But Why???

As my lovely companion's pregnancy progresses and our little one makes its presence felt more and more, we have noticed a previously unknown problem arising; Random Belly Touching. People would just walk up to her in random locations and touch her belly. Why? Why the hell?!

I mean, would you like it if I randomly walked up to you and touched your stomach? Yet people think that being pregnant automatically gives them permission to enter your personal bubble and touch you. And it seems it happens everywhere, with family, friends, acquaintances and complete strangers! What is it about a pregnant woman that makes people go "Ooh! Pregnant belly! Must invade personal space immediately!"

Think about this from my perspective, you are entering my wife's personal space, touching her and at the same time touching our unborn child. If I were to walk up to your wife and do that, I'd end up with a black eye and/or with some random object protruding from my posterior. Thus, I make this kind plea to the general public, please stop randomly touching my wife. Or I may have to resort to hiring a pregnancy bouncer!

This kind gentleman would politely ask you to refrain from entering my wife's personal space. If, for some reason, you decide to ignore a man with a serious glint in his eye and more muscles than He-Man, he may have to resort to picking you up in a polite manner and escorting you from our immediate vicinity. Politely, of course.

Some research has shown that we are not the only ones to feel like this. Many of our recently impregnated female friends share this discomfort. So I am asking the public, please refrain from running up to pregnant ladies and touching them. This may result in bodily harm and having some nearby object shoved up dark and mysterious places......

Space.....the Final Frontier!

When you think of space, you generally think of this...

Wide open, empty, silent. Some would even say peaceful. You could imagine that nothing much goes on there. Although if science fiction is to be believed, space is littered with a variety of ships and races all trying to shoot the holy hell out of one another for a variety of reasons; whether it be planetary disputes, racial issues or just someone who blew up a random comet that some other culture happened to be worshipping.

But I have discovered that space is actually very limited. In fact, at the moment, I firmly believe that space looks something like this...

Now, if you are confused, allow me to explain. We have recently moved house. The reason being the imminent arrival of our little one. And suddenly furniture and items that fitted so perfectly in one house has doubled in size and quantity. I'm fairly convinced there was some mating activity amongst our belongings, and the result of that is that now nothing fits into our new home. We've spent the last 3 weeks unpacking, and so far we are no closer to reaching our goal of a nice, clean and box free home. And we have discovered that we have a huge amount of random things! Things that probably seemed like a good idea at the time that it was purchased, but in retrospect makes me wonder if we were smoking something illegal and possibly filled with old socks and mouldy cheese. People say that certain drugs give you hallucinations, sometimes of dragons in the kitchen or ninjas on the front lawn. Whatever the hell we were on gave us hallucinations of discount prices and possible future uses for objects that, when closely studied now, seem to have no purpose other than to sit there and take up space. Exclamations from "Hey, I was looking for this!" to "What in the purple holy hell is that?!" are quite frequent in our house at the moment. I long for the day that I can once again think of space as open and star-filled. But until that time I will be modifying the legendary opening of Star Trek a bit:

"Space, the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of a husband and wife. Their continuing mission, to unpack boxes and crates. To discover old items and new species of interesting spiders and various miscellaneous insects. To boldly unpack things that few people have seen before, and even fewer people understand....."

The Fast and the Furious

Cars, let's face it, they fascinate men. And the bigger, badder and faster, the better! Yesterday I had to go sort out an IT issue at a client of mine, and he had a picture of the Lamborghini Aventador as his desktop wallpaper. After we stared at it longingly for about 10 minutes, during which time I am convinced that I drooled on his keyboard, I asked him if his employers knew that he had porn on his computer. Because that is all that car is; pure, unadulterated car pornography! For those who don't know what I'm talking about, let me enlighten you:

Right, now that you have had a chance to look at motoring perfection, pick your jaw up off the floor, and wipe the drool from your keyboard. The statistics for this car is almost as mindblowing as the price. I won't bore you with it, but it begs the question, why would you buy something like this? Is it for the pure thrill of owning a supercar? Or just the fact that you can pull up to a traffic light and look all smug? A car like this makes sense as a poster against a wall, or as the new Batmobile. (I mean, just imagine that thing in black!) But as a tool for every day commuting? Probably not. I live in South Africa, where the rules of the road are more like suggestions than actual rules. Most of the time you are not driving, you are playing bumper cars or go-karts. So if you drive a car like this, you will arrive at your destination sweating profusely and shaking endlessly. Your morning commute would have been more exciting than poking the school bully in the eye. So while I love the Aventador, in fact, while I love all supercars, I would not want to own one. I want to be able to enjoy my commute (well, as much as is possible in SA) without having to worry that a minibus taxi is going to remove my extremely expensive supercar's front bumper.

