Orcas in the Bay

There is a fine art to digging a hole on the beach in the right place – too high up and it doesn’t get any water running into it. Boring. Too close and you might as well be swimming in the sea. Today, for the first time this holiday, I nailed it. Every now and then a wave would be strong enough to reach and fill the hole with water – much to Kit’s delight.

Our perfectly placed puddle happened to be in line with the beach foot traffic (although the traffic has slowed considerable, it being 11 January). A boy of about 10 ran in front of us and wiped out. There was something about the wipe-out that made it look somewhat intentional. A bit of pizzazz. A bit too convenient as it placed him directly in line with us and he clearly had something to say. “There’s killer whales.”

“Where?” my dad asked.

In cricket when the umpire signals a 4. That’s pretty much the gesture he used to indicate the killer whales location. So now we knew that the orcas were indeed in the ocean.

Tailing the boy was his mother.

“Did you see the killer whales?” she asked.

We had not.

“You haven’t?!” she said, utterly astonished. “There were about 20 of them”.

She elaborated … Her son had pointed the “dolphins” out. She didn’t have her glasses on though but she knew that she wouldn’t be able to see dolphins from that distance. Huge fins. She had also heard people mention that there were killer whales in the bay. It all added up: Orcas – 20 of them.

After our swim, we saw her standing a hundred meters down the beach, phone up, filming the sea. Perhaps live streaming. She looked in our direction and gave us a thumbs up. Clearly pleased that we could finally see the orcas, with her assistance. On our count, there were more than 20 of them, all over the bay. The interesting thing about these orcas is that they were definitely dolphins. We gave her a thumbs up. She look well pleased.

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Photograph of the day: Kit skipped bath and had an outdoor shower instead. Here’s Jess blowing raspberry kisses, sending Kit into hysterics.

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A Cicada and a Palette Knife

It’s hot tonight and when we sat down to dinner we left the balcony doors wide open in the hope of a breeze. A cicada saw the gap and came right on in to see what all the light was about.

“That’s what happens when everything’s open and the lights are on,” my mom said as she ate her burger.

For those who don’t know, cicadas are big insects (this one was at least the size of my thumb including the knuckle). Cidadas, as my dad mentioned, use sound as a weapon. They are LOUD. “Our” cicada crashed from wall to pitched roof to plant to cabinet, back to the roof – and so it went.

“Turn off the lights,” my mom said. “Open the courtyard doors.”

“You’re just issuing instructions,” my dad said, releasing the latch of the doors. “I’m the only one that’s doing anything”.

This was the wrong thing to say to a woman that had made black bean burgers from scratch.

“I mean relating to the insect,” my dad corrected.

Jess then appeared at the top of the stairs, having put Kit down. She opened the door and her eyes began to follow the alarming insect flying around the room at pace.

To this day, there are few things I find funnier than watching someone react to an insect they think is on them. I tried this with Jess, shouting, “Watch out for your face”, and then roared with laughter, even though she didn’t react all that much (not because she is nonchalant about insects – she is chalant about them – but because she didn’t believe my cry wolf). (As a side story: A few years ago, I was en route to a post-wedding brunch in an Uber with the back window down and a loctus flew into the car and onto my top. The screaming that ensued from my friend next to me and my friend in the front seat, sent me into hysterics.

My friend then shouted, “I don’t understand why we’re still driving! Stop the car. Stop the car”.

The Uber pulled over and I jumped out to place the locust on the verge and then thought better of it, turning abruptly and pretending to throw it back into the car. Pandemonium …

Back to “our” cicada – back to Plett.

Jess took her place at the table and we all sat there, watching and listening to the cicada jet around the room. Then silence. The cicada took a break or got stuck in some nook, and we thought that was the end of that, but she started up again. And then, WHOA, it lands on my mom’s bare arm. Now you must understand that my mother lived in Londolozi, in the greater Kruger National Park, for many years. For a time, my parents literally lived in a mud hut. This is not the first large insect encounter. But it’s ON. HER. ARM.

Moira doesn’t scream – she stands up, stretches her arms backwards in something that resembles a crouched power pose and does a fast walk outside through the open doors to the garden. Only there and only then does she let out a yelp. Apparently it flew from her arm to her hand and pinched her.

Moira returns to the table with the look of someone that knows they have just demonstrated great calm in a high pressure situation.

“I wanted it outside”, she says, after we all compliment her on her composure.

