Category: Things of Interest

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Slutwalk Johannesburg

At the beginning of this year a police officer in Toronto Canada told students at a law school that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized”.

His lack of insite and knowledge of what constitutes sexual assault resulted in Slutwalk Toronto being born.  Since then cities around the globe have put together their own Slutwalks and Johannesburg is no different.  Spearheaded by Sandi ‘Sass’ Schultz, Slutwalk Johannesburg is set to take place in early July.

I will be walking with Sass and many other women on the day to pledge my support.  You dont have to dress like a ‘slut’ to participate, you can wear your pajamas, your gym clothes, a ball gown, a suit, jeans and a T-shirt.  Why? Because it doesnt matter how you dress you can be the victim of sexual assault!  You dont even have to be a woman to participate, men, children, grannies, babies, gay or straight.  Why? Because not only women are victims of sexual assault!

Please take a moment to visit the Facebook page and the Twitter account and pledge your support.

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You Cooked What?

After a quick poll on Twitter I decided to start a new food themed blog to showcase my cooking and baking experiments as well as some of my well used recipes.

Not only mine though.

The new site will be a collaboration of recipes, some new, some tried and tested, posted by the women (and hopefully a few men!) of Twitter.

The first two ladies that have joined me are Mandi and Cat, who will hopefully be posting their first recipes soon.

Please head on over to You Cooked What? and bookmark us, leave a comment on a recipe you like or one that you have tried, let us know if you have a suggestion or even if you have a recipe you would like to post.

Looking forward to many yummy recipes.

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They need our support!

Tracey Engelbrecht was just 15 years old when she had her son Conor.  Today Conor is a 17 year old young man and his mom is an inspiration.

Tracey has started a support group for young moms, they meet at at False Bay Hospital in Fish Hoek and provide a safe  place (physically and emotionally) for young and teenage moms to get love, friendship and support (and cupcakes).

Here is an excerpt taken from the About page:

Every mom is different

I’ve learnt that it’s very important to realise that each mom is different and not to assume that they come to us because they are struggling or not coping.

Instead, we provide a stable and non-judgmental environment in which they can be themselves, grow as parents and speak of their frustrations and fears, long BEFORE they get to a point where they feel like they’re not managing. It’s an informal, friendly, non-intimidating setting where the moms and group leaders get to know each other as friends, equals – mother to mother.

Established, “older” mothers are always advised to look for support in their communities and family structures, to take time for themselves and to be realistic in their idea of what being a “good mother” means – and urged not to feel guilty about it.

Younger mothers have many of the same stresses and fears (and possibly more) than other mothers – they need the same support, the same amount of rest and “me-time”, the same opportunity to be heard and respected for the work they’re doing.

Isolation, judgment, loneliness, lack of material, physical and emotional support damages a mother’s ability to parent correctly – not healthy for mom, not healthy for baby and not healthy for society which has to live with the consequences of poorly-parented children.

Help the mothers before it gets to that point. Acknowledge and respect those young moms who are doing it right.

We are out there, and we deserve recognition.

There are a few ways to help Tracey help other young moms.

You can follow Tracey on Twitter and on Facebook.

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Moms with Cameras

Jenty of Jeanette Verster Photography hosted a workshop this afternoon at Stepping Stones Garden Village.

Most of the moms had ‘real’ cameras but a few of us had ‘point & shoots’.

I have a Canon PowerShot SX100IS, I also have no idea what that means 🙂

The workshop was fantastic, Jenty showed us how to set aperture, shutter speed and ISO as well as giving us tips on composition and basically how to take pictures of monkeys kids.

I need a lot more practice but I had great fun trying to get good shots of Aaron.  My biggest issue is focusing on him and not the background.

 

Also a huge thank you to Angel for coming to my rescue with a set of batteries 🙂

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Look who’s talking!

When we fell pregnant with Aaron we looked into signing as a way of communicating with him before he could talk.  Due to a few obstacles, lack of resources on the web and locally, being overwhelmed by the new addition to our family and suffering from PND, signing with Aaron fell by the wayside.

To be honest I didnt even think about signing with Faith until I came across this website!

Wow! What an amazing site.  Simple, concise  and easy to use, not to mention free, makes this site a win.

So far we have been signing ‘Mommy‘, ‘Daddy‘, ‘brother‘ and ‘milk‘ to Faith.  I am going to teach Aaron how to sign ‘brother’.  Tonight we will all be learning ‘Uncle‘, ‘Aunt‘ and ‘Granny/Bobba‘ as those three people will be having supper with us.

Oh yes, ‘dog‘ will also be a sign that is used frequently in our house 🙂

I really hope that Faith picks up signing easily as Im pretty certain that it will reduce a lot of frustration between us as she gets older and is able to communicate more effectively.

