End-Of-Year Tomfoolery

        It’s been a while, pielings, (Hmmm, that sounds like the same of an Asian bond girl from the 70’s, and also slightly delicious) and I must apologise for my laxness in updating, but it has been festive in more than one flavour here in Casa Birkenstock over the last month. Allow me to allow myself to be allowed to explain. A ha ha. *Wipes away tear of mirth* Oh, how I do amuse myself.

We had Sister Estelle’s Wedding on the 18^th of this very December, a gay occasion of much frivolity and mirth of the aforementioned style. I had been the beneficiary of a splendid little (read: HUGE.) instant Polaroid-typecamera for my birthday a month prior, so I was to prance around in my decidedly un-trossie flat sandals, getting in the way of all and sundry and especially the sundry that was the official photographer and the sundry that was the seventeen or eighteen unofficial paparazzi. 

This is not it. This is one of the ones I made out of Coke can, forever altering my fingerprints with cuts and scratches so deep I doubt they'll ever even out.

I am enjoying the ever-love out of this camera, as you well know, you yummy little pieling (“Nom nom, Meestah Bond.”), and hope to be able to post a cornucopia of wedding photos, both pie-tastic and official digital, soon. Estelle and Barend looked amazing, and the chapel was beautiful- although I will say this: the pastor who officiated the ceremony seems to be harbouring some kind of a unsung dream for the performing arts, ‘cause dude had props. And I don’t mean like “mad props”, I mean mad props, as in crazy insane illustrative devices. Balloons, one filled with water, another with air. A lighter. Little pieces of printer paper with Estelle and Barends’ names on them, and geometry. More paper, some words, slightly different geometry.

And the man had Stamina so hard it was almost like an anthropomorphised figure in the room with us. Of course, if she’s called Stamina, she’s probably an exotic dancer or a high-class escort of some sort, so she was probably already sitting somewhere on our side of the chapel. What I’m saying here is: endurance. A wedding ceremony as a marathon, most certainly not a sprint, no matter how loving or appropriate and succinct. Every time he came to what sounded like a lyrical and content-indicative logical conclusion to his lovely, lovely sermon, he would start anew with a slightly louder bark to wake up the poor souls who had deigned to fall asleep in the back pews. This continued for some time, whilst I contemplated how the hell I was going to deal with the wedgie situation that was busy developing once it actually came time to stand up. You’ll be glad to know I managed to avail myself of Monseigneur wedgie with grace and minimal intrusion to the proceedings, despite being clad in red and being seated at the very front of the chapel like a large red thing seated at the front of the chapel.

At the reception, the tables were covered in red glitter that I managed to find in crevices days after the event itself, and that I think is no understatement to say lodged itself into my very soul. I would very much like the opportunity to thank the bright spark whose particular idea the metric shit-tonnes of glitter was- if Jack McFarland had been there we might have had to go through a very dramatic scene to avoid a glitter-related injury. I believe I, and everyone I hold some affection for, managed to eat more than the gross product a McDonalds puts out in a year, as it is our wont to do. It was all in all most enjoyable, and I got myself a brother-in-law into the bargain. One who could, and most certainly would take great pleasure in, breaking heads any time I should need him to. You know me, and therefore have no doubt that at some point me and my camera will assuredly need him to.

 

            Not long after, in fact I’d wager about a week post, I had my own little adventure all over this lovely province of ours. A friend of mine, Mac, invited my along to a braai (that’s barbeque for my friends abroad) at his friend’s house. His friend lives in a place called Midrand, I live in a place called Valhalla. These two places are not far from each other, and are in fact separated by something called the N1 highway, which enjoys the honorific as the number one highway in South Africa. Easy to find, easy to follow, and will almost directly take you from my place, to the place where the braai was.

