It is really, really hot...

I think we experienced the hottest day of the year today. It is 38 degrees outside, and even though all the doors are closed and most curtains drawn, it's a whopping 35 degrees inside! If this goes on my body will be all dried out by tonight. One positive point on this weather, my clothes only took 10 minutes on the washing line to get dry this morning. I also took only about 5 minutes to get some light sunburn lol.

Sorry if the next paragraph is too much information but I just got to say that my boobs are really hurting! I am hoping this may be an early pregnancy sign (keep all thumbs cross!) but if not then something is not right. I am truly hoping that I will be pregnant next year, it feels like a good year for that :)

Also a big priority for next year is to finish at least one of my novels. I have been a lazy writer in the last month, mainly because my computer is not with me and I prefer to write on it. I have now taken to writing the old fashioned way, by means of pencil and paper. This I keep next to my bed for in case I get some inspiration at night, which seems to happen quite often nowadays.

Ah Christmas time... already?!

How fast did this year not pass! Seems like Christmas was just last month lol. We made the mistake of going to the shops yesterday, not for Christmas shopping, but for strolling. It was so busy! We have one big mall in our city, and not mush else, so everyone was there. Some days I have the patience to walk in a crowded shopping centre without getting annoyed, but yesterday was a different story. It seems all the stupid people in the world walked in front of me and made a point of just randomly stopping in front of me in the middle of the passages! I had such an urge to walk over them or hit them with something... We did all our shopping online again, but it seems both my and my husband's gifts are going to be to late for the tree. We usually open our gifts on the evening of the 24th, which is also my mom's birthday.

Heard some sad news today. One of my friends from school lost her husband yesterday morning. It is so sad, even worst because they have 2 little girls as well. I feel so sorry for her. I don't think I would be able to handle losing my husband, I would go mad. Even 2 days without him is too long...

We are leaving for Bloem...again...on Thursday. I will try to blog in that time, depending on whether I have internet there. If not, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year! I am very keen for January as I turn 26 and our 2nd wedding anniversary is only 2 days later!

So my kitchen was clean...

My husband loves to cook. I have absolutely no complaint about that, cause it is lower on the list of things I like to do :). All that amazes me is how one person can make such a big mess. The mess also seems to be a lot bigger on the days when I took extra care in cleaning all the counters and things... *sigh*. It is all worth it in the end however, especially last night. He made a Guinness Pepper steak pie. All I can say is yummy! We had a taste of these pies in Stellenbosch during our Cape Town trip. I am quite impressed with him, he can cook any time he likes and I will happily clean up afterwards.

My stupid cold is better, but I am still not rid of it. My hearing is improving a little bit, as a couple of times a day my ears open up with so much force that it feels like my eardrums are bursting. Then, a couple of minutes later, it closes up again. It feels like I am being tortured!

This has not been an interesting week here. It is supposed to be the middle of Summer, but it has been raining everyday so far, which is normal, though it feels like Winter temperature wise. In other parts of South Africa people are complaining about the heat again. So thank you for messing up our seasons global warming, and if it is not too much to ask, maybe skip Summer this year? Make it snow instead? Ah well, so much for wishful thinking, today is unfortunately blue skies and sunshine, but the clouds have not disappeared yet.

Oh yes, I found a solution to my shelve problem in my bedroom. We only have 3 shelves in the bedroom closet, which is really stupid craftsmanship for me, so it has been a struggle for me to find space for everything. I have some hanging material shelves for my shoes, but nothing else but shoes and socks will go in there. Then on Sunday, during our weekend ritual of strolling through the mall and going for coffee and french fries, I make a discovery. It is called a sweater shelf (picture courtesy of organize.com) and it can fit so many clothes in it! I guess I am getting all excited about something that has probably been available forever, but it was the first time I ever saw it :)



Well I guess that's it. Still waiting for the gardener who has either forgotten to come or is running a little late. Going to see my first 3D movie this weekend, Avatar, and I am really stoked about that!

All is well again...

Finally I can say that I am all alone at home again (alone referring to my husband being at work). My husband is back, we are back at home and still I am not feeling to good. This is due to the fact that I am staring into a half empty rattie cage. I had to have two of my girls put down a week ago, but I will write about them in another post.

