Kicking my own lazy butt

It's been a while and life has changed. I have a kid, aka The Supreme Ruler, a husband, 2 dogs and 2 cats. I am nearing the end of a 2 year-long mommy sabbatical. I have no idea what I want to do next year, but it will have to involve generating an income as The Husband has decided that he wants to be a struggling artist. Go figure. At least I didn't marry for money otherwise I'd be hellavu disappointed.

There are some topics I'm exploring and things that I like spending time thinking about.
Writing is one of them, so here is to reviving this blog. Cause I loved doing it and I'm not quite sure why I stopped. Laziness I suspect.

Heading back to SA

Well, that's odd. I haven't posted to this blog in over a year.
Life certainly has changed since then. We moved back to Joburg, South Africa. We now have 2 dogs, 2 cats and we're busy adopting babies. Well, I say busy adopting - we're done with our interviews and basically we're waiting for our children to be matched with us. Small snag: we asked for twins. The wait may be a little longer than normal.

This is the view from our bedroom at the in-laws. Yip. Tough. I know, but someone had to escape the cold have enjoy THIS view. More to follow on adoption process in South Africa.

And we're back.

What happened? Where did you go?
Nowhere really.
Well, to lots of places. Doing lots of things.
Generally being caught up in work, love, life.
You know how it goes.
But I'm back.
And happy to be doing this again.

Settling in

We moved to Zurich on Friday night. We don't exactly have masses to move, one trip in the Great White (the company station wagon) was all it took to get most of our belongings from Schlatt to Zurich.

We're now the proud owners of a delicious leather couch from Bogen 33 - a very cool shop with 50, 60, 70 and 80s furniture.

The rest of our SA stuff arrives over the weekend - when I'll be back in SA, smelling the jasmine. Lucky Frikkie gets to unpack it all on his own.

Dear Department of Home Affairs

I need an unabridged marriage certificate from the SA Department of Home Affairs to prove to the Swiss authorities that I am indeed married to my husband and not some harlot who wants to make Switzerland my home by any means possible. I guess it happens.

Thing is, it takes 8-12 weeks for said marriage certificate to be issued by Home Affairs. Then, once I have it in my sweaty paws, the Swiss uathorities insist that I submit it, in person, to their Pretoria office. Not here in Switzerland, oh no, only Pretoria will do.

The Swiss certainly can give the Chinese bureaucrats a run for their money.

The quiet life

When I was little we lived on a farm near Robertson. My ouma lived across the canal and not far down the way, not even for a small child. The summers were hot and if I close my eyes I can almost feel the heavy silence of those warm, mid-summer Sunday afternoons when you had to be Quiet, with a capital Q, because the grown-ups were napping.

As a child you miss many things, you forget, you just don't notice... Perhaps it was lonely for my mother (my father worked away a lot), but as a small child I remember it being pretty idyllic. My ouma cooked dishes that I haven't eaten since. Haaksel (spiced mince of lung, heart, windpipe and some other choice bits), kaiings (crackling, but so much better), real buttermilk, ouma-made apricot jam, aga-baked bread... I have really fond food memories of my childhood. Baking biscuits with my mom before the summer holidays when all the Transvaal cousins came to visit.

I'm vegetarian now and my heart lunges just at the thought of all that butter, fat and sugar, but back then I ran everywhere, everything was freshly made and we knew where everything came from. My ouma made her own butter, the hens laid the eggs, she baked the bread and her vegetable patch always seem to have beans in it (perhaps that's just because I despised beans and it felt like I always had to eat them).

Living in Schlatt is almost like living on Grootvlakte again. If I took a two minute walk I'd be in the middle of some farmer's corn field. When I arrived a month ago, the wheat fields were swaying heavily in the heat. The wheat's since been harvested and now the walnuts, corn, sunflowers, carrots, onions and apples are just about ready. The little apples with their pink cheeks beckon on every corner.

The local supermarket, the Volg, is not your usual chain supermarket. They stock local. So yes, some of the veggies comes from Spain, but if there's a local farm with produce to sell, you'll find it at the Volg. Our favourite yoghurt (rhubarb flavour) comes from a dairy not far from Schlatt.

And I could, if I wanted to, pop around the corner to some farmers wife for fresh eggs. We drink beer that was brewed in the neighboring town, Schaffhausen.

The photo is from a look-out tower about 15 minutes' walk from Brunnenhofstrasse. It's in the middle of a little forest. We ate berries in the forest and generally lazed about on Sunday after going to Florian and Angilica's pre-wedding feast on Saturday night.

We're heading to the next phase of our Swiss Adventure and we'll be moving in to our Zurich apartment in 2 weeks. Whoop.

The garden of Eden, perhaps

The back garden in Schlatt. My lunchtime haven. I will surely miss it when we move to Zurich. Sigh.