Busy-ness

All around me, people are busy. And not just busy, but BUSY. Some people are busy by choice. Their evenings and weekends are filled with social engagements – parties, dinners, concerts, charity functions, after-work cocktails, weekend getaways. Others seem to be busy by circumstance – a job with crazy hours or pesky children requiring constant attention. And then there are the really busy who are afflicted by some combination of both. Of course, you also have the people who claim to be busy, but you’re not so sure that they really are busy or if they just think they’re busy. But either way, everyone looks pretty damn busy.

Me, I’m not busy.

I mean sure, I go to an office most days, but I usually find time while I’m there to surf http://www.msn.com/, http://www.cnn.com/, even http://www.rachaelraymag.com/ (or any of my other favorite websites now listed to your right if you scroll down a bit). I almost always have some time to reply to a few emails; I might even pass along an obnoxious forward or two. I get some work done, of course, and perhaps I add a thousand words or so to my novel, but I usually leave the office by four or five. After work, I might go to the gym or stop at the grocery store, but either way I’m home by six-thirty. Then I cook dinner, force my husband to sit at the table with me while we eat, and by seven-thirty or eight we’re watching television.

I gage my level of busy-ness (pronounced slightly differently the word business might be appropriate here, but http://www.dictionary.com/ says that usage is obsolete. Funny, huh?) by the amount of time I spend in front of the TV. I figure if I have enough time at the end of my day to do absolutely nothing in front of the television, I’m probably not that busy. Some days are relatively busy, I suppose. Days when I only watch an hour of television as opposed to three (oh don’t act so shocked, I can’t be the only one that occasionally spends three solid hours in front of the television). But this isn’t about television. This is about being busy. Or not busy in my case.

It’s nice – not being busy – but, for me, it creates a lot of pressure. I’m one of the few people on the planet who isn’t busy, so shouldn’t I be doing something marvelous with this gift of time? I mean, isn’t everyone always saying “If only I weren’t so busy…”? Well, I’m not, but unfortunately, I don’t have a hell of a lot to show for it.

The thing about not being busy, is that sometimes you can feel busy, when you know without question that you aren’t. I know this firsthand because occasionally even I feel busy. And how could I possibly be busy? I don’t have a full time job, no babies to bother me, no overflowing social calendar…and yet even I manage to run out of hours in the day (and for some reason, those two in front of the television don’t count!).

I suppose it’s the constant to-do list in my head. I tend to set what seem like reasonable goals, and yet I am forever failing to achieve them. So I sit in front of the TV with my husband, beating myself up for indulging my laziness, but instead of turning the damn thing off, I readjust my mental to-do list and tack on whatever I have failed to achieve that day onto tomorrow’s list – most assuredly setting myself up for failure once more. I think it’s this cycle that makes me feel busy. For surely, it's being busy that prevents me from reaching these goals and not the time I spent printing out recipes that I’m too busy to cook or the hour I spent looking up an author I’m too busy to read or the time in front of the television watching something I’m too busy to focus on.

The thing is if I actually did everything I ‘should’ do, well, I guess I’d be pretty busy. If I wrote two thousand words a day in addition to the work I get paid for…if I tried all those recipes I find online…if I read all the ‘smart books’ on my current to-read list (but reading doesn’t really make you ‘busy’ now does it?)…if I volunteered for a charitable organization…if I learned to speak a foreign language…even if I just organized all the photos on my hard drive, or cleaned out my closet, or started my own herb garden…then I might be busy. But I don’t, so I’m not.

Sometimes I feel kinda bad about not being busy. After all, don’t most people equate being busy with being important? Hmmm. I won’t allow myself to think of it that way. Instead, I am embracing this less-than-busy lifestyle of mine. Because one day, when I’m juggling projects at work and trying to raise a family (not to mention doing my own ironing), I’m sure I will look back and laugh at this version of me who gets stressed about one little deadline at the office and thinks writing a weekly blog makes me ‘busy’. I will wistfully remember these endless days in Africa when I had the time to contemplate the meaning of being busy.

But that's all the contemplating I'll do for today... After all, you are probably far too busy to be reading this blog anyway.

