My Soul is Scottish

Being a gypsy is embedded in your DNA or it isn’t. You either have roots or wings; it’s rare to have both. I’ve always preferred wings, even if I didn’t always use them. Roots are terrifying.

In an attempt to grow roots, I bought a house. When the sun was up and I was ankle deep in mud playing in the garden last weekend, it was pure bliss. Monday was a completely different can of worms.

The water heater died and the floors on the ground floor have been gutted down to the concrete. The frustration is it was literally scheduled for middle of next month to be replaced. It was meant to be this month but I had unexpected visitors so figured pushing it back 3 weeks wouldn’t make a difference. Yeah, right.

While dealing with that, I had my water tested only to find it’s not fit to drink. Enter stage left: black mold, which was deliberately hidden by the sellers.

The silver lining is if the water hadn’t flooded my house, the mold would still be neatly hidden and growing out of sight. The ramifications don’t bare thinking about. So all the new floors are gone; half the kitchen is gutted down to the studs to remove the mold; I have a shiny new water heater; 19 industrial fans that sound like an airport runway at rush hour which will be blowing for 4 days total; every square inch has a layer of dust over it; my furniture is strewn around and everything is out of place; using the kitchen is out of the question unless you like dusty food; my furnace and AC  were ripped out and replaced because they’re old and about to go so before they destroy what’s left of my house, they were replaced; I haven’t slept since Monday; it’s safer to drink wine/scotch than the toxic shit in my taps; and I want to find the sellers and rip their spines out and feed it to the neighbour’s dog.

WHO DOES THAT?! How do you KNOW there is black mold and instead of dealing with it, just cover it with laminate, knock a board over it and paint it white?! Karma will level their playing field at some point but right now I’ve imagined every conceivable way to dismember their rotting bodies…. Maybe I really did live in the Dark Ages with a side gig as a prison warden/executioner.

Upgrading the floors was on the list to do in about 2 years; that’s now been ramped up to immediately, so maybe that’s a blessing. My budget doesn’t think so right now. I have to believe that this too shall pass but at this sleep-deprived, caffeine-fueled moment, I wish I’d never changed my name. If I hadn’t, I’d have my visa and be living in the only place I want to be.

Instead I chose roots and it feels like I’ll never have wings again. Regret…. this is definitely topping the list of regrets right now. I’ll get my wings back and it’s safe to assume that roots will never cross my horizon again.

A while back, I was chatting to a friend about her love life – let’s call her Friend A. I don’t remember the exact details of it all, but I remember telling her to stop writing in the guy’s backstory. It was similar to a conversation a group of us had over a year ago, her, myself and a guy friend. We were talking about a mutual friend (Friend B) who wasn’t having great luck in love. The consensus was that she was giving these guys a story that made them seem perfect for her. It was Friend A who made this observation.

The same thing I was now telling her to stop doing. So what have I gone and done? The SAME DAMN THING. The same thing I did with the last guy I was involved with. He told me about himself and when telling my friends about him, there was an extra layer to his story. A layer that made him seem like a great guy. Now I’m not saying he wasn’t a great guy before the layer; he was just a better guy after it. More heroic; more perfect for me.

The layer blinded me to what I should have been seeing. The half-hearted hugs, the canceled plans when it was something I really wanted to do, but he was less interested. The quick visits that were obviously booty calls.

After he made a flippant comment on the wrong day, it was like my 20/20 vision was restored and it became so obvious. I ended it and we never spoke again. That was 2 years ago.

And I’ve gone and done it again. Attached my heart strings to the wrong balloon for all the wrong reasons. Why do we keep doing that? Taking a perfectly regular guy and mentally adding on all the filters and layers that make him a hero, when he never tried to be that? He never asked to be the hero and that should have been the first clue that his heart strings weren’t attached to the same balloon.

Maybe this is the lesson I’ve refused to learn and it keeps coming back with a different face, handing out the same disappointment and sorrow.

 

The last day of the year is scorecard time. Time to tally up the wins and losses of the year gone by. 2016 has been a strange vintage.

It will be remembered for a lot of reasons; all the legends who died; Brexit; Trump; the Chicago Cubbies breaking their 108 year curse to finally win the World Series. From there the scorecard moves away from the masses into the personal. The loved ones who died; the dreams that didn’t survive and the goals that were never reached. It’s always been a melancholy day for me.