Everything went well with my husband's return and that is quite a big relief to me seeing as I was having all kinds of silly dreams about airplanes falling and things like that lol. He got me 3 gorgeous gifts which I would like to show now but my camera batteries is remains hidden :). The first is a beautiful Twilight music box... yes, a TWILIGHT music box! And yes, I have watched New Moon twice so far and absolutely loved it! Ok, back to the gifts... The second was a little celtic necklace which I will rather post a picture of later then trying to explain how it looks. The third is a rat in an egg, a teeny tiny egg, but the teeny tiny things I am collecting will also be another post, as soon as my camera is working again, preferably this week :).

Just before we left our geyser broke. I thought that we would be stuck with an awful mouldy smell of the wood in the cupboards that got wet. Well, nothing happened there. Instead, the plumber were smart enough to think they turned the correct power on again, which they did not, so my fridge were off for 3 weeks... Aaaaahhhh! The smell was horrible! Everything was rotten, even the eggs had mould on them. It..was..disgusting. Luckily my mom and dad brought us back so I had some help with cleaning everything up. There is still a faint smell hanging around, but the worst is luckily over.

My last complaint is the nice cold that my husband brought back from England. I got it the day before we came back home, and it does not seem to want to ease up now, which is 5 days later. This is truly the mother of all colds, though it feels like flu, but I never have such a sore throat with a flu. Ah well, at least my husband is back, so anything happening now will not dampen my spirit. I can honestly say I am, at this moment, extremely happy :).

I am still here!

I don't remember much of this year, it seemed to slip by so fast that I am starting to wonder whether I slept through most of it :). This month is also coming to its end, very very slowly mind you, but I only have today and 4 days left before my husband gets back. I never want to be away from him for so long again, it's dreadful. It really feels like a part of me left with him. I am also getting anxious to get home now, been away from there for much to long.

On a more happy tone, I watched New Moon! :D It was so awesome, and the anticipation before the movie was so great that I read the entire saga in 4 days, again lol. It is just such an easy read.

Unfortunately I could not finish my novel for NaNoWriMo this year. I had so much going on in my head, that I just could not give the book the attention it deserved. I will be entering again next year, and this time I will be doing the prequel to my my own trilogy that I am currently busy with. Hopefully I will be finished with one or 2 books by that time. I really think writing is what I should be doing with my life, and I am just sorry that I did not realize it a little earlier.

We did get a little breakaway holiday to the mountains near Clarens last week, but the weather was dreadful! South Africa's seasons have been thrown completely haywire, seeing as it was almost winter the past few weeks instead of a hot summer. Not that I want to complain, I love cold and rainy weather.

I will officially say it now, I am trying to get pregnant :) I am hoping that this will happen in the next year or so, and I must say I am very excited about the possibility of becoming a mom. Luckily I now have the chance to properly prepare myself and get myself healthy. I am reading a lot of pregnancy magazines, and some of the things I have read scares me to death (there seems to be a lot of needles involved *shudders*) but I think I will be ready for them all.

Nanowrimo and other things

Can I just say, this week has felt like an entire month all on its own :( A week ago my husband landed in Germany, and yesterday he arrived in Belgium. What I wouldn't give to be there with him! Luckily I have had contact with him every day but it does not make it easier. On Tuesday he is going to France and on Wednesday to Wales. After that he will spend his remaining time in London before coming home on the 29th of November.

The 1st of November was also the day that NaNoWriMo started. I started with one story, then had a tremendous attack of writer's block, then moved on to another story :). It seems to be going better now, but it is really hard to sit down and write! I am a little behind on the amount of words I should have done so far, but I will hopefully make up for that soon. I found I write very well while watching a movie or series at the same time! Yay for True Blood and Vampire Diaries.

Hmmm I seemed to have missed my 1 year blogeversary. Well, congratulations to me! Once I am home I am going make a point of it to blog at least 2 or 3 times a week :). I still have another week here at my parents house before we go to the mountains for a mid week getaway, so then I guess I have to write on paper lol. Not much else news I am afraid, except that my sister and her children were all struck down with chicken pox. I am really truly relying on the well known fact that you only get it once, else I will be all itchy in the next week or so.

What else!

I am so glad I decided to finish some things yesterday, like, the washing for instance, and all the dishes. Cause last night just before we had to go to dinner, which was fabulous by the way :), I heard a faint dripping sound. First I thought it was outside due to all the rain that we've had, but then I realized it was a little closer to me. And then I saw the little puddle forming just below the cupboard under the sink, the location of our geyser. Ah yes, the geyser is now totally leaked out, finally empty, leaving me with no water... EEK! It..sucks... Luckily we always have a bottle of water in the fridge but let me tell you, brushing teeth with ice cold water is not very pleasant.