The "C" Word

You can run but you can’t hide. It seems no one is safe. You can eat broccoli, give up cigarettes, take your vitamins, avoid hanging out in front of microwaves, get regular mammograms…but none of it seems to matter. One way or another, it will hunt you down.

The "C" word.

The news came several weeks ago. Yet another loved one has been diagnosed with cancer. The tears came first, followed shortly by anger. More than anything else, I’m pissed off. Why her? Why now? WTF? you know?

I shouldn’t be shocked; I should know by now that cancer doesn’t discriminate. It plucks its victims from the masses with no regard for the number of people counting on them, depending on them, needing them. I know this, and yet, I fool myself into believing that it won’t go after one of my loved ones. Not again. Not now.

The ‘good news’ is that they caught it early. But when they remove the lump, they discover it's bigger than they thought. It has spread to one lymph node. The doctor says that the lump has tentacles. I have a vivid image of a tiny evil octopus swimming around Mrs. T’s body. This octopus has devilish red eyes and a sinister laugh. Even as I write these words, I suspect the evil-octopus is trying to spread his cancer-venom. I picture this tiny evil-octopus and I feel certain that he is no match for Mrs. T. She can kick his ass, I’m sure of it, but still, the doctor insists a full mastectomy is needed, followed by chemo and radiation. For this evil-octopus is a slippery little sucker, and ridding her body of him and his venom requires drastic measures.

So now she is scheduled for major surgery to remove the treacherous body part that has been harboring this foreign invader.

The protocol is to stay positive, and I am, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be angry too. And I am. I want to protest. I need to make signs and start a riot to express my discontent. But what good would that do?

So I smile and stay optimistic and tell my dear friend that her mother will be okay. I pray that the words I’ve said are true all the while wondering if my prayers will be heard. For surely if God can hear my pleas to save Mrs. T, he will. But there is a nagging voice in my head reminding me that he didn’t hear my prayers for Lynn. Or for Maggie. Or Susan. Or even my dad. It’s not fair, I know. It’s not right to blame God, and yet, I need to be angry at someone…at something. But more than anything, I need for Mrs. T to win this battle. I need her to come through it with flying colors. Not just because her family needs her – her husband, her granddaughters, her son, her daughter (not to mention her daughter’s friends!) – but because we desperately need a victory. I need her to win this battle to prove that the war against cancer has an end in sight. And that sometimes the good guys win.

This time for certain, the good guys will win.

The Beauty of the Blog

The world is shrinking. A writer far more clever than me says it’s flat. Thanks primarily to the World Wide Web, it’s easier than ever to communicate, do business, even have a relationship with someone on the opposite side of the globe.

When I think about my mom living in South Africa thirty years ago, I can’t imagine how disconnected she must have felt. She and my father lived here in Johannesburg for two years, and not once did they fly home for a visit. And worst of all, they had to rely on air mail to communicate with loved ones back home.

Can you imagine?

I certainly can’t. Not only do I have email and skype to keep me connected, I also have this little blog. Through the wonder of blogspot.com, I attempt to ensure that I am gone but not forgotten. True, it requires me to bare my soul in a public forum on a weekly basis, but that just proves the lengths to which I will go to stay in the forefront of your minds! Is it working? Okay, maybe not the forefront of your mind, but if you are reading these words at this moment, then you must think of me every once in a while, right? Hell, some of you probably know more about me now than you did when you saw me every day. Funny that, huh?

When you think about it, though, a blog is really just an email to pretty much everyone I know. But if I were to write an email about my latest drama and then copy and paste it to my entire address book (possibly changing a line or two to make it seem more personal), well that just seems a little sleazy. However, I can post my thoughts on a web page and invite you to check it out and that seems more socially acceptable – a bit narcissistic – but much better than what is essentially a mass email.

When I was in college, one of my roommates started dating a boy right before he left for a semester in Spain. Theirs was a relationship based on emails, and she awaited any and all communication with great anticipation. When his name popped up in her inbox we gathered around the screen, eager to analyze his words and decipher their meaning. It wasn’t until the third or fourth email that we began to suspect the emails weren’t quite as personal as he would have her believe. I can’t remember exactly what gave it away, but at some point we were faced with indisputable proof that lover boy was patching the emails together via cut and paste. She had been hanging on the words of what was essentially a mass email. Oh the horror! The humiliation!