Photograph of the day: My mother is a painter and this a photograph of one of my favorite pieces of hers. It’s not the full painting but a cropped version of it and – truth told – doesn’t do justice to how beautiful the painting is. The painting hangs above the bed in Jess and my room in Plett. I once asked Moira if I could have this painting (I have other really beautiful works of hers). Moira said no. I would also say no. The interesting thing about this painting is that it was my mom’s first ever painting with a palette knife. As I understand it, you have a lot less control with a palette knife. The benefit of that loss of control is a freedom – movement. My mom once asked her teacher, looking back at this painting, how she managed to paint so well with the palette knife on that first go. Her teacher told my mom that when she painted it, she didn’t know how difficult a palette knife was. She just did it.

 

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A House on a Hill

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Every third Christmas my friend – let’s call her Terry to provide some anonymity since I’ve highjacked the story and it’s too late to ask for permission – goes on holiday with her husband’s family in a remote spot near St Francis. It’s a private nature reserve with no electricity, two lone houses, lots of space and their own beach. The kids (lots of them) run wild. Rex, their black Labrador also enjoys the freedom – he strolls rather than runs though (his name has also been changed to protect his dignity).

The houses sit on a hill a fair way away from the beach. Maybe it’s more of a slope, or a foliaged covered dune than a hill – let’s not let the details get in the way of a good story. The point is the houses are some way from the beach.

One afternoon (it could’ve been morning), Terry sees that Rex is swimming in the shallows – nothing unusual about a Lab taking a dip. Rex, however, is on not at his physical peak (read slightly overweight). He starts to struggle in a rip. Terry watches anxiously from the house, scared that the backwash will pull Rex deeper and deeper out to sea. She shouts to her husband, Joe to ran down and help. Joe is up to the task, sprinting down the shore but he stops short of the water. Watching.

Terry starts to panic. “Why is Joe just standing there?” she asks her sister in law who is also watching Rex flailing in the ocean below.

“He’s worried he’ll get caught in the same rip. He needs to think of his own life,” her sister in law says in his defense.

Rex’s snout is going under. Popping up every now and then.

Terry starts crying. Again, she asks, desperate now, “Why isn’t Joe doing anything?!”

Because it’s an otter.

Not Rex (who is resting in the shade behind the house, well out of danger). An otter.

Photograph of the day: Playing around with a slow shutter in this evening’s blue light. 

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Light from the bathroom door

Tonight we heard some really awful news about a friend. There were so many joys today, before the news; so many moments I could focus in on and write about, but my heart feels heavy this evening. Writing about any of that joy feels false in the wake of my worry and the gut punch of it. So I won’t. I will only say (because the news is not mine to share or talk about) that life can change awfully quickly.

I will circle back to some of the joys of today and some of the photographs (because there were some special ones). Even though I took quite a few photographs on my ‘proper’ camera today, this one struck me as my favorite, despite taking it on my cellphone.

Tonight is ‘my’ night – in that I will sleep next to Kit and Jess is sleeping in the spare room to get much-needed rest. I came downstairs to get ready for bed and found Jess and Kit like this. The line of light sliced through the bathroom door and I’m not sure there’s anything more beautiful in the world.

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Lost Post

Two minutes ago I lost my writing for today in a wifi issue while I was trying to upload my photograph of the day. I think I’ve been working on Google Docs for so long that I thought WordPress would also automatically save drafts. I thought wrong.

I’ll rewrite it tomorrow. For now, I’m too tired to redo it but I wanted to show up here regardless.

Losing my draft aside, I had a good day: Time with my daughter and Jess on the beach, a really wonderful wedding in Knysna. This evening my wife gave me a foot rub. A pretty good day, indeed.

By the time I got home from the wedding and we had Kit fed and bathed, I had lost a lot of light and a lot of energy. Still, I went into the garden to try take my photograph of that day but couldn’t find much inspiration (not the garden’s fault – it’s beautiful). So I looked up and saw the clouds and decided, that will do.

Sleep well. I will (in the spare room).

Tomorrow I turn 37.

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18 boiled eggs

Today, at the lagoon (maybe that’s how the next week’s blog posts will all start)… Anyway, today at the lagoon, I saw a family with 18 boiled eggs for snacks. I know there were 18 because they had placed them back in the carton. I’m not judging it. I respect it. As a family (the Thomases) we are boiled egg people – egg mayonnaise for padkos people. Still, even we have never boiled 18 eggs for any one day.

When Jess and I first started dating, we met up with one of my very good friends who said to Jess (I forget why it came up): “You obviously know how many eggs Lara eats”.

It was the first Jess had heard of it.