Now about the weather. Our winter was warm, so warm we wore summer clothes. Then came October, which is supposed to be spring, so it is usually very warm. I think we have had a total of 3 days sunshine so far this month. The rest of the time its been raining, and its been cold :/. But don't think I am complaining, I love rainy weather, but very often I have to do a thing called laundry and rain don't work with that. When I woke up this morning the sun was shining very brightly and I felt a bit of anger about that, being without water and all, but now it is completely overcast again. This is the thing I feel thankful for today. My father-in-law is coming somewhere this afternoon,, and at 2 PM the plumber is coming. This is not how I planned my day! This is the other thing I am thankful for: think of the damage we would have had when we came home and found, after a month, that the geyser started leaking. Now that would have been a disaster lol.

Well, I guess I am back to packing now. I just cleaned the rat cage, and still need to fix up the spare room, so I still have a very busy day ahead of me *sigh*

It's almost time

For what is that? My husband is leaving for Europe and Britain on Saturday, but before that, we are leaving for Bloemfontein on Wednesday, and before that, my father-in-law is coming here tomorrow. The worst thing is, what do you take with you for a month? Clothes and those types of things are easy, but its the other things that rattles my head. Thankfully I will be taking my computer along. And then there are the ratties and all their belongings (food , bedding etc.) Cause what can I say, a month is a very, very long time away from home...

We spent the entire afternoon yesterday visiting a friend and yet again it made we wonder if we should not try to find a home in that neighbourhood. Her home is huge, her kitchen is gorgeous (Mine is terrible) and she has 3 bedrooms. The rent in that area is the same than we pay now, but I am not very fond of the surrounding area itself. Ah I am rambling on again, my head is so full of things at the moment that I am not thinking very clear at the moment. Luckily tonight we are going out to dinner with friends and then hopefully I can relax a little. Next time I will be blogging again, I will be in Bloem...

Cape Town trip - Day 5, the final day...

And so finally we come to the last day of our trip. We decided to take one more chance on Table mountain and... success! We went there 2 days earlier but it was too windy which was a pity cause that day looked like this.



On Tuesday we went at about 09:30 and did not even stand in a row waiting! We got our tickets and were on the first cable car up :). Here the car is coming down towards us.


And this is to show just where we were standing at that moment.


It was not scary at all! The whole trip up was over in a matter of minutes. This was our first glimpse of Cape Town.


It was still a bit misty at that stage, with a couple of clouds approaching, but the most of the morning was nice and open.




Some of the inhabitants of the mountain


And finally we got a awesome tourist from America to take a photo of me and my husband together :)


The clouds started to move in after this so we made our way down again, this time with camera in hand.



After this we took a trip to the Afrikaans Taal monument (a monument constructed for our language, weird). It is quite an ugly monument from the outside, but it looks cool looking from the bottom up.



After this we went to visit a friend in Stellenbosch who showed us around the campus for a while before we went home and started packing for the trip back home. It was so much fun to fly back again! I love planes... :)

Cape Town trip - Day 4, Part 2

After our little penguin excursion we made our way to the harbour to book a whale watching tour. This tour we chose cause the sharks was too expensive and we had already done the seals, so the only option left was whales. I am really glad we chose this one cause it was fantastic! Not only did we see 5 whales in total, two of them spend a good 30 minutes playing under the boat! A bit scary that, but so worth it.

This is the 2 of them approaching. From far we only made out a glow under the water, then realized it was the one whale's back that looked like it was covered by cow skin!



Here we were given a little nudge from the one, causing the boat to shake a bit, which in turn caused me to panic a bit lol. They kept swimming from one side of the boat to the other.


This was by far one of the greatest experiences of my life.




After the tour we decided to go to Cape Point. It was so beautiful, but extremely tiring. This was taken halfway, and the rest gave me chance to get some photos of the view.




After a couple more stops (I hate climbing by the way) we made it to the lighthouse and was greeted with this sight.




Now that's a lot of water lol. So our day 4 excursion came to an end. We were suppose to attend Tails's birthday party that evening, but I had terrible heatstroke from the day out on the boat, so I was lying down the rest of the evening :). Will make sure I put our last day up tomorrow!

Cape Town trip - Day 4, Part 1

This was going to be a long post, so I will be splitting it in 2 yet again :). On day 4 which was a Monday we made our way back to Houtbay, hoping to ride along Chapman's Peak, but found it closed during weekdays. So we made our way via an alternative route to Simonstown. We waited on this spot in Fish Hoek foe almost 20 minutes, but at least we had a nice view.


And then finally we made it to Simons Town!


