who needs pretoria friends visiting anyway?

still reveling in the afterglow of the weekend - yep, folks, it was a great one. ducked out of cocktails on friday (and a good thing too, can't stand that stuck-up prick marc was dragging with) and spent the evening with that far more pleasurable activity, making butternut soup.

saturday came, and armed with my credit card and 4 mates, hit stellies for some serious el vino buying. was very militant about the number of farms we had to visit, so no one was allowed even to think of stopping for lunch (this nazi bought sausage rolls, and ordered timmy to make sandwiches for padkos). 27 bottles later, my thirst for purchase had been quenched (well, actually the farms I still wanted to go to had closed), and hunger pangs were beginning to attack. we went asian for dindins, then on to what has to be one of the most awesome clubs ever. who'd have thought that cape town's elite could make for pleasurable company is any setting, let alone in a club? (was completely turned off by the ferrari gallardo parked right outside the entrance with the numberplate 'TOPGUN')

the view from the 31st floor overlooking CT was spellbinding, as were the gyrations of a scantily-clad, coke-saturated pretty blonde thing, semi-humping her pimp on the dancefloor right next to me. i couldn't help but stare, less for her antics and more for the attraction of her appearance, which strikingly resembled my current preferred lesbian fantasy partner, scarlett johannsen. oh, and i must have looked fabulous myself, because 4 men were trying to get all over me (not simultaneously). oh the boost to my already-large ego! of course, my pal was jealous of the attention i was getting, and kept acting like he was my boyfriend at the most inopportune moments, so i never got anyone's number (not that i'd be able to do anything with anyone's number, anyway, being the faithful girlfriend that i am).

to end a rather long post briefly, here's the quick sunday rundown: headache at 9am, choo-choo to kalk bay at 12, lunch at fab olympia's, choo-choo back at 3:30, tea and card games with fed&ed, dindins at timmy&marc's (where a certain nauseating relationship threatened to ruin my dessert), failed dye-job on nan after the movie. and so here we are, back at the week. sigh.

Shame, family and a hot tub

God, rereading yesterday's blog and cringing at the melodrama of it all. In keeping with my blog integrity, I'll not delete it, and rather keep it as a reminder of the soppy depths I can descend to. So, Timmy's wrapped up to go, one relationship's serving with a dose of knraut on the side. Get over it, Lauren, it's his choice, his right, and you're buggering off to Joburg before you have to see it getting real down and dirty.

The drama (which played itself out late on Sunday, anyway) made me forget that for the rest of the weekend, I was entertaining Mom and the sis. Yip, they lugged their lean asses (don't get me started on their eating habits - y'all know how I feel about a good sauce-dripping-calorie-ridden piece of chunky meat, preferably duck) down here to see me. So, in between the frantic shopping frenzy they had secretly planned between them (goddamnit, what the hell do you want to do going to three shopping centres in two days?), I managed to drag them to Buena Vista Social Club, the beach, Kirstenbosch, Hout Bay and Tank. And, because quite frankly I fell very little connection to any family member, I was graced with some respite from them on Saturday night, and ducked to visit my peeps at a larny Camp's Bay house a friend's housesitting at.

Had to scale the friggin' wall cos the friggin' friends were screeching at the top of their voices on the other side of the house and couldn't hear my hooting, phonecalls and loud shouting - was expecting a bazooka-wielding guard to pounce on me, but surprisingly entered the property unhindered.

The jacuzzi had been fixed, unbeknown to me, so commoner that I am, I joined the cozzie-clad bunch in my undies, while another sullen-faced un-cozzied person sat by watching us wistfully in the tub. Two gays (one in the closet, one undecided) were making passes at each other, Timmy and his lass-to-be were rubbing up way too close for my liking, the rest of us quaffed vino and southern comfort. Nothing remains of the evening except a sniffle, and the rash of chaffing wet underwear on my skin. Oh, and the promise of similar antics sometime this weekend. Bring it on!