The Hangover

No, not the movie. The aftermath of drinking copious amounts of alcohol! I was recently invited to a friend's bachelors party and needless to say that the beverages consisted solely of alcohol. Now, up until that time I thought I could handle my booze quite well. I was sorely mistaken! I was but an amateur among professionals. I started off with some beer, but was later told that this is in fact a celebration, so my beverage got upgraded to vodka. And for some reason I had a bottomless glass. Every time it hit bottom it was magically refilled when I wasn't looking. And while you feel fine while all of this is happening, I'm thoroughly convinced that you actually look like this:

It is slightly embarrassing! Especially around the time where you start slurring your words and think it's a good idea to belt out Celine Dion at the top of your lungs! (No, I did not in fact do this, I'm more of a Sinatra fan) Why we drink ourselves into oblivion remains a mystery to me. Especially when you consider the fact that it makes you do stupid things, and do them amusingly. Add to that the fact that you don't remember doing those amusingly stupid things the next day, and your only way of remembering is the video of you snogging the bouncer that someone put on YouTube, then drinking lots of alcohol makes even less sense! I think the following picture sums this up nicely:

Then there is the morning after. Your head feels like your brain is trying to escape through your nasal passages, your mouth is dry (after drinking all night, which makes no sense), you can't even stomach the thought of food and your sense of balance is about the same as that of a cat in a tumbledryer. Think about it this way, if you went to the doctor and told him that you have a splitting headache, nausea, a serious case of dry mouth and you can't stand upright without listing slightly to the left, he'd book you into hospital. So why do we do this to ourselves? I think from now on I'm going to leave the serious drinking to the professionals! "Barman, a glass of water please!"

Who needs Wimbledon!

Okay, before all the tennis lovers descend upon me, let me explain. I think tennis is a great sport, one that requires dedication, training, and if you're female, an unpronounceable last name. It is a great way to stay fit, and can be quite fun when played with friends. Although, probably not when played with me. The only time I can actually hit the ball is when I'm serving. That's it! The rest of the time I just run around looking impressive, but I don't actually get near the ball again for that round. Now though, I have found a way to make it even more fun! Behold, the Jolt Racket!

This fun device is battery operated (batteries included), and sends a stream of electricity through the wires in the centre. It is not for frying tennis balls though, it is for bug zapping. So now the game of tennis has been improved by the fact that your target is actively trying to avoid your racket. I bought mine a few years back, and it was quite inexpensive, and also one of the best investments I've ever made. I'm still using the same set of batteries that came with it! My highest ever score is:
Me: 28
Mosquitoes: 0
We have quite a few of the annoying little bloodsuckers where we live and that high score was done in the space of about 30 minutes. After that they decided they were getting slaughtered and left us alone for the evening. My lovely companion also states that this is pretty much the only sport that she'd watch. Watching me run around the room swinging my racket furiously, adding some tennis player-like grunts as I swing. Husbands of the world, take note! With a simple purchase you can go from watching sports on TV to having sports in the comfort of your own home! So now I have gone from this....

....to this:

Who said staying fit had to be boring!

The Neverending Story

So, for those of you who have actually seen the movies, you now have the awesome theme song stuck in your head. Although probably just the chorus. Most people just remember it as "the Neverending Storyyyyyyyyyyyy, la la la la la" or something along those lines. But the actual reason for this post is not to revive interest in the epic 80's fantasy, it is to talk about another neverending story. One which every married couple has to face almost daily:

Yes, laundry! It seems that no matter how often we do our laundry, it magically doubles during the night. Before going to bed we drop the clothes we wore during the day into the laundry basket, and the next morning it will seem like it is suddenly overflowing. Even our washing machine must be wondering "What the hell are these people doing? How many outfits can they possibly wear?!" Last night, while looking at our laundry basket, which was doing a pretty good Leaning Tower of Pisa impersonation due to the fact that its structural integrity is failing somewhat at the bottom, I thought to myself "Now I know why people become nudists." It's not being one with nature, or returning to the days of the Garden of Eden. Nope, I am firmly convinced that nudists are people who got fed up with doing laundry. And they are actually very smart in this regard, to them doing laundry is simply taking a shower, and voila! Now I'm not saying that I'll actually turn to the nudist lifestyle, but I do think they are on to something.

Maybe one day someone will invent a laundry basket that actually washes your clothes when you put it in. Imagine that! Dirty clothes go in, washed, ironed clothes, smelling faintly of Sta-Soft come out. But until that day, I will walk around with a very catchy 80's film theme song stuck in my head every time I approach our laundry basket......

FEVER!!!

It has officially hit my lovely companion and me. Baby fever! We are just buying everything cute in sight! If it has even the remotest possibility of being cute and cuddly, chances are we are suckers for it. We have so many baby blankets, baby clothing, soft toys, books and other miscellaneous baby accessories we don't know where to store it all! But then, when the baby is actually born, I can almost guarantee you it will be like this:

No-one will be able to resist our baby, or even be allowed to try to resist! Yes, yes, I realise that I will probably be stalking people with our baby, telling them to look at it. This is the point where people usually tell me to calm down, but I have new daddy fever, and will probably continue to have it, up until the point where I haven't slept in 3 months, then it might cool down slightly. But for now I am enjoying the experience. The day my lovely companion gives birth, I will be doing the following:

The theatre doors will open, and I will be walking out holding our baby high for the world to see while "The Circle of Life" plays majestically in the background. World, be warned, it is almost time!