That changed last year, around the time I started this blog. All stitched up after surgery, I took score of all the things that got done that were never on the list in the first place. I much prefer that tradition to the one that ends with me sobbing into a wine glass because I’m still a failure at everything I wanted to achieve.

So that’s the tradition I’m going with.

2016 was a mixed bag. The dream of going home to Scotland was dented but not crushed. So I can’t go back right now and I need to wait for some bureaucrat somewhere to do their job and update my details, but the door isn’t closed forever. It’ll just take longer and I’m ok with that.

An old school friend died on Thanksgiving after a long brutal battle with cancer. I’m thankful for his life, his courage and his spirit. It’s because of him that I took the chance to try and go home again. He taught me that life doesn’t wait for you to do all the things you want to do. So while you can, DO IT. He packed a lot into his 40 years and he’ll be remembered for showing us how to live. I’m thankful for that and that he’s finally not suffering anymore. There will be a toast to him at midnight with a great scotch because he did love a good dram!

I spent my birthday someplace new, same as last year. It’s now going to be an annual thing. Birthdays will be celebrated somewhere I’ve never been so I start each new year doing something new. Start as you mean to continue.

I finally manned up and submitted my photos to a stock agency. It wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. Something I’d been meaning to do for years is finally done.

I wrote more, I cooked more. I enjoyed life more.

For the first time in my life, I have a home. An actual home where I can just be me without asking permission. I own a home which is something I never meant to do and I’m glad I did. It was certainly not on the 2016 menu this time last year! An unexpected detour onto the road less traveled and I’m grateful. To the people who helped me achieve this, thank you!

I finally have all my treasures with me. From childhood comforts dug out of boxes I’d forgotten about, to new treasures that I found along the way. My piano is finally with me and I need to learn to play again. I cleared out the excess from my life and now only have things that mean something to me. I can look at each thing and love it.

Paintings I did years ago are all up on the walls. I’m surrounded by things I’ve created and they are reminders to let creativity come out and play. There needs to be space for beauty. Life can’t always be about duty & function.

I saw my bestie this year and we had a great time chatting, laughing and binge-watching Outlander in comfy chairs. She taught me how to bottle wine.

I met new friends; driving across Illinois to meet a colleague from out of state and having lunch with her family. What a brilliant bunch of people! If you can put faces to the people you speak to across the miles, do it. I’ve met some lifelong friends that way. A few years back I randomly took a trip to Arizona to meet a client I’d been speaking to for a year and we’re the best of friends now. He’s no longer a client; instead a friend I love to death and a huge part of my life. I can’t remember what life was like before his crazy arse arrived.

I paid off my car and it’s ALL MINE!

I don’t have the love life I want, or the body I want or the dream job that I want, but I have so much more. Those things will come and if the last 2 years have been anything to go by, those things will come by unexpectedly, through no planning of mine. They will be spontaneous detours along the way and I’ll love them all the more for it.

So drink a toast to everything you gained this year, planned or not, and leave the sadness where it belongs; in the times long past, in the days of Auld Lang Syne.

 

The big move happened last weekend. In snow and ice, 3 men and a truck moved all my junk and lugged a piano into my new home. It’s been an emotional roller coaster for the past few weeks. Nothing has been normal and it’s been difficult to stay balanced.

Thankfully it’s all done and I’m mostly unpacked. Other than a dozen boxes of books piled in the living room, everything else has found a new spot to live. It turns out I’m a book hoarder, even taking into account the boxes of books I took to Goodwill when I was going through my spring-cleaning phase a few weeks back. Well, it’s not hoarding if it’s books.

Once the holidays festivities have passed and the shoppers have all calmed down, I’ll head out and get some more bookshelves to complete the unpacking process.

The Christmas tree is up, the kitchen is cozy, my plants all look like they’ve been draped over the balcony for years, the first batch of cookies have come out of the oven and I’ve started prepping food for Sunday’s lunch. It’s still snowy outside so looks like a white Christmas is on the menu this year.

I’ll be hosting Christmas lunch for the first time since I’ve been in the US so really looking forward to it! FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD!!

Monday we’ll probably all need a new wardrobe when our pants don’t zip up but oh well, same procedure as last year! It’s what we do best 🙂

Wishing you and your families happy-whichever-holiday-you-celebrate and don’t forget to make time for family. It’s all that counts at the end of it. Once life settles down a bit, we’ll catch up and tally the wins for 2016. It’s safe to say this year didn’t go one bit the way I thought it would. It turned out better!