Edited to add: The sign language being used on the website above is based on ASL (American Sign Language) and that is what we will be teaching Faith and Aaron.  Unfortunately I cannot find any effective online resources that are based on South African Sign Language (SASL).  According to Wikipedia (see links) SASL is based on Irish, British and American sign language, while both Irish and American sign language seem to be based on French sign language.  Perhaps one day we will explore SASL.

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Grammar, people, grammar!

This has been bugging me for weeks, enough that I decided to blog about it.

Johannesburg Water has been running a campaign on electronic billboards around the city.

Unfortunately I havent been able to snap a pic of the offending advert but the text goes something along the lines of:

Pay your account timely in order to avoid being cut off.

Or something like that.

Ggggggrrrrrrrr!!!

You can pay your account on time or you can pay your account timeously but you cannot, let me repeat that, you CANNOT pay your account timely!

It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.  In fact I think I may send Johannesburg Water a little email about it.  They probably wont do anything about it but I will feel better.

Until I see that ad again…

Edited to add: Spelling is not my forte as evidenced by the incorrect ‘grammer’ in my title * hangs head and blushes *. I have now changed it 😉

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Dinner Date

Megan posted this today and asked us who we would invite to dinner and who would cook.

Here goes…

  • Nelson Mandela (yes I know its a cliche but the man is an inspiration)
  • Sean Connery ( I could listen to that man talk for hours)
  • Princess Diana (I would love to hear her side of the story)
  • Albert Einstein (so he could explain to me, in baby talk, the theory of relativity)
  • My dad (I miss our conversations, also he would have come up with some great questions for my other guests)

As for who would cook, I think I would get take out, lots of different stuff, Chinese, Italian, Mediterranean, South African, sushi, shwarma, pizza, mezze, pap and gravy, hot dogs, borsht.  Why?  I think it would be interesting to see what my guests woud choose to eat 🙂

So, who would you have over for dinner and who would cook?

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How I wish I had written this myself*

*taken from an email sent to me this afternoon.

 

He grasped me firmly but gently just above my elbow and guided me into a room, his room. Then he quietly shut the door and we were alone. He approached me soundlessly, from behind, and spoke in a low, reassuring voice close to my ear.  “Just relax.”

Without warning, he reached down and I felt his strong, calloused hands start at my ankles, gently probing, and moving upward along my calves slowly but steadily. My breath caught in my throat. I knew I should be afraid, but somehow I didn’t care. His touch was so experienced, so sure.

When his hands moved up onto my thighs, I gave a slight shudder, and partly closed my eyes. My pulse was pounding. I felt his knowing fingers caress my abdomen, my ribcage. And then, as he cupped my firm, full breasts in his hands, I inhaled sharply. Probing, searching, knowing what he wanted, he brought his hands to my shoulders, slid them down my tingling spine and into my panties.

Although I knew nothing about this man, I felt oddly trusting and expectant. This is a man, I thought. A man used to taking charge. A man not used to taking `no’ for an answer. A man who would tell me what he wanted. A man who would look into my soul and say…

 

 

 

 

 

“Okay, ma’am,” said a voice. “All done.”

My eyes snapped open and he was standing in front of me, smiling, holding out my purse. “You can board your flight now.”

 

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Pretty colours!

Last night I attended the Logitech Fantasy Range launch courtesy of an invite extended to all the GirlGuides.

Exmi, Shebee, Jenty, Angel, SleepyJane and I all attended.

We were fed, supplied with drinks, given a presentation and some some entertainment and went home with a lovely goodie bag consisting of a Logitech branded umbrella (thank heavens cause the rain was pelting down when we left) and a Wireless Logitech Mouse.

The Logitech people were quite impressed that after I had reviewed their N700 Lapdesk with Speakers for Girlguides, Paul had gone out and bought himself one.

We all had a great time and kudos to the Logitech team for hosting us.

To see some great pics of the night head on over to Jenty’s site.

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Blog Action Day 2010: Water

This years topic for Blog Action Day is water.

We live in a small house, we have a very small garden with grass and flower beds all around the outside walls.  When we moved in we had an irrigation system put in.  I hardly ever use it.

I much prefer natural irrigation (rain), so in winter I dont water my garden at all, it looks kind of sad and brown and drab throughout winter but in summer, as soon as the rains come everything goes green and pretty.  It makes me a little sad that in winter it looks so awful but I would rather not use the sprinklers.

This has lead me to think about finding an alternate source of irrigation for the winter.  One of the options that I found and quite like is using ‘grey’ water.

Basically you recycle water that is used for bathing, laundry and dish washing.  It involves setting up a recycling facility that can be  built by yourself or purchased.  The water can be purified or used as is.

Here are a few places that can help you set up a grey water system in your home.  (I googled all of these and have had no contact with any of the companies listed below).

Im definitely going to look into setting up a grey water system in my home.