Pulling Strings (Present)

Arno LOVES string. He is forever asking me to buy him string. Sometimes you find he has tied up all the teddy bears in his possession, and everything is a mangled mess, and other times, you discover he had string in his pocket when they were on the farm - and he was able to help out with tying something up. Last week, I ended up washing his shorts - and out of the pocket came kilometers of string - AFTER it had been washed.

I have even taken to buying extra rolls of string and sort of hiding them in my own drawers - with the words - This is MY string - it belongs to ME. When he runs out of string, he eventually winkles out those supplies too, and comes asking for it. I look sternly at him asking - What is that for NOW, but eventually give it to him, because it was bought for him anyway!

This week, I get called into his room to look at his latest invention. He has discovered that every night, when he has climbed the long ladder to the top of his bunk bed, and wants to go to sleep, that he arrives at the top, only to see his curtains are not drawn. Then he has to trek all 5 rungs back to the floor - in order to close his curtains. That is way not on - and way too much effort for the little sausage! So - he made a plan. He STRUNG his curtains up, so that he can "draw" them closed when he is lying in bed. "When I am grown up, mom - I will get remote control curtains - you get those you know." Yes, I do know - SIGH - men and remotes - poor wife one day.

So, I am treated to a demonstration of a variety of things his new string contraption can do. The strings are even labelled - so he knows their functions!

They can close the curtains, close the window itself , open curtains (sort of - one opens and the other closes), etc.

In between these demonstrations, I get a huge giggle, because some of the stuff does not work quite like he had intended it to. My programmer brain translates this : your system has some bugs, you will need to find the bug, redo the design, and then TEST the whole system again. Briefly I wonder if I should use this as a lesson about "testing" stuff in life - but decide that is way too programmer like to be cool.

"This deserves a blog spot Mom", says Marinda in admiration. I have to agree, he did earn himself a blog spot!

As I walk out his room that night, he calls me back to switch off his light.
"Haven't you got a string to pull, that will do that for you?" I ask slyly.
"Moooooooom" is my only answer, and I wonder how long it will be before he designs a hammer falling from the roof, to switch off his light.

Oeps

Heeelloooooooo!
Happy new year.
Back online, back in the working world, back to normality!

We had a lovely Christmas, and just took Werner's children back this weekend. Despite the hard work of having 5 kids around - it was sad to see them go. Eric had tick bite fever while he was with us, so we had a few troublesome nights with him, and we heard on Monday that Carissa has tick bite fever too. They all spent time on the farm before Christmas - with the Prof and Cream Puff - so - I guess that is the down side of country life.


The children had a wonderful time on the farm. There, they ride horses, swim, even row boats in a nearby dam. The Prof was well behaved, or perhaps they had more space to escape his grumpiness, than when they are at home with him. Despite the lovely life style of the farm, they were happy to come home again - and live a normal, somewhat more sedate lifestyle. It took a few days for them to settle back into our way of life here!



While the kids were with us, we painted T-shirts, decorated cookies, read stories, took photos... made food, made more food (that cycle just never ends!)

Well, that is a very short recap of what has kept us occupied. Shoo.



I think it is time to get back to the story line. I was last telling you where Werner was in the whole story. He had found out about the affair, had in fact also discovered who the other man was, Cream Puff was still living at home, but Werner knew it was over. He just didn’t know when she was leaving.

A funny incident occurred round about this time: before Cream Puff moved out. It was quite late at night, and Cream Puff was acting strangely. She had been sms-ing on her phone and just generally, Werner sensed that something was not right.

Not quite able to figure it out, he told her he was going to bed, but he actually went outside, to stand in the garden and smoke… and think, I guess.

Standing in the shadows, he noticed a car pulling up in front of his house… guess who! The Prof!

Werner walked out to the drive way – and casually asked the Prof – “Can I help you?”

The Prof got an awful shock!. He had come over, to give Cream Puff a humidifier (my humidifier!), because one of the children was sick and coughing.

