The Real Jenty

I’m at home this morning because Connor has a doctor appointment a little later (it’s a checkup after his tonsillectomy) and I’m listening to him chatting to Beauty while she’s making the beds.

Connor: “Look here’s money”  (picking up the coins next to Lance’s bed)

Beauty:  “Put it in your money box”

Connor: “No, you can have it”

Beauty: “Noo, it’s your money, you can save it”

Connor: “Nooooo, I have money already, you don’t have any, you can have it”

Awww

Connor went for his tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy today, and as we were sitting around in the paediatric ward waiting for him to recover, we started chatting to the other parents that were also arbing around there… as you do when you’re in a hospital

One of the kids in his ward was about 11 or 12, I guess, and he had broken his arm over the weekend, and had arrived at the hospital for treatment this morning (they didn’t realise it was broken).  We heard his story while the sister was sorting his drip out, while he was waiting for his op.

The sister asked him how he managed to break him arm.  He said he had climbed a wall at his sister’s house, and fallen off it.

The sister then says “Well, I suppose you won’t be climbing walls anymore after this”, to which he replies “But what if my tennis ball goes over the wall?”

That’s when I started laughing, and the rest of the conversation had me wishing that Connor was still asleep, but thankfully he was too dopey to remember anything he heard.

Then the sister told her story.  Her nephew decided that he was a helicopter one day, and climbed onto the roof… turns out he couldn’t fly after all, and broke an arm and a leg.  Then she starts talking about kids that think they’re Superman…

… and that’s when it happened. The boy’s mom then told us about her oldest son who is now 30.  He got a Superman costume as a present.

And that’s right, he thought he was the hero of the day, and tried to fly off the roof, cape and all!  And guess what… he also broke his arm.

She’s used to this broken arm thing, no wonder she was so calm about the whole ordeal today!

Oh but then, the Superman story got even funnier! The sister had a better one… the same helicopter kid arrived at her house one day donned in a Superman costume, cape and all… her dog took one look at him and attacked him! She had to sit on the dog to save the boy, and the dog was only happy when the suit was removed!

So, there you go, those families are the reason most of the nursery schools in Johannesburg don’t let kids wear superhero costumes to school!

But then again, boys will be boys, and you can’t get a good man down (or something like that)

Overheard just now as I’m drinking my tea…

Bradley: Dad, did you go to Grade 12?

Lance: Yes, my boy

Connor:  And did you come back?

LOL!! Too cute!

On top of everything else that happened this weekend (1 portrait shoot, The Kid’s party, Barmitzvah, and double shoot this morning) I had to take Bradley to a school party this afternoon.

I never cease to be amazed by some of the mothers… it’s this constant banter about whose kids are doing what extra murals.  And OMW the extra swimming etc that the kids go to on weekends… and whatever else they do. Oh and  not to forget the extra soccer and the special meals the kids eat etc etc

The kids are in grade 0.  They’re 6 for pete sake! How many extra murals must they have?  Who really cares if they can swim perfect laps in the pool using the perfect stroke yet… at least they’re not freaking drownable anymore!

It’s exhausting to listen to them truly… my conclusion though… it was only the SAHM’s with nothing else to do other than cart kids around that were speaking like that… oh and the one mom who has a full-time au-pair for her kids!

This has to be be funniest quip I’ve heard in a long time…

“This place is like having sex with an elephant”

“Everything happens way up high…

… and then it takes 20 odd months before you see any results!”

We had a  meeting with Bradley’s teacher this evening at the school to get his end of term report, and I can happily report back that Bradley’s doing very well

He’s scored as an Over Achiever for his maths and spelling/reading skills, and then above average for the rest   I’m so very proud of him.  She said he’s one of the few kids that have grasped the concept of letters forming whole words quickly and he’s almost reading.  In fact, if you show him 3 or 4 letter words to read, he’s actually phonetically spelling them out and working out the pronunciation.

And surprisingly, he’s also apparently the only child in the class that has mastered the skills taught in computers.  Now I say surprising, because he’s almost the only child in our circle of friends that doesn’t play with playstations and computers… apart from the odd ceebeebee’s internet game that he plays.  You should see the picture he made in computer lessons by dragging and dropping simple shapes… it’s quite amazing.

One of the comments on the report, was that he’s a good “consultant”.  Mrs B explained.  If he’s finished his work earlier than the other kids, then she gets him to help the kids that are struggling.  So she tells the other kids to ask Bradley how to do it, and he helps them out.

She then said that one day, he was helping a friend with simple sums where they have to sum the contents of  2 piles of objects.  Now Bradley finds that type of thing very easy, and he doesn’t have to really count objects with his fingers anymore in order to do that.  She watched how Bradley was showing the other kid A, and then stopped him, because he was just giving A the answers, and explained that he has to help A learn how to sum.

She then told us that eventually Bradley came up to her and whispered in an amazed tone “he can’t even count”.  But she said that he had the most amazing amount of patience with A that day.

It’s actually quite something, A is 6 and she said that he can’t count things at all.  He apparently gets confused even with 4 items on the table.

Anyhoo, enough gushing about my clever son… I’d better get back to editing photos.

It’s Election day today in South Africa, so yay we have a day off work.

It’s 9:30am, and I’m still in my jarmies and having coffee, and the weather is miserable today!  Twitter is currently going nuts with everyone posting photos of the queues all over the country, and their inked thumbs when they’re done… it’s so very cool to watch it via social media as it happens .  The guys are using the #VoteZA and #SAElections hashtags, if you want to search for the pics (go to http://search.twitter.com and type #saelections ).

We’re going to go this afternoon, I think.  Hopefully the queues would have died down by then.