Getting there, not a problem. A lovely time was in fact had by all. Many a dirty joke was made, and since these were Mac’s work colleagues, they were I think slightly taken aback and then semi-impressed by how many times I managed to say “fuck” in a three hour time period. Someone- upon realising fairly early on that I was rather game and had probably thought of every double entendre before they had even had time to lace up their metaphorical shoes- bet me twenty bucks that I wouldn’t call the host of the braai a bitch. I did this with great relish and if I remember correctly managed to get a bastard in there as well. I only realised a great many hours later that I forgot my hard earned money on the table, which I shall curse myself for until 2012. I wasted a perfectly good utterance of a dirty word, which by all counts is unforgivable.

 

Mac is the blurry one on the right. Arshaad is the bitchy one on the left.

People got drunk- not my ride, luckily, very good man- but certainly one of the attendants. This man, good lord. Every so often he would pipe in a word after a long silence. It would often be “goats”, or “tits”. Whatever would come out of his mouth would be so insurmountably random, that it would reduce everyone in the vicinity to tears of laughter, and by the end of the night his friend Lucky would have to excuse himself each time he said anything, I believe for fear of breaking a rib. He shared with us a dream he had had, about ice-cream that turned into a mouth, which naturally he then pleasured. This ice-cream/mouth melted, signalling some kind of climax to his particularly odd wet dream. My god, how this man’s head did not explode all the fuck over his linen the next day I do not know; I have never seen another human being so drunk.

Anyway, goodbyes said, ice-cream (of a non-sexual or Freudian nature) consumed, bitches designated, we departed. Sober, driver and passenger both. We left Midrand at almost exactly 10 PM.

We got to Valhalla at 3:30 AM.

How, you ask, is this mother-human-fuckingly possible? Well, I answer you with all the earnesty of a young Sarah Brightman starring as Christine, we went the scenic route. We passed by Sandton, Randburg, Eldoraigne, we were on the Krugerdorp highway, the Zwartkop racing track waved at us as we passed it twice. We saw Montecasino, but only the first time we were in Sandton. We tried to stop for coffee the second time we were there, but by that time everything was closed. It was… yes, I believe I used the word adventure, I shall adjectivise it now. Adventurous it was. When we finally got home, I gave Mac a small piece of cheese, as I said we both deserved some, having come out the other end of the maze unscathed. Poor soul, he really is the sweetest guy, he was much more worried about it than I was at any point- I kept telling him statistically speaking it was rather unlikely that we would be doomed to wander the canals of Gauteng for actually ever, and much more plausible that we would find home eventually. We did, when we swung through Midrand the second time and found the N1; it was almost laughably easy, almost as if to taunt us. He wouldn’t believe me that I really wasn’t worried- well Mac, I really wasn’t worried. You bought me coffee, I couldn’t really ask for more out of a night.

Plus I got to call Arshaad a bitch. That kinda shit’s priceless.

After this excitement, we naturally had Christmas as I have yet to figure out how to circumvent the natural flow of time. Crackers were cracked, more food was consumed, and goodies unwrapped. We had a family 30 Seconds tournament, during which my favourite question or description or what-have-you came courtesy of Barend:

“Um, it’s a movie, where a guy has a sword, and gets hit by lightning.”

“What?!”

“Highlander.”

        Genius. Me and Cousin Carla won the grand trophy, which I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn came out of one of the earlier crackers. I was kind enough to let Carla take it home, but it was a combined victory.

After we ate, we went through the customary round of complaints about being overfed, each of us taking turns to groan and/or roll ourselves around in mock agony. Perhaps an hour later, we managed somehow to find space in our individual universes for dessert. This, as it turns out, was cheesecake and ice-cream.I shan't deny that only mere hours after that, once the guests had departed and we had started up the ol' DVD player for a movie, did we go back for midnight snacks and seconds and thirds.