In those early days of our relationship, Jess was studying for her finals, and the stress and the nerves meant that she had lost most of her appetite. A loss of appetite has never afflicted me (my mom says that Thomases are guzzlers). In those early days, one house always wins out and in our case it was Jess’. I was buying my on-repeat ingredients of hummus, eggs, halloumi, basil but then spending so much time at Jess’ that I wasn’t eating any of it. I wasn’t eating at Jess’ either. And so, as I fell in love, I also starved and I ate a lot less eggs and so my penchant for eggs was only revealed a little later when I explained to Jess that I needed a lot more food than her.

But this story is not the story of Jess and I falling in love, this is a story about the 18-eggs-for-snacks family on the beach. A member of that same family had a bow and arrow. You’re probably imagining a toy. This was not a toy. It wasn’t a compound bow but it was as professional and hardcore as a bow can look without being a compound bow. This was a proper bow. Do I need to emphasize that more? A bow bow. There was also a pile of arrows.

Two elderly people sat in chairs watching the kids playing. Mr Bow and Arrow took advantage of the captive audience, demonstrating how best to shoot an opponent that is at very close range. It is not straightforward. Literally – he shot the arrow from behind his back into the sand.

This I judge.

Not long after this demonstration, we packed up and made our way off the beach to the car park (it bears mentioning that we didn’t leave for fear of being shot – we left because Kit got cold. Only when I reached the tar, did I remember my slops in the sand. I handed Jess the car keys so she could get Kit settled in the car and then retraced my steps. As I slid on my shoes, I heard a man say, “That’s so frustrating”.

I thought Mr Bow and Arrow was talking to someone in his egg party but then he added, “Having to come all the way back just for your slops”.

What a nice man, I thought.

(Photograph of the day is at the top. Jess with freckles; Kit recovering from lagoon life.)

 

 

 

 

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Running a Sanctuary

Framed photographs cover the one wall in my parents’ home in Plett. Kit stares up at them and most days, once of us picks her up so she can see them properly and we tell her who is who in her family. Some of the photographs are old. We point to a four-year old boy (or thereabouts) and tell her it’s her grandfather. We point to a little blonde girl with a fringe and a bob sitting on her grandmother’s lap and we tell her that that little girl is her “Momo”. That’s me. I’m Momo, which is a story for another day.

Today, I heard my mom telling Kit about another photograph: “That is your great grandmother, skinny dipping at Londolozi. So you see, skinny dipping goes way back in your family”.

Cut to this afternoon: Kit, naked, running in the lagoon on an overcast day. At the beginning of the trip to the lagoon she had a cozy on. She also had an immediate friend, which is a win in any context but for a 13 month old baby, it’s thrilling. Her new friend, almost four year old, approached in her round lilo, announcing that Kit could fit on too. When Kit couldn’t master the mount, she ran off to get a smaller floatation device: A blow-up penguin. This, too, Kit struggled with. Kit doesn’t like to be restricted (by hands holding hers) and certainly not by a tight circle of taught plastic, even if it does look like a birdie. No problem, her new friend, Annie, had other toys. She instructed Kit to follow her where she revealed a trove of toys: Helicopters, surfers, multiple spades…Really good stuff.

After some time with Annie, Jess decided Kit was cold. She thanked Annie for her lagoon hospitality and brought Kit back to our spot on the sand. I made the error of taking Kit back into the water to try get some sand off her legs. Kit took the gap and tried to make a run out of it, or at least a side-ways wipe out into the water – to her delight. Another swim session ensued before we got Kit dry and warm.

Charlotte, the bride that I’m doing a ceremony for on Saturday mentioned to me, when the wedding forecast came up, that her dad says of the Garden Route, “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes”. It proved true at the lagoon. The sun made an appearance and with it, we lost our desire to keep Kit from the water. Off came her clothes.

A group of older children huddled at the water’s edge, digging a moat, building a bridge, finding crabs to populate the abode. A lot of time, voting and town planning went into the project. As we were packing up our things to head home, I heard one of the children say to another, “It’s tough running a crab sanctuary”.

Photograph of the Day: 5 January 2023. That piece of sand – resting between the green and just before the the stair rail – is one of my favorite shapes in the world. On the left of the dune, before you reach the steps, rest the ashes of my grandparents, both sets, and of our dog, Shadow.

 

 

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Salt and tissue salts

The socks are no longer safely in the cupboard. Rain came this afternoon, and Jess and I like to be cosy and we like to wear socks and I noticed, this evening, that we both had a beautiful pair on this evening and said as much.

Jess’ response: “One of my pairs has been stolen”.

This accusation caused me wild laughter. And when my laughter subsided, I was left with a sense of vindication. Already, Jess’ 5 pairs are dwindling.

Jess continued, “I put the pair in a very specific place and they’re no longer there”.