I’m hoping that the ANC won’t make the 2/3rd majority they’re looking for, but I don’t have that much faith in my countrymen.  If they get that magic number, they’ll be able to change the constitution.  Or as the clown of our political system says… the ANC is not looking for a 2/3rd’s majority this time, they’re looking for a 3 3rds!!  He’s a madman, but that’s a topic for another post… and he scares me… he’s too dangerous… it reminds me of the fanatical following that Hitler had actually. Just read this post that appeared on MyNews24 last week.

Yesterday, the office and the shops were buzzing with election talk.  Some people not wanting to say who they’re voting for, and others shouting out that people must vote for the “winning party” or anything other than them.  From the reactions yesterday, and the way people were responding, I think that most black people will vote ANC again… just because they’re the winning party… there seems to be no substance behind their decision… and that’s very sad and worrying.

In fact, the M&G have had a poll prediction website up with a whole load of questions, and dependant on your answers the program would tell you who you should vote for.  Very clever, and it had the policies of the major political parties  built into the answers.  According to that, I should vote for the DA or the ID.  Everyone in the office was doing the poll  yesterday, and eventually one of the ladies piped up that she think it’s rigged because no-one’s outcomes said they should vote for the ANC.

It wasn’t rigged, because I’d seen twitterers results being posted and results on Babynet too, and there were a few people whose results said they should vote for ANC.  PMSL! What does that really tell you?

Anyway, I need to get today going… I’m going to try catch up with my blog reading later… and I’m taking photos for Earthmosaic too… hope you all are too!!

Maybe it’s because I read a lot when I was younger, or maybe it’s because I take an interest in the way that people speak; but to some people at work I apparently speak complex English.

I was doing a demonstration this week at work and mentioned that a colleague was going to take “copious” notes during the session.

Well, you could have blown me over with a feather when that colleague and another one asked me what that word meant?!

Please!  It’s not a convoluted word is it?  I use it all the time!

Oooh, and on the same subject, I overheard the following comment today, while I was getting lunch in the restaurant at work…  “It’s raining cats and ducks!”

PMSL!! That made me laugh

Our study is upstairs, and I can kind of see the back of our one neighbours house over the wall.  Our garden is quite big, so we’re not living on top of our neighbours, but the trees aren’t quite high enough yet to block their kitchen windows and door from our view.

Last night, I was sitting at the PC blogging and twittering away when I hear shouting and their child shouting and crying (they have a little girl that must be about 3 years old).

Now I don’t often hear shouting from the house, but the child crying is not big news… kids cry!  That’s what they do… but what happened next was not normal by any account.

Then I hear the child screaming.  It was blood curdling.

So I open the curtains and look to see whether I can see anyone.  It was pitch dark in the house and garden.  Only a few upstairs lights were on.  And the screaming continues.

The “mother” must have noticed me watching, because the kitchen lights then came on, and the door opened.  She THEN LET THE CHILD INSIDE!!!

You could have blown me over with a feather!! What kind of “mother” leaves a 3 year old outside in the middle of the night and switches all the lights off???!?!?!?

That poor child.

Of course, I tweeted about it, and Graeme responded saying I should phone the police.  I suppose if we lived in another country that would be an option, but I seriously don’t believe they would do anything about it.

But what I promise I’m going to do… is keep a watching eye on their house.  If this happens again, I swear I’ll go outside and give her a mouthful or something.  There’s absolutely NO excuse for that in my mind.  It’s child abuse.  If your child was making you so mad, give her time out in the bathroom or something! You DON’T leave them alone in the dark… especially not outside the house!

I actually feel sick even thinking about it.

On Friday night at the Tweet-up, Laura and I were chatting to Louisa about meeting bloggers and how actually meeting people face-to-face makes such a difference in the way you read their blogs.

It’s always funny meeting people from your online world for the first time.  No matter how many photos they post of themselves, you always have a preconceived idea about what they look like and sound like.  I’m not scared of meeting online people anymore… like I was years ago.  All the BN meetings (a local baby forum) over the last 5 years have cured me of that for good!  But as Laura and I were both saying, for some reason, meeting bloggers feels slightly different.

Bloggers tend to put more of themselves into their blog posts than forum participants do.

You know when you meet a group of people for a braai or a lunch, the first half hour or so is spent catching up on latest developments in each other’s lives.  With bloggers that almost never happens… all the news is on their blogs.  There’s no need to rehash it, and in fact, re-hashing is such a schlepp for me now.  If you want to know what I’ve been doing, read my blog damnit!  Why do I have to tell you too?!

Anyhoo, back to my point… after meeting Louisa for the first time a few weeks ago and listening to the way she speaks and watching her facial expressions, I have become an avid follower of her blog.   I find it hillarious now, because as I’m reading I imagine her dry sense of humour, the lilt in her voice and her laugh as she’s writing her posts.

And on the subject of writing in your own space… I’ve been trying to get one of my colleagues to blog for months.  I know she reads Janet’s  and my blogs, but she never comments, yet she talks to us about what she’s read on them.  Well, I’m pleased to say that she’s started one finally!

Then today she floored me!  I asked her if she’d written a post yet and I helped her with hyperlinking.  She commented about how easy it seemed to be and then proceeded to tell me that she’d got told by someone that they didn’t think she should blog because she wasn’t technical enough!!

I hate that!  Blogging isn’t about technical stuff. It’s so easy to do.  You don’t have to be a wizz-kid to get it right… all you need is something to say!  It still makes me cross thinking about what she’d been told. And it makes me determined to help her in any way that I possibly can   LOL!  And anyway, she’s proven more than once in the last few months that she can be as technical (if not more) as the rest of the IT team!  But that’s besides the point… I’m sure she’ll love this world of blogging and find her spot to ramble on and vent and then maybe finally I’ll see some pics of her kids