Multitaskular

When in Mexico, carry your shopping on your head...

Sorry about my scarcity over the past few weeks, but I have been on vacation in Boca de Tomatlan in Mexico. Man, we had an amazing time. It was just so awesome to get away from the cold Californian winter and head somewhere warm. Yes yes all you northerners, I know California is a tropical paradise compared to your icy hellholes, but I'm from Africa and we aren't designed to withstand any temperatures under 50 degrees. So Mexico was just what the doctor ordered.

So basically all we did for 2 weeks was catch the bus into town, meander through the local market, catch fishing boats up and down the coast and drink tequila. Did you notice how I just dropped the last activity neatly on the end of the sentence like it was an afterthought? Like it wasn't the main focus... hmm me thinks I used a bit of poetic license there!

You see my mom came along for the vacation too - not usually the recipe for party central. But since we had a baby things have changed. And having my mom around meant that Uwe and I could go out after 6pm (what a novel concept) and spend a day together... alone! So all in all it resulted in a great deal of irresponsible behavior on our part (give us a break, we'd been on 24/7 baby duty for 9 months)!

So here is what I learned about Mexico:

1. Snorkeling while under the influence of raicilla is truly amazing. As long as you just look. If the fish swim into you or you accidently touch one, the opening scene of Jaws comes to mind. I get an involuntary shudder just thinking about it!
2. You get free shots of tequila or raicilla for buying stuff - the more we shopped, the more we drank. I LOVE this retail marketing strategy, now if only Trader Joes would see the light!
3. Mexican people love kids, and I mean truly love them. Complete strangers played with Micah on the beach, lent him toys and he was hugged more times a day than even I thought possible. 
4. Crossing a knee deep river after a day of shopping can be treacherous (refer to point 2 above). However, if you follow the african tradition of carrying your shopping on your head it works brilliantly - no matter how many times you fall down, your nachos stay warm and toasty!
5. Local busses are an adrenaline-pumping, endorphin-rising blast! For less than 10c you get to feel 10 years old again. Take that Caltrans!
6. And last but not least... its incredibly beautiful. Clean unspoiled beaches, super friendly people, a smile around every corner!

So in summary we had an amazing time. I feel decades younger and I have a tan. What better way to feel after a holiday? 

Oh, and while I was away I decided to start up my own skin care line. How exciting is that? Whew, 2010 is going to be a wild ride...

    

     

“Women never understand why men love toys. Men understand that they wouldn’t need toys if women had an on/off switch.”

I saw this quote on a website today and I almost fell over laughing! Isn’t it great? I suspect one of the reasons my husband is so in favor of my blogging is that he’s hoping it will shut me up. He thinks if I’m writing everything in my blog I’ll stop rabbiting on to him about my pet peeves: bad service, why pediatricians are always late, why people must add ice to everything, why cyclists ignore road rules and my favorite rant of all… bad airlines (US Airways, yes I’m ranting about you again you sleezy ne’er-do-wells).

 Let’s face it, we love to rant. Women just need to get things off our chests or we feel we’ll burst. Sometimes I feel like I’m about to do a Hindenburg – hissing with flames and gas and noxious fumes and unbearable heat. The pressure builds up to a point that no amount of cursing, stomping, slamming or muttering can help.  I can’t help it, its in my DNA.

Men on the other hand play playstation. Which for the record I just don’t get. Do they pretend the villains are real people (us wives for example)? And if so, does it give them secret satisfaction when we are blown to bloody smithereens? Or do they feel so emasculated that they must escape to a fantasy world where they are king for a day? Or is it just an excuse to switch off their brains for a while and ignore us, their version of Greys Anatomy? I don’t know, but the fact that it has an on/off switch seems to be a huge draw card.

Then again, my husband shows no interest whatsoever in the washer, dishwasher or dryer and they all have on/off switches. So, really I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t get my husband, his playstation or why he doesn’t just rant like the rest of us. It would be a lot cheaper than buying a new game every 5 minutes.

