Will someone please get the German authorities a sense of humour!!

Saw these headlines come through on CNN last night – “Parents try to sell baby on eBay”, and my immediate reaction was;

“Brilliant, What a FAB idea!”

Apparently the baby was 7 months old and labelled as ‘Nearly New’. I laughed so hard. The Germans however did NOT. They immediately sent the mother for psychiatric help and took the baby into care!!

I mean, Yes, I do believe it takes a special kind of person to actually go ahead and advertise their baby for sale on eBay, and for just one Euro do you mind, but please tell me of one parent in this world who at some time or another in their child’s life – even if it was just for a split second – didn’t think that they may actually even pay someone to take them away, and to gain one whole Euro in exchange would be a bargain actually!!

Personally I would have added in a line;
"Toys included".

Like I said it probably takes a slightly warped person to really carry it off, but the parents did try to explain that it was done as a joke and they really would never have gone ahead with it. But Oh No, the German authorities would have none of it.

Don’t tell me that people who do deal in any form of child trade – which I will be the first to condemn wholeheartedly let me tell you – would ever in a million years genuinely traffic children by advertising on eBay for goodness sake.

Now this is headlines on every news channel, and all I can say is I hope eBay is making some great marketing sales out of this. My first retort as 'Marketing Director' for them would be to put out a great ad amplifying the fact that you would be bloody amazed what you can buy on eBay these days!!

You're probably all jumping up and down at your computers by now going "Oh My God, what type of woman is this Mzungu Chick", but perhaps you might look at the fact that ALL parents in the entire world probably need a little psychiatric help from time to time when it's all going pear shaped at their house, and yes, more than likely they'll never dare say it OUT LOUD, because of course to all of us, our own children are the most perfect little darlings that ever walked this earth, and we'll all be the first to tell you such. But once in a while, the thought of jumping off the fridge freezer to get away from the noise, the guilt and the continuous heartache known as 'parenthood' doesn't seem like such a crazy idea.

At least this has taught me one small lesson in life;

For Goodness Sake, whatever you're thinking, don't let those thoughts escape out of your head!

Personally I think we should all get a grip, and SMILE ! :)

Need to gain a few pounds? ... Have a workshop!

For the past two days I have been in a workshop together with a bunch of other company staff for a spot of ‘strategic planning’.

Well, can I just say that in all truth, all we have really done for the past two days is strategically plan how to stuff our faces. Coming out after two days of meal to meal activity, I’m a little confused on what actually we really did achieve besides putting on 3 kilos each – which funnily enough, in my case, was completely unnecessary.

I hear of lots of skinny people, both blokes and women, complaining if you please, that they can’t put on weight. It’s easy people, attending a workshop can guarantee you will sit perfectly still for a minimum of 12 hours per day with the only exercise involved being lifting your hand to your mouth, and perhaps unwrapping your next sweetie!

The general programme looks something like this;

8.00 Tea/coffee with fruits, donuts, sticky buns, banana bread

10.00 Tea/coffee with biscuits, more sticky buns, and yet more banana bread

12.30 Lunch (minimum 3 courses, but at least 5 available). Start with soup and bread, followed by a variety of cold meats, cheeses and salads, main course of meat, fish and chicken plus rice, potatoes and the compulsory overcooked vegetables, followed by fruit salad, various colours of chocolate mousse, profiteroles and oodles of cream, cheese and biscuits and yet another cup of coffee for good measure. All this interspersed with chocolate éclairs and Murray mints on the tables in the meeting – just in case you’re feeling a little peckish by any small chance! – And all this before dinner of course (which is another extravagant affair consisting of at least 7 courses), and all replicated for 2 days in a row!!

(Oh, and of course there is a little bit of chatting in between the meals which is what apparently they call the point of being there!)

This is me after attending my 2 day workshop!
So NOT recommended - Best stay in the office and get some real work done.

They just don’t warn you about these things at Weight Watchers let me tell you. I saw nothing in the plan when I joined up about warning you of the dangers of attending a workshop. They go on about eating out and getting a take away, and what to do if you’re at a party, what foods to enjoy and which to avoid, but NOT a word about how to eat (OR not to more appropriately), at a workshop.

