Writing Guidelines

Let me start by saying that my younger brother is hilarious (or at least I think he is), he also writes very well, even though he doesn't think so. The only real outlet he has for writing is the Notes facility on Facebook. He wrote this note a month or so ago and I've decided that more people need to share in his humouristic genius. So Ringo, this is your note, whether you like it or not...

Writing Guidelines by Ringo

Learn to spell.
Then I’ll know it’s a language I can understand and I’ll keep reading.

Use grammar.
Then I can read it and know it’s not a random collection of words.

Punctuation is required.
This helps prevent death from lack of oxygen when reading aloud.

Stop exaggerating so much.
Then I’ll believe you more of the time.

Don’t try to be funny with every single sentence.
You aren’t.

About how empty, meaningless, materialistic, pessimistic, disloyal, ugly, dark, anguish filled, pretentious, fake and/or ‘plastic’ the world, the human race, the future, popular entertainment, them, they, me or your life is, has become and/or will be.
Writing about this has been done. You’re a sissy.

Use facts that are true.
If I know you’re lying or making it up, I’ll not be impressed.

LOL, ROFL, OMG, WTF, BRB etc.
Using any of the above mentioned abominations, or any other I didn’t list, will put you on my douche list.

Swearing can be fun.
It can also be gosh-darn irritating.

If a simile, metaphor or expression makes no sense, don’t use it.
“...pisses off…more than an Agro[sic] Eric Cartman on PMS showing you thoughts of impending end-of-the-world stigmata on a piece of pig rind...”

Criticism is just opinion.
Take it or leave it. Don’t fight it.


Disclaimer: There is no reason to follow these guidelines. I am not a writer and I didn’t study literature.

I'm going to be posting more of his work as he writes it. I'm very proud of my little brother and may even tell him what I'm doing (one day.....)

My Story - Part 5

This is the second incident that I remember from when my dad and FSM were still dating.

Part 5

This happened at around the same time as the two previous entries. I had been singing my entire life. It was and still is my one great passion, and I happen to be pretty good at it too....or at least, I must be fairly good to have made it into the youth choir for the area where I lived. I lived and breathed that choir. All my best friends were there, and I couldn't wait for choir practice every Friday....and I couldn't wait for the trip to Thailand that was planned during my second year in the choir.

I nearly jumped out of my skin the moment I found out that we would be going overseas. It was like a dream come true. A dream that nearly got killed....

I told both my parents that the choir was going abroad, and that it would cost R5500 for me to go along. (about 3 of the kids had to stay behind in the end because they couldn't afford it) We started with passport and visa applications immediately, and my parents arranged that each of them would pay half of the trip fees. It was close to December and I was starting to think about getting a job for spending money. Then Dad said the he and FSM needed to speak to me.

They sat me down in the lounge on a bright and sunny day, and told me that I couldn't go. They gave me reasons why, but I was so devastated that I can barely remember what they were. Everything was ruined!! The one thing that I wanted more than anything in the world had been destroyed.

It was around this time that my relationship with my mom started getting better too. (in hindsight, she probably saw an opportunity to win me back, but I didn't see it that way back then) I told her that my dad had said that I couldn't go because he couldn't pay his half. I was completely crushed. I didn't count on Mom's resourcefulness. Somehow, she managed to make a plan to pay the full amount, as long as I worked part-time during the holidays for spending money. My life had meaning again!!

About a month before I was set to go to Thailand, Mom decided to take me to the doctor to have him look at my skin. I didn't have acne as such, but I did have a problem skin and it was starting to eat at my self-confidence. Dad must've authorized it because I was on his medical aid. The doctor prescribed Roacutane.

I was almost halfway through the three month treatment when the date of my trip to Thailand arrived. I asked Dad if we could get a renewal on my prescription as I would be running out halfway through my trip. And for a second time I was told no. This time it was because my portion of the medical aid had been used up. I decided that I wouldn't let this ruin my trip and left it there.

The next ten days were those you read of in fairytales. I saw things that blew me away and had experiences that I can't describe to anyone. The memories I have of that trip are ones that I will cherish for the rest of my life, because they offer me a bright light in the midst of dark times. I forgot about everything that had gone on at home and had the time of my life. Which is probably why I was so unprepared for what happened when I got home.....

I was ten years old when Mom's cat died from a dog bite. I absolutely adored cats, and my parents got me a cat of my own after Katie died. He was the cutest little black cat with only a white spot on his tummy and his throat. His face resembled that of a mouse, so we called him Mickey.

For six years, Mickey did everything with me. I was the only person who could pick him up. He only slept on my bed and he only came when I called him. I loved that cat more than anything and when I came home from Thailand, he was gone.....

