Yesterday I got to go on a field trip for work. My manager wants to have the department picnic at the zoo first week in December and asked me to go check it out for her.

Can I just say well done to Johannesburg Zoo for your awesomely helpful staff. No less than 5 (the only 5 I spoke to) went above and beyond trying to help and accommodate me in whatever I asked them – this kind of attitude doesn’t come by itself, so I assume you’ve put some effort into training them this way. I am extremely impressed. It’s rare these days to see this anywhere, so really, well done!

I’m very glad I decided to take my umbrella with. About 200m waddle into it the heavens opened up like in the days of Noah and even though I was somewhat drenched I missed out on most of it, especially the hale stones bit which i was very grateful for! When the thunder and lightning started shortly after that I reconsidered walking around with a lightning rod (umbrella) and made my way over to the reptile house quick as I could.

The Zoo itself looks pretty good too. There were three school tours there yesterday and I think the odd candy wrapper could easily be attributed to that. (Btw, have you seen what happens to three school tours when it starts raining and haling and there’s nowhere to go? Chaos I tell you, mad screaming, scattering, running chaos! I felt very sorry for the two teachers trying to heard the youngens to the buses by themselves).

I didn’t stay very long either – I only wanted to see if it would work for a picnic, and it will as long as it doesn’t rain. There really is nowhere to go if it rains except the reptile house.

On my way out I spotted this funny scene. These goats don’t have a roof to hide under when it rains, and one decided that he couldn’t see why the food has to stay dry on its own. Those are not his feet sticking out of the bottom, there’s another bokkie behind the feed he’s sitting in! Clever goat.

Even though I got more or less soaked, it was a fun way to spend a Monday. Beats filing hands down.

I am in pain. It’s making me a little bit nuts to be honest. The silver lining is that at least it’s better than yesterday. Last night I had back and stomach pains that made it difficult to walk or get up by myself, and today at least the back pain is gone and the stomach pain is at roughly half the level it was last night.

Unpleasant.

Let’s hope it’s not serious, and whatever it is settles down so I can sleep properly tonight.

Hope your week’s off to a better start than mine?

According to Babycentre my squishy is about the size of a Jicama this week (another root/fruit that we don’t get here!) and should be more or less 16.7 inches long (42.4cm). I am SURE my baby will be a lot cuter than a Jicama.

They say that she’ll be picking up about a third of her birth weight in the next 7 weeks at the rate of about half a pound a week (226,7g). Well there you go…it’s time for the big swell to commence? Brace yourselves, we don’t know how big this is going to get.

They also say that this week she has fingernails and toenails and either hair or a respectable form of peach fuzz. If this baby is anything like her mother she’ll be born with a full head of proper hair, no fuzz to speak of – but we’ll see what happens.

According to the weekly email update I get, some of the symptoms I should or could be experiencing this week include shortness of breath (check), heartburn (CHECK) and back pain (nope – and thank you for that!). I will say that I am constantly uncomfortable though and that I get funny cramps in my legs and potbelly – which I assume is either squishy squishing my nerves or some sort of braxton hicks? It’s not exactly fun, but I suppose it’s part of the process? Also I am sleeping more than I have ever slept in my life! It’s really hard work growing another human!

If I had to use one word to summarise how I feel now I’d have to go with clumsy. I can’t explain why but it’s actually easier for me to get out of the bath than out of bed. I dropped my house keys (through the security gate) one morning this week as I was leaving home for work – and I wanted to weep! Getting them back so i could unlock the door entailed putting everything I had with me down and crawling on my hands and knees to reach them and then pulling myself up again afterwards. Sounds easier and more elegant than it actually was!

Other than that I feel just peachy.

I’m spending a lot of time navel gazing…and not the depressed kind either, actual navel gazing. It’s fascinating to see her rolling around and stretching under my skin.

I’ll be honest: some days I am sooo excited to meet her and some days I am quite frankly terrified. But mostly I am excited. Good thing too – since there are now 8 weeks or less of this pregnancy left to get used to the idea of being someone’s mom.

Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future. We make discoveries about ourselves. – Gail Lumet Buckley

No passion so effectively robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. – Edmund Burke

The smallest good deed is better than the grandest good intention. – Dugest

I’m not feeling on top of the world today. It’s a meh day for me…thank goodness it’s Thursday!

I’m uncomfortable and I have some new aches and pains – nothing too severe, just enough to interfere with my sleep and make me a little bit grumpy today. Not to worry, I’m sure I’ll snap out of it by the time I get to work.

Anyhoo, tomorrow is Friday and I’ve decided to reward myself for making it through the week. I’ve been craving real unhealthy deep fried swimming in salt and vinegar slap cafe’ chips all week long – and if I still crave it by tomorrow I’m having it. I’ll probably have the mother of all heartburns after, but I don’t care. I want it!

I’ve had a few other peculiar food ideas – seems perfectly fine to me, but when I see how my family pull their faces at it I think maybe not so run of the mill after all. Tell me honestly, what do you think of this: a fresh buttered roll with Nutella chocolate spread and slices banana on it? Sounds yummy right? I don’t know why they’re on about – it was delicious.

The receiver of revenue and I have always been on pretty good terms. I pay my tax, submit my return and when I get my refund I usually go Christmas shopping with it. In general I keep my nose clean with them, and they don’t give me any hassles.

However the last few years there have been some disturbances in the force. It all started in 2006 when I quit a very long standing employment arrangement in something similar to hell and took a few months worth of mental health days.

