Camping When Nature Hates You.

Camping is a queer concept to me.  I mean really, who in their right mind would willingly submit themselves to the elements if they are not homeless, raised by wolves or competing for a million dollars?  If humans were intended to live in the bush or mountains we would not have evolved to be able to build houses, nice hotels or invented electricity and room service.  Don’t get me wrong.  I do love to do quad biking, horse riding and I do appreciate nature’s absolute splendor.  But this doesn’t mean I want to spend a night in nature, sleep in a sleeping bag in a tent with God knows what crawling over me.  I have been camping twice in my life and this was enough times for me to realize two things:  One, I don’t like “roughing it” and two, I do NOT do camping.

About ten years ago hubby and I decided to go hiking with my sister, brother-in-law and some friends.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.  We would spend two days hiking up a mountain, walking about 10 kilometers a day (that is like 6.2).  The selling point for me was that we would not need tents as we would be sleeping in what they called “chalets” and they said there was electricity at both “camping sites”.  The only down side, I thought, was that we would need to carry everything we needed in backpacks with us.  Optimism never served well, and in this case optimism would once again dismally fail me.

Arriving on the Friday, the first “camping site” was basically a room with a questionable roof, holes in the walls that you could literally see through and stretchers to sleep on.  No electricity.  No indoor toilet.  That was the very first time I in my life that I saw an outhouse or as they called it - a “long drop”.  I was mortified!  It was nothing more than a hole in the ground with a toilet seat on top of it, smelled like shit and there were steam billowing out of it the following morning.  All I could do, when I eventually had to take a shit, was to go in there, hold my breath and pray that the whole thing didn’t cave in on me.  In retrospect, I think that’s where my fear of public toilets comes from.

The following day we started with the hike.  Ten kilometers is fucking far, especially if you are carrying 5kg on your back.  Needless to say I cursed a lot that first day.  My sister, the drama queen that she is, also had a complete dramatic melt down three quarters through when she had a cramp in her leg.  She was a whimpering mess and wanted to be medically evacuated off the mountain.  Needless to say that didn’t happen.  The rest of the hike she was whimpering out loud and I was crying and cursing on the inside.  Eventually, what felt like an eternity, we made it to the second camp and things only got worse from there.

Again the “camp site” was no Hilton Hotel and by all means worse than the first one, again with the outhouse, cracked walls and stretchers.  With blusters the size of plums on my feet and smelling like a funky monkey, I realized hiking was probably the worst idea I ever had.  All I wanted was to take a long hot relaxing shower.  Then came another shock.

The “camp site” had a shower but it was outside in the bush and if I wanted a hot shower I had to heat the water in a thing they called a donkey on the fire. Like primitive prehistoric men.  I remember screaming “No hot water, no indoor toilet, no indoor shower, no electricity.  Why the fuck did I do this to myself?”   I wanted to get clean so I heated the water, carried the donkey to the outside shower and hubby and I got in and opened the release valve.  First came the searing hot water then in came a snake.  I literally peed myself and that was the shortest and most traumatizing shower I ever had.  They said it was a harmless snake, but at almost a meter long it didn’t look harmless at all.  Besides nobody in our hiking party was a reptile expert.  We could have all died.

On day two we hiked back to the first “camp site”, completely paranoid about snakes,  but this time I was motivated by one thing and one thing only - I wanted to get the hell out of there!  It took us about six hours to reach the “camp site” and we left immediately.  I have never gone hiking again since but I did end up going camping a couple of years later.

My parents’-in-law are avid campers.  They own a caravan and all the camping equipment one would need to survive in the event that the apocalypse should destroy all man-made structures.  They go camping often and they invite us along just as often.  I have always found creative ways to avoid camping and declining their invitations.  That was until the one day about 5 years ago when I couldn’t get out of it.

My in-laws got me to agree to go camping and until this day I can’t remember how they did it.  They promised me that we will have our own fully equipped bathroom and that we would not have to share it with other people.  They also said there would be electricity.  The only down side was that hubby and I would have to sleep in a tent.  How bad could it be, I thought?  What is the worst that can happen, I thought?

On arriving at the camping spot I was delighted to find that my in-laws didn’t lie.  We did indeed have our own bathroom, kitchen and there was electricity.  I needed electricity for my portable air-conditioned, inflating our double bed, electric mosquito repellent, ice machine and emergency light. Once again I have to stress that I don't do the roughing it thing. We helped the in-laws unpack and then set about pitching our tent.  Pitching a tent in your pants is one thing but pitching an actual tent is a whole different story.