My dad is an odd duck. He’s got the biggest sweet tooth in the world, which is probably the largest contributing factor as to why he has so few left. The sweeter it is, the better, and then you can probably still heap a few teaspoons of sugar on there. A little more. What, are you afraid you’re going to run out? Cut me a real piece! Sorry, I tend to segue into Friends quotes these days as an automatic response to any kind of stimuli. What was I saying? Oh yes, my dad. Sweet anything, but something like cheesecake is unholy. It’s got the word “cheese” right in the name! Cheese is not something that goes into a dessert! But, you might argue, it’s still sweet. In fact, depending on the particular species of cheesecake you’ve managed to track and kill, it might actually be overly sweet. Yet no. Cheese.

But my aunt, this very father’s sister, had brought along a homemade fridge cheesecake (sublime, I might add), and as this was the option we had for dessert, he seemed game. Actually, to be honest, I think he might have misunderstood it to be simply a “tart” of some description until I actually made it a point to emphasise the “cheese”, at which point he- having been enjoying it thou’rly- lifted his head.

“But it’s not like, a real cheesecake, right? That’s just something you call it? It’s just a tart?”

“No, it’s an actual cheesecake.”

“But there’s no cheese in it?”

“Cream cheese, yes.”

Cue the sour face. He contemplates for a moment, and I could actually see him decide that he was choosing to call it a “tart” in his mind and to pretend that I had never said the word “cheese”. He cleaned his plate.

Happy New Year’s Eve to everyone, I suspect I shall be entirely boring tonight and do something as exciting as watching The Goonies. Well at least we know we have the removal of my wisdom teeth to look forward to early next year, which I’m sure at the very least Brenda will treasure greatly. I know this because I sent her a picture about a week ago of my root canal smile and she laughed so hard I think her bowels prolapsed.

Till next year, I wish everyone much pie of excellent to awesome quality, with dollops and dollops of sweetened whipped cream. That’s how much I love ya.

Shoes Are The Fashionable Foot Implements Of The Devil

   I am not a shoe kind of a girl. I can appreciate a good looking sandal, and I can acknowledge the difference between the superb simplicity of a nice heel, and the god-awful fugliness of whatever in poo-perfect hell this is pretending to be.

   Thusly, I choose my footware in a manner I might describe as sparingly. I have one pair of shoes that I wear really, and they are this:

   Yup. Those are exactly as stylish and cutting edge as they look. They are Crocs and cost more money than I am personally worth, and as such were given to me about four years ago as a gift. Wearing these is like walking on a cloud of inappropriate sexual advances from the Ocean's 11 cast member of your choice.They don't require me to zip, lace, buckle or even velcro anything up, down or together, I don't have to wriggle, mangle or force my feet in any manner to occupy them, and I can slip them on or off at a moment's notice. They are black, which would have sat well with Mr. Ford, and so I can insist that they go with everything. They bear no distinguishing features other than those little decorative holes in the front, and that satiates my need to not traipse around wearing frou-frou bullshit all over my feet. I am not a fan of the redundant bow, zip, stud, buckle, or ornamental harness in any variety, and I abhor it in a shoe.