The Prof practically threw the humidifier down, jumped in his car and rushed off… in the process bumping his car into a tree.

His car still has the bent back fender as proof, but he has changed the story a few times over. When the children asked him what had happened to his car, he told them he had driven in to a tree at the university. Funny enough, this same conversation recently came up between Marinda and her dad, as a discussion they were having on TRUST. She was saying she couldn’t TRUST him because he had lied to her, and she used this as one of the examples. He got very upset, and told her, he had bumped his car into a tree in our street.

Tsk tsk… when you lie – you need a better memory than that Prof – your stories aren’t straight!

Bathroom Renovations (Present)

As promised - some photos of what is keeping us busy!

Werner fixed up this bathroom. It was full of mould, and yukky. Every time we paint or fix something up, it is more of the Prof gone, and gets more of an "our" character.

The paint was peeling off the ceiling. Here, Werner has scrapped it all off, and as you can see - the end result is beautiful.

This old basin was a problem and a half. When installing the new one, it leaked water on the outlet. Werner struggled with it for a whole day.... deciding that plumbing is not his thing. But - he got it sorted.

Christmas time Reflections (Present Tense)

Today, I am going on leave. Yah! We are not going away - we are fixing up the house. I will post some photos of our progress.

I was just looking back over the last few years in amazement.

Going back 3 years puts me smack in the middle of deep trouble and turmoil. The Prof had done his midnight ride to Witbank thingie, and was about to break the dreadful news of his imminent departure on Christmas Eve.

2 Years ago, I was friends with Werner, and spending Christmas time with him and his family. Quite a nice thought - neither he nor I ever spent a Christmas alone.

Last year, we were newly married, spending Christmas with the children at my sister's place.

This year: Christmas day is 1 day late - because all the children are with the Prof and Cream Puff - out on the farm in Witbank. We get them back on the 26th, so we have delayed our Christmas day celebrations to the 26th.

Christmas days used to be stressful affairs, with lots of family politics. Now they are a sweet gathering of my dearest family, and the only stress is : what dishes do we prepare for the meal. Wow - blessings indeed.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you dear reader, for sharing this journey with me. For the encouragement, for clever and insightful comments, for the keen interest and anticipation with which some friends await the next post! It has kept me writing, and challenged me to dig deeper within myself.

Mom, thank you for the beautiful translation work for our Dutch family, for the proof reading and for endlessly fixing up my WHERE and WERE mistakes!

I will do some post of photos, but continue with the story line in January. Wishing you all a very wonderful Christmas season.

Cream Puff's Birthday

Where were we? Oh yes - telling the story from Werner's side. It was March 2007, and they were still staying in their house, which had been put up for sale.

Werner discovered gifts that The Prof had given to Cream Puff – in the cupboard. (As I said before - not a very bright cookie!) There were mugs, shoes… and finally – Perfume.


I need to backtrack into my life here, to show you the significance of what happened. I am not a big perfume person. The Prof had bought me Jean Paul Gaultier perfume, the one in the picture at the top of this post. I quite liked it.

So, guess what he bought Cream Puff? Yup - Very original: Jean Paul Gaultier Perfume! The very same one.

On Cream Puff's birthday, Werner smelled this new perfume and just KNEW that she had received it as a gift from The Prof. He had not smelled it before, and she used to tell him when she bought herself perfume.

It was still early in the morning and the house hung thick with the smell of that perfume. It made him sick to his stomach.

“Go, bring me that perfume you have put on”, he told her. She bought back a bottle of perfume – not the Gaultier.

"No", he shook his head, "the other one... the one the Prof bought you for your birthday."


She eventually brought it out, and he went outside, into the street.

"SMASH it ", he told her.

He says she stood for a very long time with that bottle held high, eventually dropping it onto the street.

Today, he tells the story with a wicked grin.

"Do you know how perfume stinks when it has been in the sun all day? "

That smell he had been trying to get rid of, hung about the house like a fog. He scrubbed and hosed it down, but it took a long, long time for the smell to go away.


