The Ultimate Pink Ticket

Can you believe i have had the ultimate pink ticket all weekend, and what did i do with it?

.........Stayed in, ate popcorn, watched girlie movies and cried a lot of course!!

I was hoping to develop cabin fever that would make me want to rush out of the house and hit the town and paint it a great shade of maroon or something wicked .... but alas, cabin fever proves totally elusive and i find I've stayed in the entire weekend!

The reason for the pink ticket is that my son's been away all weekend at his father's wedding. I'm not sure why i feel so down about it all - I mean, I wanted that divorce too ... 'Didn't i?' It's just that selfish thing inside me that says; 'Well, I may not have wanted him, but that doesn't mean i want anyone else to have him either!' I mean he was my husband first, and is the father of my gorgeous son, and ............... Oh Bollocks, I sound like a child having a tantrum and as all good mothers know, we should never give in to a tantrum. (But as all great mothers know, we often do just to keep the peace!)

But still, I'm struggling a little here .... he could have fought for us a little don't you think? .....

Anyway, enough of that. I got the best bits out of the marriage - my son and the dogs - hey who needs the husband? I've got enough on my plate as it is without having added extras on board!


I've got the prize winning Rottweiler running around the house with a bucket on his head after having an operation on his eye. He's taking out everything in his wake as he can't seem to work out that his head is three times its normal size - which being a Rottweiler isn't small on a good day!

It's mayhem here running about the house after him diving to save vases, cups and all other breakables from the tables as he crashes by. And the walls in the whole house have paint chips coming off where he's crashed his way through doorways, round corners and down the corridor.

They fail to mention that down at the vets when you check them in. All they tell you is 'I'm sorry, we really need to perform this operation to improve his quality of life' - Well they forget about the owners quality of life when they have to pay off the bills the operation incurs!

What they should say is 'Please take out a large bank loan in order to pay our bill, and a 2nd mortgage wouldn't go amiss as you'll have to redecorate the house once the dog comes home with an enormous bucket on his head for 10 days and completely destroys your decor!

Anyway - he's worth it - as my son always says 'No-one can resist a puppy dog pout!'

....... But hell, who am i trying to convince here that I'm fine with this 'he's getting remarried' thing by prattling on about my dogs? ..... You or Me?

...... Personally i don't think either.

Excuse me whilst i go and open another box of tissues.

Life Sucks !

Just popped into the docs for a harmless prescription to help me through 'fruitcakedom', with the added bonus of helping my stressed out irritable bowel!

Well, i ask you. I had been in and out almost scott free when;

First of all I met a friend in the reception i hadn't seen in ages who asked me how i was. - Bad idea considering;

a) I was in the doctors surgery

b) Was awfully red eyed and weepy - and ALL women should know the drill - NEVER be nice to someone when she is very obviously on the brink of tears! - It is the sure way to crack the gate to full on waterworks and means your nice friendly doctor is in danger of flooding her office and will almost certainly have to change into a rubber frock!

c) My ex-husband's getting married today to the thin, pretty chick with a face of stone. (They'll be no laughter lines on her when she's old and grey, let me tell you!)

Then - can you believe - to top it all - the nurse caught me and said she needed to weigh me! ........ Weigh Me! ...... Is she kidding?!?! ............. Well apparently not.

I did suggest perhaps "Far Too Much" or "Extra Large" might do it if she just wrote that down as a 'sure guess' without the full blown embarrassment of climbing on the scales - but Oh No, she absolutely insisted!

She said if it would make me feel better i could take my shoes off - like that make a shed load of difference!! - I mean where were my 5kg high heels when i needed them!

And tell me this - how come i didn't get the only decent symptom on the 'Irritable Bowel' list, of 'loss of weight'. I want that symptom and not just the gut wrenching cramps, 'Michelin' man looks and serious wind that has my son shouting 'Mum, mum, the dog's done a windy again!' every 5 minutes.

(Hey, perhaps one day I'll let on it's really me and stop kicking the dog!)

.......................... Life, ... it's so not fair!!

Shocking gossip from the ladies that lunch.

We had half term last week, and after sending my son off most days with various friends and their mothers to be duly entertained whilst I worked.

