's always slightly worried me that I may end up like this one day with a wardrobe exclusively from Cape Union Mart and ruddy cheeks. 

So not me.

But there I was on Sunday in full hiking gear (from you know where) enthusiastically encouraging my little chaps up the hills shouting : “Come on buddy, you can do it, you’re a Star, what a Champ” and shoving bikes and boys into our large 7-seater Ford Freestyle American Soccer Mom car.  Oh dear.

Boys new favourite expression "knackered"

Shoes, caps and sanity

Photo by Ed Childs

I've been reluctant to comment too much on the new found joys of full-time parenting as I still have my big L plates on, but I finally have to say something:

Corporate life had its challenges - impossible deadlines, lovable clients and enough politics to make one feel like the little moonblind owls in Guardians of the Legend. Thinking that I'd be leaving chronic stress far behind me, believe me when I say that it all pales into insignificance when compared to the daily challenge of trying to get three little boys ready & out of the house every morning. 

You think you'd get use to it, but you don't, or at least better at it. I approach this task every day with a mixture of dread and determination. I’ve applied systems, processes, bribery, threats of violence, Oscar-worthy screeching Lady Macbeth monologues and have invoked every saint and occasionally Satan to smite the little darlings down – and nothing NOTHING makes the slightest bit of difference.

Everyday at least one child does not have a water bottle or a hat (we lose a cap a week) or matching shoes . We can never find the right suncream (the one William is not allergic too) but can always find the 10 year old bottle of SPF15 Piz Buin. Inevitably the children are dressed in a peculair mixtures of clashing stripes and checks, to which my general view is as long as it includes a hat, then sod it. 

I cannot understand why it is so hard to co-ordinate 3 sets of packed lunches/3 bowls of oatmeal/3 sets of shoes/caps/the brushing of teeth & hair/feeding a cat, some chickens and a parrot, but it is a seemingly impossible task and quite hard on Madam Type-A-Taurus.

We're all left feeling shell-shocked and full of remorse by 8:30 every morning, vowing to do better the next day.

Until just as you're getting in the car - one child cannot find their hairbrush, one hasn't got a belt on so  he's holding up his shorts (for the rest of the day?) and the cat is doing flic-flacs for it's Ocean Sensations and nobody has noticed. It's like finger on the rocket button, and I'm off into ballistic Lady Mac ranting mode again.

Without sounding too much like Charlie & Lola.... I Absolutely Cannot Wait For My Holidays, which kick off next weekend when we are off to San Juan (yes, I know, another island, but a beeeg one) for 5 days.

I'll be happy to feed the children from the mini-bar all week and they can stay in their pyjamas all day long if they want and watch American TV till their eyes fall out, but I'm determined to have a "Where's-your-hat-waterbottle-shoes-bag-suncream-rashie" Free Week. 

I'll officially be sane again in about 3 weeks, and I'll have my first full year of Parenthood in the bag. In fact we should all be experts by then, just like the corporate world really.

A Luta Continua*

All of us looking a bit frazzled after Scrub Island

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that one of the key reasons for us moving halfway around the world was so that I could scale down and spend more time with the boys. Up until very recently, ‘mothering’ used to be something that I did when I wasn’t working. Now, it seems that working is something that I do when I’m not being a mother. The mindshift which this has required, plus the matching skillset, has made moving to a tropical island look like a complete cupcake, by comparison.

Although I spent the weekends and long holidays with the kids in South Africa (and considered myself a “hands-on” mother, as one SAHM* rather pompously informed me she was) Tyler and the nannies were their day-to-day ‘carers’ – the people who sorted out their socks, did dentist appointments, poured a million juices, clipped 80 toe & finger nails and did all the things that children require a hundred times a day, 365 days a year. I just felt like I swooped in for the glamorous stuff.

The kids don’t appear to have suffered as a result of my absences but I always felt like I did. I didn’t want the increasing list of missed birthdays, school nativity plays and other rites of passage to grow – and I was increasingly haunted by that old chestnut about how one reflects on one’s death bed about how one spent one’s time in life.

So armed with my Cath Kitson MBA kind of view on life, I jumped in, nine months ago to being (a) full time mom (b) full time housewife and (c) semi part-time worker in a trust company. I honestly thought New-York-Times-reading- Martha-Stewart- channelling- Domestic-Goddess Yummy Mummy.