And my own bottle of Jean Paul Gaultier? Well, I wrapped it up and sent it to the Prof, when I realized the duplicity, and how Werner hated that smell. I imaged how the Prof passed on my bottle of perfume to Cream Puff, as a replacement.

2nd hand goods darling - like some people we know!

The Sweet Spot

This is one of my most poignant stories of Werner.

He put his house up for sale, on insistence of Cream Puff. In retrospect, he says, that it went on the market (and subsequently sold) for too cheap, because she was desperate that they get this house off their names.

This... the place that Werner had stayed home for on weekends, spent his time and money fixing up, just became another casualty of this thing called divorce.

He says - at the time, it is all unreal, and you don't really realise what is happening, it all moves too fast. I was so lucky in that sense. The Prof gave me the house, and I never went through the trauma of parting with my home and safe space.

But my story today, is about Werner's sound room. In the "Sound Industry" there is a term known as a "sweet spot". A "sweet spot", I have learnt (but never heard), is when the sound from all the speakers, in a closed room, hit your ears at the exact, precise same moment. There is not a millisecond delay in any of the sounds.

A room having a "sweet spot" will remain in exactly that state. IF you move a single article in that room, even if you bring in extra people - it changes the way the sound waves bounce off stuff - and thus disturb your "sweet spot". This is then, an elusive and difficult thing to achieve in any sound room. It requires dedication, hard work, experiments, measuring with sound equipment, disappointments, and above all - TIME, to achieve this. Some people never get it right. The shape of a room, the height of a ceiling - all affect the ability to get a "sweet spot" - or not, as the case may be.

Werner made himself a sound room in this house. He had the measuring guys there, he dropped the ceiling, put in double glass on his windows to stop vibration, raised and lowered speakers ... I think you get the picture. Huge schlep, huge expense.
And yes - FINALLY - he had a "sweet spot" in his sound room, after years of fiddling around to get it!

He called his dad and brothers, and they also heard the "sweet spot". Music was his very life, it was what got him through his weekends alone. This was a huge personal achievement.

And Cream Puff? She doesn't know what a "sweet spot" is. She never knew about it, and never heard it.

Selling a house, is kinda detrimental to a "sweet spot". They really hate that! You pack up that room, and the "sweet spot" moves out!

I guess it was the least of his worries at that stage, but his story made me really sad. I asked him once, if he would like to make a new sound room in our house, but he shook his head. The time, effort and money are too much. He had achieved it once, and that was it. It is a thing you only do once in a life time.

But, he said giving me a huge hug, YOU are my sweet spot now.....

Drugged

Werner himself says he doesn’t know where reality ended and paranoia started. He began to notice strange things. The first strange thing was that he was tremendously thirsty. (OK I was thirsty too, and I found out afterwards that stress does that to you – you are thirsty all the time, but you can’t eat.) As Werner describes it so well: there is a little man, standing on your throat, pressing it closed!


But together with thirst, he felt strange. He felt like he didn’t care, that he was disconnected.

A few years prior, the Dr had prescribed pills for stress, which he had not taken. He took it once, didn’t like how it made him feel, and chucked the pills, forgotten, on top of a cupboard.

He went looking for them. There should have been about 28- 29 pills left, but when he found them… there where only 2! He suspected that Cream Puff was putting the powder from these pills, into his food / sugar / coffee.

He also noticed that when he smoked his cigarettes, the filter part turned black. He kept a stash hidden away, and when he smoked those, the filter did not turn black.

Not knowing what to make of it all, he began keeping his own coffee and sugar, and was suspicious of absolutely everything Cream Puff gave him to eat or drink.

Please don’t misunderstand me, he did not think she was trying to kill him, merely trying to calm him down.

Adding to all this were the smses he had read on her phone, which also referred to pills.

Was Cream Puff drugging him as a precautionary measure to protect herself? Who knows. It is a pity he did not run blood tests at the time. But when he stopped drinking and eating what was given to him, he stopped feeling strange and disconnected. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.