That old couple

I have always felt kind of sorry for “those couples” that have been together since they were teenagers. I know how cruel that sounds but in all honesty this is what goes through my mind when people tell me they’ve been together since high school: “holy crap that is unnecessarily long, they probably love each other the way they love their pets. Sigh... there is no way that they still have sex”. But because I’m polite, I respond “wow that’s so wonderful”.

On Sunday the 21^st of October I celebrated 5 years of being with the love of my life. Now I'm one of “them”. Sitting on the other side of the relationship fence. The side where people love to ask me for relationship advice like I'm some kind of expert. The side that archaic people think it’s okay to ask ridiculous questions like are we going to get married? If we do, how many children? Would we live in Cape Town or go back to Johannesburg? Bla bla bla.

It’s actually really tough to dodge these questions politely. Sometimes I don’t quite manage. Sometimes I don’t even try.

As one of “them” I can sincerely say that when you get to 5 years, it doesn't seem long. Not even with the three years of JHB-CPT “see you one weekend a month” long distance.

I used to tell all my friends not to do this long distance thing, but now I'm glad that none of them listened to me. Long distance somehow brings you closer, makes words clearer and makes promises stick. These past 5 years seems like a few holidays, dinners, tears and laughter.

Even so, I know that the next person who hears “it’s been 5 years” come out of my mouth will be thinking “you poor thing, you guys have been together for so long that you definitely don’t have sex any more.”

To ‘you people’, I say fuck you.

Goodbyes are painful

Okay so its done. In a space of 2 years one little happy family by the name ‘Tripple D house’ has changed. It now stands that I am the last D that is in South Africa never mind Cape Town. It seems my little happy family have all grown up a smidge faster than me and have moved to places to better their careers.

Farewell's seem to be our speciality  with My Robyn’s farewell putting us in the most hated neighbours list and now we say goodbye to TP.

The latest person to Leave is my best friend TP. She signed the contract, moved out of her apartment, sent her stuff to jhb and packed all within a month.

Seems pretty quick but what this actually means is that I had a full month to prepare my tears and as I have mentioned before: I am a massive cryer.

Her farewell dinner was organised with 12 of her closest friends at a larney restaurant in Moullie Point.

I firstly noticed something strange when I was the first to arrive. 

Me.

Early.

There was definitely something wrong, I should have suspected something from that first punctual second.

As the rest of the farewell party trickled in, they bring news. I soon find out that TP is in hospital after running down lions head she hurt her ankle. At first I did what I’m sure you just did: “Pffff, its just a sprain, she just needed to walk it off”. Then I felt guilty because apparently they heard a pop (a runners term for a torn ligament) and had to be carried down by buff strangers.

Luckily, TP had for her waiting a pair of crutches. You see we had another friend whose ankles also decided not to pull their weight at a little festival called Tomorrow Land. Anthea had progressed from her shiny crutches to the ever attractive moon boot. At least that was one thing covered.

something occurred to me: I, the normally injured Dana put a spanner in the stars with my abnormal punctuality which obviously lead to the injury of ‘always-on-time-TP’ and her being a few hours late to her own farewell dinner.

From now on I swear to be the tardy injured one in friendship circles, if either of these traits change it seems the people I love get wounded. So next time I’m late for something just remember that I’m probably saving someone from a terrible or painful experience.

I’m doing it for them.

"Catchups"

It’s always interesting to bump into a friend that you haven’t seen in years. I don’t know how guys work when it comes to this but this is the general scene structure for girls: one of us recognises the oblivious other in a crowded area and makes a huge effort to get to her which means that somebody’s little dog’s tail will get stood on. There’s a great moment of recognition when they make eye contact and then.... the scream.

It’s definitely annoying to listen to but far too much fun when you are the one screaming.

I had no idea I was a ‘screaming –with-excitement’ type of girl ,I always thought I was a simple word shouter, you know like one of those people that scream out “yay”. But not the day I saw my best friend from standard 3. That day I was transported back to some year in the 90’s where I was screaming and dancing around hugging  like it was the start of term and we were reunited after the holidays. Perhaps that’s why girls scream with excitement. 

