Running around in circles
16 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
That’s honestly how I feel about my life at the moment. This was my day today
7.45 am Left the house (on time) to take Aaron to Speech Therapy
8.30 am Leave Speech therapists rooms to get Tyla to school because she is having a little concert
9:00 am Get back to Speech Therapist to take Aaron to school – drop him off by 09h30
09h45 Get back to the school to take the photographs and realise that I don’t have the CF card in the camera (shush, don’t even go there)
10h00 Get home fetch the card and go back to school
10h30 – Get home do emails, a bit of editing
12h00 – Back to School to fetch Tyla, she is now finished for the day – go and drop her off at home and work for 20 minutes
12h45 collect Aaron from school – HE is now finished for the day
Do a bit of editing
01h30 – Leave to fetch Daigan who attends school te doer en gone – and thats an hours trip
02h00 – Arrive at school Fetch Daigan
02h30 – Arrive at P&P do a bit of grocery shopping
03h00 – Arrive home, start food preparation
03h30 – Do a bit of editing
04h00 – Kids get in the bath – TG Stefina does this or I would never get any work done
05h00- 07h00 – Family time – dinner time etc
after that its either TV or editing until whatever time of the night / morning
I would never give it up for the world, I LOVE LOVE LOVE working from home and being my own boss, but flip , it’s a madhouse and I never even had any shoots today 
What I’ve learned this week
12 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
That my hair really needs to look nice for me to feel good
That I am never going to be happy with the school system, I find fault with the nursery schools all the time.
That I will always cry at the school concert, even if my kid is not singing.
That KFC crushers rock!
That even though I say it all the time, my husband is truly amazing.
That as much as I prepare myself, i am never going to be ready to lose my dad.
The things that Girls are made of
11 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Tyla
I feel so blessed to have sons but so very pleased that I have a daughter too. My favorite part of the day is dressing her. And the best part of it all is that she enjoys it. We go to her cupboard in the morning and select the outfit for the day, we find matching shoes and hair accessores and once she is dressed we go and sit and my dresser and do her hair. I’m very lucky with her hair – she’s had thick curly hair since the day she was born so she has never known anything else.
There are a lot of other things that I enjoy doing for, and with the boys, but this week I’m really enjoying all things girlie.
I’m back – apparantly menopausal *slap*
08 Sep 2010 3 Comments
in Daigan
I’ve neglected my blog …….. badly!! I have not had the energy to run everything, and this blog had to take a back seat. But now I am back, I think fully recovered and needing a place to vent about arb stuff – FB status updates don’t do it.
I have to tell you what happened with Daigan yesterday, I am still giggling about it, but now wondering ……….
I fetch him from school yesterday and he as we are driving home he says to me
“Mom, can I ask you, are you maybe meTopausal?”
Me: “Hey? What you talking about, do you mean Menopausal?”
Daigan: “Ya, I mean Menopausal. We were talking about it in class today”
Me: “Daigan, I am going to slap you if I hear you’ve been talking about me to my friends and teacher” (at this point my voice is all shreaky like, half hysterical.
Daigan: “No, we are learning about Menopause and the teacher was listing all the symptoms and as he was saying them I was thinking, hey, that’s my mom!!”
Me: “So what are the symptoms?”
Daigan: “well apparantly women get irritatble and ratty and cross all the time over stupid things, and MOM, did you know they can even get off murder because of it?”
Seriously, do they only remember the bad stuff?
Little Shit better remember that “get away with murder clause”
I do love him though
The Perks of my Job
06 Jul 2010 3 Comments
Before I went into photography full time, I had worked for a large company my entire life, since I was 17 years of age. There had always been stability in terms of medical aid, pension and sickness benefits. When I was ill, I took off work and got a pay check at the end of the month.
So it’s been hard this time around, to try and focus on getting better and not worrying about money. Being a photographer is my dream, but financially it is not the same as working for a boss. Most of my money goes back into the business and I think clients do not even consider that when they fork out the money for their portraits. They see it as you have taken a photograph on a digital camera, there is no cost involved. Wrong!
I have received a lot of requests lately to mentor and I am quite willing to do it, and I will never put anyone off becoming a photographer but I think one of the main aspects most people have to consider is cost. If you are a budding photographer starting out, take the following into consideration before you buy a camera and hand in your notice at your day job, so that you are at least prepared.
Camera (yes, you need one of those) – and just as you get used to the camera you will probably need to upgrade, or replace. And a backup camera, just in case.