   Now here's where my puritanical pragmatism (and some might say almost heroic levels of frou-frou-related cynicism) becomes a problem. I have no proper fancy shoes to wear to my sister's wedding, which is happening this very Sunday. I have already done the Hunt For The Mythical Plus Sized Red Bridesmaid Dress That Is Not A MuuMuu last week, and shall some other time extemporise on the mysteries of adding a separate (smaller and exponentially uglier) section for the big ladies in an otherwise perfectly adept clothing store, instead of simply making the normal clothes all the way up to sizes that fit things that are not Keira Knightley. Now I had to go out into the big world with my agoraphobic self looking for plain court shoes in either black or red to fit a size 9 foot. I was even willing to squeeze my piggies into an 8 if it was a generous 8 and I could prophesy a night of sitting down a lot and ordering my date to fetch more drinks and/or cake.
   This was not apparently a reasonable request.
   Me and my mother gamely held our heads and bosoms high, blocking radio and cellphone signal for miles around, and marched into Centurion mall with our mission statement front and centre in our minds. We figured since we required neither bells, whistles nor multi-coloured jesters with our footwear this day, we would probably find our quarry in record time, maybe even in a place like Jet or Mr. Price where we could spend the money we had saved on other, more interesting things.
   The very first place we tried was Jet, and we found just such a shoe, but alas, nothing above a size 5. Edgars initially scared the living begeezus out of us by asking house prices for some basic pumps, but even upon revisiting them were we disappointed. The shoes that met the (ever widening) criteria were always either too small, or if they came up to even an 8 (never found a single 9, and we visited nigh on every single shop in Centurion that sells anything resembling a shoe) it would the 8 of a world gone by; an 8 of yesteryear, where toes were not so well regarded as today and thought of as a silly luxury only insisted upon by the frivolous.
   Shop after shop I would ask: "Good sir or madam, for I know not which by your ambiguous pallor, I seek a simple and plain as milk court shoe in a field sable or gules, with nought of bow nor zip nor strap superfluous, in size 8 or 9."
   Agog, they would answer me thus: "8?! The fuck is wrong with you, 8? Get the fuck out of here, there are civilised people trying to shop here! Fucking EIGHT. Pfsh." Those that had even heard of such mythical numbers as high as 9 stared in wonder down at my feet, no doubt immediately wanting to know if I had managed to find shoes in a size 9 elsewhere before, or had been forced to live my life a  barefooted gypsy- and if I had managed to find success being shod previously, for fuck sake's where?
   My mother and I began to wander around aimlessly through throngs of holiday shoppers, growing more and more delirious by the ankle-boot. I would swerve dangerously through innocent ladies and grab at any shoe with a shiny surface, getting glitter all over my hands, face and sternum. My lunges were desperate and artless as my hand would shoot out and violently retrieve a display shoe- my mother would shake her head silently at my anguished, pleading expression and gently put the shoe back, explaining that it was a ballerina flat in dark silver sequins, so fucking no.
   I sat down in Meltz, having recklessly kicked boxes out of the way to get to a seat, and shoved a pair of black semi-strappy high heeled dress sandals onto my weary footses. These were so far off my original game plan it was ridiculous, but by god the word "shoe" had started to loose all meaning and so IT NO LONGER MATTERED. With a quiver of something akin to dangerous hope in my eyes I raised my eyes to the mother towering over me.
   "Don't get too excited or anything but we may have a winner."
   She started to laugh. I stood up upon which my my pinky toe was immediately severed and flew several meters across the store and huddled for safety in the furthest corner of the room, no doubt the most comfortable it had been all day.

   This is a blatant lie, but illustrates, I think, the effect of the shoes perfectly in both semantic and picturesque terms. Fucking ow.

   When the full force and weight of my womanhood hit these bad boys it was clear that they simply had not been built to withstand anything past a Selma Hayek say, or perhaps an America Ferrera. I am more what you might call The South Americas, or American Airlines, but a Ferrera I am not, so off they flew and out we swandove.
   The highlight of the whole adventure came by the time we were desperate enough to try Milady's on the way out of the mall, making our way back to the general direction of the car. We looked at the shoe rack wasting no time, being rather expert and well-oiled at this by now, but highly fatigued and explosively wired the way only frat boys get after staying up for a week drinking espressos and energy drinks on a dare. We scan the rack and spy a perfect pair: red, very minimal heels, sandal-ish but really more or less ok. This is what we call perfect, you see. We could have sung. I think we might have sung a little. We elatedly- perhaps even a little overzealously- accost a saleslady and ask for a pair in a size 8, to which she encouragingly does not slap us in the face with a fawn-skin glove with utter disgust but disappears into the back to presumably retrieve said 8s.
   "I'm sorry, it seems we only have them in a size 5." WHAT? WHYYYYYYYY?????!!! LADY, we have been walking around for four and a half hours of my short life looking at shoes and shoes and shoes. They all look a-motherfucking-like to me to start with, but by now I couldn't pick the pair that assaulted me in Meltz out of a line-up. These were perfect, sort of, and came out of no where as if by providence, yet now you flout destiny and all poetic narrative by FUCKING TELLING ME YOU HAVE ONLY UP TO A SIZE 5?!
   My mother is a trooper, and instead of having a nervous breakdown like me, she starts scouring their rack for something else, determined to find that elusive shoe. We have begun lowering standards here so fast it's like the floodgates, but she just knows it in her bones that she's going to find that shoe. She grabs at a pair like a frenzied beast and holds them up-