Tents are complicated assholes and the instruction manuals that come with them, I firmly believe, are written by people who are high on drugs or drunk.  They make no sense.  After a struggle, some sweat and an averted mental breakdown the tent was semi decently erected.  Our bed was inflated, the air-conditioner was running and mosquitoes were fleeing.  The whole camping spot was set up and I must admit I was rather proud of myself.  Everything was done and as I was standing there admiring our handy work, I thought to myself “So now what.  We are here; we are set up, so what exactly does one do when you are camping?”  As it turns out – not much! You drink.

The only things we had to do were to go down a waterslide and drink.  I broke my rib on the waterslide that day and later that evening I got drunk on vodka jelly shots.  I would have broken my nose too had it not been for the emergency light outside our tent.  You see, vodka jelly shot, darkness and tent ropes don’t mix.  Much later that evening, I sobered up a little and we went to bed and that’s when it happened.  Back then my father-in-law use to snore, the sound of which could scare away wildlife in a five kilometer radius.  His snoring sounded a lot like a mixture between a diesel engine coming apart and a pig choking on its own esophagus.  It kept me awake for a long time.

After eventually falling asleep I was roused from my not so peaceful slumber by something tickling my face.  I brushed it away and dosed off again.  Then it happened again.  “Stop it” I mumbled to which hubby mumbled back “Stop what?”

Just then the tickling went down my chin, down my neck and into my t-shirt.  I woke up, reached for my flash light lifted up the collar of my t-shirt and let out a petrified scream as only a twelve year old school girl can do.  I too am like Oscar Pistorius and scream like a woman when I am petrified.  There was a big hairy spider on my chest!  As I stared down at it in utter terror, its beady eight eyes stared back at me while its front feet were touching my nipple.  I felt sexually violated and petrified that it would bite off my nipple after it had finished molesting it.  Pandemonium broke out.  I survived.  The spider did not.  I lost three years of my life that morning and inhaled a whole can of Raid in the scuffle.  I still get nightmares.  We never went camping again after this.

Until such time as North Korea starts nuking the shit out of the world or when the Zombie Apocalypse happens and we are all forced to flee the city and find refuge in the mountains, I do not see any good reason why I should ever voluntarily go camping or hiking again.  No amount of bug repellent, vodka or inflatable and portable luxuries will see me leave the comfort of my home, or that of a hotel, to go and spent a night under the stars with the wild life, spiders, snakes and other hideous and possibly dangerous insect and animals.  Sure Broke Back Mountain made it look sexy, but in reality I would have had no problem quitting Ennis Del Mar as no high altitude fuck can be worth being dragged up a mountain to sleep in a tent and being crawled over and molested by spiders and snakes.  I find no shame in admitting that camping is not for me.  I am a civilized human being. I am not meant to play survivor and submit myself to the elements ever again.

Till next time.

Being Face Raped by Nature

I don’t always complain.  Well, actually that it not entirely true.  I complain all the time, mostly to my cats because my husband has selective hearing when it comes to things like that.  This is also why I am not completely convinced that he will survive the Zombie Apocalypse without my help.  It is important to note that when I do complain it is not always about random or minor stuff.  The things I complain about are important.  Well, at least they are important in my mind anyway.  Seeing as spring has just arrived in the Southern Hemisphere and I always bitch about it on my blog (you know because spring almost kills me every year) I decided that this year will be different.   Why you might ask.  The answer is simple, I decided to try and ignore it.  But as luck would have it, just because I am ignoring spring doesn’t mean it will ignore me.  Denial is an ineffective son-of-a-gun that way (see how I didn’t use a curse word right here.  I am so making progress on my potty mouth).

This year I think I may have discovered the allergy medication combo that works for me.  I mean really, it only took me about eight years to get it right and I should totally be getting a prize or something for this achievement.  I am also happy to report that I have not contracted my annual pink eye at the start of spring this year and even though I do sound like I have the flu, most of the time, I am not rupturing internal organs due to hay fever induced sneezing.  However, just because my allergies have calmed down this year with the aid of charmed pharmaceuticals, air purifiers and the avoidance of all things pollen related, doesn’t mean that spring has’t tried to kill me twice this season already.  It seems that if Mother Nature can’t torment me with pollen, seeds, grass and dust she will find new innovative ways to try and get to me.  The first attempt she made was with our pool.

Seeing as we may be “with child” soon hubby and I started taking measures to ensure that our house and garden aren’t deathtraps for children.  This is not something that bothered us before but when you have, or are about to have, children you understand that maybe other people weren’t so crazy after all.  The first thing we have done is to cover our pool with a net.  There are way too many children that accidentally drown in pools and all households with small children should have their pools covered.  It took me four hours one Saturday afternoon to put that Chinese puzzle from Hell over the pool.  Four hours without the help of anybody!  I have never cursed that much in my entire life but after it was done I felt pretty butch and damn proud of myself for accomplishing what I thought was the impossible.  However the next day it felt like I was ran over by a train and then trampled by psychotic donkeys, but at least our pool was secured.