By Friday I was feeling a little guilty after dumping my son all week and missing out on the motherly children bonding action so I decided to join them for lunch. I dutifully went into the office until lunchtime then bailed in order to join in with the ‘ladies that lunch’ and see what they got up to in an ordinary day at the ‘office’.

I must say, I did struggle to keep up with the conversation whilst they discussed how they’d invented the latest “Gosh you must give me the recipe, it’s fabulous” talk, and who’s little precious darling was the latest to join the pony club, but as the afternoon wore on and some of the ladies had to move on for hair appointments, gardening lessons and polo clinics, the conversation certainly woke me up.

Well, I can tell you, I had absolutely no idea what these SAHMs (Stay At Home Mums) got up to. There was the ‘who’s had a boob job and who’s booked in for one’ conversation which I found quite enlightening. Then it was ‘who’s done who’s latest hairdo’- which I must say I also struggled with a little as I’m that girl who has her hair cut once a year – and only when I’ve been to the annual shaggy dog show and realise I could qualify for the ‘shaggiest dog in show’!
But then ………. well it got riveting.

Turns out there are a group of mothers who spend most afternoons drinking wine and putting various narcotic substances up their noses! …. I was floored!

I mean no one's immune to the odd glass of wine at lunch but really ...

Right in amongst our midst is another world of ‘Desperate Housewives’ I’ve only ever read about and seen on TV. Apparently there’s one woman – who it seems is talk of the town – who’s husband (although they are still married – happily probably very questionably) has gone to court to get custody of his children. Four of them I understand – all below the age of 6! Talk is that he’s a ‘little worried’ – understatement of the year I should imagine – about the welfare of his kids as Mrs whoever she is has been a little unpredictable with regards looking after the children as she’s either pissed or stoned 90% of the time it seems and keeps wandering off with or without the kids in tow.

Well I’ve got to say – thank god for house staff in this part of the world because by the sounds of it, I think they are probably the only ones keeping any sense of stability together at all for those poor children.
I’m sure in any other part of the world, social services would have been round in a flash and whipped them all into care by now, but here we don’t have any kind of organisation that remotely resembles social services so it falls on those who know her to try and make her see some sense but I think perhaps she probably just offers them a drink and they all get stuck in for the rest of the afternoon and that’s that.
I did ask why she kept having all these children – as I understand one of them is still only a few months old – but evidently its because ‘she wants to prove she can at least do motherhood’ – but can she?????? ……….. I don’t bloody think so! And what kind of strange way is that of proving it wouldn’t you say, and funnily enough it turns out that one of the kids ‘isn’t quite right’!
……… Nooooooooo

Fellow Kenyans, Give up the tribal politics!

Its politics, politicians and policies round our parts at the moment. It seems you cannot have a conversation lasting more than about 5 minutes without touching on the subject, so I thought perhaps I should post my 5 cents worth – although as a mzungu chick in this part of the world my opinion may not be worth much, I still have the same rights as every other Kenyan – and that includes my right to vote – whichever way that may be.

I read an excellent article in the press in one of the dailies which was a comment on the issue of politics and tribalism.

First of all can I say, I’d like to totally agree with the fellow who said that all those who felt he should vote with his tribe should basically ‘Get Stuffed’! A Kikuyu guy wrote the comment stating that the fact that although a fellow Kyuk has been in power, this has not altered his life (or any other Kikuyu for that matter) any different from any other Kenyan. Likewise in our constituency we’ve had a Luo in power for the past however long and there are no Luo’s I know of around here that have benefited – or not as the case may be – any more than the next guy whichever tribe they may be from.

Majimboism (the latest buzz word in the politicking factions) – according to the proposed constitution – is the decentralization of government with more power to the people, and although this sounds great on paper, Kenyans extremely tribalist roots will suggest they get their own tribes in and all others out! .. and the case of sharing out the cash to run each constituency will be a whole debate of its own …

Fair? … – I doubt it!

A colleague in the office told me of a scam that was going on throughout the last general election that had a gang of goons going around the villages telling the voters they felt wouldn’t swing Kibaki’s way that if they put an X in the box for Kibaki, it would mean that you didn't want him for president.

- Nice way to garner some votes wouldn’t you say!