   And says: "Wat van hierdie paar? Hulle het nou wel 'n trossie..."
   Which, for those of you fine people who don't speak Afrikaans, very, very loosely translates to "What about this pair? True, they do have a little {grape} cluster..."
   I'm so sorry, it's just not as ball-crackingly funny in English as it is in Afrikaans. Nothing I can do about that, the word for a bunch or cluster of grapes in Afrikaans just sounds inherently dirty, a fact I never realised until now. It's just that at that precise moment, standing there, exhausted and having lost all faith in survival beyond the carpark, ready to cry conspiracy and really just to cry, this was one of the funniest things any human being has said, ever. We both started to laugh so hard we couldn't breath. Tears were streaming down our faces, I was hanging off of the sales racks, a little bit of pee literally came out. Try as we might, we could not stop laughing. People were starting to look at us and see us for the miscreant vagrants we were, and we just could not be arsed to care.

   We came home having found no shoes, and I decided fuck that, this is not Lady Di's fucking wedding, I'm going in my gladiator sandals and that's that. They are dressy simply because they are not my aforementioned crocs, and I think at this point Estelle will be thankful enough that I'm not pitching in my PJ's with cold cream all over my face to write me a note attached to a muffin basket. I shall be snapping pics with my new instant camera (which my awesome dad got me for my birthday) at the wedding, so I shall post pics. Here are some that have happened already:

Estelle, taken on my pending-brother-in-law Barend's birthday a little while back.

Dad-Chill-A-Lot.

I'm boogeying here, in case you think me simply mad. I'm that too, but not for this particular moment. 

Cousin Carla and attaché Peter. Carla has read one of my blog posts- the one entitled "Only The Very Best Penis For Me" and was greatly tickled. Now she brings it up as often and as loudly as she can. Bless.



   So you see, unlike all you posers with your instamatic apps to make your pictures look like they were taken twenty years ago, I have a whole camera that does that for me. And a few apps on my phone. Damnit. I always give the game away, curse my ever vigilant honest streak.

   I had a few visitations the last while, ingoing and out. Dirk came to visit me, and I ventured out to visit Brenda and bebe Sam. Both were excellent. Dirk sat on my bed and did the little Brad Pitt dance from Burn After Reading, which is a mental image I shall return to rather often with great pleasure and glee, and I assured him that in my mind there is a Friends reference or quote for absolutely every life experience ever. Dirk, in case you were wondering, the shoe adventure has two.

   "Ugely shoes, ugely shoes, ugely shoes..." Then of course there's a whole episode where Monica suffers under the oppressive reign of the gorgeous bank-breaking boots she bought and had to pretend were worth it. LAWYERED.

   Baby Sam has gotten so big- he's over 8 kilograms now, and so freakin' beautiful. That app I was deriding and loftily having my high horse pee all the fuck over a few paragraphs ago? Yeah, I abused it a little.

   He was brilliant, and fascinated by my thin, stringy-ass hair. If I let it brush over his face he spasmed in ecstatic delight and demanded more. Also: kid knows what cleavage is for. He's an experienced little milk-sucker by now, and he focuses like a laser beam when the headlights are brought out.
   Nothing cuter than a blonde in a onesie.

   Before I love and leave you, I must ask- have you guys given any thought to what your effort would be to give me a middle name? I'm thinking about the best ways to publicise this and start the auction, cause I'm actually starting to look forward to it. If I were you, I'd get the creative juices flowing early and start putting away all your spare change now, cause Cousin Carla has already said she's intending to invoke a hyphen and some serious consonant abuse if she has her way.