Lessons learned this week

I have learned two very important things this week.

Like yesterday, I decided to go for a brisk 30 minute morning walk before work. This is nothing unusual. But it was cold. Very cold. And wet. So I missioned along for a while and then decided to warm up by breaking into a jog. This is unusual - I am NOT a runner.

After just more than five minutes of steady jogging, I got a mammoth stitch that felt like someone had punctured my right lung. It was horrible. Sheer agony, I tell you.

I moaned like a wounded beast and two spandex-clad old ladies out for their own exercise moved hastily to the opposite side of the road.

I slowed back to a walk. My one ear started to hurt from the cold (I have rubbish ears. Had grommets three times as a kid). This turned into a dull headache on the right side of my head. I completed my walk in misery and thankfulyl jumped into the shower as soon as I arrived home.

Lesson: I dislike running.

This is not news to me. If you've known me long enough you'll have heard me say the following at least a million times:

"Show me two people in a row who are out jogging and look like they're actually enjoying it and I'll take it up. Until then, no thanks."

Really... Give me a gym full of other sweaty people who look as ridiculous as I do going nowhere on the stairmaster.

Give me group classes where the butch instructor at the front tells me exactly what to do and when.

Give me my lounge and Billy Blanks shouting daft encouragements from my TV screen in his Taebo workout (good grief, that man is ANNOYING).

But don't give me a slippery, cold open road with lines of bored morning motorists staring at me while I try to jog and at the same time avoid the scores of domestic workers on their way to work who snigger at this mad masochistic woman breathing like a cow in labour as she attempts to do something she's clearly not cut out for.

Another lesson I learned is that I still take water for granted. When I lived in Broadacres, our water would get turned off without warning on an almost weekly basis. We once went without it for four days and were flushing our toilet with mineral water.

Since we've been in the new house, we haven't had this problem at all. Until last night.

When I arrived home at 18h00, the water was off and my mad Italian neighbour was awaiting me to point this fact out a million times over accompanied by grand hand gestures and lots of tutting.

Thankfully, since our experiences in Broadacres, we've been prepared and always have two 5-litre bottles of water on standby. With the water in our kettle and the 2-litre bottle we fill up regularly in our fridge, we were able to manage just fine.

But my sponge bath could in no way match up to the long bubblebath with TSC that I had planned. And brushing your teeth with ice-cold water from the fridge is not fun.

Lesson: I realised again how precious water is.

TSC always says that you can tell a man's wealth by how freely he uses water. The low-earning labourers on local buidling sites can wash up with the water they fill their hard hats with. Those of us spoilt suburb-dwellers used to having water on tap are outraged when we have no water for just one evening.

It makes one think.

What about YOU, dear reader? Learned anything interesting this week?

Have a great weekend, btw.

You know when...

...You've had a rough day, and then everything looks like it's going to turn out just peachy, and then it doesn't, and then in the end it does?

No?

Sorry... I know, that was a long and complicated sentence. Let me start over:

Yesterday was one of those days where I just couldn't seem to get it all together. I forgot about a telephonic interview I'd scheduled for a magazine feature I'm writing (way to go on the professionalism, Tamara), although the interviewee was very nice about it and agreed to chat a bit later when I recovered at least some part of my brain. Thankfully!

I then got in a rush job from a new freelance client that needed to take precedence over my other work, which I knew I'd have to fit in later. It was interesting though - I haven't done advertising copy since I was first out of varsity, and I'd forgotten how different the writing style is to straight journalism. I struggled quite a bit, but client seems happy, so that's ok.

Things are still weird at the office. In short, boss hasn't been around since about last Thursday. She pops in occasionally, but we haven't had our weekly status meeting with her and things are feeling a bit like we're in limbo. She also hasn't acknowledged the fact that the most experienced employee of our bunch, DK, has resigned, which is making things a bit surreal. DK needs to arrange client hand-overs, but boss is pretending that nothing has happened. She's dealing with the death of a friend, and it's almost like she's forgotten about everything else, including her business.