Yesterday I lost my best friend. Not to disease, emigration or an unresolved feud, but to the more insidious evil of a girlfriend who hates my guts. It is enough to put me off having good friendships with guys ever again – the list of male mates I’ve lost due to girls grows steadily. Yes, Timmy and I will speak, and yes, we might go out for the occasional drink unsupervised by said girlfriend, but no, the overriding knowledge of her arch disapproval of our close friendship will not be overcome. I can’t write anymore, the tears are welling up as I write this under the leering glare of my colleagues. Bye Timmy. I love you.

Calories shmalories

I have had it up to here ('here' being a hand pointed at my neckline) with picky women who eat ridiculous small portions. There is a strong correlation between the size of a girl's average meal portion and the nibbly size of the bite she takes (yes, yes, I know you're thinking "...and the size of her ass", but that's not my gripe here). Small, meek women with little or no personality nibble like mice on their celery sticks. And I'm convinced that the correlation extends further - to the bedroom, where nibbly eating chicks equate to frigid, unpassionate lovers (their bodies have to conserve the energy they're not getting from their dietary intakes, you understand). Of course, the amount of time they devote to food and 'healthy eating' as a conversation topic is also inversely proportional to their portion sizes. (No, for fuck's sake, I don't care that you found this new brand of calorie-free salad dressing). Now, I know that you might think this venting stems from my bitching about my current state of chubbiness (if you can't beat 'em, then eat 'em), but really, I have been irked for the past 7 fucking months in CT by my colleague who eats less than most homeless beggars do. And now I shall unashamedly admit to my little revenge plot that I have been carrying out, ever since that fateful day in October last year when we were shoved into a house together...

Almost every second evening (when I'm not gorging at a new restaurant on my gourmet tour of CT), I have to cook dinner, and you can bet your lean asses that it's all battered, fried and sugar-coated in calorie heaven. Mathematically speaking, my glee is directly proportional to the look of dismay on her face each time my cuisine is presented.

So, call me a martyr - after all, I'm dragging myself down with her - but this is work that just has to be done. Us foodies need to rid the world of the stingy calorie-counters, after all, it's in the interest of everyone's sex lives. It's a religious quest too - spiritually speaking, there's only one Roman god that anyone longs to follow in example, and that's Bacchus - god of food, drink and hedonism.

So go on, my luvverlies, eat, drink, and indulge in that only decent calorie-burning activity, sexercise.

On the menu tonight? Bouillabaise! And chocolate fudge brownies! Mwuahahaaaa!!!!

Treadmills and burnt buns

I don't believe it - I finally got my fat ass back into gym last night. after a way-too-short 4-week fat break, my colleague forced me into it. of course, I emerged with a face the colour of a beetroot and a distinct limp (partly dramatised, for extra effect), but that was the bulk of the unpleasantness. I can happily report that I have minor muscle stiffness, and can go on eith life. I've also discovered that them hormones aren't so fond of exercise (sexercise yes, but the regular old vertical workout no), which means I have a new way to deal with them. Whew! Ladies and gentlemen, it is safe to let your sons out again.

On a tv note, I've decided csi:ny is crap. what gullible moron viewer would believe the software programmes they use in their investigations, actually exist? "oh yes, we'll just locate the exact position in the whole of new york where this flower specimen occurs using our spiffy programme that generates really cool but unnecessary graphics" (i've paraphrased a bit, but that's essentially the dialogue)

Tonight's plans involve a soiree, hosted by myself - after substantial pressure from the CT peeps. I am cooking for 10, and have made the unwise decision to make rosemary and olive rolls from scratch. And no, I don't have a backup plan - that's such a Dorito's moment of boldness, isn't it?

So bottoms up, dearies, and a good vino-quaffing to you all...

a treatise on yonis and lingams

I'm a weak-kneed orgasm waiting to happen. I do not know what is wrong with me lately - I haven't changed my diet, my lifestyle, the people or places I hang around - but I can't get enough of sex. Which is a problem because I'm in a long-term relationship with someone whose bed is located about 1,500km away from mine. So, with no person to relieve me of my piqued hormones, I resolved to get myself off in any other form possible: my obvious beloved five-fingered friend, my imagination, erotic literature, writing and talking about it.