Extra batteries, a battery grip, and memory cards
Lenses (Oh lets not get started on the lenses, sob)
Lights (if you are going to do studio photography, and probably if you are not, you will probably need lights)
Decent computer to run Photoshop
With Photoshop must come the software, and the training of said software
Good backup drive
cd and DVD’s – lots of those to back up your shoots (yes, a backup of a backup) and of course to give your clients their pics on DVD
Marketing material (pamhplets, business cards)
Packaging – Boxes etc to present your work to the client
Then there are the props, I am a studio photographer mainly so I am a bit of a prop freak. I love them. Little hats, and baskets, and flowers and outfits. I draw the line at proper costumes like bee’s and winnie the pooh’s but I love tutu’s and wings and things. I never stop looking for props and am currently on the prowl for an old pram, have been looking out since I started this business actually – just haven’t been able to find something decent in my price range.
So, next time you pay for your photographs, please try and appreciate what goes into the huge prep behind them
You bring the “Gees” …. ♥
09 Jun 2010 3 Comments
in Moments Tags: 2010 soccer, avis car hire
My house is approx a km away from the highway that goes past the airport, but I haven’t travelled it in a few weeks because of the “goings on”. I usually travel it every day to fetch Daigan from school, but my mom and Matt have been doing the school run for weeks now. So I was beyond delighted to drive down the road and as I turned the corner, here were all these flags leading up to the airport, I shrilled like a gay queen on prom night!
So today, I decided to take my camera with me, I was going to get photographs for the first time in a long time, of things, of life. And as luck would have it, Avis head office in Isando was attempting a human chain to the highway at 12pm in honor of Bafana Bafana.
As we got off the highway , I had to go back on to take the pics of the Avis people and my friend Christie asked me if I was proud to be part of this and I just started crying. I can’t explain to you what it has done to me these past few weeks, going through photographs on Facebook that all my photog friends were taking , the lives that they were carrying on with, and even a wedding workshop that I had so wanted to attend by my friend Natasha du Preez – I couldn’t do it because I was too weak. It’s been hard – it’s not a jealousy, it was a deep sadness that I couldn’t get over, it’s hard to explain. Anyway, the tears, they just rolled and they were of joy because today I got to take a photograph again, I got to join in – in a very small way, and it means so much to me.
So, they brought the Gees, and I took the pics ♥
The aftermath …. blah blah
08 Jun 2010 6 Comments
in Me
As a result of my thyroidectomy, I have either lost my parathyroids, or they have been damaged, we are still not sure which. The surgeon seems to think that they should recover in a few months and I hope , please pray that he is right. The Parathyroids control amongst other things, your calcium levels. Now at this stage if I don’t drink calcium 3 – 4 times a day I get the most terrible pins and needles, my eyeballs jump up and down, and i get facial twitches that would be fun if I were at a rave, but not fun at the moment. So what’s so hard about taking calcium meds you ask? Well it is – they are these huge big fizzy tablets that I have to dissolve in water and they are horrendous to ingest – the first few days were bad, but after 3 weeks of drinking them, i actually have to build up the courage to do so. And then for about an hour afterwards I feel yugh, quite nauseous, it’s just horrible!!
I went to the specialist physician today to ask him to take control of my medicine situation. At the moment I feel a bit confused about who is actually caring for me. I have a surgeon, a physician and an oncologist. The surgeon sounds like he wants to cry when I phone him and just wants me to go away now. The oncologist is a really cool person but looks like she should be on holiday in Cape Town, she is that chilled, and the physician is all stern and stuff but knows his shiz when it comes to meds. So Matt and I decided that only one of them should be in charge instead of me phoning around every time I have a query re: my meds.
The tests show that my calcium is still far too low (same as it was when I was hospitalised a few weeks back) so he has given me another tablet to take as well. I also have to take a horrendously expensive Vitamin D tablet every day because the caliciferol was not working and my VIT D is too low for the calcium to absorb properly.
Sigh, so hopefully in a few months time my parathyroid glands will have recovered, this seems like a huge burden to bear for the rest of my life – not fun 
Cancer is a four letter word ……….Season Finale!!
06 Jun 2010 7 Comments
in Me, Uncategorized Tags: Thyroid Cancer
So, I think it’s over, I have just been through a week of absolute hell and I think that it’s over
I know ….. you’re sitting there thinking, what a whinging whiney chick this is, a week out of somebody’s life is nothing! And looking back i think that too, but the absolute hell of constant vomiting, pain and feeling that you are never going to climb out of this pit you have fallen into is hell on earth.
