Busy!!

I am very busy these days. Too busy to blog, too busy to read.
I don't know where the time goes, and I guess that means I'm having fun (which is good - I like fun), but I do wish I had time to notice what kind of fun I am having.
Perhaps when I'm old (er) I'll be able to say to my grandkids: "We used to have such fun, you know . . . " Maybe then I'll remember.

New Job, Knitting & the Doctor's Office

I have a new job! Again!

Yes . . . yes . . . I realise it is only March (the beginning of ), and this is my second "new" job, but 3 weeks in the last one was enough to last me a lifetime!

Remember the office-mate with the country music? Well, by the time I left she had started to accompany the song in woeful mis-harmony. Woeful for me, that is!

Which brings me to the question - what on earth leads people to believe that they are making a pleasant sounding tune, which others (such as myself) would wish to share?
And this is obviously a serious problem! Just look at American Idols, and all the hopefuls who appear genuinely hurt when advised they have no talent.
Who tells these people they can sing?
And shouldn't they be brought to justice?

Anyway, three weeks into hell . . . (did I mention said-singer also had the social skills of a neo-nazi?), and someone somewhere learned about my lonely plight and dropped me a line of hope.

Strangely enough, it was a job offer I'd been made way-back-when (last year), when I had been offered two jobs at the same time after streaks and streaks of nothing - and in true ZambeziGirl style, I chose the one that would close down in four months!

But here it was again - and this time I leapt! (Huge, bounding, leaps, no less!)

And now I love my job :)

That's not the end, of course. Fate wouldn't be that kind to ZambeziGirl!
And in case fate thinks I am too content at this time, I have been making a valiant effort not to stick out like a sore thumb, and decided to take up knitting.
Yes, I realize there are people out there who find knitting easy; even pleasurable!
In fact, I heard one person say they found it "relaxing", and I don't want to call anyone a liar - I don't even know her very well - but relaxing is NOT a word I would use to describe knitting.

First, there's the Casting-On!
This is not like fishing at all, although complete silence and lots of beer just might help. There was one occasion when I used my knitting needles with the very same arm movements used in fishing, but no-one was hurt, and I managed to snag a number of stitches that way.

And then there's actual Knitting! Completely different body movements involved here, by the way. And you have to make certain that you knit the same amount of stitches that you cast on originally - on every row!

Well, I'm proud to say that I have successfully accomplished 4 rows of knitting, and if I continue in this light, I may just end up with something recognizable. And so determined am I to accomplish this, I almost hosted a knitting-night myself.

I say "almost", because only an idiot would have expected things to go smoothly.

After much preparation - the house was even tidy - I was just about to pick up the pizzas, when I got a phone call from 4-year-old's school, suggesting she might have pink-eye!
Eeesh (as they say in Africa)!

In two hours my house was to be filled to the brim with knitting moms and their offspring, and my child had to contract a contagious disease! Fabulous!

So I cancelled knitting; (I could hear the cursing of knitters everywhere who had made no plans for dinner); collected the infected one from school, and dropped in for a quick visit to the doctor's room!

Yes . . . yes . . . you can stop laughing now. Quick visit, my foot!!! (As my mother used to say). Three and a half hours with a four year old who is not actually sick is difficult, to put it mildly.

And what the hell does the doctor do in all that time? There were three people ahead of me when we arrived at 4 o'clock, and only one person came out in the two hours we waited in the "outer" waiting room. I'm sorry, but that doesn't seem very busy to me!
But they are very tricky, these doctors.

Just when you are about to succumb to whatever disease you may have, a nurse calls your name, ushering you into the "inner" sanctum, and thereby giving you a renewed sense of hope.

And then they weigh you.
WHY? To torture me more? Put me in my place?
They don't say anything, but I know. . . And who wants to complain about the long wait after that?
See? I told you they were tricky.

Hang on a sec! I'm having flashbacks to my last visit to the doctor.
Four-year-old still thinks the scale is a fun piece of equipment (little does she know) so we entered the next, private, waiting room with psyche intact.

Won't be long now, the nurse promised. Hah! Never trust a nurse!
Forty-five minutes later and we've read all the magazines; spun around (and fallen off) the doctor's stool; taken each other's blood pressure (well, if they didn't want us too, they shouldn't leave it on the wall like that); and told so many variants of Lil Miss Red-Nosed Hooding Ride, we could out-tell the Grimm's Brothers.

