Wanted: 1 Hobby

Today somebody asked me what 'activities' I was interested in - i.e. what did I do for a hobby in my spare time.

Huh?

Spare time?

Sheeesh - all my time goes into basic survival.  Work, keep house clean(ish), keep husband and child fed and clean(ish), keep pets alive.  And that's it.

As I was driving home, I thought about this and realised that I am boring.  Very boring.  I don't do ANYTHING other than just get by.  I never feel as if I have enough time to take on anything new.

Dan has surfing which requires some sacrifices.  On both our parts.  He sacrifices sleep since he gets up around 4ish to go out for a dawn session, and I sacrifice having him at home letting me sleep in/have spare time.  But it's definitely worth it.  He can be having a god awful time with life and work and his wife (!!!), and then he'll go surfing for a day and come home a totally different man.  Well, not totally different, but definitely rejuvenated.  It's his passion and I'm happy(ish) to give up my sleep-in's so that he can keep surfing.

So I need an interest too.  Something outside of work and home and children.  I'm losing myself in my mundane life and I need to find my own passion.

Now obviously I'm not about to start surfing.  Not here.  For many reasons:

1. I'm not an idiot;
2. I don't like the cold - and the water here is very cold (the surfers here put vaseline on their faces in winter to stop ice forming);
3. I like sleeping in;
4. I hate being held under water, and that happens a lot when you surf.  Unless you're Kelly Slater.  Actually, I think that even he gets dumped all the time.

Anyway, so I need an 'interest'.  I do a bit of yoga, but only because I feel like I should - so that doesn't really count.  I do this (blogging), but this is more like therapy than a hobby.  I sometimes play WoW (and no I'm not 'finished' yet!), but I now just end up feeling that each quest is just yet another thing I need to do.

So - I'm open to suggestions.  I'd like a really interesting hobby, that makes people think "Wow - she might be a Mum, and old, but She. Is. Cool".  

PS - I'm not interested in sky-diving, though it ticks a lot of the 'cool hobby' boxes.  I think it's more of an anti-lifestyle choice, and while my life may be kind of boring, I still like it very much thank you.

PPS - I'm also not interested in knitting.  It would be very handy to be able to make my own sweaters etc, but it doesn't tick any boxes. 

I'll Fix You Mummy

So the last few months have been kind of awful, and the emotional healing process for this mc is taking a lot longer than the others.  Perhaps because I'm coming to the realisation that there won't be another baby and that's really difficult to get past.

I've made a big effort not to be sad around Kalani, but it appears that perhaps he's picked up on the fact that I'm still not feeling whole.

This morning I was sitting on the couch with my cup of coffee and he came over with his tools.

"I'll fix you Mummy"

Ahh.. innocent fun with tape measures I thought.  No problem.
 

And then ... "This won't hurt a bit" and out came the saw.

I think he realised that sawing someone's head in half isn't a very nice thing to do, so he tried to hide the evidence ...

Strangely - I did feel a lot better afterwards.

Kalani the Healing Handyman.

Awesome August and Sizzling September

I haven't done one of these for a while and I really love doing these pictastic photo journal type things.  The quality of the pictures isn't that great, and the shots are all unsteady and non-creative, but it's really enjoyable looking back over the last few weeks and remembering.

Kalani is going to be pro surfer....  only we can't get him into the pool to learn how to swim.  No matter - he practices his pop-ups with Dan, and occasionally they go surfing together.

I celebrated my birthday in August.  I turned 29 for the 10th time.  It's a lovely age.

We've had the most wonderful summer.  Really hot.  There were only a few days that were really wet.  One of them drew all the monsters out into the street.

Cute monsters though ...

And another crazy weather day brought down one of our trees into the neighbours back garden.  Luckily Kalani was on hand to help with the clean-up operation.

 Kalani has also been trying his hand at photography.

And I've been trying to do more of these types of photo's.  Ideally they'd have Dan in them as well, but he keeps buggering off to different places for work and play, so bleuuehh ..

A wonderful friend got married.  The whole event was lovely apart from Kalani having a total meltdown in the middle of the ceremony which resulted in me taking him outside and yelling at him, only to later discover that the church door had been left open so everyone could hear me yelling "Come and lie down you awful child, I need to change your stupid poopy bottom".  *sigh*  Nothing like the house of God to let everyone see what an awful parent you are!