However, having a net over your pool does have some rather obvious disadvantages.  Firstly, if you are not careful you can trip and fall and almost land on a bunny (I am still not forgiven for that just so that you know) and secondly, cleaning the pool becomes a bitch to deal with.  With the start of spring one of our evergreen hedges started the shed its winter leaves and all of it ended up in the pool.  Not being able to skim them off the water, due to the net, most of them ended up in our pool gobbler and weir.  Also getting to the pool gobbler and weir was now also difficult seeing as the pool net restricted access to both.  I guess you can see where I am doing with this.

So one afternoon I get home from work and as I walk past the pool I noticed that it sounded like the swimming pool pump was struggling.  I switched it off and then checked out the pool gobbler and weir.  Both were filled to the brim with leaves and needed to be cleaned.  However getting to them and taking them out was a problem as the net was cock blocking me.  To make a long story short, I ended up “accidentally” breaking the weir cover and some pool gobbler connector thingy (I don’t know it’s called) which I replaced the next day.  But not being very mechanically orientated I could not reattach the pool gobbler correctly.  Frustrated and feeling like a monkey trying to solve a puzzle for a treat hubby eventually found me sitting next to the pool gobbler looking completely defeated and poking it with a stick.  Apparently, and I take his word for it, I forgot to attach something called a washer (which looks like a cock ring, just smaller) to the system and that’s why it didn’t work.  After pointing and laughing at me he fixed it and all was back to normal on the pool front.  But then blow number two came.

Last week was hubby’s birthday, and as is tradition, I always send him flowers to his office.  Flowers I like to call hypoallergenic flowers.  You know the kind that doesn’t try to face rape you with pollen.  Pollen is nothing other than plant sperm and I do not like being sexually violated by nature.  It just wrong people and there should be laws against it!  As fate would have it, I was not the only one who sent hubby flowers that day.  Our hairstylists also sent hubby a spring bouquet the extravagance of which outshone my flowers much like a Dita Von Teese burlesque show outshines Candy the stripper from Teasers.  Unfortunately, our hairstylist temporarily forgot that pollen equals a slow snot filled eye infected death for me.  And their bouquet screamed pollen!

At first it wasn’t a real problem but as some of the flowers started to open and ejaculate their pollen into the air I felt like I was in Syria and the victim of a chemical weapons attack disguised as spring flowers.  It became so bad that when I parked my car and started walking towards the house I would smell something that smelled like incense, wondering when the hell be burned some.  It was only yesterday that I realized I actually smelled the flowers and not incense.  So this morning, after a somewhat rough couple of days, I asked hubby to banish the pollen face raping flowers to his reception area of his studio.  I still have to walk past them every day but at least it is not ejaculating all over the house anymore.  Flowers can be such sexually inconsiderate assholes!

So even though my allergies are sort of under control this season and having survived two attempts to steal my spring joy I have managed to prevail.  I am looking forward to summer and some lazy days lounging next to the pool with cocktails.  Luckily the worst of spring in our garden is almost over and I just have to make it through three more weeks of pollen.  That being said, winter also wasn’t too kind to me this year and I managed to gain 5kg’s.  During winter I can cover up my flab but with summer board shorts only covers so much.  So perhaps instead of bitching about spring and the torturous process that is adoption, I should focus on shedding that extra winter weight.  I don’t want to look like an albino whale lying next to the pool, now do I?

Till next time.

Wallow in Self-Pity. It’s Liberating.

I am in a mood.  Actually, I have been in a mood since Monday.  For those of you who are not sure what I mean with “in a mood”, let me explain.  Since Monday I have not been able to snap out of my normal, not so pleasant, grumpy Monday morning personality and I have been a Debby Downer ever since.  Much like Grumpy Cat, I have been somewhat on the “glass is half empty and you can go fuck yourself” side.  But don’t get me wrong.  I am not apologizing.  Everyone is allowed to have a bad day; or in my case a few of them.  I just pity the people around me who have not learned how to deal with me when I am behaving like an emotionally stunted child alternated by me breaking down into a snot filled mess.  The secret is to just ignore me or to say “you are pretty” but you have to get your timing exactly right or else things can get ugly.  After some introspection (talking to our cats because I am eccentric or normal that way) I have come to the bottom of why I am being such a bitch.  It was narrowed down to Vodka, Fat and Pollen.

