Growing up

So CG is out on his first date...official date. With a girl. I've laid down the law on what's acceptable and legal (PDA's aren't, and nothing is legal when you're 14).
And as I'm driving home, I realise, this is the start, this stage has been threatening for a while and now it's here. The girl stage. And I'm kind of dreading it but also so conscious of not being like my mother. In that everywhere she thought wasn't suitable for a young lady was banned and proclaimed to be the place 'where girls got pregnant'. This included: drive in's, pool halls, arcades and the list went on. I have to confess that I went to all of them and I didn't have any babies. I'm not sure why she thought this: after all a bunch of teenagers were hardly likely to have an orgy amongst the pool tables. And the more she stressed about hanging out with the wrong sort, the more they became attractive. So, I'm not going to be like that. Instead, I've made it clear, everything is illegal and you're judged by the company you keep. I've also stressed that honesty is rewarded and dishonesty gets you grounded. I kept most boyfriends away from my parents. They must have known boys liked me and went out with me. I can recall breaking up with a boy when I was 15 (and a bit of a brat, so I wasn't nice about it), Mom had liked him and therefore he thought it was perfectly acceptable to phone the house when I was out and cry down the phone to her at how much he loved me (he didn't love me at all). But it was never discussed.
But we didn't do 'dates' as a social group - it was just groups of girls and boys who hung out together and we kind of rotated who we went out with. Or so it seemed. Above boy did take me out on a date...highly embarrassing experience. I'm hoping CG's is better. I'm sure it will be. Kids these days are blessed with the kind of confidence my generation didn't have I don't think. Not that they don't have the same kind of hang ups we did but they appear to not take it all so seriously. Maybe I think that because I have a teenage boy in the house and not a teenage girl (which I remember being).
I'd like to think, in that respect, that I'm teaching CG not to be mean to that one girl that keeps phoning and asking for a chance.

Bloody hell

For the love of all that is sweet and sticky... why on earth do I fiddle with things I shouldn't. For example, I had quite a lovely picture of a rose here. It fitted in well with the layout and so on. I fiddled with it and not only can I not find that rose on my pc anymore (the picture, as the actual rose is long gone into mulch), but I can't get another to fit in the bits as well. So I fiddle around some more and now other bits have disappeared. Why do I do this? I start something I have no real skill in and end up with a botched job that looks pretty crap.

I reckon I have the mind of a magpie. I see something sparkly and shiny and new and HAVE to have it. Will have no real use for it, but it must be mine.

I thought that once I had given up Coca Cola (6 weeks you know) that I would zen a bit. Be a bit less manic. Not so. And I'm pretty much caffeine free now (can't shake that morning coffee just yet) and yet I'm still scatter brained, I'm still hyper and I'm still all over the shop.

Kind of nice to know that my personality wasn't aided and abetted by Coke and that I'm just naturally upbeat and freaky in my own way. I appreciate it gets on nerves. And I have to say I am largely intolerant of people who crave being miserable. It's in that song 'you get addicted to a certain kind of sadness'. Some people just are. They like the drama that comes with being sad and unhappy and pissed off with the world. I am glad that's not me. Oh that's not to say I don't get in a funk but I'd rather be funky (the good funky, not the bad).

Questions

The other day, someone asked me what I was passionate about and for a minute, I was truly stuck. Firstly, is that not a strange question? Secondly, I think I am a geek.
I've recently got into baking.... it calls to my intensely stubborn streak. To walk into my house, you would not think 'ah there lies an organised mind'. You would not proclaim 'goodness, there's a gal who likes a place for everything'. But I do. I was the child who loved the alphabet, who had all her books lined up (not by author but by title). I group my cds in genre, then alphabet. And on my dressing room table there's a clear hierarchy. Oh I know it's not evident, my lists and sorting out but it's the way my head works. For example, my photo albums are grouped. My trinkets are on my shelves in strict order. So baking, yes, it screams to me to want to be perfect, I want to be able to make roses out of the most delicate of icings. I want the admiration of a nicely decorated cupcake. But am I passionate about it? Not quite. I want to be good at it, because my nana's were. I want to excel with the roses because I want to be good at something but it's not quite a passion. I don't wake up and think 'CAKE!' (well I do but not in a 'I'll get down to the kitchen and make it' more like a 'EAT CAKE').
So what do i want to do when I wake up - besides drink myself awake with coffee.
This is. Not this blog per se. But write, that's my passion. That's what occupies my mind, that's the clutter that holds my house together - bits of paper and diaries and lists of plot lines, of dreams, of things I want to do.
And that was my answer. I'm passionate about writing.
Last Saturday I was passionate about tequila, but that's only ever a passing Saturday night kind of passion.

The urge to scribble

It happens often, this urge to just put pen to paper (or words to screen in this case). Regulary, I don't have a lot to say just tons of thoughts swirling around in my head that need to come out.

Like, I'm really kind of sick of people's attitudes. I know I really suck at doing stuff - like sending stuff and keeping in contact etc. But I try hard and if I forget to send Christmas cards, I do make sure I send an email saying 'oh gosh sorry, here's a picture of the card you should have got but it's now Christmas Eve and I'm shit'. I have YEARS of Christmas cards all addressed without the stamps. However, I'm quite good electronically. I connect quite a lot in that realm. So it annoys me when I'm having a well documented crap week and so-called friends just don't even send a quick text to say 'are you ok?' That I send a text saying 'are you ok' and don't get a reply. It's rude. And leaves me wondering what the hell am I doing trying so hard.

As a mother....