I feel like we're living in one of those books that don't make any sense (the ones that get turned into Oscar-winning movies). She's talking to DK again (was ignoring her last week), but like nothing's going on. DK finds this totally bizarre, as does the new girl (let's call her Shakira, seeing most people get her name wrong and call her that). I think she's (understandably) a bit freaked out by the vibe at the moment. Poor thing. She seems sweet.

I have so much work to do, but no motivation for my PR stuff. I just want to do my freelance jobs. Unfortunately, I'm not in a position where I can do that, but I need boss's input on the PR stuff, so I'm sort of stuck there anyway. Limbo. Or purgatory. Somewhere inbetween.

I was also supposed to prepare for last night's life group - we were going to talk about Buddhism and Hinduism. I had found some info and was going to take it home to summarise when I started getting messages from a few of our members to say that they wouldn't be able to make it to the meeting. Apparently, everyone else is busy, stressed and not getting everything together either. This made me feel better somehow. Less alone in my ineptitude and procrastination.

TSC and I talked to them all and we decided to cancel the meeting this week. I was actually quite relieved - it would give me time to collect myself and get some work done at home. And hopefully a chance to spend time with TSC.

So I picked an interesting recipe from one of those "quick, cheap and easy"-type recipe books (I call them my slutty cookbooks) to make for supper. It was for Thai-style fish-sticks. And there the fun began.

What a waste of time, energy, money and tuna! Honestly! You're supposed to make this mixture from the fish, the spices, beaten egg and mashed potato, form it into little fish-cake-thingeys and thread them onto kebab sticks. You then brush them lightly with egg, dust with flour and fry on all sides until golden. Serve with lemon slices and sweet chili sauce. Sounded great.

Huh! First-off, I would like to say that I SUCK at following recipes, so I usually amend them slightly. Or more than slightly. This time, however, I decided to stick to every little step and every little measurement and to be totally and completely exact in following this damn recipe.

So why, I would love to know, would my mixture not stick together? I made the little fish-sticks, shaping them around the bloody kebabs, and as soon as I tried to "brush lightly with beaten egg", the stupid things fell apart in my hands. They would NOT stick. I even tried popping them in the freezer for 20 min to see if they'd firm up a bit.

And then, how the heck are you supposed to fry the things if they have a big kebab stick through them that won't fit into any normal-sized frying pan? I ended up taking them back off the sticks and frying them on their own. *Rolls eyes*

They then actually started to look good and smell good (although, being covered from head to toe in flaked tuna and mashed potato by this point, anything else would've smelt good). Problem was, they tasted rubbish.

It's always such a let-down to smell and see something yummy, only to pop it in your mouth and discover that it tastes like crispy-on-the-outside-cold-and-squidgy-on-the-inside-tuna-and-mash-mix... Gross.

So my quick, cheap and easy meal turned into a protracted tuna and mash mixing and frying marathon nightmare that left me both smelly and still hungry. Poor TSC resorted to squashing a few of the revolting fish cakes onto two slices of bread with some sweet chili sauce, cheese and mayo, and making a snackwich of them, which made them slightly more palatable. But never have I seen him enjoy my side salad so much.

That will teach me to follow a recipe.

By the time we had finally rescued our dinner, we might as well have had life group. Grumpy and disheartened, I showered off my pungent meal remains (how does the stuff get under my fingernails?!?!) and felt much better.

And, after I managed to get around to hemming my jeans (been trying to do that for over a month), fixing the curtains and hanging them in our breakfast nook and collating my freelance info for the feature article, I could agree that the day did indeed turn out ok in the end. Especially when I could lie in bed with TSC and cuddle, and the cats actually deigned to join us and keep my feet warm (meaning that last night must've been quite chilly - they don't sleep on the bed unless it'd really cold).

Here's hoping that today is ok too. And that's there's no fish or potatoes involved. Have a good Thursday, all. And stay away from slutty cookbooks.