Stay safe if you’re traveling

After I left South Africa, I moved to England. Well…. despite the fact that both countries have English as an official language, I spent the first few months not having a clue what they were talking about half the time.

TEA

Tea is tea. Tea is an occasion & tea is also food. Let that sink in for a bit. People frequently ask ‘what’s for tea?’; at which point my automatic response would be ‘uh…. tea?’ Apparently not.

Dinner, or the evening meal, is frequently referred to as tea. This is not to be confused with afternoon tea, which is an entirely different meal altogether. When someone asks what’s for tea, what they really want to know is, what’s for dinner?

If you’re meeting someone for afternoon tea, well then that’s the fancy little bite-sized cakes, with crustless cucumber sandwiches and scones with jam and cream. Oh and tea, of course. Afternoon tea simply isn’t tea without actual tea, even though it’s also a meal.

Then there’s just tea as a hot beverage. That mystical brew that has been a haven through every crisis. It doesn’t matter how devastating the news is, or how rough the day was, or how hot it might be outside, tea is ALWAYS the answer. It’s the Calm in ‘Keep Calm and Carry On.’ I didn’t realize how British I’d become until my dad fell down the stairs after his knee replacement and the first thing I did was ask him if he wanted a cup of tea. Never mind that he was sprawled on the floor. The shock of not knowing what to do or how to fix it made me instantly offer him tea. He obviously declined.

Then there’s the making of the tea. Each person has their own method; milk first, then tea. Tea first, then milk. Some heathens even go so far as to add milk to hot water, then just let the tea bag marinate until it’s the right colour. Rest assured; the Brits are extremely vocal about how to make the perfect cup of tea. I’m fairly sure a puppy dies every time someone lets a cup of tea get cold. A tea shortage would cripple the Empire. It’s that serious.

WEATHER

Good ol’ British weather. It sucks 96% of the time. I never knew there were so many different ways to refer to rain until I lived there. Each type requires a different level of preparedness to deal with it.

Brits take great pride in their shitty weather; it’s probably the most talked about thing in Britain BUT, moaning about it is reserved for Brits only. Foreigners are absolutely not encouraged to moan about the weather. If you don’t like it, you know where Heathrow is, goodbye.

As a foreigner you may talk about it and comment on the precipitation, but do not complain about it. Ever.

GARDENS

Britain is a really small island. I recall reading somewhere that you could fit England into Lake Michigan and Lake Erie combined. So it’s a fair assumption that it’s a pretty congested patch of land, which makes gardens a HUGE thing.

Summer is only 5 minutes long and the Brits will eek out every last second of enjoyment they can from their gardens. Bulbs are planted before the middle of winter, so that they can get the cold snap that helps them to bloom in spring. Spring is just a carpet of beautiful flowers, growing on the sidewalks, through the grass in the parks and people’s gardens are just packed to the hilt with bulbs.

Conservatories are big business and probably the most popular extension people add onto their homes. Think of it as a glass sun room attached to your home. They might have gardens the size of a postage stamp, but those lawns will be mowed, hedges impeccably manicured and hours spent tending to flower beds. It’s part of what makes Britain chocolate-box-pretty in the little villages.

South Africans employ people to take care of their gardens and Americans are somewhere in between South Africans and Brits. Some take gardening to the extreme, others couldn’t be bothered.

SHOPPING

When the weather is bad, Brits go shopping. They’ll straight up sit in queues of traffic to go to a shopping center, drive around for ages to find parking, then shop all day. It’s the oddest thing.

When you consider how often the weather is bad, that’s a LOT of shopping! Go to virtually any shopping center on a weekend and it will be packed to the hilt. It’s infinitely more painful over Christmas, or ANY bank holiday weekend. If you’re going shopping, it’s not going to be a 30 minutes excursion. You’re in it for the long haul.

It certainly goes a long way to explaining the level of credit card debt in the UK.

FOOD

I really got behind this weird thing. Carveries are a huge thing there. All you can eat buffets with 3 types of meat. The breakfast ones are the best!

Sunday lunches are frequently done at a pub that has a carvery and it’s one of the most popular Mother’s Day things to do. Take Mum out for a carvery.

The food thing also extends to regular food shopping. Buy one get one free offers are AMAZING!! Or the multi-buy 3 for £5 on ice-cream tubs! I picked up about 20 lbs in the first few months there because I inhaled multi-buy ready meals because I was convinced they’d never be that price again. They’re that price all the time.