Enough! I open the door quietly and peek out - no-one there! I close the door impatiently (and yet quietly).
I try to think back to my fellow sickees who went in before me - which one of them is taking so long??? Probably that woman who'd been sitting across from me in the lime green blouse. She looked like a hypochondriac, for sure. Probably still droning on about all her ailments! Oh for heaven's sake! Surely, the doctor can tell she's not that sick!

Another fifteen minutes. It's very quiet out there. Oh god, what if they've forgotten us and all gone home? I dash to door, and glance around. Whew, I see another sickee in the "outer" room! Poor bastard!

I sigh loudly (did they hear me?) and close the door with just a little bang. Four-year-old has found the box of tissues and is blowing her nose loudly. Not many tissues left now.
We play the rhyming game again.

Another fifteen minutes. Four-year-old is getting boisterous and loud. I don't care anymore . . . at least they won't be able to forget about us. Is the doctor taking a nap? Did he go out to dinner?
Oh god, make it go away!!

And then the door opens, and a nice young doctor walks in. It takes 5 minutes to establish that it may (or may not) be pink-eye, but here's a prescription for eye drops, just in case. Thank you very much, and I'm sorry about the state of the room.

Ten minutes waiting for a prescription. Twenty minutes at the Drug Store. One minute phone call to husband establishing that no, he had not thought about sorting out dinner. Fifteen minutes to pick up take-out. And just a couple of hours to realize that despite going to the doctor in a perfectly healthy condition, I have managed to pick up a cold (or worse) whilst there.
Tricky, those Doctors. They sure know how to drum up business!

P.S. Knitting is postponed to next week!

Moving abroad, the Totton Girls have not been very newsworthy lately (or perhaps they are just not sharing their exploits with me, anymore), but I did hear a rumor that one of them is threatening a mid-life crisis, so that should be interesting.

On a more serious note, I am very sad to read about the tragic death of Susan Tsvangirai, wife of Zimbabwe's "true" President, in a suspicious car accident yesterday. As if the Tsvangirai family have not lost so much already in their long struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe! My heart goes out to Morgan and his children at this sad time.

The Song, Microman & the Girls from Totton

Firstly, as promised . . . Caught In the Act! Sylvester, the thieving cat from next-door. Yes, he is licking his chops!

And work! Such a pity that one has to spend so much time there. I share an office with a girl who likes country music. One song, in particular. Something about Juliet and a T-shirt, I think (or at least those are the words which have been revolving round and round my brain like a washing machine on viagra). And don't get me wrong - I like country music. I even liked that song the first few times she played it on Monday, but by Friday I was ready to strangle the wretched Juliet with the darn T-shirt.

But onto more interesting things.

My dear friend, whom I shall refer to only as Whisky, blind-dated a guy from MySpace who confessed even before dessert to being a little "lacking" in the men's department, and has been following up with text pics of said "dinky-winky" ever since.

Yes, I realise this tid-bit does not fit into the theme of things, but it gave me great joy, and has also had me thinking.

Firstly, why MySpace? FaceBook should have been the obvious choice! And secondly, I was not aware that an honest man was still in existence (and yet I've seen the pics to prove it!)

Needless to say, Whisky has not seen Microman again (apart from the pics, of course) and is considering changing her number. She was talking about reporting the matter to the authorities, but really, for such a small thing, it's probably just not worth it!

I often think about escaping, and I must say, friends of mine - the Totton Girls -have me very tempted to leave sunny California for the cold, wet playground of the United Kingdom. On a map, the metropolis of Totton appears to be no more than a small village near Southampton, but I swear it could give London a run for its money in the entertainment department. Every week the girls from Totton post new pics of their weekend adventures onto FaceBook, and I find myself dreaming of Friday nights at the local pub, Christmas parties where you get to pinch the cute young bosses' ass in drunken abandonment, and wild Eighties parties where the hostess forgets to tell you that the theme has been cancelled, and it is now a formal "do". (I must try and get the pics of that night!)

Yep, I think that my next vacation trip will definitely include a long stay in lively Totton, with possible minor side-trips to London or Paris, if I get the time.

