"Questioning is at the heart of spiritual journeying, of literally leaving home for a time to go on a pilgrimage, retreat or vision quest, of removing ourselves from the duties and dramas, the relationships and roles that bombard us with messages that may be distracting or irrelevant or even destructive to an emerging or affirmative sense of self, and that interfere with our asking for responses to our burning questions--Who am I? What matters? What is my gift? What is my purpose?"
--Gregg Levoy  

School holidays generally equate to morning (if not all day) insanity. My daughter and her little friend are on school holidays, so I (in a moment of extreme madness) agreed to take both of them to a day horse riding camp at a nearby farm. This would entail having the little friend sleep over for 2 nights. Ok, all good so far. Last night said little friend was dropped at my house by my lovely friend. We all had a hearty dinner and the kids went to sleep at about 8.30pm.

Here follows my morning madness. Was awoken by giggling at 4am! Aaargh. Screamed into the kid's room (hair sticking up, no make-up, witch-like expression) and shouted at them to go back to sleep. Awoken again by the low droan of little voices at 06:05am. Kids and cats running about madly. Had no coffee. Had Pronutro instead. Installed kids in front of DVD while I showered. Dressed, put make up on, hair slicked back in greasy pony – v. attractive. Ordered kids to get dressed in meantime (much hysteria in between from my off-spring – methinks she was OVER tired and OVER excited)! All ready eventually after a few tantrums, threats and tears (and that was just me!) Bundled kids into car. Drove (ALL NIGHT i.e. a very long way) to stupid horse farm in the middle of nowhere (is it a requirement that farms have to be so faaar away!?) in pouring rainstorm – dodging puddles and pot holes on route. Car now resembles muddy disaster. Dropped kids (on heads) at farm. Signed (indemnity) form (ack – had brief panic attack and a what if moment, shook it off). Waved g'bye. Drove to work (back along puddle, muddy horrible road).

The PS is that the kids had a GREAT time aside from the little boy having an allergy attack and his dad having to fetch him early. My daughter won a prize for the best ‘horsie makeover’. She is nothing if not creative. Needless to say the 2 day excursion was shortened to 2 days, much to my daughter's disappointment. Me, I'm not so traumatised.

My daughter is a famous movie star. No seriously. She was chosen for an international production of a movie which I cannot name. We've signed confidentiality agreements as we are so very important. I have not been on many movie shoots in my life so had no idea how exhausting it might be.

We had a 7:15am call on a SUNDAY which in itself is ungodly. Pardon the pun. The agent told us to 'go to the cut-off freeway'. Upon asking her how exactly to get there, she replied she had no idea. Right. Great. So off we set on Sunday morning to the freeway I thought was the cut-off one in Greenpoint. Get there, uhm, WRONG cut-off freeway. There were many film trucks etc and a woman asked me if I had a business suit. I replied: Uhm, what? Remember this was 7.10am on a Sunday before my 1^st cup of coffee. Apparently we had the wrong freeway and the wrong shoot. We were re-directed to another cut-off freeway in central Cape Town. Arrived there, freezing. There was a huge tent where breakfast was being served and madam had to sign in (celebrity). We were told NOT to eat breakfast as the kids were going to wardrobe and we would be fed there. Lovely. I snuck in a cup of coffee and a muffin, however.

We were then bundled into a shuttle to be taken to the costume hire place i.e. wardrobe and make up. Daughter was fitted into her 40's costume complete with hairstyle and makeup. She looked edibly adorable. We then waited, and waited, and waited till her call which was only at 11.30! Luckily the other mother was quite fun, so we sat and smoked and scinnered* with the gay hairdresser who was vastly entertaining.

Finally the bus arrived to take us to the shoot. There I was at 11.30 on a Sunday morn standing on the roadside with a bunch of people straight out of the mid 1940's. We got a few odd looks.

The shoot was at a famous landmark church in central Cape Town. Many 1940's collector's cars were parked all around and there was even an old telephone box on one of the pavements. The director (being German) took about 20 takes of each scene which was exhausting for the poor kids but I must say my daughter behaved like a total professional hardly moaning at all.

We were served lunch in the church hall and that was amusing as it really looked like a wartime soup kitchen what with all the 40's dressed people sitting around eating their lunches.

