The legend known as AMY turned 4 today! I can't believe it's four years since we met her. Time just goes too fast once you have kids.
In other news, Indians appear to want to be white. It really makes me laugh that those who are brown, want to be white, and those who are white, want to be brown. Humans are just never happy. Maybe one day, with enough interbreeding, we'll all end up one indistinguishable shade of brown, and we can find something else to hate each other for.
Some photos of the joy here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mrsalmon/Summer2010
We finally got our phone line yesterday. It turns out, the assholes who laid the pipes, didn't install a phone cable. What superb work. What really grates me is the method of service delivery. Contractors just rock up at your house (sometimes at 8 in the morning on a weekend) with no notice and expect you to be there. They then ask the same questions the previous palooka did, root around a bit, and disappear. You can't find out the progress of the job, because the people at the call centre don't know, and you basically just have to wait for them. We've been in this house 6 months, and we've had 2 full months without a line - compare that to the UK where I had about 6 hours outage in over 5 years. Oh for some decent competition.
In the meantime, we've been up the arch of the new Durban staidum, to the beach pretty much every weekend, and work is stupidly busy. 2010 hasn't had a good start, but it's starting to improve!
What IS pertinent, however, is that this is the same guy who shouts communist slogans and wants to nationalise the South African mines. Basically, it's the most obvious contridiction ever: criticise captilism and it's trappings when talking to your followers, but embrace all of those same trappings in your OWN lifestyle. Do as I say, not what I do. I really wonder if he can actually see this himself, or if he's just to stupid? I really battle to fathom how someone can be this much of a hypocrite.
I had a pretty awesome weekend. Saturday, the waves were really really really fun in Umhlanga, and my last wave was 2 turns and a nice little tube. I spent the rest of the day with my girls and wife, cruising at home, capped by some pizza and wine. Good times.
The waves were good again on Sunday, but that wasn't the highlight of the session - the highlight was the 100 or so dolphins that played around us for 10 minutes, surfing and jumping out of the water. One big guy jumped about 3 or 4 meters from me, fully out of the water. I didn't catch a wave in ages, I was just trying to swim down to check them out - a very special experience.
Of course, however, it can't all go well - after a 4 or so month break from disease, Amy got hit with a ridiculous temperature yesterday evening. 3 days back at school and BANG. Poor little girl. Hopefully it clears up in the next day or so, at the moment she's feeling terrible, although I have to hand it to her, she doesn't complain at all.
I added some new albums to picasa too:
The girls were a delight, Amy is frigging hard work because she's go-go-go but she's the coolest kid in the world so I forgive her. Bel is coming on in leaps and bounds, she's very advanced for her age and is desparately trying to talk to everyone. She's actually got quite a big vocab now: Dada (me!), Mama, Mommy, Hello, Bye-bye, Dow (Down), Da (Duck), Up, Amy, Un (On), Baw (Ball), Baby, and a pile of others I forget right now. Very amusing though, and she still walks like a penguin, haw haw haw.
This year is gonna be even more hectic then the last one I think. We've had a million appliance issues (phone, fridge, stove, computer, and counting), and the bills are racking up - it's going to be rough! Home ownership is expensive, it's like you're throwing wads of cash into a bottomless pit. Still, the place is finally starting to take place and we're loving it. Both of us miss Westville and I miss being closer to the sea, but we both still feel it was a good move. We STILL haven't taken transfer of the damn place, but it should go through in the next week or two, fingers crossed.
My brother, his wife and Ciaran also return home from the UK this month, in fact Peet is already back and we'll be seeing her and the little man this weekend - WOOO HOO. Chris gets back in 3 weeks, so amped. It'll be good to have another mate home, it's kinda lonely being the only guy with kids coz I hardly ever see my friends, all I hear is them doing cool stuff. Such is life, wouldn't trade it for anything. With Bel growing up, hopefully we'll start getting out more - it's Rich and Anna's wedding in May and all the London boys will be home, we're hopefully going to St Francis with Todo and Andrea, and we've got a few other plans so we'll see how it goes. Let the good times begin!
Pics of my girls: http://picasaweb.google.com/mrsalmon/Christmas2009.The following weekend arrived, and we were meant to be having a housewarming braai with all of my mates. Quite a few had pulled out though due to various reasons, and Fee and the girls were so exhausted from a week of no sleep that I had cancelled the braai, and it's a good thing I did. We had noticed the night before that our bath hadn't been draining properly, so I had tried to plunge it, to no avail. It turns out, our entire underground sewerage system leading towards the waterborn pipes was blocked up, so effectively I was plunging a big pile of poo and toilet paper out of one the outlet pipes onto our garden. Awesome. So this little pile of fecal fun was waiting for us in the morning, and we had to call a plumber out to shove all the shit (excuse the pun) through and clear out the system. More expense - weekend rates of course!
Weekend 3 arrives, Senor Salmon is well and truly grumpy after a huge outflow of cash, crap weather and sick people. Sunday looms with glorious weather so we hit the beach at 8.15. Life is good. Amy needs a wee and goes to the toilet with Fee, Claire and her cousin. Wanting to wash her hands, her and Bethany climb onto a bench so they can get to the sink - as luck would have it the bench is unstable and falls over onto poor little Amy's foot, crunch. Anyway, Fee comes flying out with this poor little shocked girl with a foot that's literally bent in two. We rushed straight to the hospital to get it checked out, although by the look of it I had no hope it wasn't broken. It turned out though, that she had some cracks but the foot was fine - kids bones are so soft they just bent and the broken look was just a massive haematoma (spell?) that had formed from the trauma. I must say, little Amy was so brave - she was really trying her hardest not to cry and be a big girl with what must have been bloody sore. We had a couple bad nights sleep again with her in quie a bit of pain, but childrens' recuperation is amazing and one week later she was back on her feet and charging around the house.
I still haven't received the hospital bills, although I'm shitting myself for those. What an expensive, tiring, painful couple of weeks. Anyway, this last weekend came and went with no mishap, so I'm going to assume that our spell of bad luck is over, for now. Gah!