I had nothing to do with the disappearance of the socks. I’m typing in the dark (my daughter is sleeping next to me) and I just used my phone light to check that my socks have an L on them, not a J. L it is.

Some of you may have picked up on the, ‘my daughter is sleeping next to me’ bit. To you, I say, “Stop”. Stop thinking that she should be in a cot, or asking, “Is she waking you or are you waking her?” Stop it. Actually, it’s fine. You can think it, of course. Of course. Please  just don’t say those two words – sleep train – near me. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to speak about it. I don’t want to consider a gentle version. Jess and I have made several resolutions not to speak to anyone about our lack of sleep because naturally, people have a solution and we’ve heard them and some of them we’ve tried and tried, and some, we have vowed to never try. So why do I raise it here? Because if I am going to write every day of the year and share it here, I can’t possibly bypass the fact that I am sleep deprived. I was going to write severely sleep deprived but then I took the adjective out. Now, I change my mind – it’s accurate. Severely. Did I mention that I don’t get much sleep?

The reason I wanted to mention the sleep thing is so that you know that I’m tired. That’s the end of the story.

No, I wanted to mentioned it so that I could speak about tissue salts. Don’t worry, I don’t sell them. My mom, Moira stands by them and she has the Bible of tissue salts at the ready. The name of the book – dubbed as of right now, the Bible – escapes me but those who know tissue salts, know the book I’m talking about – there’s a flower on the front; there’s definitely some purple involved and it’s on a white background.

Some believe that tissue salts – which are homeopathic – are just sugar pills and do not work a smidge. They do not believe in homeopathy at all and they will tell you this as they slug their rescue remedy and rub arnica on their sore limbs. Sjoe, this post is covering some controversial topics: Sleep training, homeopathy … and I think referencing “the Bible “when it’s not the Bible is probably as my headmistress used to say, “An absolute no no”. But back to the tissue salts…

Moira is a fan. She will consult the Bible for a vast array of symptoms. Irritability – take 8 on the hour, every hour (don’t actually take 8 – I just cited the first number that popped into my head – this is not Moira’s advice nor the Bible’s). Struggling to sleep? Take two of all the even numbers – 2,4,6,8, every 15 minutes, until you’re asleep (it’s the homeopathic version of counting sheep).

When I picked up Kit for bed, Moira had placed 3 of the pink tissue salt bottles next to the lamp by the stairs. She casually mentioned them – “they’re there if you want them”.

I have nothing against tissue salts. I was brought up on the stuff. And so, Moira doctored Kit’s bottle before bed. If she sleeps well tonight, I will take a photo of the Bible. My three readers will rush to get it and it’ll be sold out, nationwide.

Coming to the end of this post, I regret not writing about the fact an old school friend on the beach today, who only just met Kit, commented, “Long eyelashes like you”. (I have really long eyelashes. People tell me this fairly often – as the owner of the eyelashes, you’re never quite aware of just how long they are). Kit does have a strong eyelash game (a stronger eyebrow game – sherbet, those are some good eyebrows). The thing is, I have nothing to do with Kit’s eyelash length or incredible eyebrows. I corrected the friend, saying, “Yes, like Jess'”. Later, Jess told me to rather claim it.

The next time someone comments on her lashes, I will flutter mine (causing a light but pleasant breeze) and say, “How could she not?”

(Today’s photograph appears at the top. It was slim pickings on my SD cards and, if I’m honest, I nearly cheated and posted one from a couple of days ago. I didn’t. What I like about Jess’ shoes is the sand and that we went straight from the beach to the bath and then to socks, and that all of it was together.)

 

 

 

 

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Giving rocks

Near the end of our walk around the Plett burbs today, Kit refused to be in her hiking carrier anymore (yes, we were using a hiking carrier for a very relaxed walk and yes, my wife told me that people would judge me for it being overkill but I like the way the hiking carrier allows me to carry some of the weight on my hips rather than in the front like a traditional carrier and so hiking carrier it was). I don’t care if people judge me about the carrier. Really. But hypetetically, if I was embarrassed by it… You know what would be even more embarrassing than carrying your child in a hardcore hiking carrier for a casual stroll? Carrying an empty hardcore hiking carrier on a stroll while your one year old practices her slope walking on the lawn verge.

Our return walk became very slow, what with Kit wanting to walk on the road rather than the grass, and us having to shepherd her back to the lawn. And it may have been due to this pace or Jess may have very good eyes (she doesn’t, her glasses are a signature look) – but Jess noticed a rock in a flower bed. Picking it up, she saw that on the back of it was a message: Post a pic and tag us on Insta. Rehide. I won’t share the handle here for reasons that shall become clear soon.