Traumatic as it was for my friend at the time, the boy was probably just trying to be efficient with his time. Instead of typing out the same story nineteen different ways, he simply hit CTRL-C and pasted the story into a new email. Logical enough, but somehow a bit, well…sleazy. I won’t lie though; I’ve done it before. Not on a regular basis, but if I think I’ve described something in a particularly witty or clever fashion I might copy and paste a paragraph or two. But I think the blog is much better – it’s more polite. It says “here’s-what-I’m-up-to-if-you-feel-like-knowing-but-I-won’t-bombard-your-inbox-with-a-rambling-email-based-on-the-narcississtic-notion-that-you-do” (feel like knowing, that is).

Now that being said, sometimes I wrongfully assume that you know what I’m up to because you have read my blog when clearly – you haven’t. It’s fine, really. (It’s especially fine for you. Seeing as you’re reading at this very moment, it’s probably not you I’m talking about!) But not long ago a friend of mine – who claims to “love” my blog – asked if Roger and I had moved into the cottage yet. Ouch. If she’d read almost any one of my posts over the past six months, she would know that I have only regained my sanity because of said cottage! So, yes, maybe it bruised my ego a bit, but just as I was hurt to learn she’s not a regular reader, I have been delighted to find readers in unexpected places. I’m thrilled when someone emails me a follow up question about something I’ve written in my blog. I eagerly await any and all comments (it's borderline pathetic, actually). And then there was the revealation that someone I’d never even met was reading my blog. How cool is that? And now this former stranger has become a new friend – an ‘e-friend,’ if you will! Ah, the wonder of the blog.

It’s funny now, that I was almost too chicken to start a blog. The prospect was terrifying. I knew that I wanted to commit to a weekly ‘column’ of sorts, but what if I discovered I didn’t actually have much to say? And what if a week wasn’t enough time to compose and refine my 1,000 words? Or worse – what if I finally put my writing out there, only to reveal that it isn’t actually all that great? I mean it’s one thing to call myself a writer, but until you’ve read something I’ve written how can you honestly encourage or advise? You can’t. Hence my hesitation…

I’m glad that I didn’t let those fears stop me, and a year and 55 posts later I’m still here (and surprisingly, so are you!). However, I still seem to have plenty more to say – at times it will be more eloquent than others, but that’s the great thing about a weekly blog – you can’t expect genius every time. And if you do, then allow me to apologize now...

But I guess this is just to say thanks for reading. Thanks for indulging my Carrie Bradshaw fantasies and allowing me to spill my secrets every week.
It may not be Shakespeare, but it’s cheaper than therapy!
So, thanks…

Miserable Moose

My dog hates me. I know it seems impossible. I mean, dogs are known for offering the ultimate unconditional love. The adoring eyes, the wagging tails, the slobbery kisses. Man’s best friend, right?

Not Moose.

But Moose has never been your typical dog. Sure, he’ll wag his tail a bit when you first walk in the door, but he’s never been like Griffin ("my" dog that lives with my mom in Atlanta). Whether you’ve been gone 5 days or 5 minutes, Griffin is so excited to see you he can hardly contain himself – in fact usually he can’t and ends up peeing a little all over your shoes. And nothing says love like a bit of urine on your Nikes.

For Moose, on the other hand, it always seemed as if he could take us or leave us. We used to joke that he was a cat-dog, content to lie on the couch all day – our presence didn’t seem to matter one way or the other. But all that has changed now. Turns out, Moose really likes company – just not ours’. He follows my mother-in-law around all day long.