But, I woke up this morning and I could feel a difference – there was no headache and more importantly there was zero nausea!!! I have never ever thought that I would say this, but I am SO happy to have my appetite back!!! I think that I would rather be in pain that be nauseous like that all the time, I hate it!! I have no idea how I am going to do this next year again, but for now I need to concentrate on getting strong and getting back on the road, I can’t let myself be held back by thoughts of what is going to happen next year.
And you know that saying that something like this always happens for a reason? Well I can’t think of what the reason would be for cancer, but what it has taught me is who are the keepers, and who are not. People who have come out of the woodwork here for me, has been absolutely amazing. Even those that have just sent sms’s and a phone call here and then, I can’t elaborate exactly how much it meant to me.
My mother in law has been phenomenal, the things she has done , well I won’t go into it right now, but if everyone had a MIL like her, we’d all be happily married.
And then there is my husband – he deserves a blog post all of his own so I am not even going to go there right now – but all I can say is that I was blessed with the nicest, bestest man on earth – he truly is amazing and I love him so much.
So hopefully, from very soon, my blog posts are going to be full of photo’s again, photo’s of me living it up and appreciating all that I have.
For life…… for better or for worse
01 Jun 2010 2 Comments
in Me
It hit me this morning like a ton of bricks. I have cancer, yes I have a “good” cancer, but it’s still cancer. And with it comes a lifelong sentence, it never goes away.
I have to have another scan in 6 months time to make sure that the radiation has done it’s job and if there are any traces of cancer cells they do this all over again. And then after that once a year, for life. How do you go from year to year with this hanging over your head thinking that it may return at any time? Yes I know that the yearly scans are there for a purpose, to check that the cancer has not returned, and it’s a good thing that they check isn’t it? But how do you get your head around the panic that sets in when you think of having cancer. It’s crazy.
And the nausea is debilitating – what if this lasts for months, oh please lord please let it just go away
I’ll be back when my sense of humour has returned.
Cancer is a four letter word, Part 2
30 May 2010 6 Comments
in Me Tags: iodine radiation treatment, rosebank clinic, Thyroid Cancer
I’m sitting here after eventually dragging myself out of bed at 1.30pm and having a bath to try and make me feel better. This has been tough that is all I can say. I woke up yesterday morning looking like I had the mumps and I couldn’t move my jaw. I was as nauseous as well and oh joy, I am allergic to all anti nausea meds.
Mathew stopped past to drop off my pillow and some chewy sweets, and he stood at the door and waved, that’s really the only contact we could have. The oncologist said that I should bring some with but I thought she meant to keep me busy – so i brought chocolate and biscuits instead *insert rolly eyes at my own stupidity here*. The chewy sweets are to keep the saliva glands going so that they don’t swell up like they had. Not sure exactly why it affects the saliva glands, I still need to go and do some reading up on that.
The actualy radiation process is simple. They come in, remove the capsules from a tube, pop it in your mouth and you swallow it. They walk out, close the door and tell you to no circumstances come outside – if you want anything you ring the bell. Oh and there is a big yellow triangle on my door with a radiation warning.
The isolation itself has not been too bad – I have been feeling too sick to miss anyone too much. I am chatting to the kids on the phone so that’s ok and at least I have interwebz to keep me up to date on what is going on around me. I’m currently watching the Susan Boyle show, and that’s quite uplifting
I’m at Rosebank Clinic, and please believe me, this has to be the worst hospital food I have ever tasted. I am too nauseous to eat food as such so I am ordering dry stuff like croissant for breakfast and wholewheat roll for lunch and dinner. But is it absolutely necessary for every singl item to be 5 days old? The Jelly and Custard can’t go wrong can it? Wrong! The Jelly is fine, but the custard has not been cooked and has not seen a drop of sugar, it tastes like milk mixed with yellow cardboard.
The staff are great though, they leave me alone obviously because of the isolation, but they come in every now and then to make sure I am ok and the one lady keeps on running downstairs to get me ice chips for the nausea. The nurse that brought me my towels must’ve seen how I was ready to drop because she ran my bathwater for me and helped me in, and stuck around until I got out.
When I first arrived on Friday I burst out crying when they showed me to my room. It was a tiny corner cupboard with a window way up high. I sat down and just sobbed and said to Mathew that this is what it has to be like to be in jail. The nurse came in and I ranted at her with snot flying in both directions and next thing she had whisked me into a suite with a huge big window, with a tree outside, the tree is now my friend. And best of all it has one of those new fancy beds with the controls that you can just push to have the backrest go up and down and the foot of the bed bends and oh its very nice – see …………. little things please me.
So tomorrow, in theory, I get to go home. They will fetch me for another scan tomorrow to see whats up, and then I can call my beloved man to take me home.