Anyway, enough said. Oh, and for you readers that asked me for travel tips when flying with your baby, check out the new page on my blog. You will see that my hatred of US Airways and cabin attendants is heavily featured. At least my husband won’t be subjected to that rant… again, for which I’m sure he’s grateful. Right now he's not available. He's playing playstation. No surprises there.

I started the year by swallowing a frog

I had every intention of starting my blogging year with a great post about new years resolutions, life goals and other lofty ideals. Instead I saw in 2010 with my head over a toilet bowl. And not because I’d had too much to drink (although with my past history you’d be forgiven for thinking so). No, I had the stomach flu for 2 whole days. And we all know that there really aren’t too many things worse than the stomach flu. Except if you have to look after a teething baby while you have the stomach flu.  Which I did… while my husband went mountain biking with his friends. Hmm, enough said.

But, I got through it. Mainly because I relied on a mantra repeated by women all over the world for decades: “this can only make me thinner”, “this can only make me thinner”. And since I ate the equivalent of a small elephant in chocolate over Christmas, there was definitely a bright side.

But this morning as I was sitting down for my first breakfast in days, I split my pants. Even after barfing the equivalent of my own body weight, the sheer magnitude of my ass caused my pants to explode. Sad, sad, sad. Was this a bad omen for the rest of the year or, god forbid, the rest of the decade?

 So I did what we all do, I called “friend-911” on Facebook. I knew they would drag me out of the depths of despair. And true enough, I struck gold! My friend Kim explained it perfectly. She said “don’t worry, its not a bad omen. It's like starting your day by swallowing a frog - nothing worse can happen to you.”

So yay for me. The all the bad stuff for 2010 is finished, over, finito, acabado, klaar, vergeet. From now on it only gets better… I can’t wait!

I have hair like an Alsatian

I’ve always suspected it but now I have proof – baby books are a packed to the brim with pure unadulterated bullcrap! I should have seen the writing on the wall when they suggested that I put on a nice outfit and some makeup the week after Micah was born, “so that I would look good for my visitors, and to give my self esteem a boost”. I don’t know about you, but the last thing on my mind was my self-esteem three days post partum. Self-preservation maybe, and hygiene at an absolute push, but self-esteem… I think not. I left all semblance of self-esteem in the hospital when I had my knees around my ears and my nether-regions flashing to the world!

 Anyway, when Micah was a few months old, my hair started falling out in chunks. And I mean CHUNKS. I was like a yeti shedding its winter coat - it was everywhere. I was convinced that I would end up either looking like Kojak or wearing a cheap nylon hooker-wig. “Not to worry” said the baby books, “its only the extra pregnancy hair you’re shedding. In a few weeks your hair will be the same as it was pre-pregnancy.” I believed them since it seemed to slow down after a while. Well, now all that supposedly “extra” hair is growing back and it is about an inch long.  Picture this… I have my regular, normal looking longer hair. Then I have my extra-thick “regrowth” hair underneath. And its thick and wiry. The only way to describe it is like the undercoat of an Alsatian. Oh, and did I fail to mention the final insult, the nail in the coffin, the straw that broke the camel’s back? The regrowth is grey. Not only do I now have hair like an animal, which is bad enough, but its old animal hair. Suffice to say I’m freaking out here people!

So here is what I think the those perfect women who write the perfect pregnancy books should write in future:

1. You will get fat when you are pregnant. Not just your belly, but everything. In fact, you will never be thin again.
2. Episiotomies do leave scars
3. Most of your hair will fall out. But don’t worry it will grow back. And when it does grow back it will be thick, wiry and doglike. And it will be grey. 
4. You will never take a shower for longer than 5 minutes ever again
5. You may have time to shave your legs (sometimes) but you probably won’t do it. The last thing you want is for your husband to get the “wrong idea” when you slide into bed at 3am
6. You will never sleep again.

And to all of you who think this is way too negative, that’s the whole point. The only way to survive motherhood is to lower your expectations completely… to zero. That way, 4 weeks after giving birth, you can give yourself a pat on the back for taking a shower instead of beating yourself up for not looking like Kate Hudson.