Full on meals in a bag. £10 for a Chinese meal for 2, with ALL the trimmings included. The same bag meals also come in Indian and Thai!! Let’s not forget all the ‘all you can eat’ restaurants where you can stuff your face for a small price. Let me tell you, the Brits are often ridiculed for their limited cuisine but they do pub food better than anyone on the planet. Pack stretchy pants, people! You’re going to need it. I was genuinely surprised all-you-can-eat places weren’t more prevalent in the US, but guess that’s not a bad thing.

Between their dry sense of humour, their stiff upper lip crankiness, their ability to insult people in spectacular fashion without missing a beat & their fierce devotion to their football club of choice, they are the best bunch of people I’ve ever met.

It takes a while to really get to know a Brit, but once you do, you’ve got a chum for life. The true measure of their affection is how much they insult you. If they can’t be bothered to engage in banter with you, they probably don’t like you much. It’s really that simple.

 

 

I’m often asked where I’m from because my accent has become a hybrid of all the places I’ve lived. I sound British but still say ja instead of yes and use words like braai (pronounced bry, like fry) instead of BBQ.

It’s made me think of all the weird nuances from each place I’ve lived. Let’s start at the beginning: South Africa. South Africans are called Saffas, for short.

TIME:

Africa-time is a thing and there are units of measurement specific to South Africa, which make NO sense outside of the borders. The 3 most common units of time are now now, just now and later.

Now now can be anywhere between a minute and a month. If you’re busy on a quick phone call and someone is trying to attract your attention, you’ll be with them now now.

On the other hand, if you’re busy cooking dinner and your friend wants to meet up afterwards, you’ll be with them just now. Just now is longer than now now but not as long as later. Later is later, just now is before then, but not as immediate as now now. All Saffas understand exactly what someone means depending on the context of the situation. In one situation now now means immediately. In another situation, it’s ‘give me 20 minutes.’ They just know and there’s very rarely confusion.

BBQ’s:

Saffas don’t barbecue. We braai. No, they’re not even close to the same thing. A braai takes hours. There’s wood to burn, coals to stoke, beers to drink and a whole bunch of conversation before any kind of cooking can happen.

A bring-&-braai is part of the social fabric of South African life. You take your meat and booze to someone else’s house and slap it on their braai. When some Saffa friends of mine in England suggested a bring & braai, their English friends reacted as if England had just run out of tea. Total shock and horror. ‘Bring our own food?!’ Yes, bring your own food. Booze too, thanks!

The host provides the rolls, salads and sodas; everything else is every man for himself. Everyone’s booze gets parked in the kitchen and becomes a communal stash. The unspoken rule is you don’t drink someone else’s booze unless you contributed some of your own to the collective pile because that’s just rude. You also drink down, meaning if you bought in cheap booze, you only drink on the same level of booze you contributed. Don’t bring in a cheap bottle of scotch, then sail into the 18yr old Glenfiddich. You won’t be invited back.

You cook and then sit around the fire with your food on paper plates and a drink in hand. It works completely differently in US & UK. Saffas eat their braai with their hands, cutlery is only for salads. It’s not a sit-at-the-dining-table affair.

HOMES:

Saffas generally have rather high walls around their homes. It’s mostly a security thing, with many houses looking like fortified military compounds surrounded by 6 ft walls topped with razor wire. A fence in the UK is usually a hedge about a foot high than you can step over and in the US there are frequently no fences between properties. It’s all just open, which continues to blow my mind 6 years later.

There are no barred windows in the US or UK that I’ve seen. SA has everything barred; windows and doors.

POPPING IN & TALKING TO EVERYONE:

People rarely make arrangements in advance to meet up. If you’re in someone’s neighbourhood, you pop in for coffee. Sometimes you ring them a few minutes ahead and it’s ‘Are you home? I’m popping in for coffee.’ Done. No worries.

The Brits don’t pop in. Ever. Arrangements are made way in advance and under great duress. An unscheduled knock at the door has everyone crouching out of sight, silently not breathing until the person has gone away. Then wait an extra 20 minutes just to be sure they’ve left. NEVER pop in unannounced.

Muricans can conduct entire conversations on their front doorstep. Unless you’re family, don’t assume because they know you, they will invite you in. It’s the weirdest thing. Popping in is also not encouraged. It’s very hard as a Saffa to grasp this concept because we’ve been popping in all over the place since birth.