It’s fine, really. I mean, I try not to be jealous. It’s good that he enjoys her company while Roger and I are at work. However, when I come home from work, I want my little family to be together – me, Roger, and Moose.
But it’s not as simple as that.
If we’ve been at work all day, one of us (I always nominate Roger) has to go up to the main house to get Moose and bring him down to the cottage. This involves forcibly grabbing his collar and dragging him down the back steps. But once inside, he stands at the door and whines to go out. Now, we trained Moose to whine at the door when he needs to pee, so it’s only fair that we let him outside when he starts this routine. The problem is – he doesn’t actually need to pee. We know this because when we let him out he runs directly to the door of the main house and whines to be let inside with them.

He will scream and whine outside of their front door indefinitely creating one of the following scenarios:
1) My mother-in-law begrudgingly lets him in to quiet his whining until Roger or I to go up to the main house and drag him back to our cottage.
2) Roger or I hear him screaming and sprint up to the front yard to drag him back to our cottage.
3) My mother-in-law shouts down for us to sort out our dog causing us to sprint to the front yard to drag him back to our cottage.

He has made his preference for the main house painfully clear, but there are several plausible explanations for this.

1) His girlfriend. Tigerlily (the cat) lives in the main house and Moose is still very much obsessed with her. When he’s not chasing her around the garden, he settles for lying on the floor beside her while she sleeps. He’s completely whipped.

2) His girlfriend’s food. Perhaps the only thing that rivals Moose’s love for Tigerlily is his love for Tigerlily’s food. My mother-in-law tries to remember to put the cat food up on the table if Moose is around, but if he times the whining-at-the-door routine just right, he is guaranteed an extra meal of tasty tuna.

3) My mother-in-law. The first two reasons for Moose’s fickleness I can cope with, but this one kills me. The idea that my child loves the evil M-I-L more than me is just too heartbreaking to comprehend. I don’t care if he only loves her because she gives him food that he shouldn’t have. The little traitor will pick her over me every damn time!

After forcing him back to the cottage for maybe the third time in any given day, Moose will reluctantly climb up on the couch, turn around a few times, give a loud sigh – so as to let us know he’s not happy about the situation – and finally curl up in a ball as far away from us as possible while still sharing the couch. This must be what it feels like to have a teenager. I love that damn dog so much, and yet with his huffing and rolling of eyes (I'm serious), he makes it blatantly clear that he wants nothing to do with me.

I don’t know what to do. I bribe him with dog treats (but he prefers the bits of fillet that the M-I-L gives him). I’ve started putting ice in his water bowl (something I used to make fun of the M-I-L for doing). I brush him. I talk to him. I play ball with him. I take him to the park. But he still prefers her.

I don’t know, maybe a year later, he still harbors bitterness over the thirty hour journey in a plastic coffin. If that’s the case, it’s certainly not gonna get any better when we take him back to the US. But at least then he won’t have the option to abandon me for the M-I-L. And once again I can fool myself into believing my child loves me.

Yeah, I'm clearly a great mom...and you wonder why I don’t have kids!

FYI

I woke up this morning to a house with no power.

No problem. I grab my gym bag and head to Planet Fitness.

But it takes me thirty minutes to get to the gym because the traffic lights are out, and once I'm there, I realize Planet Fitness has also been cut. I trudge through my workout anyway (no electrical power needed to lift a few weights!), but when it comes time to shower - still no electricity.

I am faced with a dilemma. I could go back home to shower - where at least I will have the sunshine streaming through my bathroom window to guide me in my eyeliner endeavors. Or I can attempt to shower in the dark, because - funnily enough - there are no windows in the women's locker room at the gym. I know the choice seems obvious, but with the traffic lights out, the detour back home will put me at least an hour late to the office, and even though I'm hardly 'on the clock,' I do try to be there by nine-thirty so as not to come across as the obnoxious freelancer who flits in and out at her whim (and as a former real estate agent, nine-thirty is the best I can do).

So I elect to shower in the dark. I use the light from my cell phone to guide me back to the showers, narrowly missing a far too close encounter with a very naked woman. "Excuse me!" I mumble as I shuffle my way further into the darkness. I choose the first shower I come to - fumbling for the door. This is trickier than I imagined. I feel for the shelf and set down my 2-in-1 Pantene along with my Philosophy face wash. I attempt to place my cell phone where it won't get wet but can still give off a bit of light.