Oh hahahahahahahahahha. Oh hahahahahhahaha. Ha ha ha ha. Nothing can prepare one for the endless humility and sheer selfishness which is required to do this, not to mention the torrid amount of mess that 3 little boys can generate. That kids lose their shoes ALL THE TIME, never pick up their Lego and never put the lids back on the felt-tip pens EVER! Nobody mentioned the industrial quantities of Spaghetti Bolognese which has to be cooked, the three PE schedules which have to be remembered and the 60 birthday parties per annum to be endured.

And this is all before any ‘parenting’ as such happens - the guiding of three little souls and the imparting of wisdom and knowledge which we must do as responsible, middle class parents. Most of the time one is just too exhausted for this bit. It mainly seems to boil down to “have you finished your homework/practised your scales/found your library book?” Good, goodnight then.

Mostly it’s a blur from the minute I get up (currently 5am) till I fall into bed. I'm definitely not one of those 'bright & breezy' moms who uncomplainingly makes endless peanut butter sandwiches (“there’s the bread, there’s the butter, do it yourself”) and I seem to spend a lot of time ranting at the children and often can be found muttering darkly about the cavalier qualities of a five year old, an eight year old and a 10 year old.

Like every other mother, I suspect, on the planet.

Being a bit of a novice about all of this - I try and take it as it comes and enjoy it all whilst pondering where a million socks go to die. I have to remind myself to keep my sense of humour, swear less, wait until at least 6:30pm until I have that first glass of wine and dig more sandcastles. I wouldn’t change this for anything in the world and deep in my heart I secretly enjoy being a bit of a martyr – so I clearly have the makings of a matriarch.

So here's to all the real and wonderful mothers that I know – Viva Mothers day, Viva! A luta continua!

* 'A Luta Continua' means 'The Struggle Continues' - for all you post-Eighties babes who dont know your Che Guevaro's from your Sandanistas!
*SAHM = Stay at Home Mother. Also see WAHM – Work at Home Mother

Bonds, equities & potato prints

Source: BVI Beacon taken on 20 Jan

For those of you who don't quite know what I do when I sit in the office in the mornings (I think that is everyone?) what I'm really doing is paving the way, through my growing knowledge of the stock market, for my first mega yacht - like the one above..  When we first saw it on Monday morning on the way to school  the boys were jumping up and down screeching "look at the submarine" - which it does look a bit like, or maybe something out of a ropey Austin Powers movie

But  I, of course, knew better.  Because of my job (monitoring the performance of our trusts and mutual funds under investment) I get to do a lot of reading of the Wall Street Journal, Bloombergs, the FT & Yahoo Finance,  which means I'm learning an inordinate about Russian oligarchs, 'Wealth & How to Spend It' and mega yachts. So I just happenend to know that this yacht, called 'A' is the largest mega yacht in the world and belongs to some 30-something year old Russian. You can read all about it in the WSJ link above.  Now, we do get to see our fair share of mega yachts in the 'Hood, but this one really takes the prize for unfettered ostentation and FUness - all $300 million of it. Anyhow, nothing like a little bit of bad taste to brighten up a Monday, and T tells me that they went and scraped it on the Scrub Island dock as well, so that made us feel even better.  





Boys at Sailing Club

 We've had a good week with T still doing day shifts and things getting back to the new normal. Our children are becoming as scheduled as any other global, middle class kidsters - with soccer, sailing, extra maths etc. Luckily we get to chuck it all up and go to Cane Bay Garden on a Friday afternoon - the kids get to play with about 30 of their best friends until the sun sets, and the moms have a few Painkillers or GODW (glass of dry white) and relax a bit. This Friday was extra special, as the fisherman trawlled their nets off the beach, and they had 30 over-excited expat children 'helping' them bring in the fish. This was all happening as the sun was setting. The cruise ships had all gone, there were only 'locals' on the beach and it was so magical that we were all secretively thinking that this was exactly the reason why we put up with island life, for moments like that. Wish I had my camera there.

My solution to digging myself out of  melancholy is usually to get hyper-organised and 'do things'.  In a moment of pure madness, I signed up to run a craft workshop for 5 year olds once a week (WHY?) and now I'm faced with my first one on Wednesday. I'm feeling hugely daunted - flat-out terrified actually, and will understand the psychology of it all at some later stage - but there you go. I'm running a toddlers craft group. Amazing.