Well, Christmas was certainly different this year. It was quite an important one in that this new year holds a lot of changes for my family. Not really changes that will affect me too much (except for one), but they are changes nonetheless.This year my step-dad will be moving to the UK where he will work as a Chartered Accountant. He's qualified as a CA already, but needs to complete whatever courses or exams are required to be able to practice in the UK. My mom will continue to live in Bloemfontein (literally meaning "flower fountain") as my step-dad doesnt want to sell the house just yet, and would like to rent it out to people once my mom moves out and joins him.
One of the big reasons my mother will be staying in Bloem is because my Gran moved up there sometime last year, and needs to have someone around to keep an eye on her every now and then. I think she's had about two or three strokes already, which have affected her speech and co-ordination. She's getting very frail and very slow, and has even started forgetting her word tenses.
Since my uncles' very unexpected death, (her son), she has been very emotional aswell, which we witnessed when she opened her Christmas presents. Her eyes welled up with tears and she had difficulty getting her words out. I was touched then. What I really wanted to do, since I was the closest person to her, was to get up and put my arm around her. But I am sometimes stiff and awkward when it comes to showing affection towards other people other than those I see on a regular basis. And I am sometimes funny when it comes to old people, finding it difficult to communicate with and be patient with them, yet at other times finding them so sweet and endearing, as well as being a wealth of interesting stories and information. So in the end I didnt jump and go to her as I imagined in my head. Sometimes I wish I could just relax and forget about silly little inhibitions...
Another pretty major reason why my mother will be staying in Bloem is that her house is home to about 13 cats and 1 dog, the last time I counted. It is impossibly difficult to comprehend what to do with so many feline friends. Splitting them up when they each have their own favourite buddy would be far too heartbreaking. And these cats are not old, mind you. I predict a long stay in Bloem before my mother is able to join my step-dad in the UK.
Reason three for my mother staying in Bloem is that she will be studying Theology this year, which she is quite excited about. Its interesting to note here that since I was a little girl my only wishes (as in make a wish on a star, or make a wish when you reach the centre of a maze) were that:
a) my parents would get together again.
With age and maturity it became obvious that this wish was futile. If anything, my parents are better off divorced and living their own lives than they ever were married.
AND
b) that my mother would let go of her anger at the church that let her down when she most needed it, and that she would find God again.
While I am not the most religious person around, I like to think that there is a God up there watching over us. Christianity in any case creates good people who are happy and optimistic and perfectly happy with their lot in life. People who arent shallow and concerned with the petty things in life. I wanted that for my mother. Over time I assumed that this wish was also futile, but look! Some wishes do come true afterall!
Anyway, my brother was supposed to be going over to the UK aswell to work for 2 years, but has now decided that he wants to move back to Cape Town. The idea here is that Boyfriend and I will look for a bigger place so that my brother can stay with us, paying rent of course. This arrangement will last for at least a year, and hopefully by that time we will be able to afford the place ourselves, and my brother will be able to find his own place. Only time will tell.
This Christmas holiday is probably the last time that we will all be able to get together in Bloemfontein, so you can see why it was such an important one. A lot of emphasis was placed on family time because of it.
I had a great time this holiday, despite some things that worked hard to stop me (and a few others) from enjoying the holiday to the full. But they say that bad things happen in threes, so hopefully this will be the end of my streak of bad luck. Sadly my mom and brother are still on Bad Thing Number 1, (if you can count my mom's one as a Bad Thing).
Anyway, things that went wrong (to me and some of those around me):
1) On the drive up to Bloemfontein I noticed that my throat was sore, which quickly went away on my arrival. Unfortunately it flared up again about 2 or 3 days later so that the second half of the Christmas holiday was spent with a tissue permanently stuck to my nose and with a head that never ceased pounding. I also succeeded in sharing my germs with boyfriend who, on more than one occassion, looked at me through glazed eyes and asked "why are you putting me through this?"
As the new year approached we began dosing ourselves with just about everything we could find in my mother's medicine cabinet. While Boyfriend seemed to perk up a bit, I remained stuffy headed and miserable.
2) On Friday afternoon I managed to stab my right foot with a dart, something that can only happen to me. Im not quite sure how that happened. There I was, happily playing darts, when one that I had thrown somehow hit the board, bounced, spun around, and then stabbed me in the foot, just below the toes. While it was sore, it was probably on par with hitting your freezing cold fingers against something. Sore, but eventually the pain goes away. I showed the wierd little hole that it had made to Boyfriend, but by the time I showed my mother it had already started bleeding. Quite a lot for such a small puncture wound. My foot was a little tender when I walked, but that was to be expected. On went a plaster and everything appeared to be fine.
Unfortunately it wasnt as clean cut as that. After sitting at the computer playing "Soldier of Fortune" for about half an hour or so, I found that my foot had swollen quite a bit so that my toes looked like those mini pork sausages. I couldnt put my weight on the foot and resorted to hobbling around the house, using tables and chairs to keep me from toppling over. The pain was excruciating.
That night we went out for supper at Ocean Basket. I managed to get my feet into some slops because I wasnt sure if my right foot would manage to sqeeze into my takkies, but even the slops were a little tight. Throughout supper I could feel a dull pain pulsing through my foot, but was afraid to take my slops off incase I wouldnt be able to put them on again. By the end of supper I really found it difficult to walk, so Boyfriend graciously offered to give me a piggy back to the car.