I turn on the faucet. The cold water is the least of my worries, for my energy efficient cell phone has reverted to power saving mode and is no longer radiating light. I reach for the Pantene and hear my travel sized bottle of face wash tumble to the floor. Damnit! I grope the shelf for my cell phone but then realize I am going to destroy it with water. I turn off the faucet, find my cell, and use it to search for my face wash. Face wash retrieved, I reposition the cell phone and turn the faucet back on.

Let me assure you, the next few minutes are not pleasant, but I cope. With shampoo still in my hair, I wrap myself up in a towel and shuffle back to my locker which is basked in just enough light from the doorway to ensure that I don't put my underwear on backwards. Once dressed, I apply moisturizer before reaching for my make up bag. I feel my way to the mirror before realizing the absurdity of the attempt. I shove the make up back in my bag and head for the door. I'm sure I look ridiculous, but at least I don't smell bad.

I suffer the traffic until I reach a section of town where the traffic lights are still on. The tension leaves my body and I start to relax. A few minutes later, I arrive at the office. I throw my laptop bag over my shoulder and enter the office, smiling as I imagine how Karen and Laurel will laugh when I tell them about getting dressed in the dark.

I say hello to the receptionist and set up my laptop. I've just finished a few invoices and am about to open up my novel when...Zap.
No power.
You've got to be kidding me, right? But no one is kidding. The schedule that they neglected to share with the rest of us has Parktown North (my neighborhood) without power from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and Fourways (my office) without power from 10a.m. to 2 p.m.

The whole office grumbles. My sister-in-law announces that Florida is also having rolling blackouts, so we can all just shut up about living in a third world country. Someone then says the people they fired from Eskom (a South African power company) must have gone to work in Florida. I remain silent, but tell myself I must research said blackouts in Florida.

I work off my laptop's battery for another hour before it dies. I then pack up and head home, hoping the power is back on. It is; so I work from home the rest of the day.

Inconvenient? Yes.
Impossible? No.

But I just thought you should know.

April Fool's Day...a year later.

Last month Roger and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary, but this weekend we crossed a much more impressive milestone, in my opinion. We have now been living in South Africa for one year, and if this isn’t your first visit to my blog, you know that it hasn’t exactly been easy. But here we are – a year later – and I’m not ready to pack up and move home just yet.

Despite the difficulties, living here has been good for us, and I’m proud to report that I’ve finally stopped questioning our decision to come to Johannesburg. Of course, I continue to question how much longer we should stay. But can you blame me? At the moment, the whole country seems to be going through the same crisis. I’m definitely not the only one thinking about leaving South Africa.

Lately, I hear more and more people talking about leaving. The conversations usually start in hushed tones, as a confession almost. “We’ve started having the discussion,” someone will say, usually after a glass of wine or two. That seems to be the code word – ‘discussion’ – referring to ominous conversations about the future of the country and whether or not it is safe to stay.

Now by ‘safe’ I don’t necessarily mean the likelihood of you being hacked up in your bed at night. Violent crime is always a concern here, but it’s certainly not the only one. No, I believe the heightened concern lately is a result of several factors: 1) Power and 2) Politics.

Now, I’ve mentioned the problem with power in previous posts, and as you know, we don’t have enough of it. The power company’s solution is a seven year “load shedding” plan. That means, until 2015, every residence and business in South Africa will have its power cut off for a scheduled section of the day (not that we are privy to the schedule). Now, I’m all for going green, but these power cuts are affecting people’s ability to make money. With fewer operating hours, companies aren’t able to produce as much product, which means they can’t afford (and don’t need) as many workers. Even in the small ad agency where I work, when the power goes out, there is nothing you can do. Deadlines are ignored; proposals postponed. Over the long term, every business will be affected. And as a consumer – well, I’d hate to be in the dentist chair when the lights go out, or having my hair highlighted. A friend of mine is looking to get Lasik surgery, but can’t find a clinic that has a back up generator (not a question I had to ask when I had my eyes done back in Atlanta). Once I was in the dressing room of a department store, and the power outage prevented me from buying the skirt that was on sale. In that instance, it saved me a few Rand, but how much money did it cost the department store?