While I was away in Thailand, Dad had decided that he couldn't spend every weekend at FSM's house, and leave our dog and cat alone at the house....so they had to go. He (always having been more fond of dogs) arranged with Mom to give Hitler (our gorgeous 2-year-old German Shepherd whom I loved almost as much as Mickey) to friends of hers on a farm. Mickey, on the other hand, would be put down.

I came home exhausted from jet-lag, only to find that my darling cat was missing!! Thankfully, my darling mother had come to the rescue again and arranged that my grandparents would adopt Mickey so that he wouldn't have to be put down.

It wasn't very long after this that I decided that I couldn't stay with Dad anymore. At the end of that same year (and after four months of therapy) I moved in with Mom.

Dad's one condition for letting me move was that I would quit the youth choir.....

Have a good weekend.

Always in threes.....

So...

I spent the entire day in an extremely boring meeting about technical stuff that I don't need to understand (but which I had to attend), only to come back to an email from my mom, saying my cousin had died in a car accident.

What a crap day :-(

I'll have it once your done, thanks!!

Today seems to be the day from hell for more than just me.

It started like this....last week Thursday, I sent a 3 part package via "insert courier here", with explicit instructions that the packages needed to be in Windhoek by Monday (yesterday). They're parts and brochures that needed to be there for a presentation that's happening today (Tuesday).

So yesterday, my contact in Windhoek phones me to say that only one of the packages have arrived. Now please remember, they were sent as one package, with three parts, but only one part had arrived in Windhoek.

I promptly got on the phone with our distinguished couriers, after using the online tracking facilities to see where the other two parts of my package were.

It seems that my packages had somehow developed a mind of their own, and had gone to see the world. The landed at Feltham Airport in the lovely Britain on Friday of last week. Not content with only seeing a small part of beautiful England, they decided to take a short flight to Stansted Airport as part of their journey. Finally they hopped over to Koeln (Cologne) in Germany, before flying back to Johannesburg on Sunday.

As fascinating as their tour must have been, my problem was that they were still not in Windhoek. So yesterday afternoon, I had a long conversation with one of the guys in the export department of these wonderful couriers, and he assured me that the sightseeing packages would be delivered to the door of my contact in Windhoek, by the manager of their Windhoek branch, today. He even gave me his direct number to follow up on the progress of the delivery.

Why then is this the day from hell you ask? Well, I checked the online tracking system again this morning, just before phoning the guy in exports, to see if the package had at least arrived in Windhoek yet. (as was promised to me) It had not.....or at least, that's what the website said. The guy in export couldn't tell me, because he wasn't there!!

I spent 20 minutes bouncing off the walls before phoning them again and getting through to Mark, my knight in shining armour. According to Mark, he'd only scanned out one parcel last night, and the other one had only arrived back in Johannesburg this morning. Neither of us had any idea which tracking number went with which parcel, so he couldn't even tell me which one was in Windhoek.

What followed was two hours of stressing and phoning to try and find out which package was in Windhoek, which one in Joburg or if both had gone off to Windhoek after all. At long last, the nice lady at the courier office in Windhoek phoned me to tell me that both parcels had arrived at their destination in Windhoek. I cried tears of joy!!...

...That is, until my colleague phoned me. Somehow, my waybill for the one parcel, had ended up in someone else's parcel, and their little box of chemicals had been delivered in Windhoek, instead of my box of VERY expensive cables....which were now officially missing.

Boss-man and my colleague managed to make another plan with the cables (thankfully) so they could continue with the presentation, however, that box needed to be found. So after 3 more hours of phoning around, I convinced Mark, and his counterpart in Windhoek that they should go on a massive man(box)-hunt of both airports to try and find the missing parcel.

Finally, at 16:00 this afternoon, Heila in Windhoek phoned me back to let me know that they'd found the renegade parcel, and that it was, in fact, still in Joburg. I requested that it stay here, because it would need to come back anyway. She phoned me back 40 minutes later to tell me that it was already ready to leave for Windhoek and that they couldn't hold it back anymore. So now she will keep it in her office when it arrives there tomorrow morning, relabel it, and wait for our go-ahead to return it to Joburg again.

This is the last I heard, and the news that I need to convey to my boss......

....so MsB...pass the lube when you're done, please....I'm going to need it!!

How I met your father....

*well Exmi, you asked for it....here is how hubby and I really met*

Dear Unborn Child (unconceived really...)

So you want to know how Daddy and I met? Well, it went like this:

My friend at the time, M, was studying marketing at UJ (still known as RAU back then) and through campus life, she managed to meet this band.

I don't know the exact history of how she met them and what her relationship with them was, but I do know that she ended up managing the band.

I had just come out of a very long relationship, and was trying to get myself back into the social realm, spending time with the odd guy here and there, and partying as much as I possibly could. This inevitably led to me joining M on a trip to Heidelberg to see this little project of hers in action.

