A girl can dream

So I kinda entered a competition because I was bored. (being bored is a motivator of many things in my life - sometimes being bored is the only excuse I have - fortunately hair grows back... and things dry out and solvents remove most of the evidence)

Anyway. back on topic... this competition sent me a letter yesterday saying I may have won a large sum of money. Not ridiculously large but equivalent to a fair portion of my annual income.

So I sent back the Thanks for the Offer of Your Money form and I know I know I know these things never happen but... just imagine if it did...

So I got pondering and dreaming and thinking and calculating about What If I Really Won All That Money...

So as part of making a pact with the powers that be. I shall declare here what I will do with my money. and therefore holding myself accountable (but only if I win)

First: I will tithe a portion of the money. This goes without saying. If you have to ask what portion of the money that is... you should ask me - Ill educate you in the joys of giving to the Church. (No point in giving if it isn't a joy)

Second: I will donate a portion to my parents for their awesome holiday. They have spent so many years taking my self and my siblings on holiday, I wish for them to have a good restful holiday of their own this year. (a holiday from parental duties)

Third: The money is unforcasted and so it features in no budget of mine so spending it doesn't hurt. I will speak to one of my teacher-siblings and donate a quarter of the prize money to pay the school fees or university fees for a girl. I will prefer that the girl be schooling in Maths and Science or else be an Engineering student. I can be nerd and feminism specific if I want... It's my imaginary prize money.

Now I am not saying all of these things so that you'll be thinking "Oh wow, Frankie is such a generous person I want to be just like her!"

It would be cool to be able to be extravagantly generous without having to impact my salary. Normal people have to budget giving to charity versus the size of their entertainment budget... me included.

And so after these three portions of the money Ill have a bit more than half left.

I will not lend any of it to friends of family members. I may never get it back or else resent the person until I get it back.

It will not be enough for a new car, but will be enough for a fat deposit on a new car.

It will afford me a kickass trip overseas. but not enough to have kickass travelling partners with me (you know who you are)

I could invest it... or I could put it into my retirement fund to grow for 40 years... or I could spend it on investment items (LBD, leather boots, designer luggage, laptop)

I could find a micro-loan beneficiary organisation and feel good about myself. (until I realise that I have no money any more)

But for now I can dream away :) It doesn't hurt anybody to spend away all the money you don't have.

pretty pretty pretty please I would like to win.

43 Things pt 2

I forgot to include the amusing bit.. My About Me:

About me: “I am a girl… No, I am 23, I am a lady… or try to be a lady. I am 1 of 5 siblings and sometimes act a little attention starved. I am an engineering student and I try to be a remarkable person.


I think deep down what I want from life is for someone I meet to be able to say in even some small way that their life was changed for the better for having met me. but then don’t we all want that?

I am fond of the normal things like chocolate and boys and some less than normal things like sheep in a compltely innocent fluffy-soft-toy and frolick-on-the-hillside kinda way.

I worked for 5 years in the service industry and that combined with the work intensive engineering degree makes me not a people person but I really love getting to know individuals. Some people just intrigue me.

I think that the existance of humans that can do really amazing impossible things is no where near as amazing as the very existance of human beings at all and THAT is the start of my beliefs…..”
 
 
It's a real pearl that. In some ways... I have hardly changed at all.

43 Things

Some where in the work avoidance of spending time in the computer labs at varsity I joined this website where you list 43 things you want out of your life. And you get to see who has similar goals as you and you get to encourage other users at any of their goals.

Anyway I happened to stumble across my own profile today. (I had completely forgotten about this)

Anyway here it is:

FrankieBeans's Life List


1. visit Japan
2. take up a sport and get fit
3. pierce my nose
4. move to the sticks and live there for a while
5. get a car
6. become a wife
7. learn to paint watercolours
8. travel Europe
9. work or volunteer for a charity
10. get a score higher than 10000 in solitaire
11. fall in love and stay in love
12. own all the books in The Edge Chronicles series
13. live in Norway or Sweden
14. pet a sheep
15. learn to play the piano
16. read the whole Bible
17. take a cruise to Antarctica
18. become a mommy
19. learn to speak French
20. open a coffee shop
21. meet someone really famous
22. own and redecorate a house
23. learn to sew and knit
24. donate more money to worthy causes
25. make my parents proud
26. make a difference to the world food crisis
27. achieve one general life milestone before my older sister
28. complete a project report before the night before
29. find something better for breakfast than porridge
30. get my eyebrows properly plucked and shaped
31. get a teeny tiny tattoo
32. create an artwork
33. buy and wear a really tall pair of heels
34. collect all Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels
35. tidy my bedroom
36. backpack somewhere and rediscover the joy of camping
37. climb somewhere interesting on the corporate ladder
38. get a job where I get dirty
39. celebrate my 60 year wedding anniversary .. eventually
40. visit the United Kingdom but never settle down there
41. afford and get eye surgery
42. finish my engineering degree
43. live on my own for a while

What actually made me feel pretty good was how many of these I have already achieved or partially achieved. It's not astonishingly many but quite a few. I have managed to complete a project report before it's due date. I managed to complete my engineering degree and I managed to go to Europe not once but twice (so far). I have a car and I think my parents are proud of me.