And perhaps the overarching issue that the power cuts reveal is the problem with the still very present affirmative action system. Here it’s called BEE – Black Economic Empowerment. I hesitate to bring up a subject I know so little about, but I can’t overlook such a big part of why people are leaving. The thing is BEE, like affirmative action, is/was a necessary evil. In a country with a history of such extreme racial injustice, they had to balance things out somehow, right? But the power company is a glaring example of why BEE doesn’t always work. Because when you fire people who know what they are doing and replace them with people to fill a quota, things fall through the cracks. Entire power plants get shut down, and suddenly people living in a first world country can’t get power when they need it.

I hesitate to say all of this for fear that I am way off base. Maybe these are simply the misguided perceptions of my social circle. After all, most of what I know about the economic and political climate comes from word of mouth, and I’m not exactly surrounded by a very diverse group of mouths. That being said, because of the power crisis, the government has given a temporary BEE exemption to the power company. Currently, Eskom is able to hire whoever they want – regardless of race or ‘previously disadvantaged’ backgrounds. They are hunting for the best nuclear scientists that the world has to offer. You can imagine, though, why the best nuclear scientists the world has to offer may be slightly hesitant to go to work for Eskom. After all, once they get things back on track –who do you think will be getting the axe?

Of course another reason people are leaving is the country’s political climate, which seems to have been on a downward spiral since Mandela resigned. Once again, I’ll tread lightly because I don’t know much about South African politics. I do know this however – when I try to read the paper I get very bored very quickly because the front page alternates the same two stories daily: 1) Some politician is corrupt and may go to prison, and 2) Some woman/child/family has been raped/murdered/kidnapped. It’s always the same story. The details may vary, but the story is the same. Am I scared of the crime? Of course, I’d be stupid not to be. In this country it’s not if it happens to you but when, and I only pray I’m gone before my when arrives.

But as for government corruption, the story has gotten very old, very fast. And yet, South Africans continue to elect these questionable leaders. In December, Jacob Zuma was elected president of the African National Council, which means he is likely to be the next president of South Africa. Now Zuma used to work closely with the current president, Thabo Mbeki, but when he was linked to corruption – namely the rape of a young woman – Mbeki forced him to resign. It hasn’t seemed to affect his popularity though. Hell, even his comment in court that he wasn’t worried about contracting HIV from the girl because he showered after having sex with her hasn’t seemed to upset the members of the ANC party. And why should it? Just because we live on a continent where HIV is spreading faster that the common cold, why should we expect our leaders to be educated on the ways you can and cannot contract HIV? So what if the future president of South Africa thinks he has protected himself from HIV by taking a shower? And hey, even if Zuma were to contract HIV, the South African minister of health announced to the public that ginger and beetroot are the cure for AIDS, so what’s the problem?

But of course, there’s also the fear that Zuma might get ideas in his head like our neighbor to the north, Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe. Could it happen? Could the elected president of South Africa force selected people to surrender their land, their homes, their businesses? Would that be possible? Could it happen? Most people say no, not in South Africa. It could never happen here. Zuma knows the big corporations would pull out and the country would lose too much. But does he know that? Could it happen? Zimbabwe is proof that it’s possible. Just ask the starving people still living in the formerly wealthy country.

Wow. I’ve rambled on about things I know nothing about for far too long. But what does all of this mean for me? Should I be worried? Am I scared? Sometimes after lengthy conversations with people plotting their ‘escape’ from South Africa, I start to wonder if I was a fool to come here. But then Roger reminds me that because we’re American, we don’t have to escape. We can leave any time we like. We could move home tomorrow if we needed to (and Roger just might pack our bags himself if the power goes out while he’s watching soccer one more time!).

So no, I’m not scared. For the moment, I’m happy to be here, spending my days writing and exploring a new country. Of course, I say this after yet another long weekend spent with my husband down at the coast. And with my toes in the surf and the sun on my back, it’s hard to think about the power and the politics and the crime.

So maybe this year the joke’s on me, but the view from here looks pretty good.
For now, anyway.