Thankfully the next day the swelling had gone down a little bit, and I could walk, even if at snails pace, although I still had a problem bending my toes downwards. (As in the ballerina toe-point. Why I would need to strike up the ballerina toe-point pose, I dont know). Strangely pointing my toes upwards is not so much a problem.
I was determined to go out on New Years Eve, even if I didnt have loads of drinks or dance all night, so I dosed myself heavily with headache tablets and vitamin C tablets, got all dressed up, did my hair and make-up and sqeezed my feet into my high heels. Although the swelling in my right foot had mostly gone down, my right shoe was still a teensy weensy bit tighter than the left. It turned out that high heels was not a smart move. Stones had decided to have a beach party of sorts, and had coated the dance floor with a thick layer of beach sand, (or sand from somewhere, since Bloemfontein is landlocked and therefore hasnt got any beaches). When I eventually decided to dance, the heels of my stilettoes sank effortlessly into the soft sand so that my high heels became flat shoes and I was left leaning back at an awkward angle. Not fun.
Just before we left for Stones, my brother had managed to fall (read, "get pushed") into some (thorny) bushes that line the front porch of the house. My brother, Boyfriend and my step-brother had been playing a game of darts, and had come up with some silly game where they all had to speak Afrikaans (Bloem being a very Afrikaans place afterall). If any of them forgot this rule and spoke in English, the others had the right to give him a good old shove or punch in the arm, or something to that effect. Clearly my dear old brother forgot the rule and was sent tumbling into the bushes. He cut his knee open quite badly, as well as his jeans.
Now, my brother had been hobbling around Stones in the beginning until he declared that the alcohol was beginning to numb it. He made the mistake of sitting too long and then trying to dance afterwards. It was not a good idea, and we left soon afterwards due to his knee hurting too much and to mine and Boyfriends throats beginning to burn again. (Note to self: Smoky environments are not good for sore throats that are trying to mend themselves!)
Part of our leaving early was due to the fact that Boyfriend and I had to drive home the very next day. Yep! After celebrating New Years Eve we had a few hours of sleep before embarking on an 11 or so hour drive back to Cape Town. So we left the club and made our way back home. In hindsight it was probably a good thing that I wasnt feeling 100% on Sunday night since quite often Im quite a difficult one to get off the dance floor to go home. I think that if Boyfriend and I weren't so sick, if my right foot wasnt wedged so tightly into my shoe, if there wasnt such a thick coating of sand strewn upon the dance floor, and if my brother's knee wasnt so badly injured, I might have had an awesome time and insisted on staying later. Something I definately would have regretted deeply when I had to wake up to leave for Cape Town. But there are a lot of "ifs" in that sentence.
3) On the morning of our drive back home, I was sitting at the kitchen table eating my cereal and chatting to my mom and Boyfriend when I found myself crunching away at a particularly hard bit of cereal. So hard in fact that it seemed I was eating rocks or crushed glass. Well, it turned out that the cracked tooth that I have been too afraid to get fixed had finally decided that it was as good a time as any to chip off. Quite a large chunk came loose. But you know, I was so expecting that to happen while I was in Bloem, only I thought it would happen sooner.
What came later, after I had arrived home and had a shower, was even worse. Another whole chunk came loose!! Now, if I smile too widely and turn my face just so, I kind of look like a homeless person. Its awful! So I am trying hard not to smile too much or too wide at the moment, until I can get it all fixed up. It is so embarassing. Ive got a history with my teeth, and not a very good one. They are crap. No good, and there is always something that needs work on. Dont get me wrong. I look okay, but there are quite a few fillings, and a number of operations on the troublesome ones that you wont know about on looking at me. Im very nervous about my teeth, and having someone poking around, especially taking into account the number of times Ive been hurt by a dentist, is a fear that just keeps growing and growing as I get older. Hence the fact that I left this tooth until now. Call me stupid, but Im just plain terrified. (Do I count the second chip as a fourth bad thing? I dont think so really. Id like to think its a three or nothing rule and say that both chips were all part of the same Bad Thing).
Anyway, considering my not-quite-healed right foot, my stuffy head cold (or whatever it was), and my chipped tooth, it was lucky that the drive home only took us 7 and a half hours to complete! Im not sure how thats possible, but it happened. Boyfriend found a good driving partner (also driving a BMW, and also from Cape Town), who he could drive with. Never having said a word to each other, and only with a bit of flashing of lights or handwaves to point out a speed camera, they kept pace with each other at about 160kms an hour for most of the trip.
Keeping pace with someone else meant that he was far more awake than he would normally be, and that meant that I could read or snooze a bit when I wanted instead of having to keep him company. And boy did I need those little naps! Going from such a high altitude to a lower one really played havoc with my sinuses and I ended up feeling even more stuffy headed and miserable. I think, if Im not mistaken, that Bloemfontein is about 2 kilometers higher than Cape Town. Dont hold me to that though.
My mom's Bad Thing was that when we went ten pin bowling she managed to rip her thumb nail quite badly while rolling the ball. Id say thats a pretty Bad Thing, especially since I have such trouble getting my nails to grow in the first place, so having one ripped off would very much piss me off.
Hopefully now I will be left alone to recover and begin this new year the way every new year should begin. With good cheer, optimism for the year ahead, and a fresh and renewed spirit to tackle things head on.
Right now though, having had little sleep, feeling tired, drained and very sick, its difficult to feel upbeat about the new year ahead, because really, what a start Ive had! I definately need another holiday so that I can recover from this one just passed.
Happy New Year everyone!!
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