Voting on tribal lines has become so ensconced in the Kenyan culture, you’re a Kikuyu – then obviously you vote for the Kyuk, a Luo for the Jaluo and a Kamba for the Kao – the others just get conned into voting for whoever the goons who get to them first tell them to vote for.

Please fellow Kenyans, let’s wake up and smell the roses. Let's vote for those with the best policies, those that will make our great country move forward and upward as it deserves to do.

I certainly IS demoralized !

Just spotted on Sky News:

The union spokesman from the BBC says:
"The staff is demoralized and angry!"

Now tell me - wouldn't you also be demoralized and angry if it turned out your union spokesman couldn't speak English either!!

Anything the UK can do, the US can obviously do much better!!

Not sure if you’ve ever come across my blog before or read about the news story somewhere else, but I had written about the Royal Air Force who lost a bomb a couple of weeks ago. whilst out on exercise in Scotland somewhere. Not sure if it ever turned up, but ....

“Let’s not overreact and ‘Go All Football’, we’ll just carry on as if nothing had happened and hope that some nice chap might just come across whilst out walking his dog one day and give us a quick tinkle so that we can swing by and pick it up sometime!”

Well, the Americans – not to be outdone by the Brits in any form or other have gone one better – in fact, I wouldn’t even say one better – but in true American style – totally over the top in fact.

The US Air Force not only lost the odd bomb, but totally misplaced six nuclear warheads!!

……. The paper cites anonymous sources who say that five (later updated to six) Advanced Cruise Missiles were mistakenly loaded on a B-52 bomber that flew from a base in North Dakota to one in Louisiana. The missiles, set to be decommissioned, should have been removed from the plane. Instead, they were mounted on the bomber’s wings……

Thankfully it was only for a 3 hour period and the US Air Force hasten to assure us, that the public was never at risk - ‘because of safeguards that should of kept the warheads from detonating in the event of a crash or accidental launch.’!!

……. What on earth do you mean ‘SHOULD’?!? - Perhaps they should have notified the crew flying the plane that they were carrying them in the first place – perhaps that might have been a little more useful!!

International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

Kibera slums - where one in 3 Nairobians live.

Today is International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, and as much as i sometimes wonder what all those UN types round our parts get up to half the time, I do believe that somehow, some of the time, they do actually do something useful and for once I'd like to stand up with them.

I've stuck in a link at the side of my blog in which you can all join up and support the Global Call to Action Against Poverty - a worldwide alliance that is committed to forcing the world leaders to live up their promises they made at the dawn of the Millennium, to the world’s poor.

The leaders pledged a world where all children complete their elementary education; a world where people have access to safe drinking water, and families are protected from deadly diseases like malaria; a world where nations work together to cut greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. Above all, our leaders promised a world where people are no longer condemned to a life of extreme and egregious poverty.

This year, International Day for the Eradication of Poverty falls just after the midpoint in the race to reach those commitments -- ( the Millennium Development Goals, as they are known) -- by the target date of 2015. The Day provides an important opportunity to take stock of progress, and it seems that although the proportion of people globally living on less than a dollar a day has fallen, progress has been uneven, and some regions -- particularly sub-Saharan Africa -- are not on track to redeem even a single one of these grand promises.

- Well, that's us folks - the sub-Saharan ones that are stuffing up their statistics, and yet we are surrounded by do-gooders and UN types, so something somewhere must be going on although i'm not sure how its gone so horribly wrong. Although i can't profess to be able to save the world, i would like to think that somehow we can all do something somewhere to save my fellow citizens.

Ban Ki-Moon suggests Governments to become more accountable to their citizens in their efforts to achieve the Millennium Goals - nice try Mr Moon but you're obviously not an African politician as those around these parts are keen on inflating the banana and orange market, meanwhile making empty promises, that seem to fill nothing but their own pockets!

He then goes on to say: "Above all, it requires a true partnership for development -- one in which rich countries do their part in delivering resources and productive employment opportunities through market access, so as to enable the poor to take control of their lives. " - Now, here i could not agree more. We do not need more and more food aid, we need more and more opportunities to give the poor in order to enable them to take control of their own lives and not to have to live on handouts for ever.

Bravo Ban Ki-Moon - and i do hope our politicians also take a little more notice and stop with the empty promises.