Before bed tonight, I mentioned the rock to my dad. I picked it up and showed it to him and, doing so, noticed that the rock had been painted on (I initially thought the rock was naturally marked like that). My dad seemed indifferent to the find. Disinterested even. He said, “I found one the other day on the beach.”

“What did you do with it?” my mom asked.

“I left it there,” he said.

“Why?”

“They should be arrested,” he said, completely seriously.

“Arrested for what?” I asked, in hysterics.

“For defacing beautiful things”.

You see, my dad has somewhat of a Marie Kondo belief about certain inanimate objects. Marie, for those that don’t know, encourages you, among other things like putting things back in their place, to thank your jacket for keeping you warm before lovingly hanging it back and placing it the cupboard. When I write this, I’m not mocking it. I’m with Kondo – or at least, the idea doesn’t seem absurd to me.

How is my dad like Kondo?

Today, after my brother’s kayak, my dad commented that the kayak was very happy.

“Why?” my brother asked.

“Because you took it into sea”.

Today’s rock isn’t the first rock that my dad has had strong feelings about. Once on the Otter Trail, he saw that a group of hikers had taken rocks from a rock pool and used it to prop up their grid for their braai. He carried the rocks back to where they were found. When someone asked him why, he said that the rocks were much happier there.

Another instance: He made the new owners of our Johannesburg home (where my mom and dad lived for close to 30 years) promise that they would clean the rock bird baths regularly. I say regularly. If it was up to him, he would’ve insisted on daily. Here, in Plett, his new home, he does exactly that. He cleans the one on the beach path every. day. He then fills it with fresh water. The birds come. And the birds are grateful for the clean water. How do I know? Because of how many come and how often. He told me the other day that he found a beautiful yellow feather on the rock where a weaver had been.

Here’s the photograph for today (it’s a little of a cheat because my dad took this photograph but I had to run defense… steering Kit away from the waves, catching her (most of the time) when she was heading face first into the shallow water, telling her to ran to her grandad.)

 

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The sock challenge

The sock challenge seems simple enough. Keep 5 pairs of socks together. The catch? You have to do it for more than one day. You have to do it for weeks, on end. You have to keep it and them together. They have to find their mate, again and again, after wash cycles.

One of the advantages of being married to a woman is that you get to share a wardrobe. In my marriage, I definitely reap the benefit of the shared wardrobe, which is a nice way of saying Jess has more style than me; more clothes, too. If I receive a compliment on an item of clothing (I rake them in), 97% of the time – Jess has bought the item. A quick note to my wife: Thank you, Jess.

The equation of the double wardrobe is complicated and works like this: Double the clothes (bonus!), exclusivity on shoes (Jess is a 5; I’m a 7) and half the socks (literally, only one sock of every pair is left). Technically, we share socks. Wait, share is the wrong word. Compete is a truer reflection. If you find a couple that are close on the same colour, for example both are light grey, but one has a black patch over the heel and toes – it is a victory. That’s a pair in our eyes. Most shoes cover those black patches – the socks become, to the outsider, indistinguishable. No one knows. But we know.

One of the quotes that plays on my mind a lot is, “the way you do everything is the way you do anything”. It pops into my head and when it does, I often think of the socks. And I think, if I can get the socks right, I can get other things that I struggle with right.

Cue the sock challenge. Today, Jess and I bought 11 pairs of socks. It’s an awkward number, admittedly. That gives us each 5 pairs of socks. That’s maths. The remaining pair is the darkest of the lot – a maroon-ish pair and shall be a floating pair. But back to the 5 pairs.

When I asked Jess who she thinks loses the socks out of the two of us, she said, “You”.

I laughed at the audacity.

“It’s you!” I shot back.

“You don’t know yourself then,” Jess said.

The smack talk has already started.

Jess then told me that she had explained the sock challenge to my mother – a woman that keeps her socks together. Did my mother offer support? No. She said she doesn’t think either of us can do it. She did, however, offer us a permanent marker to label the sock camps. (Soon a single sock with J will be floating around, no doubt.)

We bought the socks at 13:22pm this afternoon. 11 pairs remain. Jess, however, is the only one yet to wear a pair. Amateur.

The sock challenge will expose one of us. Or both. There is bound to be sabotage, excuses, probably theft along the way.

Here’s the one photograph for today. Pictured here, Jess, owner of 10 socks (probably the last day she will be able to claim the title) and Kit, sockless (she owns some, but tends to pull them off at the first chance she gets). Also pictured here – laundry.

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