The shoot continued after that and I chatted to some interesting people. The MOST interesting were the old farts who owned the antique cars. They were hilarious (all one foot in the grave) and kept poking fun at some of the actors calling them moffies etc.

The shoot FINALLY ended at 5.30pm and we only left Cape Town at 6:15pm. By that time we were freezing (it being mid-winter) and tired. We drove home, got pizza and fell into bed.

*Afrikaans slang for 'gossiped'

Copied this off Wenchy’s blog in lieu of an actual post.

What was I doing ten years ago?

Hmm VERY interesting question. I was in my early 30’s and was in the midst of my jolling and raving days. I was living in a stunning architect designed house in Observatory and working for a hip and happening e-commerce company. Any thought of children or settling down were definitely NOT on the cards for me. Oh what a surprise I had in store!

What are five things on my list to do this weekend?

Do the laundry (translated take to Laundromat and pay ‘em as tumble drier is on the fritz)

Drink wine (check – done)

Go shopping (check – done)

Meet friends for drinks at pub in Durbanville

Take my famous daughter to a film shoot for an international movie in which she was an extra

Snacks I enjoy?

I don’t really DO snacks, but if I had to choose, I guess Chipniks or those lovely lil Tuc biscuits preferably with Camembert on top.

Things I Would Do If I Were A Billionaire?

Obviously pay off debt, buy a nice little mansion in the countryside and a penthouse in the city / beach. Give my family a whole lot of money. Give to charities. Write my book.

 Three of my bad habits?

VERY impatient

Can’t focus on one thing for too long – am slightly AD – OH LOOK there’s a butterfly! Hehe

Smoking – yep I am one of the die-hards (pun intended) who refuse to give up

Five places I have lived?

Observatory

Rondebosch

Pinelands

Seapoint

Durbanville

Ooo yes and very much in my head – a lot! Lived there I mean – you get my drift – if you don’t, don’t worry, most people do not.

How did you name your blog?

Well duh. I was happily living oblivious to the fact that I might one day ever (gasp, shock, horror) produce an actual child, let alone enjoy the ride! Then one day, I took a pregnancy test and voila – 2 lines. I remember looking in the mirror and saying to myself: You’re going to be someone’s mother! ACK! So, yes Accidental Mother as in I never really meant for this to happen. Don’t get me wrong though, now that I am one, it’s the most amazing journey ever!

Recent cute-ism by my daughter:

Scene: Wandering the aisle of local supermarket, madam ensconced in trolley, me dazedly walking, aghast at prices of things. WHEN did everything get so expensive?

Her: Mommy, do you like dry wine or (pause for thought)… uhm WET wine?

Me: WHAHAHAHA <hysterical laughter> …. No darling it’s dry or semi-sweet wine

Her: OOOH so it’s dry wine or lemmy-sweet wine…ok…(nods sagely)

Me: Yes, lemmy-sweet, that’s it. : )

-12 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

Well lucky for me I don't live in the 30's then huh? heheheh - take the test - it's hilarious.

PS: Copied from my (famous) sister's blog. Sorry Neen! : )

Hi All (Or one reader / whatever),

Here’s a letter I’ve sent to my daughter’s school. It is self explanatory – so read and tell me what you think or what YOU would do!? Names have been changed to protect the not so innocent, so no that is not the child’s real name, although it should be.

I write this letter out of extreme concern for my daughter and that of her fellow learners in the Butterfly Class as well as the children who attend the after care facility.

I have been alerted to a number of incidents which happened between my daughter, Rhiannon and another child in her class, Spawn of Satan. Some of these incidents were minor and involved misbehaviour but these have become increasingly frequent and worrisome. The one major one (which happened about 2 months ago) involved Spawn of Satan banging my daughter’s head against one of the lockers. I was told about this the following day by her teacher, Moira and obviously expressed concern. Moira assured me that she was monitoring the situation and trying to keep them apart as they become unruly when together. Please note that I am not holding my daughter entirely blameless i.e. they had had a fight but Spawn of Satan’s reaction, to me, was a little over the top and placed my daughter in some danger.