Hmm ...  anyway so we sat down and we had the ‘catch-up’ talk which goes like this: “So?”. And your friend responds “so?” then you both burst into what you’re doing, where you’ve travelled and how happy you are to see each other. 

And then nothing.

Awkward, silent nothing.

Once the catch up is done it’s almost as if all we had to talk about was the past, our present selves aren’t friends so all we have to talk about is when our past selves were. Unfortunately our past friendship was prepubescent so we both evidently didn’t remember much past ‘that time at school when’ and that other time ‘I came to your house to play and’.

Solution: high five and bugger off.

Almost pretty lucky

My life is generally pretty lucky, I’m the person who wins those random magazine competitions, get my phone returned to me even when I leave it on a shelf in pick ‘n pay and I’m often in the right place at the right time. But I think my lucky fish existence has had a bit of a spanner thrown in the works. Something in the universe is wrong. All of a sudden I’m getting parking tickets, I can’t find both socks, I burn popcorn and recently I sat on a GHD.

This last one struck my lucky ego quite hard. I love my GHD. and in a normal universe it loves me back.

This magnificent device tames even the wildest hair with its sheer brilliant mechanics and shiny exterior, this baby heats up to a whopping 220 degrees. It gives control to busy and stressed out women all around the world, every day. What is not to love?

But I sat on it. It obviously hates me and the universe is not a fan of mine. I had just come out of the shower and I didn’t see the bugger lying pleasantly on my bed before I sat my bare butt down on its scorching metal parts. I screamed bloody murder before checking to see the two gloating lines that formed across both butt cheeks. What a way to start the week.

The lines have progressively welted, scabbed and bruised. With every explanation as to why I prefer to remain standing, every dab of ointment and every snigger of my misfortune my ‘lucky ego’ welts scabs and bruises too.

Apparently according to my sibling sources I am being a touch too dramatic about my soon to be butt scars and my declining Luck ego.

So in light of her genuine annoyance concern she has made me “set the universe right” by finding other uses for my GHD. I don’t know how that would work but at the time it seemed rather brilliant.

This is what I got:

1)      It straightens or curls your hair

2)      It makes a great door stop

3)      It’s a nice shoe stretcher

4)      Iron’s out the wrinkles in your clothes

That’s it. That’s all I got to.

It didn’t make me feel better at all.

Screw the universe, maybe I was destined for 7 years of bad luck, looking out for ladders and black cats and never being given my lost stuff back again!

Sigh... then I found R200 in my jeans and I forgot about it.

The Grump Zombie

My day started like the way many fairy tales do: happily.

I woke up this morning in the most comfortable slant where my pillow was moulded just right and my blanket hugged my body in a cool non creepy way. My brain replayed scenes from my adventurous dream while the air floated happily around me summoning me to consciousness.

 In every possible way this was me waking up on the right side of the bed. It was one of those days where my hair and I were friends and I kept the first outfit I tried on.

And then I was bitten (metaphorically of course) by the grump zombie. My sister.

Grump Zombies didn’t decide to become monsters, it just happens when they are bitten by another zombie. She turned over night it seems. She had a crap night, crap dreams, woke up in a crap position with her socks sliding off her feet and BAM! She turned into the grump that would make other happy peoples days turn into one big bad mood.

The theory of the grump zombie is more of a cycle than an irritable take over, it’s basically the movement of grumpiness from person to person. Grumpiness is a package that gets passed around, the only way to get rid of your grump zombie that takes over your power to resist an eye roll is to pass it on and make some happy person around you your victim. This morning it was me.

I was the bitten this morning over untouched dirty dishes that were made the night before.I repeat, the night before.  I made the mistake of not backing down when I should have. The grump set in.

 Once I  turned,  I  later I bit my boyfriend’s head off for having the audacity to tell me to change into a slower lane. There was metaphorical guts everywhere and they weren’t mine!

Then once the most hideous of Grump Zombie’s  had settled within him, he was like a hybrid Grump Zombie. He didn’t have the warning of a dark cloud that I did above his head. In fact, he looked normal, acted normal (mostly) and then BAM his grump zombie was all knives and ropes.  His flat mate  Dixi didn’t stand a chance, especially after  not doing the laundry.