Feels good that Frankie of 2008 would be a little proud of Frankie.2010.

:) Perhaps time to set a few new replacement goals.

The weekend pass-eth

So I did not make it to the travel agent today... but don't cry boys and girls. I received free tickets to the Travel Expo instead.

So the good news is that I found two, no, three viable tour group trips that fit into my time frame and my budget (whoop whoop). I even tried to hook two of them together as one finishes in the same city as the next starts the next day.

Bad news is that because I want to be travelling between Christmas and New Years and/or the first week of January. The air fare is going to DESTROY my budget. (doesn't help when you choose obscure holiday locations)

I even managed to find a tour to countries/towns that most of my friends haven't been to (Sorry Russia -I am not ready for -40 degree weather yet)

So I have spoken to the nice people who want to take my money (the tour operators) but no money has been forked over as yet. Trouble is... the Travel Expo is only on until tomorrow so the multiple discounts only apply until then (wait did I say I was saving 10% on my trip if I book this weekend?)

Funny/Not-So-Funny bit is that I only went travel -lust-crazy because some other people I know are travelling a lot and now Mr Thursday is NOT AMUSED that I am going away on holiday without him.

Honestly, I think that the best way to go about this will be alone. I think it will be an awesome adventure into independence and a good time to learn how to make new friend and not scare them off with my pre-morning-coffee-antisocial tendencies.

... speaking of which (and on a mostly unrelated side note) people have the audacity to complain at me because I am less that friendly at 7:30am at work (that's pre-coffee time). Lesson: Boys and Girls, Frankie is no fun in the morning. it's nothing personal.. stop bothering me... the growling is a warning... Sarcasm may follow.

...but back to my impending travel plans... This trip isn't finalised. all I have is a tentative place booked on a tour and a flight salesman with my number and some flight-search-instructions... I am wondering if it would be more economical to not travel in peak holiday season and suck it up that Ill be at home for a week between Christmas and New Years Not spending my hard earned money...

...might feel like a passport-stamp-deprived-loser tho...

Weekend cometh...

I have had a hairy few days with watching persons involved in my project exchange acerbic letters and increasingly polite tart communicating and muttering insults under their breath. This is of course a complete exaggeration.... However some tense moments have come and passed before me. In hindsight it is a little amusing but in the moment it was very stressful. Each man defends his empire and throwing arrows over the castle wall at the barbarian invaders and usurping naughty people.


(Could I be more obscure?)

I am a little tired however again from this silly busy schedule. I nearly brushed my teeth on three separate occasions in the space of 30 minutes the other night. Well I succeeded the first two times and then in the third time I realised that my minty fresh breath was in fact minty fresh. So I had to moosh the toothpaste back into the tube. Which was not very appetising the next morning for after breakfast teeth cleaning (Wait... is toothpaste supposed to be appetising?)

I also find my self waking up with my alarm at 6:00am and 6:15am and 6:30am. I lie in bed and think about how wonderful it is that I have woken up early and all the things I will get done that day because I woke up early and how productive I will be and how early I will be able to leave work… and in the process I go back to sleep dreaming about productivity and wake up later when it is late and I have to fly out the door.

And now the weekend dawns and I have plans of doing nothing all weekend long. Except I know that I won’t. Ill be shopping and cleaning and tidying and coffee-ing and wandering and washing and hanging and brownie-ing.

In other news, I have decided to make use of the fact that I get a holiday from work between Christmas and New Years and that I have some leave days collected up and I wanna wanna wanna wanna go on a holiday. I have been saving up for another overseas experience since forever and I have a tidy budget amount inside my head. My plan is to simply vanish for two weeks. Trouble is who will take photographic proof if I go on holiday alone? It irks me that everyone else is going on overseas holidays and I am not and for teh only reason of that I am cautious about going alone and I have so many other things to distract me from teh passing of time.

So Ill be meeting with my friendly travel agent tomorrow…. Unless anyone wants to host a visitor to your country/province/city/town for a week or two? (I think I would settle for Paarl or Parys even) It would save me a tidy sum in organised tour guide fees….

Meet my kitteh.

This is my cat. Her name is Camouflage because she has fur colouring that is termed in veterinary circles as "calico". Basically she is multicoloured all over, Not that unlike camouflage material colouring. I call her Camo.

