Kachasu

Thank God for Alcoholics Anonymous! My head was in such a snarl this morning about the man I live with and love, ready to throw it all away in an all-or-nothing scenario. I know when I am in a space like that, I need to do something. Writing helps a lot to clarify the problem but not always to solve it. SO off I headed for lunch with my sponsor (this is someone in AA with more sobriety than me and who I trust to be honest with me). Anyway, she reminded me that every thing I do in life is a choice. More importantly it is a choice in that day, that moment. That not all of my decisions need to be made today. Each day I can wake up and reinvent myself, make choices for the day. I can choose to be sober, choose to be a mother, choose to go to work, choose to look good, choose to eat, choose to stay with the man FOR THAT DAY. There are many things in life that are too much to cope with other than one day at a time. When I got sober and I heard people talking about not picking up a drink I felt relieved and yet appalled. The thought of a life without alcohol was too appalling. Where would I hide? What would I do to get through the night? Or the day for that matter. And yet a day at a time I have made it to almost four years. The trick it seems, is in only making choices for that day. Not sitting and imagining myself a year from now still not married, still not secure, still in debt- I can decide tomorrow to change anything I like. I can choose not to be anything that I currently am. It’s all about choice. Every moment. Every unhappiness. Every worry. It’s a choice.

How did this happen? I wake up and find I am in about R2m worth of debt. Obviously it didn’t happen last night. This has been a slow and gradual step towards hell. My bond is about R1.5m. Two cars, around 400k, credit cards around R100k. I am in shit. Debt repayments chew up about 80% of my after tax income… If I can stop drinking, surely I can stop spending? Then why do I start wondering about getting ANOTHER credit card to pay off the existing ones. Debt consolidation seems like a plan. But then, I will have access to even more credit – nasty nasty nasty. Thank GOD there are no store cards or accounts in my name. But R2m? Shit shit shit. I suspect the only logical answer is to shred the shitty bits of plastic. But then what if I need them? Aaaargh. Then, when I start to fret about it, I want to spend more! “Those are nice sidetables… ours are nasty… Only R1500 and they are antique…” SWIPE. This has to stop. We eat out four or five times a week. AND THEN I WONDER HOW THE FUCK THIS HAPPENED? *clickety click* – token payment to one of credit cards. Feel a bit better. But watch.. in a week I will be thinking “well, i have that money…” SWIPE. This has to stop. Really it does.

I tell you up front that I am not yet a Catholic. It’s a long story involving atheism, oceans of vodka and some scary exorcism movies (see other blogs). Anyway, I drag my ass to catechism class every tuesday night and Mass every Sunday. It’s still very strange and I am not entirely sure when I must bow/cross myself/sit/pray – ag it’s a really interesting time. I love the theology of it and all the ritual. DO NOT GIVE ME SHIT ABOUT CATHOLICISM. I like it. ALl of it. Do I actually believe? The jury is out, but I would like to. I am not even baptised. So can someone please explain why it is that six months into this I am feeling GUILTY for not going to catechism on Tuesday? I just didn’t feel like it. I was hot as hell and just wanted to veg and watch CSI. Not once in the past six months has the priest mentioned hell fire and damnation… After oceans of vodka, there is pretty much only one commandment left to break and I have personal experience of every venial sin on the list. So why am I anxious about missing this thing? Why is this happening?

This is not OK really. I mean come on!

http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_2021645,00.html

Durban – Two policemen were arrested in Durban for holding up a woman in her home and robbing her of R800 at gunpoint, police said on Friday.

Police spokesperson Inspector Thulani Mkhize said the two officers were arrested on Thursday.

He said the men arrived at the woman’s Claremont house saying they were policemen. She refused to open the door at first, believing that they impersonating policemen.

When they produced a firearm she relented.

As they drove away after the robbery a relative noted the number plate on the car, which was the police officer’s personal vehicle.

Mkhize said that the two constables had worked together with a civilian. They are expected to appear in the Wentworth magistrate’s court.

I guarantee you that approximately 80% of what you read or hear in the media is generated a publicity machine in some way or another. This means we may not be in the process of being brainwashed by a sinister government, but corporates are a monster worth thinking twice about. All government communication is spawned by spin doctors, so it is obvious to us that we should regard it with suspicion. All the other things we read, in a supposedly objective press, are generated by PR agencies and companies directly in order to drive sales. Sometimes it is subtle brand building, thought leadership blah blah. Ever noticed how there are all sorts of ‘industry and specialist’ publications? Greedy publishers see an industry with money and make a magazine. Then the PRs fill it with things designed to sell their client’s product/services. The point is that it is not PRs fault, or media’s we all need to make a living somehow. The sad truth though, is that media has lost its credibility (with a handful of exceptions) and PR’s are the parasite. The fault lies with corporates. The greed and mind-bending is astonishing. It used to be that we knew not to trust adverts but that we could trust the paper or the telly (sort of). Well you can’t. And it goes beyond that. There are some parasitic companies who are out there being paid to ’seed’ and promote products by word of mouth. Pretty much nothing that you see, think or do is not something that has been marketed in some way or another. The only solution? Trust nobody and nothing.

