Kit has these sponge ‘stickers’ that stick to the bathtub when wet. They’re all sea creatures. There’s a squid and a whale and a crab and starfish (you get the idea). At bath time, I’ve taken to asking her which one is her favorite. I hold up the octopus and the swordfish, and I ask her to choose. Since there are quite a few creatures, and I only pit one against the other, it takes us a while to reach the finale (especially because there are some control tests done between the quarter and semis).

The whale pretty much always wins (it may have something to do with the fact that we’ve been singing baby beluga – just a little white whale on the go – to her, every day, for most of her life).

In the last two days, she has changed it up though. Whale hasn’t always come out tops. She delights in how shocked I act when she chooses a swordfish over the whale. She understands that it’s funny that she has now changed her mind.

Today we showed Jess the game. It turned out to be a good time to demonstrate the game because a new creature rose to the top: The hammerhead shark.

“The hammerhead shark?!

Kit grinned.

“Are you sure, Kit – the hammerhead shark?! Are you sure it beats out the Octopus?!”

She was sure, pointing to it again.

Then Jess said, “He’s got great eyes”.

For some reason this made me laugh a lot. And that was the best part of my day – all three of us in the bathroom, laughing.

Photograph of the day: You know you’re reaching when you grab a vase at 7pm, walk into the garden for natural light and take a photo of it. Then I saw the reflection – the palm tree, the side of our house. Still a reach but a better one.

 

 

The good (leaning towards just okay): Growing up we weren’t allowed coca-cola except on Mondays. On Mondays, we went to my gran’s house and she always had coke and my mom made a special concession. We’d drink it with ice in these very bright aluminium cups.

There’s nothing quite as delicious as really cold coke on a hot day. I hardly drink coke these days – maybe that’s why coke on the rocks still takes me right back to my gran’s house in Joburg.

Wellington was a casual 37 degrees at 5pm today. En route to Rachel and Brandon’s wedding, I stopped at a garage intending to get sparkling water. The fridge full of coke distracted me. Today was a coke kind of a day. Sadly, even the fridge at the garage struggled in the heat. It was cool, at best.

The beautiful: Just before the vows, Rachel and Brandon’s son Elliott came to stand next to me, looking at his parents. They reached out and took his hands and they stood like that for a moment.

(I’ve said it many times before, and I’ll say it now again, the best parts of a wedding ceremony cannot be planned. They must unfold and be allowed to unfold. If a ceremony goes exactly to plan, chances are there was no room for the spontaneous.)

The bad: You know when you’re balancing two plates with a knife and a fork on each, and you’re trying to keep the plates steady and you’re about to reach your destination and something distracts you and the plate tilts and the handle of the knife slides into the tomato sauce? Ya, that – it happened this evening (and also a metaphor for this week).

Photograph of the day: Coldish coke.  

 

 

This afternoon Jess told me that she read yesterday’s blog. She said she felt sad that I had let the one “like” make me gunshy about posting a photograph. She told me that when she read it, she thought, no – she thought, “You go, girl”.

“Go” happens to be one of the first words Kit ever said. She heard Jess say, “You go, girl” and joined in, “Go, go, go”.

I’m going to listen to their advice and go, go, go – even on hard days and even when I’d rather not. I’m going to pick the momentum back up. I’m going to:

Go.

Go.

Go.

P.S. I married very well.

P.S.S Photograph of the day: There was slim pickings today for photos so I thought I’d take a photo of these magnificent illustrations in a book my dear cousin gave me called, The Lost Words. It was late evening then and I needed enough light on the page so I placed it on the floor next to the window. Kit took got involved.

P.S.S.S I don’t endorse standing on books but if a there has to be a foot to stand on one, let it be this one. I mean!

 

Walking is almost never a bad idea – even when it’s windy (somehow being in the wind is not never as bad as watching the wind, imagining you’re in it). I’m going to leave that mistake in, “not never as bad”. Beautiful prose.

I ummed and arhhhed about going for a walk this evening. Eventually, nearing on 6pm, I decided to do it, pushing Kit in her trike to a nearby park (or, rather, an open plot of land surrounded by houses). The one slope of the lot is covered in cacti. Please note my correct use of the plural there. I’m sure the cacti are invasive aliens but they’re dramatic, and they become pretty attractive aliens when they sprout prickly pears.

I listened to a podcast last week about life hacks. One of the first hack they suggested: ‘Eat the frog’ first thing in the morning. That is, get the task you’re dreading out of the way so you don’t have it sitting over you for the rest of the day. I agree with sentiment. That said, on some days, frogs are out of the question and you’ve got to go for the low hanging fruit. For me, today was one. It’s cheesy to be this literal but seeing the prickly pears in a park was really the highlight of my day.

As an aside that has nothing to do with prickly pears: Ordinarily, I post a photograph on Instagram after I’ve written here. Last night I did just that. I got one like (from a person tagged in the post so she couldn’t exactly ignore it). I figured my app was updating or there was some kind of delay …

But this morning when I checked the post. Still just that one lone like.