Anyway, she was a gift to me from a school friend. (Lets call her DocBrown)

Camo is fluffy and awesome for snuggles and a very friendly cat.

Now that I have moved into my own place, she lives with my parents. I think she has adapted my grandparents as her owners as she spends most of her time hanging around them as they are at home all day.

My grandparents even put a chair out for my cat to sit on while they enjoy their morning and afternoon tea times outside looking onto the garden. On the chilly days where they drink their tea inside, Camo sits on the window sill outside with a mournful face. (she has a lot of furry fur... She is more impervious to cold than my 90 year old grandpa)

Anyway, when I go home to visit my parents I always make time to give some love to my kitteh. She smells nice and she likes to be held and its all nice and pet-like until my allergies get going and I start sneezing.

I wish wish wish I could have a kitty of my own at my new house... However it wouldn't be fair to keep it inside tho and I would feel bad for it being alone all day.

but some day... :)

Jacarandas are blooming

... If you haven't started studying for the year-end exams yet... It is too late...

Getting Perspective

DISCLAIMER: More than anything, this blog is about me hearing the sound of my own voice and by verbalising my thoughts I usually sort my funny over-analysing head out.

Disclaimer II: This post should be posted in the middle of the night - mid-day is the wrong time for talking about emotional drama. if it helps, this was mostly written after 2 in the morning two weeks ago.


19 months ago, Mr Not-X became… Mr-X... Mr Long-Distance became Mr-We-Couldn't-Do-This-Any-Longer. And after 5 and a half years of being each others Number 1 Special Person it hurt. Oh boy IT HURT to have to break up. Hurt like a heart attack. Hurt like being kicked in the stomach. Hurt like going to bed hungry.

Now I have been thinking about blogging about this very moment for near on 19 months. The thing is that it has taken me a very very very long time to move on. It took far longer than I ever expected. Naively I had thought at the time, the hardest thing I had ever done was complete my engineering degree and breaking a romantic relationship couldn’t be harder than that right? (Yes I was wrong, Very Wrong) It took so long that I actually would not like to admit it the time frame out loud.

I can’t say today is the day when I made peace with the decision to break things off. That day passed by a while ago, quietly, without me noticing because mostly I was busy. But it has taken this long to really get far enough away from the event to get sufficient perspective on it. The look back on the path that I followed and the way things have changed since then to gain an appreciation of the journey.



Now people talk about the stages of mourning: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. I went through these five stages again and again and again. First on an hourly basis, then a daily basis, then two stages at once, then stages within stages, then weeks of good acceptance feelings then sitting in the bath tub weeping for my sad little heart.

Denial came from that we broke up on a sort of mutual basis in that dating long distance wasn’t doing us any good. We even endeavoured to stay friends – leading to the denial that anything had really changed. Oh the horror when he started seeing other women!!! Denial that I should pack away his photograph. Denial that I shouldn't throw away his gifts and cards.

Anger at myself “Frank What were you thinking!! You let him go!” Anger at him for letting me break up with him. Anger at him for not being the same person he was when we started dating. Anger at myself for not being the type of person he wanted me to be. Anger at the fact that we lived in different countries. Anger at his new girlfriend for, well... being his new girlfriend. Anger at that I was angry and yet had agreed to be cool with everything.

Bargaining I found in escapism into movies and books. I went to A LOT of movies and read a lot of books last year. In some the heroine found love. In some the heroine kicks the man to the street. In some the story was happy and I had hope. In some the story was sad and I agreed. I got to a stage where I couldn't bear to watch romantic-comedies, finding them to be a fake and unrealistic portrayal of real life and for mostly giving me false hope. I immersed myself in indie arthouse flicks where the main characters dealt with the harsh realities of life and then grew from it. I gained little from this but an escape from having to look into the depths of my misery that I was sad and alone and didn’t know if I had done the right thing.

What I did gain was being okay with spending time alone with myself. I now love spending an evening alone wandering the books stores, having a coffee, being myself with myself and being selfish with my time.

Depression hit good and hard when I spent time with friends who were in couples. Depression lurked on Facebook with every sorry time I saw Mr X update. (or teh new girlfriend update - who makes heart shaped blueberry muffins?) Depression lurked and struck like clockwork after everytime I spoke to Mr X. Tears used to roll down my face while I drove home from work after a long day. (maybe that was just the bad traffic) Depression hit when Mr-X made no sign of suffering for the separation. Not like I would be the one he would tell.

Acceptance was driven by the fact that I knew/know in my heart that it would be the greatest insult to the entire love affair if I could not want him to be happy in the end. I loved him at one time and therefore I knew that rationally I should wish him well.