And so the cycle continues, but what do I care, that’s someone else’s problem. For now.

New adventure for the Triple D's

The triple D household has sadly been segmented because our landlord decided to crush our fun and sell his apartment. Selfish git. So it was with sadness and nostalgia that we all said goodbye to our home and the year of fake family before leaving to go on holiday. The only catch is that we would return the next year homeless.

And the fun begins: 6 people fill the walls of my boyfriends’ tiny 2 bedroom tamboerskloof pad. A new dynamic had arrived, as well as truck load of clothing, shoes, make-up and hair straighteners. Everywhere.  A blow up mattress would cover the floor of the lounge and clothes would cover the rest for an entire month. It was an epic mess but what followed could only be new adventures.

The first ‘sub-heading’ shall we say to our adventures was the new relationship with our rather unimpressed downstairs neighbour.

The problem only came about because of the forever deflating mattress. This meant that my twin sister Abby would have to hand pump it up every night before bed. It would slowly deflate during the night and every morning two bodies would appear to be sinking into the bottom of the floor like they were flies in doe. The creaky wooden floors squeak rather dramatically as she pumped it up, which would be followed by some banging from beneath us. It soon came to our attention that the banging was from the neighbour directly beneath us who thought there was some kind of raucous love making happening in the apartment. Strike one.

The second incident was that the godforsaken wooden floors made an even louder noise (if that was even possible) if there were high heels being clip-clopped around the house. There are four of us girls living in the house so this happened frequently. We received a lovely note which read: “your heels make a helluva noise. Please take them off when you get home. Its annoying”. Strike two.

Strike three would have been a bit more handlable (if that was a real word and if) had the circumstances not been so un-soberly. You see the first few nights of loud balcony commotion had been fine but the final straw had been that Saturday night. After the pre-party noise on the balcony we ventured out and had one of the craziest nights in Triple D history.  Upon returning home we had brought with us two stragglers and so if the walk up the road to the apartment hadn’t been rowdy enough, the three flights up the echoing stairwell definitely was. As we walked I attempted to quieten everyone down with the traditional “shh”. This could have worked as one half of the clan silenced themselves and the other half loudly “shh’d” back at me repeatedly. Need I remind you, it echoes.

 So strike three occurred when the downstairs neighbour opened her door with furious urgency and screamed “you guys aren’t the only ones living here! Shut the fuck up”. Once again this would have been okay had everyone not burst out laughing and mimicked her like she wasn’t really there.

The next day we left “we’re so sorry” letters under the 5 doors in the block.

Needless to say, we haven’t been invited over to any neighbours since.

Complainsh complainsh complainsh! (the porra way)

Airlines suck. All of them. I have written about Velvet sky being on the top of the list but as of late I am finding Kulula to be coming in close second. So feeling ballsy and a tad unfiltered in my manner I replied to yet another “we’re so sorry for the delay” with no compensation message. I wrote this message because after yet another ridiculously long, uninformative delay I have experienced, this flight was the ‘unfunnest’ due to the obviously gatvol and critically rude hostesses. I also wrote it under the pretence that no one would read it.

So for your enjoyment I present to you my own unreasonable attempt at being “thee brat”:

Hi Heidi
I understand there can be delays and there are technical issues but ultimately I was upset by the attendants on the plane who were equally as upset but needn't treat others so rudely. 
As far as compensation goes I have never been compensated by Kulula in my monthly flights between jhb and cpt in any of the delays for the past three years! This has included everything from a 9 hour delay due to a bomb scare to number of cancellations. Over the years what I should have gotten was a free ticket or even a coke, but so much disappointment has mounted to a whole holiday which I'm sure as per usual I will not get. 
 
So ultimately Heidi no, I don't care how funny your ads are, I do not accept your apology on behalf of Kulula, not that anyone will even bother reading or replying to this message.
Regards
Once again disappointed unfan: Dana Rodrigues

And so it seems being ‘thee brat’ in some circumstances can be really helpful and may just get you a free flight. Thanks Kulula, you’ll definitely be hearing from me as soon as this flight decides to delay itself.