And oh! My feral cat population has grown immensely, so it would seem the word has spread about my hospitable nature. I have to admit, however, that I have been drastically reducing their feeds of late, since my 4 year old advised me (in hysterical fits of laughter) how her "pet" wild cats had taken so to piggy-back riding. I am hoping they show no loyalty to my kindness at all, and go back to whenceforth or wherever they came from. Quickly!

And that about sums up my week (and-a-bit). Not too interesting, I agree, but that's what work does for you! If it didn't pay the bills I wouldn't go at all, but . . . a girl's gotta make a living! ;)

Going Bad

Well, I have noticed for a while now that goodness and being nice doesn't really pay, and after a bit of consideration, have decided to drop all the niceness in 2009, and see how it goes. Call it my "Descent into Evil", if you will.
And for those who think I went there a long time ago, I have news for you!! Now, I am really bad.

Sooo . . . I chased a neighborhood cat off because he was eating the food I put out for the ferral cats. Nasty, I know! But that's the new me!
He is kinda cute though - I call him Sylvester, and true to his thieving ways, he has a perfect black mask aound his eyes. Next time he pops in, I'll snap a quick pic before I chase him off again.

Yep, I've been trying to be nice for too long, and it's really not me, you know. I've realised I'm not a nice person at all, and there are quite few people who can testify to that. When I'm driving I can be very rude to stupid people, and don't . . even . . . think about stealing my parking - I will think such bad things about you, you won't even know what hit you!!!
And let's face it - when you're as bad as that, why even bother pretending, right?

On the job front, I have had an interview this week, and have another next week. This is something of a miracle, as my 4 year old joined in the conversation with my potential employer, and my 14 year old wrestled her to the ground to take the phone away, and, all in all, it was not the professional telephone conversation I would have liked it to be. I am still not sure if the only reason I was called to the interview was because Potential Employer had never heard such colorful language spoken with an accent, and was simply curious?? (I realized too late that while I had replaced my receiver, said 4-year-old's was still off the hook! :0)
I guess next week will tell . . .

Other than that, not much else happened this first week of 2009. By the way, this morning I dropped 14-year-old at school in my PJ's - and in spite of Sod and all his laws, nothing happened. I did not break down or get a flat tire.
See! How bad am I??????

2008 in Brief

2008 – Certainly a year to remember - simply because it was so much better than 2007, which was a bad one for sure!

Yes - on this New Year’s Eve, I can look back and reflect upon the fact that this time last year we were a lot worse off than we are now. And I’m not saying it couldn’t be better, because it really could. Really!!
But I am no longer that naive immigrant from Africa, struggling to understand new systems and cultures; I am now a naïve immigrant from Africa - still struggling to understand new systems and cultures – but now I own an I-Pod Nano, and have developed an addiction to Starbucks!!

2008 was the year of The Job. After eight long months of rejection upon rejection (figuratively speaking anyway, as I never actually received any rejections per se, just NOTHING!! Nada! Rien!) I finally landed my dream job. At last I was a working girl, with a real job, and a real paycheck. A contributing member of American Society; the indentation in my wallet made by my tax deductions visible proof that I was on my way. Life was good!

Too good apparently!
With one cruel blow (cruel, but not that unusual - I have terrible luck), I was jobless again. Instead of an annual Christmas Party, for which I had dressed with seasonable cheer, my colleagues and I were greeted with the devastating news that the company was closing down with immediate effect.
Now, I understand the economy is in a recession (I am in accounting, after all, and hail from Zimbabwe which holds the record for the world’s highest inflation rate in a country that is not “officially” at war), but PEOPLE!!!!
The week before Christmas????

Needless to say, the Christmas Party was cancelled and I never discovered the identity of my Secret Santa who had very kindly been delivering Guinness Beer and chocolates to my desk all week. (All was to be revealed at the Christmas Party, see?) This disturbs me somewhat, and in the wee hours of the morning when I am lying awake wondering how long it will take to write a bestseller, I find myself wondering which poor bastard ruined my diet.

Anyway, once again I find myself scouring the online jobsites, sifting through all the possible scams, and praying that I am not forwarding my entire life history (and address) to a mass murderer. I figure I’m in a better position this time around, though, and can afford to be a lot pickier. No matter how desperate things get, I have promised myself that I will not sell Tupperware.

And so ends 2008! Hurrah!
Bring it on 2009! I’m ready and waiting!!!!