Not being a big Vodka drinker, other than my love for Bloody Mary's in summer, you may ask yourself why Vodka is upsetting me.  Well the answer is simple – Russia!  You see I recently learned that a certain Vodka company is sponsoring Joburg Pride and this has caused a shit storm in the South African LGBT community.  So much so, that I publically declared that my husband and I will be boycotting Joburg Pride this year.  I mean how can we in good conscience participate in an event that is sponsored by a company from a Fag Hating country?  Attending Joburg Pride would be like saying it’s ok that Russia is treating our LGBT brothers and sisters like shit, but hey at least they have Vodka!  Right?

After posting our plan to boycott Joburg Pride on Facebook, I received some rather unpleasant Facebook messages and emails.  All of which, I suppose, were from Vodka drinking homophobe loving assholes.  Some did get my tits in a twist, but I decided to just let it go.  Frankly, I am not being paid to think for people and I am not here to force my opinions on others (no matter how right they may be).  However, all I will say about this matter is, if you are a LGBT event accepting sponsorships from homophobic companies, companies from homophobic countries or any other homophobic person and/or group it is just as good as saying you condone their attitudes toward homosexuals.  It kind of makes you an event whore and I am not into shit like that.  And because I am not into whoring out my moral values and integrity for money, we are not attending Pride.  So if you want to send me more related hate mail on this subject matter, please don’t waste your time and enjoy your homophobic laced Vodka.  Ok!

Apart from Vodka, I also was mortified to discover this weekend that I actually put on 4 kilograms.  I have never had a good relationship with our scale, I hate that bitch and I am convinced she is a compulsive liar!  I mean really?  How could I have gained 4 kilograms but not have increased my body fat percentage?  Where the fuck did the fat go, or better yet where did the weight come from?  It’s not muscle, I am sad to say.  Also, it’s not like I have been eating that badly lately.  Sure I have stuffed my pie hole with some chocolates, but they were medicinal in that they made me feel better.  After all, chocolate doesn't judge you or tell you that you gained a few.  But scales do.  They should be banned or at the very least be renamed “Deceitful Machines of Soul Crushing Misfortune!”

I am fully aware that I need to start doing something about my weight gain.  I don’t want to end up on some reality show where the person can’t get out of bed and where the show starts with the word “Morbidly”.  Luckily I am too lazy to develop an eating disorder and I am still in what is considered to be a “normal weight” range.  Unfortunately, I have no immediate intention to start with an exercise regiment because that is for people who don’t own cars and have loads of free time.  Besides, I consider herding the bunnies in the afternoons as sufficient exercise.  After all it does contain some running around and some various other unconventional exercises like reaching underneath the car, climbing over wicker furniture, jumping over lounge chairs and crawling around on the ground on all fours.  However, of late this too has seemed to become a lazy routine.  You see, the bunnies too have gained some weight.

Our bunnies have a sweet tooth and, like children, they give preference to the foods they like.  Foods like grapes, apples, pineapple and bananas.  All of which are rich in sugar and the bunnies leave foods like hay, pellets, herbs, and other vegetables for last.  Due to this they too have become somewhat chubby and lazy.  Our herding sessions in the afternoons have gone down from forty minutes to five, maybe ten minutes at best.  They also halfheartedly run, or sometimes stroll away, preferring for me to do most of the physical exertion.  To the point where I wondered last week for who’s benefit am I doing this really.  Sure, herding them is the time they should come into the house for dinner and settle in for the night, also it is supposed to be play and exercise time for them.  Yet, I am the one getting all of the exercise, and lately not even much of that was happening either.  All I really have to do is leave a trail of grapes to the front door and they will come in on their own.  And technically letting them get fat is animal abuse.  So I guess the two bunnies and I are going to have to go on a diet and I possibly may need to buy a giant hamster wheel.

Lastly, I am in a mood because of pollen and I blame global warming for this.  It is August and spring is still a month away in the Southern Hemisphere and yet my garden has decided to start spring early.  Now, most of you who read my blog know that spring is the worst time of year for my allergies.  This is the time of year when I suffer from chronic hay fever; get pink eyes and generally look and feel like shit.  Why nature decided to get a head start, a month early, on torturing my allergies I do not know.  But one thing is for sure, I hope it ends a month early as well.  If it doesn’t then Mother Nature is just being vindictive and taking out her vengeance on humankind for treating her like shit out on me!  So to conclude; No, I am not in a good mood this week.  Vodka, fat and pollen are pissing me the fuck off and I am allowing myself a “wallow in self-pity” week.  If you have never had one, try it.  It’s liberating.  And fattening.

Till next time.