The Bear in Me

The other night was very chilly in Joburg - chilly enough to require long-sleeve shirt and long pants.  It was a preview of things to come and reminded me why, or just one of the many reasons why, winter is not my friend.

I am astounded and highly disturbed by my physiological response to cold. I become a bear sensing winter coming on and everything in me propels me to pack on the fat to get through the coming food-scarce months. I have triple helpings and crave dessert;

cravings I mostly give into.  I eat more than my fair share of our hot fudge.  Straight from the jar into my mouth.  Before lunch. 

I’m not sure if bears do this also, but as if by some unspoken decree of mother nature, I, without plan or thought, one evening switch from drinking white wine to red. Just like that.   (not that that is a bad thing.)  

Day after chilly day I eat, getting rounder and plumper, in preparation for the inevitable day when nuts and berries are no longer available.  Well, shocking as this news may come to the part of my brain that thinks otherwise, I am not a bear living off the land and nuts and berries remain plentiful throughout the year in my little world.  But meanwhile I am left with plumpness and unforgiving clothes that protest against my new roundness by squeezing me, hard.

I refuse to embrace this animal part of me that makes no sense in today’s world - or my today's world.   Rather this winter I will beat mother bear back with a stick.   Or maybe I’ll invite her to have a glass of red wine with me and then to be on her way before I sit down to my normal size dinner.  

And the Good News Is; Countering the Prevailing Stereotypes - Installment 2

My post about the good news taxi story got more reads than almost any other post, so when friend, Suzanne Moore, relayed her positive taxi story in a comment to my blog, I thought to share it.   I think it is not just me who is hungry, ravenous for more of the good news.


"I love happy taxi encounter stories. Their drivers do an important, dangerous, and under appreciated job in our society.

Yesterday, as I was driving along main road, a taxi pulls up next to me and the driver hangs out of the window to let me know that one of my tires was a little flat. Then he blocked traffic for me so I was able to pull into the nearest petrol station.

A bit later in the day, I waved one in front of me in rush hour traffic on the high way. After all, they have many more passengers stuck in the sweltering heat, who have much longer distances than me to travel before they eventually get home to their families. In return, I got waves and smiles, along with the customary double flash of warning lights.

These small acts of kindness make my day. :-)"




Thanks, Suzanne Moore, for sharing!

My (second) New Year

My New Year began on 11/11/11.  I loved the symbolism of it.  "One" being the beginning - and on that day, we got 6 of that auspicious number (10 if you managed to be present when it turned 11:11am). Just look at the way that date looks. Clean, simple, yet something powerful and strong in there too.   Powerful in a stars coming into alignment way.  So,  I decided that 11/11/11 would be the first day of my New Year - My Year of (Re)Alignment.


I never have felt any affinity with what would be my traditional New Year's Day, January 1st. So not surprisingly when it came this year, I felt no surging ahead of my 11/11/11 New Year.   But today, the Year of the Water Dragon begins and it is speaking to me.

To get a better hold on it, I watched someone's video blog where he explained some of the significance of this year.  According to him, last year, the Year of the Rabbit, was a year to hole up, put things in place, get ready, but not be too out there.  This year, the Year of the  Dragon, is the culmination of the Chinese lunar 12 year cycle; so as he said, it is like graduation.  A year for BIG things to happen, what we've been building toward.

Some words this blogger used to describe what is ahead if we choose it:  powerful, emotions, passion, explode, big vision, creative, painful, love.  





The Year of the Water Dragon only comes around once every 60 years.  I did the math and this is the only Year of the Water Dragon I get.  I'm so ready, and I'm so not ready.   On Saturday, I asked a Buddhist monk to make me a good luck Chinese New Year sign with the words Courage and Faith on them.   Instead he made me one that says something like not 1 good thing, but 10,000 good things will happen.  Okay, not what I asked for but believe me, I'll take it.

At the temple, I also pulled a tiny Buddhist Chinese New Year Words of Wisdom scroll from the jar.   "Determination to Succeed Brings Good Fortune." True enough in that fortune cookie kind of way.   But the second half is so right, so mine.  "Courage to Fail Brings Hope of Success."  Happy New Year!

Hints From Chinese Heloise

Yesterday when we walked into the tiny Chinatown shop specializing in tea, we noticed wedges of lemon, big chunks of skin still on pineapple, and onion quarters, edges drying and curling up brown, scattered randomly on shelves. We wondered if they were perhaps an employee's leftover lunch, forgotten in the midst of helping a customer. Being the curious people we are, we asked.

Turns out it is an ingenious, non-toxic, low cost remedy to take away paint smell. And very effective it seemed to us as neither of us had any idea the adjoining room had been painted the day before.