In the midst of this crazy twister blender whirlwind dust storm hailstorm of feelings my (wise) father sat me down and offered to find me counselling. I reacted as expected “I do not need help!!” I my oh my oh my do I wish I had agreeeed to go for counselling if only that I may have dealt with things faster. And then again maybe the slow road had its benefits.

I think what really got to me what irked me was the realisation that Mr-X stopped showing feelings of sadness long ago and showed all the symptoms of having moved along with his life.

And I could go on and list all the things that were wrong with him and with us but for the fact that it takes two imperfect people to make a relationship.

And so grdually after a time the cycles of mourning wanned and lessened and I stopped feeling so many things and one day while cruising along I suddenly I popped through the clouds.

I realised that the relationship and person I was mourning didn’t really exist anymore. That Mr X was effectively a stranger. That I had gone days without pondering about him. That I could look at his happiness and not feel a twist in my heart.

It irks me to see him live out his (and occasionally I feel our) dreams without me only for the irk-ed-ness that he got there first. I hope he leaves at least some of Europe for me to see before him.

It scares me a little that Mr Thursday and Mr X bear similarities. At times Mr Thursday pops up with idea and sentences that bizarrely reminds me of Mr X. (It is about as horrifying as hearing my mothers words or fathers quips pop out my mouth.)



What actually made the biggest difference in the process was a complete stranger. I happened upon a blog of a woman who had lost her baby at almost the full term of her pregnancy. I am ashamed to say but I followed her through her time of deep mourning. But she was so eloquent and so wise about her healing process that In seeing her move through her tragedy to various stages of healing of the heart, I realised that my silly broken heart is really nothing compared to the loss of her child.

Another healing process was a long conversation last September that I had with a friend in Cape Town whose mother had passed away. I actually don’t remember exactly the words of wisdom he imparted. But he made me feel that it was okay to still be upset and he encouraged me to seek counselling and most of all he listened and did not freak out when I shed some tears. (drinking wine and then talking about your sorrows will always result in excess emotions – lesson learned)

And so today I can say I am well within the region of "I Have Moved On"…. I think. Mr Thursday and I are in a good space. (He deserves a prize for putting up with me while I moved on. )

The best metaphor I ever thought of on this entire topic was that Mr X and I are like paper boats floating on a pond. Once we were untied from each other we slowly drifted on the currents and sailed slowly apart and I am finally okay with not seeing him on the horizon anymore...

France's Travels - Op pad - Jozi bound

We set the alarm for early - and agonized over having to climb out from the covers at dawn, packed up and packed in and packed away our several and many bags and suitcases and we are back on the road returning to Home... Well Joburg home for MrT... Technically he was leaving mom's home to return to his Jozi-home.

I got my knee high travelling socks and short pants on for travelling-fashion-oddity amusements.

MrT chose a scenic route home through the sugarcane fields through Zululand around the small mountains/large hills. (about a B-cup #guyjoke)

While admiring the awesome mountain road views and the african huts and rolling green hills of sugar cane, we're keeping our eyes peeled for cops. (Aaargh for 80km/h zones because people build homes too close to the regional roads)

We picked up a Monkey Apple a few days ago and as awesome as the sweet spicey aroma is... It's beginning to make my stomach turn after 2 hours of travelling only.

Funny though after 3 weddings in 10 days and residing with and Afrikaans family and meeting lots of Afrikaans friends of MrT, my mind is firstly going wedding crazy and I keep translating everything I say into Afrikaans inside my head.

Hopefully it will wear off in a day or two...

Frankie's Travels - RB wedding 3 day 1

Today I will be attending the civil ceremony of MrT's brother's impending nuptials. They are having their wedding tomorrow at the yatch club but today we get the legal proceeding out the way.

So pretty clothes tomorrow and jeans and a little less pretty clothes today.

I still decided to put in an effort so today I pulled on my pretty jeans and managed MrT to take me shopping for a nice blouse. Then threw on some funky accessories and a plastic flower behind my ear and to be honest - I'm feeling pretty smart in today's threads :)

... I just hope I can top it for the wedding-wedding tomorrow.

Unfortunately we thought the ceremony was at 2pm and so we were dressed and ready to go before 1 to go collect the groom.

The ceremony is at 3pm... It's 34 degrees inside...

We're clustered inside the bridal couples small lounge under the spinning fan watching some silly tv show.

Some thoughts based on the silly tv...

- I wonder if comedians get paid per f-bomb dropped...

- I fear I am the only one here embarrassed for MrT's mom having to sit through this with us.

- Are racist jokes ever funny in mixed company?

- Is it weird to laugh at sex jokes in front of your parents?

- how many of us here will be thinking about the comedians below the belt jokes during the wedding ceremony.

- I wonder when we'll get around to lunchtime ... Sigh... :/