In the last 3 days my daughter has consistently come home with injuries inflicted by Spawn of Satan. The first was a disagreement they had that ended up in Spawn of Satan slapping her through the face. When I fetched her there was a big red mark on her cheek and her lip had been bleeding! The following day I noticed a laceration on her neck. She told me that Spawn of Satan had been ‘playing’ and when they had a fight had put a rope around her neck. This concerns me greatly as when I asked her if she called the teacher, she said yes but they didn’t hear her! Anything could have happened! The most recent injury was a slap Spawn of Satan gave her on her knee which is now bruised.

I have since spoken to my daughter and asked her to walk away if she feels that she is in a threatening situation or that someone is about to fight with her. She tells me that she is not the only child being bullied by Spawn of Satan and that there are other girls that are also going through this.

I am not sure what the solution is here but I do ask that this situation be monitored and rectified. What the aftercare have done is to break the two children up into separate classes but it seems that Spawn of Satan constantly seeks out my daughter on the pretext of being friendly and then once again resorts to bullying her.

I really DO NOT want to see my child come home with any more injuries. This is certainly not what she is used to and I really do not expect her school situation to be this way.

Please advise as to a solution to this problem.

The 101 best novels of all time, as voted for by Exclusive Books customers. I've read 29 so far, so I guess I should start making up for lost time!

1. The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
3. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
4. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
5. The Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
6. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
7. The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
8. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
9. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
10. The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
11. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
12. Spud - John van de Ruit
13. The Power of One - Bryce Courtenay
14. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
15. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres
16. Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
17. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
18. Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
19. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
20. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
21. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
22. Disgrace - J. M. Coetzee
23. My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult
24. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
25. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
26. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
27. Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett
28. Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
29. Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
30. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
31. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
32. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon
33. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
34. Atonement - Ian McEwan
35. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
36. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
37. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
38. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
39. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
40. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
41. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
42. I Know This Much is True - Wally Lamb
43. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
44. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
45. War And Peace - Leo Tolstoy
46. Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M. Auel
47. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
48. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
49. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
50. Possession - A. S. Byatt
51. Perfume - Patrick Suskind
52. The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende
53. Chocolat - Joanne Harris
54. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith
55. Q & A - Vikas Swarup
56. Dune - Frank Herbert
57. Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
58. Fugitive Pieces - Anne Michaels
59. River God - Wilbur Smith
60. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
61. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
62. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
63. Mort - Terry Pratchett
64. Crime and Punishment - Feodor Dostoyevsky
65. The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
66. East of Eden - John Steinbeck
67. The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
68. The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory
69. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne
70. The Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy
71. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
72. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
73. The Shipping News - E. Annie Proulx
74. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
75. Animal Farm - George Orwell
76. The Red Tent - Anita Diamant
77. Watership Down - Richard Adams
78. Magician - Raymond E Feist
79. Middlemarch - George Eliot
80. The Day of the Jackal - Frederick Forsyth
81. We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
82. The Magus - John Fowles
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk
85. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
86. The Shell Seekers - Rosamunde Pilcher
87. The Colour Purple - Alice Walker
88. The Beach House - James Patterson
89. Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
90. Kringe in 'n Bos - Dalene Matthee
91. The World according to Garp - John Irving
92. Northen Lights - Phillip Pullman
93. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
94. Shades - Marguerite Poland
95. Kane and Abel - Jeffrey Archer
96. Fiela se kind - Dalene Matthee
97. Story of an African Farm - Olive Schreiner
98. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
99. The Magic Faraway Tree - Enid Blyton
100. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
101. Winnie-the-Pooh - A.A. Milne

Rain, hail, sleet, lightning and thunder. The weather seems to match my mood. Last night I could not stop crying. It's not so much the recent loss I have experienced as the thought that I may never actually meet the prince of my dreams. I am not getting any younger. Time is running out and no longer on my side. My hair is doing weird things, curling up when it's supposed to be straight. The lines on my face can no longer be called laughter lines – they're actual wrinkles dammit! All the creams of Arabia cannot straighten them out.

Last night I thought about all the men who've loved me and who I've loved. There are not so many. Maybe a handful. Some were lovers, some were friends, some family. All were special in their own way, and most of them no longer in my life. That makes me sad. I miss my friends. I miss Mark and Eric. I feel sad. Sorry for myself. Today is not a good day.