Except, these things have done nothing but raise my general level of arousal. It has got to the point where I'm thinking my desperate single colleague is not that far off from Joaquim Phoenix, after all... mmmm, colleague sex! No! Snap out of it, Lauren! The table leg - that 60-cm long, hard woody - is just too far from my seat for me to attack without raising said colleague's (and others') suspicions. Help! And my nipples are aching with the mere thought of being licked by some hungry tongue...

Fuck (mmm, that would be really nice..) no! Stop it!

Thinking thoughts of my naked parents shagging.... of Michael Jackson with little boys.... of dead corpses bloated with feeding maggots.... ah! much better. Hormones down, for now....

everything and nothing

Let me share a riveting fact I learnt this weekend, whilst reading my thoroughly engaging bill bryson's "short history of nearly everything". being a chemist by training, i of course should have stumbled on the thought earlier, but being a sluggish chemist by training, i didn't. the atom is composed of a nucleus, which takes up one millionth of a billionth of the total space in the atom, and a haze of electron clouds surrounding it (where all electrons simultaneously occupy, and don't occupy, all the space - an interesting ramification of quantum theory, but i digress). given that the atom is profoundly empty, it means that 2 snooker balls that hit each other should actually pass through each other unhindered. what stops this from happening? it is purely the electronic repulsion between the electrons on the outermost layers of the balls. The balls never touch, their electronic repulsion pushes them apart before that happens. (he explains what causes the noise of their 'encounter' but i forgot it already, goldfish that i am). think about that, while you 'sit' on your chair. you are levitating 1 angstrom above the seat material. oooooh, science is exciting, isn't it?

onto matters of greater consequence to spacetime: strip/fuck did in fact end two weeks ago - on that cursed night i went to watch defending the friggin' caveman! and what is it about desperate housewives that has people in such a frenzy? i am becoming addicted too, but for the bloody life of me, i don't know why.

hope you took your mommies somewhere special this sunday, or at least pretended to care by calling them just before they went to sleep, after your friend/sibling/neighbour/partner reminded you countless times. i for one, am a terrible daughter, with a sibling who consistently shows me up in this regard. next lifetime, i swear, mom!

all weekends should be 3 days long

Having daggers of pain searing my forearms was not enough. No no, I had to extend the pain further south. All through Sunday, most of Monday, and mercifully, little of today, my thigh muscles were womiting (much nicer than vomiting, don't you think?) chunky bits of pain... The reason? My insistence that Timmy and I climb Skeleton Gorge (2 hour ascent), trek across that mountain all the way to the cable cars (another hour), then painlessly take the blessed transportation device down to our car, parked a mere 10 metres away. Except, the cable cars don't run when a gale is blowing (unlike my nose, which chose to run the whole time when I overexerted myself in the peak throes of a cold!). So, we took the precipituous Platteklip Gorge route down (another blindingly painful hour), then went to drown our sorrows in beer and pizza, and a dvd (if you're an avid King Arthur & the knights of the round table/Avalon with its wizards and witches fan, absolutely do not watch the wildly inaccurate movie King Arthur unless it's purely to perve over the dude who plays Arthur or Kiera Knightley). Sunday started ok, except I drank a mammoth winetasting route through the Stellenbosch vineyards, during which my thigh pain grew increasingly as we farm-hopped (do overspent muscles not like booze?). Of course, on Monday it was time to repeat Sunday's activities in the Constantia winelands, though it was a decidedly calmer outing. The day was topped off with me finally learning a decent recipe for butternut soup (winter, you can now throw your worst at me. I'm prepared - careful, I have a soup ladle and I'm not afraid to use it). Some good news and potentially fucking awful news for the week ahead: the V&A winetasting festival occurs this week (bottoms up, dearies!) and strip/fuck may have ended. Slit my wrists now, please.