Limes In Avos Out

Limes are seasonal - and a rare treat in this part of the world!!! Who knew??  Certainly not I when last year I did a big invite for people to come over for margaritas and guacamole.   And that is when I naively went to Dunkeld Fruit and Flower to buy the required dozens of limes and was told they weren't in season yet.  Lemons available all year round, but limes have only a month or so on the grocer's shelves.  (don't ask me how that is possible.)

Fortunately, although I had to pay a small fortune in beginning of season prices, limes came in right before our big margarita/guacamole fest.  When the price dropped, I bought bags full and juiced and froze and juiced and froze.  My frozen lime juice stock has just run out - and I see limes are back on the shelves just in the nick of time.  Which means, ridiculously, that avocados are out.

  The good news is that avos (as they're fondly referred to here) must have a wide growing area, because they are only scarce for about 4-6 weeks, and then slowly little ones start reappearing on the shelves till finally at the height of the season, you can get a package of 6 avos for R14 or $2.00.  I've eaten A LOT  of avocados since I moved here.

There are a couple of other seasonal items that have taken me by surprise.  Walnuts.  Grapes.  Israelie/Persian cucumbers.

The obvious downside of this in-season out-of-season cycle is the inconvenience - I mean really, limes might be seasonal, but margaritas are certainly meant to be a year-round staple.  However, the absolute beauty of this seasonality is that I rejoice when I see the lime, the walnuts, the grapes, and of course, the avos back on the shelves.   And in this world, I am embracing all the reasons I can to rejoice.

And the Good News Is; Examples to Counteract the Prevailing Stereotypes; Installment 2

(Before I say the good news, a little background if you are not from, or have never been to, South Africa.  The majority of people here in Johannesburg do not own cars and therefore do their daily commutes and travel by taxi.  Not the single passenger taxi, but the van type of taxi that picks up and deposits its passengers all along its route often blocking the cars behind which causes some inconvenience and irritation - which those of us who are fortunate enough to have cars should just get over.  But taxi drivers in this country also have a reputation for rude, reckless, dangerous, and discourteous driving and this reputation is not just invented.)

So my drive to deliver Alexander in the morning is a bit convoluted.    I wag through the backstreets of Craighall Park to avoid the Bompas back-up, do a little left jig onto the hyper trafficy Jan Smuts for one block, and then scoot over onto the backstreets of Dunkeld, taking me to hyper trafficy Oxford where I need to do a little left jag before turning into Alexander's school.  These little jigs and jags onto Jan Smuts and Oxford always require the kindness of strangers to let me in or else I would need to sit there and wait till rush hour is over to get Alexander to school.   Not often, but occasionally, it is a taxi driver who kindly waves me in front of him.  As a way of give-back thanks, I try as often as possible to extend the same courtesy to taxis, hoping in some small way, in my own little world, to grow this practice of mutual consideration.  

Revised. My favorites in this order. . .

A little while ago, I posted a status update with my top 3 favorite animals.   Giraffe, warthog and cow, in that order.  Then today while I driving down Bompas I noticed a Star headline posted on a street sign reminding me of one of my former favorites, making me feel a little fickle and disloyal for having forgotten it so easily.  (For those not familiar, newspapers plaster every available street post with their most sensational headlines to entice us to buy their newspaper.  I never succumb though, figuring the headline gives me all the news I need to know.)

Today's Star Headline:   "Don't Pooh-Pooh Dung Beetle Dance."  I, of course, was familiar with dung beetles before ever coming to South Africa from numerous National Geographic specials.  But I was not charmed with them until I saw one with my very own eyes at Pilansburg Game Reserve.  Wow, what single minded hard workers they are, rolling their personal perfectly round ball of dung at great speeds, sometimes facing downwards and backwards, pushing the ball with their hind legs.

So the Star got me; I bought the newspaper.  Here is what I learned from the article.  The US military is studying these much under-appreciated creatures to understand their navigational system.   Apparently, they use the sun, or on cloudy days, polarized light patterns (whatever that is), to keep their ball rolling in a straight line.  This is quite critical because they are rolling as fast as they can away from the dung pile in order to protect their treasure from being stolen.   God forbid, they end up going in a circle and land back where they started.  A few meters away from the pile, they bury the dung and yum, eat it, or sweet, lay an egg in it.

But listen to this!  In the same article, they talk about the ants in the Sahara Desert that not only use polarized light to navigate but "also appear to count their footsteps."   If I ever saw these ants with my own eyes, they would very likely need to go in my top 3 favorite animals, though I would be hard-pressed to decide which one of my currents to displace.    Better yet, I will keep my top 3 favorite animals, and also have a top 3 favorite insects, dung beetle at the top.