Read and then sleep. The combination usually works for me. Not last night though. Last night I got stuck into a new book and I couldn’t stop reading. At one point I was laughing in the darkness, trying not to wake Kit. At another, wiping tears from my eyes.

My mom is the same with books. She told me that when my brother and I were little, she had to stop reading for a time because she’d get so enraptured in novels that she wouldn’t do anything else.

I’ve witnesses this book befokedness many times.

During my law articles in Joburg, my parents lived a couple of kilometers up the road. My mom had a self-imposed rule that she would never visit the flat when I wasn’t there (she had access to it). One day at work, I looked at my phone to see I had three voice messages from my mom. The first one, calm – my mom asking me where the second Hunger Games book was. The second almost immediately after the first telling me that when I got home, she wanted to come fetch the second book. And a third telling me that she could no longer wait (about a minute had passed since the second voice message) – she was going to the flat to get the book.

The same thing happened with Twilight. (For the record, we do read other more acclaimed books but these are the most extreme examples of book befokedness). That is to say, I hear you judging us for reading Twilight – fine, I can take it. My mom actually did judge me as I made my way through the series. She told me, more than once, that I should read better books and she didn’t know why I was wasting my time. Then she made the mistake of picking one up. She did not put them down. She started one of the books at 2am. She read while she ate dinner. She could not hold a conversation until the books were done. And after she had smashed all four, she said they weren’t very good. But you have to admit, those books had something.

This is to say, I’m book befoked. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. Just so beautiful.

At around 1am, I made a note in the book, highlighting this paragraph:

“‘Promise me, that no matter what happens, no matter what dumb thing we supposedly perpetrate on each other, we won’t ever go six years without talking to each other. Promise me you’ll always forgive me, and I promise I’ll always forgive you.’ These, of course, are the kinds of vows young people feel comfortable making when they have no idea what life has in store for them.”

I’m going to read and sleep now.

Photograph of the day: Speaking of vows, Marcel and Pieter exchanged theirs this evening in their home, marking their 10th anniversary with a wedding. Here’s a pic I took on my phone just before the ceremony. In case you can’t read the sign – it says: It was always you.

 

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).