This afternoon I said to Jess, do you know that my photo only got one like. I mean, I know it’s not a great photo but one like?

Jess asked if my app was up to date or maybe not loading properly. She then clicked on my photo and liked it, asking if it came through.

It did.

So now I have two likes, and one of them I had to ask my wife to do while I sat next to her on the couch.

I don’t want to say the word algorithm …

Algorithm.

Of course, it’s not the likes that count. But. One. Like?

It’s embarrassing.

This is just to say that this evening I’m a bit gun shy about posting on Instagram. I’m sure that on a day when prickly pears aren’t the highlight, I’ll get back on that horse.

Amidst provisional tax and searching for hairbands and cutting oranges and pushing a button to make the alarm stop beeping after load shedding, it is easy to forget how lucky we are to live where we do. This evening I drove 6 minutes to an elopement on Signal Hill. The couple travelled from Nashville, Tennessee (I just wanted to write that in here because I love country music and I love the word Tennessee – with all those double letters). But, also, of course, because it’s a really long way away. A lot more than 6 minutes.

On my way home, I pulled Blanche off the road (that’s our Polo) and took this photograph on my phone. I was home in time to put Kit down.

I mentioned before that as a family we’re thinking a lot about what kind of life we want to lead and that includes what kind of home we want to live in and where. You see, we’re after some lawn. Lawn is hard to come by in these parts (or rather, it’s pricey). So we decide that it’s time – it’s time to move to the burbs. And then Summer happens. And we undecide.

We are undecided.

(For transparency, not all weeks center around Beta beach and Camps Bay Tidal pool and walks near the mountain. Some weeks (like this one) are doozies. To be honest, even the good weeks are hard in their own ways. Hard but exquisitely beautiful – the kind of beauty that gives me a strong sense of my older self looking back on this time in my life with deep nostalgia.)

 

When I was in nursery school I painted this duck (or maybe it’s a goose?) I’m not sure how old I was at the time but I know that I was young – 4 or 5? It doesn’t really matter. I wanted to share the painting because of the feet.

You’ll see that the blue sky stops short of the feet. I did that because I couldn’t risk losing the detail of the feet in the blue. I didn’t yet have the precision necessary for that task. So I left it.

When I look at it now, it’s my favorite part of the painting. Imperfection is so often where the magic lies. Actually, it’s not often, it’s always. It’s always where magic lives.

Last night Jess and I drove back from a very good friend’s 40th and since they live quite far away, we had 30 minutes to ourselves to just talk.

I once heard on a podcast about these brothers that always go on a hike when they have to have difficult conversations. The harder the conversation – the more difficult the route they choose. They explained that they could connect better and more honestly alongside one another as opposed to sitting across from each other. The same must be true of cars and road trips.

The conversation Jess and I had wasn’t a difficult one but 30 uninterrupted minutes with each other has been rare in the last 14 months. We’ve been thinking a lot about the kind of life we want for our family and what that looks like. I’m not going to get into that right now – it’s Sunday and tired and I’m going to sleep early.

What I will do though is leave these Lana Del Rey lyrics here. I’m not even a Lana fan (well, not a typical one). When I read these lyrics I had to reconsider my position though.

You thought I was rich
And I am but not how you think
I live in a Tudor house
Under the freeway in Mar Vista by the beach
When you call I take my phone to the picnic table
That I bought from the Rose Bowl
And I listen to the rushing cars above
And I think about the last time you visited me
The last time we made love
How the noise got louder and louder during rush hour
Until it sounded like the sea
And it felt like the ocean was the sky
And that I was flying because you were two feet taller than me
Until you took me in your arms
And I could touch the stars
And they all fell down around my head
And I became an angel
And you put me to bed
Happy

People think that I’m rich and I am but not how they think
I have a truck with a gold key chain in the ignition
And on the back it says: happy, joyous, and free
Happy
And when I drive
I think about the last time my friends were driving with me
How the radio was so loud that I couldn’t hear the words
So we became the music
Happy

They write that I’m rich and I am but not how they think
I have a safe I call the boyfriend box
And in it every saved receipt
Every movie theater ticket just to remind me
Of all the things I’ve loved and lost and loved again
Unconditionally
Happy

You joke that I’m rich and I am but not how you think
I live in a Tudor house under the freeway
Off of Rose Avenue, 12 blocks from the beach
And when you call I put your sweater on
And put you on speaker
And chat for hours underneath the trees
And think about the last time you were here lying next to me
How the noise from the cars got louder and louder
During rush hour
Until it sounded like a river or a stream
And it felt like we were swimming
But it wasn’t just a dream
We were just

Happy

Photograph of the day taken on my phone: The water and the waterlilies in Green Point park.

Lovely morning coffee spot (see photograph below).

What you may not notice at first glance?

There is a set of salt and pepper cellars on the wall (placed out of Kit’s view by a kind waiter).

The sugar container has also been strategically removed, only after Kit used it as a shaker, walking up and down the pavement.