It is a little secret that I have been hiding from you all, but after all your comments of how, what and the way forward on loosing a few pounds after I put a picture in all of your heads of some horses knees buckling under the weight of lil’ ol’ me jumping on board, I felt soooo guilty I ended up joining up with Weight Watchers can you believe.

The local branch of the group is actually run by a very good friend of mine, so luckily I have been saved the total embarrassment of ‘going public’ with my fatness and have been able to catch up with the whole thing on the quiet.

I did actually suggest to her that I certainly did not have a weight problem but actually a terrible issue with my washing powder and it was shrinking all of my clothes.

Coincidentally she totally understood my plight as she too had been having the same problem with her washing too, and it of course had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that both of us seem to be able to empty the fridge of its contents down our necks at frequent intervals!

Well, here’s the thing. Week One – get weighed, realise that is of course a terrible start as her scales weigh over by about 10 kilos which is so not fair and not a positive way to go. I did try and protest – but found out in a hurry that that is a complete waste of words – as she’d heard it all before. So, once you’ve been weighed and totally humiliated by the numbers, you are then handed a bunch of books which tell you what you should be eating or more appropriately NOT eating and then sent on your way to starve for the rest of your life, until of course, you then attend a workshop ….. ARGH!

Can you believe I’d lost 4 bloody kilos, my horses were slightly relieved that things were finally looking up, and now I’ve gone and stuffed the whole thing!!

Oh well, best look forward. Tomorrow is another day. I shall start all over again on the ‘let’s starve’ regime known as ‘Weight Watchers’, and before you know it I shall be just a wee slip of a chick once more, and all my clothes will once again fit as they should and I can stop writing the rude letters to the washing powder manufacturers for shrinking everything!

Oooooh can’t wait. Roll on tomorrow.

Normal service has been resumed ...

Well, after my break in bed for a week missing out on the world around me, reading the papers and listening to the news over the last few days makes me feel all warm inside knowing that out here in the big wide world nothing has changed.

Last week all the internally displaced Kenyans were asked to return home (and very kindly given an armed escort - just in case they decided they did not wish to return to their burnt homes and ravaged farms).

The civil service was put onto the list of "Who will we steal money from in order to afford the compulsory armed escort to take the internally displaced home?", along of course with the army.

Our government very kindly donated this money to the IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons), and made sure only to take it from those with a salary below the $300 per month line, so that all those above that line - such as of course the MPs who desperately need their cash (in order to have those smashing homecoming parties of their own!), and so therefore all those with the salaries of the $10,000 minimum PLUS expenses per month - didn't have theirs touched.

Like to keep it fair and equal in the government you know. If you've got nothing in life, then best give some of that away to those with less than nothing and then the big boys can sleep better at night!


What I really DO NOT understand is how the hell these people can seriously think that all Kenyans are that unfazed by this whole divide. Surely over the month of January, it became very obvious to everyone - including the outside world - that Kenyans are very unhappy with their lot and this incredible divide we have of the 'haves' and the 'have nots' has to come to an end, and solutions have to be worked out to lessen this gap. But no, imagine after all that bloodshed our politicians have the audacity to sweep it under the carpet pretty quick smart, blame it on someone else, and then get on with "Business As Usual"......

Why are we taking this???

You know there's a brilliant publication that has come out in the last week that outlines all this unfairness. It is called "Wajibu" and is produced by a few Kenyans who are really fighting for the rights of ALL of us. (If you click on that link, one of the members of the 'task force' that produced the magazine tells you how to get hold of a copy.)

The magazine identifies itself as "A journal of social and ethical conduct", and it highlights all these issues that our country has been through over these last few months, what we are still going through, and has some great articles on how ordinary Kenyans see the way forward from here.

What it does show is that there is definitely "Optimism about the possibility of a new Kenya", but it really is about time that our current politicians stopped their 'business as usual' and got on with developing this sanguinity.

As the editorial in the front of this journal quotes;
"This Kenya can only happen if all of us take our responsibility as citizens seriously and if our politicians strive to be the kind of leaders who put the welfare of the nation AHEAD of lust for power and greed for material benefits."