Our main objective for that day was to go out on some more boat trips, especially one with sharks :). Unfortunately it turned out to be way to much for our pockets, and while we decided what to do we went to Boulder Bay. Now, Boulder bay is one of the cooler places I have seen in my life, mainly because it's a sanctuary for penquins, which I adore!

Can you say trouble in relationship? lol


This little sweetie was half asleep as we took the photos, and opened its eyes only when I pushed the button. Just a little while later 4 others made their way over to us. The problem for them was a stick sticking out across the path they walked on. Each of them would put one foot over, then the other foot got stuck causing them to fall over. It was so funny!


The nice thing about this area is that there is some areas covered in vegetation for them to nest in, but also a stretch of beach just for them. Some birds had however taken over all the rocks.


This is one of the many pathways they must have walked out for themselves. It was so cute to see them come down a path in such a neat row!


In this week I will be posting our whale watching, Cape Point and Table mountain trips.

In present times, :), it has been quite cool for a week now. It has not rained hard yet but there is some slight drizzle everyday, which makes this fantastic weather. I love it when it rains, not so much when the sun is shining. One of my friends had a house-warming on Saturday and thank goodness it was sunny weather. He built a flat on his parents yard and I must say I did not expect a yard that big! They seem to be living halfway into a forest! It..was..huge... Well only a little more than three weeks to go until my husband goes overseas and I go to Bloem (that just sounds wrong :/). He is planning to go to Costa Rica next year and this time I will really try to go with, I am not staying home again!

Cape Town trip - Day 3

This was a really active day for us, we did so much! Our first stop for the day was the Castle. Not quite what I imagined, but still impressive. Unfortunately we were not allowed to photos inside the museum areas so I got a couple from the outside.

This was taken from the entrance. Wasn't it just a beautiful day?


We walked through all the museum rooms and also went in to the dark room where they use to keep and torture prisoners (yeah that's really grim, gave me the shivers to stand there, did I mention it was dark?) and then we found the stairs to the roof yay! Got some nice pics up there, including these. The entrance is on the left of the photo.


This is something you don't see everyday. In the middle is our old country flag and on the right the new one which everyone knows. I must admit, I like the new one much better. It was far easier to draw it in school than it was to do the old one lol.


We then found the clock tower. It was so hard not to pull the rope but sadly many fun things are not allowed. We did pretend to be up to no good, as my husband here is showing :).


As we made our way out of the grounds we found this little courtyard, which is what I am planning for my own home in a while... lol I wish. The water does look very inviting.


So after our visit we went back to Canal Walk where I finally got to meet one of my online friends, Tails :D. It was one of my favourite events of this trip! After a nice lunch, we decided to go up Table mountain, seeing as it was such a nice day. When we came there the wind was blowing too hard so we could not go up. We decided to go to Houtbay instead, for we wanted to go on another boat trip.

On the road to Houtbay with the town in front of us.


We went to the harbour area and saw the ad for the seal island trip. We were just in time for the last trip of the day! This is me waiting for the boat to depart.


The time we chose was also the time that the tide started coming in. So we met a few waves along the way, but it was so much fun to be lifted into the air and then falling back. A lot of screams were heard among the passengers, followed by a lot of giggles. I would just do the trip again for that part :). We passed Chapman's peak on the way out to the deeper water and was so happy to see that it was open (though the next day when we went there it was closed, figures.).



Seal island was so cool. A bit stinky, but very nice.





So yes, day 3 was very tiring, and day 4 was even better, but that is the next post :).

Cape Town trip - Day 2, part 3

I am being a terrible blogger once again :). As you saw in my previous post we went to the waterfront. After walking through the entire place we went to the Two Oceans aquarium. The tanks were really cool, though I prefer Ushaka. For some reason I did not get the nice photos I got at Ushaka, but some did come out nicely. This was the first tank we went to, and this little fellow did not want to sit still! He kept waving his claws at us and running up and down the glass, much like a budgie on a perch lol.


The coolest part for me was the penquin area (I just love them :)). This is a nice photo I managed to take.


And this is the one my husband took. He always captures the right moments...


It is not a very big aquarium it is very interesting. I was a little freaked out by these crabs though. I don't know why, but I do not like crabs.


As we went out we passed the coolest tank. It is round with a area in the middle where you can stand, while being surrounded by fish. The guy before us bumped his head real had poor guy so I made sure I don't do that. Thankfully I could stand upright in the hole without my head touching! It's good to be short somedays :) All in all day 2 was an extremely tiring day...