The water mark by the dog bowl: Kit emptied it a few moments before.

The prestine table in the forefront is not ours. Our is second in line, with the skew table cloth and the Woolies bag on top.

The ice tea has no lid on it.

(I downed my cappuccino and asked for the bill, leaving most of the oats uneaten. This is to say that things aren’t always what they seem in photographs. Don’t compare your alive, moving, imperfect life to others’ stills.)

A friend and I used to meet up every January to write down our goals for the rest of the year and then we’d keep each other’s list until the next January when we’d read them out to each other.

One year, among all the very measurable goals, like “find a loving partner” and “publish my book”, I wrote this: Have more fun and be more fun.

My friend said that wasn’t a proper goal. How will you know if you’ve achieved it?

I will know.

She conceded in the end – I think she even wrote it on her own list the next year.

(If memory serves that year I was really fun!)

Have a good weekend.

Photograph of the day: Kit, butternut and the way she looks at her mama (that’s Jess).

“If you need a photo for the day, I can send you what I took in the park” – this is what Jess offered me a few moments ago. We’re in dire straits people. Not because Jess takes bad photos (she actually takes pretty good ones) but because I tried to outsource the task today. This, after being cocky about February and writing in the morning. How the mighty have fallen on the 2nd. Here I am, again, writing after bedtime. Today was quite uneventful: No Clifton; no Beta; no De Waal Park plaque.

After work Jess took Kit to the park so that I could rest (I was hitting a wall). I spent the time making lentils and nachos because we finally had our neighbors over for a glass of wine.

With little else to offer today, I’m going to be so bold as to share a recipe with you. You should know that I probably won’t be sharing any other recipes here because I’m a one-dish-wonder. This is all I’ve got to offer. Okay, that’s not entirely true, I can make a good spinach pie (thanks, Mom) and a lovely and quick roast potato but my only go-to… my go-to is lentils.

This recipe is a version of Buffalo Horn Curry.

Strange name, yes – here’s the back story: My folks have a piece of art depicting a buffalo’s horns that is made from the Axel of a car. A few years ago my dad and uncle decided to mount it on the wall. It is seriously heavy though. Due to its weight, they took them a long time to get right. While they were trying, my mom cooked lentils. Moira was not following a recipe. Moira was winging it (my mom is a very good cook – justifying winging it). My dad and uncle took so long to hang said art work in the garden that the dish reduced and reduced. The potatoes and cumin (a topping that does not feature in the recipe below so don’t get too excited) started to burn; so did the curry. My mom about had it.

“For fuck sake’s,” she said, dragging the pot across the hob, away from the heat.

It was around 9pm – way past appropriate dinner time; way past the time she would usually have left the curry cooking.

To this day, there has never been a buffalo horn curry that tasted that good.

Here’s the recipe. It won’t be laid out like a regular recipe, I’ll just tell you what to do:

Cut up on an onion in smallish pieces (smallish because I don’t have the skill to cut it very finely, nor a knife sharp enough. Also, why is it that some onions make your eyes tear up and others don’t?). Get a big pot. Pour some olive oil in. Fry the onions until the pieces are a bit translucent. Crush one glove of garlic. Put that in too. Reduce the heat a little as apparently garlic can burn easily and get bitter (my mom told me this). Pour a tin of coconut milk in the pot. Stir a bit. Then add some medium curry powder – a heaped teaspoon will do. Let that simmer a while (your heat is lower now).

Simmer.

Add a can of tinned chopped tomatoes (my mom says that someone told her that whole tomatoes are much tastier but then you have to chase them around the pot a bit, cutting them into smaller pieces. No one wants to do that. Get the sliced and diced ones). Then you drain a can of lentils (by that I mean you open the can and then pour the liquid out) and throw them in there too. Salt will help now – a pinch or three.

Reduce.

Reduce.

Reduce.

Keep stirring. Keep stirring.

Oh, you needed the bathroom and then came back to your pot? Sorry, the bottom is burnt. Oh, you quickly looked at your phone to answer a WhatsApp. The bottom is burnt now.

All is not lost. Keep stirring.

Reduce it until there’s hardly any liquid left. By now you should’ve probably cooked some rice, too. Sorry that I missed that step but I don’t really know how to cook rice properly. It’s a bit of a hit and miss. Google it – there are some ratios that they advise.

If you miss with the rice, not to worry, you can just eat the lentils on their own – so delicious. Avo is pretty mandatory as a topping – a squeeze of lemons helps – and feta works well, too.

If there is a trick (which there isn’t), it’s to reduce it more than you think you should. It gets taster and taster. Put it in a taco or a wrap. This will feed two people (depending on which people). Yesterday I came home from the park with Kit, and Jess had cooked dinner. I looked in the oven and then went to the courtyard and said, as graciously as I could, “In future, I will need more potatoes”.

Photograph of the day: Not Kit in the Park, by Jess, but a building near Home Affairs in the centre of town. I took this on my cellphone out of my car window after lodging a few marriages. I’ve admired this building’s colours for a while now.