This was Kalani's expression just before we had to leave the church

Much to my surprise, it seems that Kalani knows a bit of yoga. Normally I don't practice until after he's in bed, but I guess that at some stage he's seen something since one afternoon he got out the mat and started to do a little flow ...

And finally, there's been music.  Lotsa music.  At the wedding he sung "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to the (partly emptied) reception over the microphone.  He was a little upset that I wouldn't let him up to perform on the stage.

Until next time chickadee's.  Happy Thanksgiving.

Christmas Cod Anyone?

I don't normally send out Christmas cards.  Mostly because I can't really be bothered.  Even back when I did have time.

But now I've reached a crisis point.  My "just can't be bothered"-ness is at war with my "I can't handle having unused cluttery stuff all over the place"-ness because of this ...

Yup - those free flipping Xmas cards that all the charities keep sending (and yes, they keep sending them because I'm a total sucker and always mail them a cheque back because I feel so bad that they've sent me something for free).  And now, after 5 years of receiving these cards and stockpiling them in a box, it's time to purge.

The obviously nice spin-off is that everyone who gets a card will think that we're awesome (unless you read this blog, and then you know that you've just received some seasonal de-clutter).

Whatever the reason, send me your address and I will send back a cute card with puppies on it.

Merry Xmas.

Oh crap, it really is too early for this isn't it?  It's only flipping October.  *sigh*

As a total aside, the name of this post was inspired (ha ha) by a conversation I had with a shop-keeper shortly after we arrived in Newfoundland.  I asked him if he had any blank card's.  He thought I was asking for blank cod's.  We were in an outdoor clothing store.  We were both very confused.

The Africa Diaries: The End

(If you've missed any of the previous posts about Africa, then you can find them all here)

Once I arrived back in Ghana (where everyone spoke English again - yay) I caught a bus to a small town on the coast called ... Cape Coast.

You might have heard of it?  It was the largest slave-trading centre in West Africa, and the castle (Cape Coast Castle) was one of the departure ports for slaves being transported to America.

The first thing I did after checking into my hotel (which had a TV AND a private toilet - luxury luxury luxury) was to go on a tour of Cape Coast Castle.

It was horrifying.

The following photo isn't great, but it's one of the 'rooms' that the slaves were kept in - sometimes for many weeks - until the next ship came to pick them up.

There would have been well over 100 men living and sleeping in this room.  Around the sides of the room and running through the middle are trenches.  Very shallow trenches.  These were used to move the waste out of the room.  I'm sure they weren't that effective.

This is the 'Door of No Return'.  It was the last door that the slaves (I don't want to keep calling them that, but I don't know how else to refer to them) passed through before they left Africa.  They would never return to their homes again.  Ever.  Just imagine how that must have felt.  

Ironically the castle was quite beautiful in an old, crumbly type way, and the scenery was, once again, amazing.

It was an incredibly moving experience, and while it was terribly terribly sad, it was also eye-opening.  Sometimes it's worth a bit of grief if it makes you a little less ignorant.

So after that, it was back to town ...

.. and then on to a Nature Reserve for a walk among the tree-tops.

Now I'm not normally that scared of heights, but we were up very very high ...

.. and the walkways felt a little flimsy ...

... and sometimes we were above the tree canopy (that's the tops of trees beneath my foot!).

Pretty amazing views though.

Unfortunately I didn't catch any on camera, but there are some excellent signs in the Cape Coast area.  These are some that I remembered afterwards and so wrote down ...

Virgins Preparatory School

Gaylords Theological College

"Everything But God" Spare Parts

Ah - classic.

And so that was it.  My journey was over.  I caught a bus back to Accra and then flew to New York and then finally back to St. John's.

It was really quite a short trip - only a few weeks - but it felt like so much longer.  And now that I've gone through all the photo's again, and re-read my travel journal (which also dwells on toilets and toilet experiences a lot), the number of memories I have seem to span a year, not just a couple of weeks.

I started this as a bit of tongue-in-cheek laugh at my toilet 'needs', but it's become more than that and has been so much fun to write.  So thank you for joining me in my memories - it's been great sharing them with you.

Me and the boys having a cup of tea