So let's go for it people, 'normal service' is not OK with us any longer.
Let's go with Obama on this one (seeing as he really is a Kenyan in American clothing!), and tell our government what we really want .....

"Change we can believe in"!

There IS light at the end of the tunnel after all ...

Sorry for the lack of drivel from me in the last few days. It isn't often that I'm quiet, but I've been slightly busy.

I finally raised my head from the pillow Thursday without throwing up or spinning around, and with only a slight head knock, which was such a bonus after 10 days of 'explosive head syndrome'.

Decided I’d better venture into the office and peep round the door and see how big my ‘In-tray’ had grown. (I was thinking that if it perhaps looked like something resembling Kilimanjaro, I could get hold of the bomb squad to send in first to blow up the pile until it got down to a more manageable size.)

Anyway, it turned out my staff know me better than I thought, and although a fairly large amount of paper waited for my signature, it looked kind of bearable and so in I snuck. (Great word that - ‘snuck’ – total lie however, as chances of me sneaking in anywhere are incredibly slim, with my big mouth and clip clop high heeled boots that I love wearing!)

Anyway back to the point (if there is one of course) – the staffed foxed me good and proper, and as I tried to make the level of the pile head downwards they just kept topping it up!

I did pretty well though, and had almost reached the bottom before my head went into shock – although this time it was more likely to have been a stress related headache rather than the dreaded lurgy of mine resurfacing, but still, - the head did get to a stage where it couldn’t look at another bit of paper. So I bailed out, and went and met a friend for a coffee instead (as you do of course when you’re supposed to be at work… I think it’s known as ‘networking’ – it’s fabulous – I highly recommend it!)

So got through Thursday and was so excited that finally I got to speak to people again, and not just those who exist in my head in outerspace as, as much as you lot are rather fabulous of course, I can't seem to excercise the mouth as well, and as you may have gathered from the amount of garbage I can spit out on this thing, I am one who’s quite keen for a bit of a chat!

Friday I actually put on a skirt in celebration. Celebration for the fact of course that it was already Furihday (Can I just say I do like these 2 day working weeks), secondly, I finally got to ‘shoot the breeze’ , and, most importantly, the small detail that my head did not finally feel like it wanted to explode …..Yay!!

Now you may think that the donning of a skirt is no big deal, but that’s because you haven’t seen me in my general attire of black trousers or blue jeans. And what a sensation it caused let me tell you. In our office they wanted to declare a public holiday in honour of me wearing said skirt, because they all know that usually I only dust those legs of mine off once a year for such an occasion and that’s in honour of Christmas Day! (being of course that my kind of skirts are hardly 3 inches on the ‘micro’ side but more like 3 feet on the ‘make sure it’s all covered’ side – meaning the dusting off of the legs is of no consequence whatsoever, and I’m not quite sure what all the fuss is about, but nevertheless, ‘the chick in a skirt’, always causes a stir.)

It was though, like all my Christmases had come at once.

No more looking through the ‘Book of Death’ every hour telling me the same useless bit of information …”Go and see your doctor NOW”, for every symptom I had. No more playing Bingo online and feeling like I should be parking a Zimmer frame at the front door for special outings, and finally real conversations with real people that weren’t incredibly hairy and rushed about on four legs panting a lot !

(Sounds like I got stuck in an old people’s home reading that … but I meant my dogs, who although pretty damn smart let me tell you, are bit of a bore when it comes to conversations concerning the price of cheese in Outer Mongolia. It seems their interests are closer to home, and conversations are slightly limited and tend to deal with topics such as;

“Will you feed me?”,

“Can we go for a walk?”,

“Drive in the car perhaps?”, or

“I’m sure someone mentioned food.”)

So you see, I’m back, and full of nonsense yet again.

‘There is light at the end of the tunnel after all’ ……..

Woo Hoo .......

As you might gather, I am slightly bored of all this ..

Being sick in bed and all, one tends to become quite morbid it seems.

You go throught the inevitable “Oh my god, am I dying? Is this really it?” through “Should I be writing my will?” and onto “Lets look through the great book of death and see what illness I’ve really got that's going to kills me off, because this loooong named virus just doesn’t sound serious enough to do me in surely!!