The place was called Coyotes (yes, I did have flashes of Coyote Ugly running through my mind) and the band was called Swallow 15. (the Coyote Ugly flashes got worse) They were a four piece band consisting of a chick on bass, two hot brothers on lead guitar and vocals, and a shy dude on drums with the biggest hair I've ever seen.

I kid you not!! Daddy had a mane of curly hair hanging halfway down his back, and standing in all directions. (Kinda like Angel's hair :-)) There was something about him though.....I couldn't quite put my finger on it but by the end of the night we were chatting like we'd known each other for years, had exchanged numbers and he was keeping me warm.

A week later I was back (wearing the skimpiest mini I could find).....for some reason this shy, placid dude had completely bowled me over. At the end of their first set, I sat on his lap (I know...Mommy was a skank back then!!) and then asked him if he wanted to get some fresh air.....we barely made it out the door before I pinned him against a wall and snogged the breath out of him. (The rest of the band even asked if they could get their drummer back.....over the microphone!!)

We decided to do the whole dating thing at the end of that evening.....and two weeks later I broke up with him. I'd decided that I was going to walk all over him, and I wanted to spare him that. So much for that idea.......I didn't last a week without him.

I broke up with him a second time two months later (but that's a whole different story which Mommy will tell you when you're a little older) but that break up also didn't last much more than two weeks. In the end, something made me realise that this was the man I was meant to be with for the rest of my life....the best decision I've ever made, and the reason I'm your mommy today :-)

With love
AW (your future mother)

Lifejacket

Exmi threw me a bit of a lifejacket with this meme....I will get more time eventually....no really!

1. Who is your man? Hubby
2. How long have you been together? 5 years
3. How long did you date before you got married? We got engaged after knowing each other for six months, but only gat married 18 months later.
4. How old is your man? 29 in January
5. Who eats more? It depends where we’re eating....I can pack away prawns like there’s no tomorrow, but he kicks my butt with pizza. Other than that we eat pretty healthy and the same portion sizes
6. Who said “I love you” first? Me, but about 5 seconds. It was so sweet, we both knew at the same time.
7. Who is taller? Hubby, by about 2cm. He’s not the tallest guy around/
8. Who sings better? We’re both very musical and can both sing, but I sing a lot more than he does, so I get more practice (he beats met at Sing Star though)
9. Who is smarter? Ummm....I think I am, but only because he hides how intelligent he really is. I mean, he’s a drummer for heavens’ sake. He can think in 4 places at the same time!!
10. Whose temper is worse? Mine by far!! He never really gets angry....people have made comments about it. I’m Mount Vesuvius on the other hand.
11. Who does the laundry? Both of us....we take turns or do it together.
12. Who takes out the garbage? Again, both of us, but Hubby does it more often than I do.
13. Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? He does, it’s closer to the door, so he can protect me.
14. Who pays the bills? I pay the majority of the bills, and he takes care of spending and petrol money. It works for us.
15. Who is better with the computer? Definitely me. He can get around, but he doesn’t have access to a PC as often as I have.
16. Who mows the lawn? We thankfully don’t have a lawn to mow.
17. Who cooks dinner? Me mostly. He couldn’t cook when we met, but he’s improved a lot and actually likes cooking every now and then.
18. Who drives when you are together? Whoever wins. We both drive, but neither of us like driving, so we race to see who gets to the passenger door first, and the loser has to drive.
19. Who pays when you go out? Hubby mostly, as all my money goes to the bills. Sometimes I use my card though.
20. Who is the most stubborn? Me again, though he can be pretty stubborn too.
21. Who is the first to admit when they are wrong? We both admit when we’re wrong which is seldom as we don’t really fight a lot and when we do, we both apologize for whatever we did wrong.
22. Whose parents do you see most? Mine, his live 2 hours away, but we try and see them as often as we can.
23. Who kissed who first? I kissed him first....in fact, it was only the second time ever that I’d seen him, when I promptly dragged him outside, pegged him against a wall and kissed the hell out of him.
24. Who asked who out? We kinda just decided we’ll do the whole dating thing after I let him come up for air.
25. Who proposed? He did. It’s a long story.
26. Who is most sensitive? I think we both are pretty sensitive, though I’m more emotional.
27. Who has the most friends? Me, he’s an introvert, but all my friends consider him their friend as well, so we’re kinda equal.
28. Who has more siblings? Me, by faaaaaaaaaarrrr!! He only has one sister; I have two brothers, two step brothers and 5 stepsisters.
29. Who wears the pants in the family? He does in the end, even though he lets me think I do. I get my way most of the time, but if he says no, then I know its no.
30. How did you meet? at a bar in Heidelberg....he was playing a gig.

That's me for now....I tag whoever wants to do this :-)