I was born in Zim. Left at the age of 5 because my dad refused to fight a civil war that he did not believe in. Returned in 1980 (at independence). Went to school. Sitting at the back of the science lab one day, the whities in the row were singing some or other stupid Rhodesian song “daddy went to fight for the green and white.” These were not my friends. I did not know these words. I was still pale from years in England. I was doing my work. Next thing I know there is a belligerent black girl called Veronica smacking ME in the face! ME! I was outraged.
And that, my friends, was my first experience of a completely unjust and blind-stupid racism. The lumping together of anyone with a white skin in “The Enemy Camp.” I didn’t learn my lesson though.
I did some work for the ANC in the first 94 elections amongst other things in my time on this continent.
And still, I am the one being slapped in the face because I just happen to be a white.

I am not a tax specialist but boy does it annoy me when government spends money on things I do not view as necessary. Nearly half my salary disappears on PAYE, then there is all the other VAT and crap I pay. Then I see they are spending R25billion on 2010, R10m on JZ lawyers and I get enraged.
I want my taxes spent on cops, roads, schools and health. Not all this other rubbish. 25billion on a bunch of soccer games?? Is this even remotely sensible? How much are we going to make back? I bet nowhere near that. And if we don’t sort out crime it won’t even work as a marketing SA initiative. People will stay at home and watch it on telly. I would.
As for Jacob Zuma… Words fail me. Nobody asked me if that was OK. And that is my money!

Today is one of those days. The ones when before my eyes are open and long before the first cigarette reaches my mouth (usually the cigarette’s first they are always within groping-blindly distance) I am already trying to figure how not to do the things in my diary.
Not every day is like that. Some days are spring forth and I am remarkably life-like after the first cup of coffee and few cigarettes. By the time I have been in traffic for 20 minutes listening to something up-beat I am positively cheerful.
Not today. I feel like a Goddess of determination and martyrdom that I have made it to 12.30 without getting a chronic migraine leading me to go home. OK well the migraine would be a twinge that I could think into something akin to a possible brain tumour. Miraculously healed once I hit my own front door.
If I feel like this, I wonder how the people who work for me feel? I can drift off: ‘got a meeting,’ and escape to a movie for a couple of hours. They can’t. Depression? Boredom? Sloth? Who knows. Today is just not a day to sit at this desk trying to look like I am a) busy and b) paying attention and c) fully in charge.
In 30 minutes I am off to lunch. From there we will see how it goes.

“Computer games don’t affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.” — Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989″

hahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah.
*choke*

Once upon a time I was a slutty teenage goth that loved vodka. I had a good friend called Fiona and when we were 15 she had a boyfriend called Simon. He was a nice enough guy, skinny but he could drink a lot. In fact, Simon was pretty much always off his head on something-or-other.
He broke up with Fiona and I started spending time in a cheesy, arcade game riddled, burger joint called The Golden Arch – we sort of lost touch. Then Simon started hanging out there too. He began wearing stretch jeans and then followed up with little girlie chinese slippers on his size 10 feet. I was too besotted with some guy called Peter to pay too much attention. Then Simon became the talk of the town, wearing frocks down First Avenue on a Saturday morning, stumbling because he was off his head and balancing on those heels was a problem.
I was a rebel too and we started to hang out again. I had no real cause for rebellion – but he did. Simon was the first person I was ever conscious of being gay. He met an older man and they got married at Lake Mac. Simon in a beautiful white dress and his husband in a suit. It was all very bohemian. I wish I could remember more of that day, but vodka plays havoc with a brain.
Simon’s family recovered eventually, but he didn’t. His husband sent him to England to begin a sex change process. Simon died his first night in London from a drug overdose. His brother told me a few nights after it happened outside a dive called BeatBox. I didn’t go to the memorial service. Instead I got drunk with some other friends.
Lately I have been thinking about Simon, wondering if things could have worked out differently if he had not lived in such a conservative place. If he had lived in a society that didn’t cause him to feel shame because of what he was. I think that of all the people in this wonderful country who are not black, it is the homosexuals who know what it is to be persecuted and discriminated against because of something that they can no more change than they can walk on water.
This gay marriage act should go a long way to normalising things – not because now they can scream out of the closet and rush down the aisle, but because it provides a sensation of normality. Maybe now the desperate feeling of apartheid from the rest of society can go. The sensation of rejection before you even begin. I don’t know, I am not gay (or male for that matter) but I think gay marriage is a good thing. My church doesn’t and that is fine. I am not affected by the Catholic stance on that, I am just an observer. And I cared rather a lot for Simon.
*****