So out comes the book of death (it’s known as the Medical Encyclopaedia to most), and I systematically go through the symptoms, as you do.

.. explosive head…

…drunk feeling without actually opening the gin bottle

.. explosive bottom (sorry – probably far too much information there)

And what do I have …..

Oooh – it’s a ‘Consult your doctor’ illness – God, how dull.

I know, I’ll go one better and Google “explosive head” on the internet …

- how about this for useful?

How To Tell If Your Head's About To Blow Up

Ah – well, it seems that if my skull was going to internally combust, it probably would have done so by now, so that’s not very helpful.

So, this is the most significant thing that I seem to be able to come up with entitled “explosive head”

Actually I ended up laughing so hard my head hurt more than it has all day – so probably not that useful but then I came across an awfully valuable site totally heaving with useless information and I thought I should share a couple of these titbits as they seem rather pertinent right now!

Did you know???? from www.livescience.com

Your Stomach Secretes Corrosive Acid

There's one dangerous liquid no airport security can confiscate from you: It's in your gut. Your stomach cells secrete hydrochloric acid, a corrosive compound used to treat metals in the industrial world. It can pickle steel, but mucous lining the stomach wall keeps this poisonous liquid safely in the digestive system, breaking down lunch.

(which goes far in explaining that dangerous smell I’ve got hanging out in here – aren’t you all glad you didn’t drop by to visit!)

Body Position Affects Your Memory

Can't remember your anniversary, hubby? Try getting down on one knee. Memories are highly embodied in our senses. A scent or sound may evoke a distant episode from one's childhood. The connections can be obvious (a bicycle bell makes you remember your old paper route) or inscrutable. A recent study helps decipher some of this embodiment. An article in the January 2007 issue of Cognition reports that episodes from your past are remembered faster and better while in a body position similar to the pose struck during the event.

(I can confirm that this is true when one has been lying in bed for days – it seems you can’t remember a bloody thing you’ve done – or not – ah, perhaps that’s the point – you see, What memory?)

..and with all that, I seem to have forgotten the point of all this ....

Politics the world over ......

This is politics the world over summed up perfectly by our man in The Standard today ....

I've got a real illness after all ...

Ok, so it turns out my hormones are in perfect working order and I haven’t got a ‘bloke’ illness at all but a genuine one with a really loooong name that I can’t possibly pronounce but it most definitely sounds like I should be in my bed!

So I am, and am incredibly bored I might add. Even the thrill of watching TV all day has not inspired me in the slightest and I haven’t even switched it on. I have an awful worry that I may be catching that “TV’s a load of bollix” disease and next thing you know, I’ll be stopping my satellite subscription …….

Whoops, sorry, it’s Ok Disney Channel, I promise not to cancel my satellite subscription and bankrupt you as my son wouldn’t allow it and would go on strike, and seeing as Disney Channel is what I use to bribe him to get anything done in this house – I simply couldn’t do that to myself!!

You see, I shouldn’t be worrying about politics – or not – and how much our mate Raila has spent of our hard earned cash, on his fabulous welding goggles that he’s been sporting since his trip round the world for an eye op. Instead I should be writing a blog on “How to effectively bribe your children” and “How to be an absolutely FAB parent”, and of course my favourite of the day “How to waste 24 hours on the internet WITHOUT taking a break” - except of course for the odd pee and frequent ‘raid the fridge’ stops!!

You see, that’s what happens when you end up with an unpronounceable virus that makes you feel like you’re drunk as a skunk without the expense of buying lots of gin.

It’s bloody marvellous actually and I highly recommend it….

The only other time I felt like this was when I dislocated my shoulder and the surgeon gave me a pethadine injection and then proceeded to climb on top of me, stick his knee in my shoulder and have the nurse yank my arm in the other direction!!

Luckily he had given me the pethadine first – not because of the pain – but the fact that I wasn’t compus mentos enough to really think about how ethical it was that the orthopaedic surgeon was actually sitting on me.

Really, I should have sued and then I’d be a rich chick by now and wouldn’t have to spend my sickly days surfing for jobs!

Oh woe is me I tell you, and with that, I shall love you and leave you, and hope that tomorrow I may wake up slightly more sane and perhaps start talking a little more sense.

But then again .......