If a friend is sick, you visit and take food. So what if they’re contagious, you go. Win, lose, shit or bust, you visit. UK, not so much. Germs, you say? Get well soon mate and see you much later! Stateside, people don’t offer to visit, you have to ask, and in my opinion, if I have to ask you to check up on me, you can keep it. That was something that really bothered me after surgery. I couldn’t get around and not a single friend stopped by to visit. ‘Why didn’t you ask?’ Uh… I’m not going to beg you to come and visit. While it’s very much a cultural thing, it changed my opinion on friendships here and I’m more guarded around people.

Saffas will also strike up a conversation with anyone, anywhere, especially with another Saffa outside of South Africa. Instant friends. There’s nothing more awkward than trying that in England. If you ever want half a train car to yourself, or even a full bench seat on the bus, start randomly talking to the person next to you. They’ll probably get off at the next stop even if it isn’t the one they wanted. Brits can be crammed like cattle into the Tube, with their noses crammed into someone else’s armpits for the duration of their commute, but unsolicited conversation? Dear God, no! Americans are generally game for a chat, especially if you have an accent. They LOVE accents so talk to everyone, they’ll mostly think it’s great. The conversation will likely center around where you’re from, but they’re super friendly so it’s cool.

Rice is a regular accompaniment at mealtimes in SA. Sunday roasts will include roast potatoes, rice and gravy. We never need an excuse to eat rice and gravy. In the UK, rice is eaten with curry. Stateside, it’s with Chinese food. Curry isn’t a huge thing here.

THE BEACH:

Saffas will drive all the way to a perfectly good sandy beach and park. Then sit in their car the entire time watching the sea. Brits will drive to a beach covered in pebbles, set up their tents and towels and feign comfort. I tried this once and even making gaps in the pebbles to put my boobs into, I couldn’t get comfy. The Brits have mastered discomfort and it’s pretty damn impressive. Stateside, there’s no coastline within 800 miles of where I live so I have no idea what beach etiquette is here.

If we’re spending the day at the beach, it looks like we’re moving house. We pack everything. Coolers, braai, enough food to feed a small village, a radio *for if you can’t park close enough to the beach to hear your car radio*, gazebo/tent/umbrella, lots of towels, spare clothes and water for the dog.

Saffas tend to swim in t-shirts a lot of the time. It keeps your shoulders from being incinerated by the sun when you forget to top up your sunscreen. In the US, swimming in clothing is often on the Prohibited List of swimming pool rules. No swimming in clothes allowed. I haven’t quite figured out why. Maybe it’s something to do with the colours running in the water? Who knows…… If the Brits are swimming, then it’s balls to the wall, no t-shirts! Summer is 5 minutes long so if it’s warm enough to swim, NO CLOTHES REQUIRED!

We also call swimwear either a cozzie or a costume. I was talking to some colleagues stateside and mentioned I’d packed a costume for my trip to South Carolina and it was met with ‘Are you going to a themed party?’ No, a swimming costume. ‘Like you’re dressing up as a swimmer?’ Huh? No, the thing you swim in. ‘Oh, you mean a swimsuit?’ Yes, one of those. Costume does not translate to anything other than a Halloween outfit here. They were rolled up laughing at me while I was laughing at them. Immigrant problems 🙂

Welcome to South Africa!

 

Recently I’ve had a number of comments mentioning that I do not monetize my blog and should consider doing so. Some of the comments are very obviously spam and are flagged as such, but others seem to be genuine people. While I appreciate the sentiment, it’s really not the point of this blog.

I blog because I enjoy writing. Yes, I love writing manually and would prefer not to use some online program to write my content. Each writer’s voice is unique and cannot be replicated by software. There have been many blogs that have grabbed my interest over the years and over time, they started adding ads, banners and pop ups. It becomes incredibly difficult and frustrating to navigate around that and eventually I stop following them because it’s irritating. It sucks to lose the meaningful content but the irritation that comes with trying to read it ends up outweighing the value of the content. It’s that exact reason why I refuse to do the same to mine.

When the time comes where I can make money writing, there are platforms for that and I’ll make use of them. This blog is solely to house my ramblings and pet projects. I intend to keep it that way.

To anyone reading this and to those who pop by regularly, thank you! Thank-you for taking the time out of your day to check in and I hope you find something useful or meaningful in here. Maybe even a little nudge to take a chance on finding happiness in the life you were made to live.

Have a brilliant day and don’t forget to look up once in a while. I did yesterday and there was a perfect red rose lying in the grass next to the tracks. Beauty really can be found in the oddest places…