Then last year when I packed up all my worldly belongings and moved to Cape Town for a year, working for a salary which was probably the smallest I’ve ever had since I started working in 1997! (Still, I learnt a lot there – so as far as I’m concerned it was worth it in the skills I picked up and fantastic people I met).

Then roll around 2009, the economic recession, the inevitable letting go from my new JHB job and then finding out I was pregnant just after I secured a contracting position which has no set income and depends exclusively on how many hours I manage to clock.

The receiver of revenue must be looking at me and thinking I’ve gone off the deep end? Ad to this that I didn’t actually submit a return last year because firstly all my paperwork and tax certificates were still in boxes after my move back to JHB and secondly because I figured that I probably didn’t earn above the level where you HAVE to submit so I’d just rather leave it.

Now from November (20th I think) SARS is getting a bit stricter on tax returns. Apparently they now get to charge you R250 – R16 000 per month for a late return, regardless if you owe them or if they owe you. And they now also have the power to just nab the money from your account if they see it there looking lost and unallocated.

I decided I needed a tax guru – and I needed one fast. It was time to restore my previous good standing with SARS.

Through a recommendation of a friend I found Zander who will now be known far and wide as MY tax guru. The man is simply a genius. I took my sad story and a box full of tax certificates and receipts to him on Monday and he’s already managed to sort out my last two returns, get an error fixed on the return before that and arrange a payout for me that came through this morning (a payout that is roughly 3 times as big as I was expecting on top of that – and I’m not complaining). And everything is completely legit. I don’t mind paying tax – I just mind paying more than I’m supposed to.

It’s nice to be up to date and have a clean nose with the receiver again. I really don’t ever want to be on their bad side, that’s for sure. If you need a tax guru I can highly recommend Zander and he’s not even paying me to say that, promise.  

…to my friend Sparrow, who is flying in from CT to JHB right this minute for two interviews today in Sandton.

He has had the worst run of luck this year so far and he really needs, and deserves, a break from karma.

Plus it would be really awesome to have the little hooligan close enough to visit again.

As suddenly as she appeared she’s disappeared again. I’m talking about my gran of course. I’ll admit that I don’t understand the inner workings of my gran’s mind at all (I’ll also admit that I don’t spend too much time trying).

She arrives here last week – to say goodbye to my uncle and his wife who are in the process of moving house. Then she ends up spending little to no time with them while she’s here doing that.

She wanders into my mom’s room to help herself to books, because she’s bored – and then spends quite a bit of time telling my mom how disappointed she is in her reading material. (I told her she was more than welcome to keep herself busy with the You crosswords in future or bring her own books from home since she found the reading material she borrowed without asking so lacking).

She takes a dig at my mom at every opportunity she gets about everything from her spending habits to the way she spends her time. She must be one of the only people who will go to a restaurant with you for lunch whilst berating you for going to restaurants for lunch and get away with it.

In general she spends a week here being rude to my mom…and then leaves without saying goodbye (to anyone).

*breathe in – breathe out*

Whatever…

The house returns to it’s normal pace and routine, and the better understood mood-swings of the people who usually live here and who make a bit more sense in general.

Ps! I’ll state this here as a matter of record for anyone who might be harbouring any illusions about the matter. I suspect my gran thinks that at some point I might ask her to become squishy’s nanny next year. IT. WILL. NEVER. HAPPEN. I hope I’ve made myself very clear? 

Anyhoo, adieu grandma – until we see you again when you swoop in more or less unannounced like a health inspector in a no-charge guest house. Hope you bring something “good” to read next time?

What a blast! It was our newsgroup’s 5th birthday party on Saturday and as I mentioned before, we did it in a Halloween theme this year.

Obviously not possible for people from all over to attend, but usually we have a pretty decent turn out between the JHB and PTA people anyway, sorry for the CT and DBN members who couldn’t make it.

We always have a theme salad and a theme dessert. Other than that it’s a pretty standard braai (except for the costumes of course). For our theme salad we whacked in some roasted pumpkin seeds and corn (for the candy corn), and for dessert we had ice cream with what we called eye-of-newt (biggest newt you ever saw!), which entailed mushed up berries in sauce with floating litchis that looked like bloody eyes.

The outfits of the day: We had a ghost (Michael Jackson).

We had a vampire.

We had the white witch of Narnia (who did a bit of moonlighting for Abba before).

We had a wench, and a little arkbaby dressed in PINK – very scary!

We had the devil and a skeleton.

And of course a pumpkin! (and look at the cute little squishy outfit the skeleton gave me).

Good clean fun was had by all…

I wonder what we’ll do next year when we turn six?

This week Babycentre says that my squishy should be more or less 16 inches (40.64cm) long and weight about the same as four navel oranges – which they rate at about 3.3 pounds (1496g). However, since we had a check up again on Friday I can tell you she weighs a little bit more than that – she’s at 1.8kg now. The doctor says she’s running about a week ahead of schedule, which is fine.

At the moment she’s just working on getting bigger and plumping up a bit, and kicking me at every chance she gets. It doesn’t hurt (unless she hits a rib) so I don’t mind – it’s actually very nice feeling her move around the whole time. Some nights she gets so enthusiastic in her jumping around that I wake up from it.

Doc says that the way she’s lying now is with her head down and facing my back and her bottom tucked neatly under my ribs. So when I see my whole potbelly move and jump it’s actually her kicking on the opposite end and bouncing against the my tummy side. I get quite a kick out of feeling her move and can be found with a hand on my belly smiling for most of the day.

I still can’t believe we’re at 31 weeks already – only a few more weeks till I meet my daughter face to face for the first time.

Anyhoo, nuff mushy rambling from me for now – here are some scan piccies from Friday.