When you become a mother, everything changes for you. I don't just mean your physical body - although that gets a beating too (hair, teeth, hips etc) but I mean your mental state.
All of a sudden you realise the world is not the great place you want it to be and there are dangers EVERYWHERE! I had a child who had no fear, a toddler who wanted to leap from the highest heights he could reach. I put the fear of falling into him. Although I encouraged the climbing, I got a bit shrieky if he got too high - I'm a firm believer in never climbing 10x your height unaided.
You also achieve the wanting to take the hurt away. Many a time, when CG has been hurling his guts up or so ill with the many germs - I've wished I could take his pain away.
And tonight was another one of those nights.
I had to have the horrible conversation that his great granny is not going to be with us for much longer. In a younger child, it's easier to simplify death I think. He went to his first funeral when he was 7/8 and coped so much better than all us adults. Children adapt to losing someone far easier. Even pets, he has done so well with them getting planted by the lavender at the bottom of the garden. Because he's my son (a boy-child) he has always been more concerned about how I'm feeling. I'll tell you about Fluffy. Fluffy was CG's rabbit, I didn't particularly want a rabbit. He was 5 and a half (CG not Fluffy, I have no idea how old Fluffster was) and in the 72 hours we had the rabbit, he was gold with it. Then the fluff ball died. I was distraught. I covered up the death for 3 days! My dad eventually took CG down to the beach (this was after 3 days of scouring the area for a pure white bunny to no avail) and told him the score. His first words were 'Is Mommy okay?'. His first words to me were "It'll be okay, don't cry. Fluffy can go by the lavender". [The Lavender in my garden is where all the pets are]

But as he is a teenager now, he knows exactly what the score is, and that death all very permanent and sad. And tonight he sobbed. It was horrible and I only wish I could have taken this pain for him. I wish I could have said she'll be okay. But that would have been lying. So he cried, and I got to hold him like I did when he was younger (a taller than me teenager isn't so free with the hugs as he once was) and tell him how hard it was going to be, to cry was more than okay and we also have to be so strong for Grandad.

Tis crap it is...

Absense

This is something that I've thought about often and I reckon there will be quite a lot of it in the future.
As a child, I was somewhat different to my peers. Yes, a lot of us were from immigrant stock down the lines but my dad came to SA in the 60's and not with his parents. So I was one of a few kids who had grandparents in another country. I didn't suffer through this, I had a most lovely set of grandparents and a great granny who never made me feel like I was lacking in grandparent duties. Bearing in mind, this was pre internet and email and Skype, we connected via 'snail' mail and sporadic phone calls. And I met my grandparents a few times. I really did feel I knew them from the stories my dad told of his mom and dad and his Granny Young and his siblings. The cousins who were close to me in age, we corresponded via letter.
It's only when I started to live in England, that I realised I didn't know my English Nana at all really. And I got a taste of how my Jo'burg cousins must have felt about my SA Nana. For once, I wasn't the favoured grandchild.
Now she is coming to the end of her years and I do wish I had known her more. My son on the other hand, DOES know her well and is devastated that she's so ill.
This isn't a blog about her though - that will come later. I will say that I wish she had been born in my generation, she was so talented with her hands yet her generation wasn't afforded the oppurtunities or chances mine was.
My blog purpose is basically, that with people immigrating to Australia from her, from South Africa to here and so on, there will be a whole new generation of kids who will know their grandparents via Skype. And that makes me sad. I think my son has been so lucky to have my mom and dad at his side, his whole life. I know he feels the same. Often he had remarked that he's so lucky to see his Granny and Grandad almost every day, as his friends sometimes only see theirs at the holiday times. I love that he will look back when he is my age and remember doing so much with them - much like I do with memories about my SA nana. He will remember a trip to Scotland with his granddad (the real Scotland, not the one we made up - although I'm sure he will remember that trick too), he'll remember cooking with Granny and possibly the day our life turned upside down when she had her stroke. He'll remember going to Cape Town with his mom and Granny and then recall having a "Boys Week" with Grandad when I went to SA with my mom.

So in respect, I'm glad I didn't uproot him and move when I wanted to. There! I've said it, and I never thought I'd say that, because in truth, the only thing that keeps me rooted to this spot of the world is the fact my parents are here, and my son is happiest when we are all around.

Action

It appears baliff action works. I have a few payments of maintenance coming my way. I'd say thank you to the parties concerned but the fact it had to go to 13 years and baliff action, means I've been waiting far too long to be gracious about it.
And it's not that CG has ever gone without but that's been with a lot of help from my parents. There is no way at all my life would be half as easy without them. And yes, it stings when you see the other party has been living it up while I look to Heavens and wonder if I'll manage to buy trainers and PE kit or just the trainers. Or if my gas will last. Now, many folk would say 'Aaah but you bring a child into this world...". And I agree, but I never planned this relationship would end, in fact I put up with cheating within that relationship when I was 6 months pregnant because, the thought of bringing my child into a single parent environment was horrendous to me. I was pertubed enough that I wasn't married, but I digress and my veiws and opinions have moved on from there. I also never thought that my son's father would turn out to be so remiss in his responsibilites. I guess that's the bit that shocked me most of all.

But this is not a woe is me blog, this is just pure facts, that finally I have some maintenance soon to come into my bank. It means the school camp and scouts camp can be paid for outright, it means my credit card isn't going to groan when I take it out my wallet and it means I don't have to ask my dad if I can borrow cash again.

This is my birthday week and it has been grand so far. I've danced until my feet ached, I've laughed with good friends, I had a cupcake from somewhere I've wanted to go for ages (didn't live up to the hype but no matter), I had a video from my lovelies in Australia and a quote from AinW from my N. And roses from someone (haven't a clue).
Yes, if this is what turning *@? does to a person, I'll have some more please!