Egg-slicer Written 27 May 2012

Same goal – lights out by 23:30. It’s 22:45 now.

This is very unusual – I’m in bed for the night and it’s not yet 11pm! Which just goes to show, anything’s possible. You can teach an old dog new tricks.

One child fast asleep, one studying. My son helped my daughter draw up her study timetable, and she’s been sticking to it with a diligence I’ve never seen in her before. Good for her – might as well learn in your first year at high school that hard work pays off. Actually, she’s been showing a lot more responsibility in the past month, transforming her bedroom from chaos and clutter to a really neat, functional space, one she enjoys hanging out in. She has all kinds of ideas for redecorating, but that’s not something we can afford, right now. She’s actually interested in becoming an interior decorator. Nice change from what she wanted to be when she was much younger – first a bus driver and then an egg-slicer. Yes.

As my life continues, with its bizarre juxtapositioning of the ridiculous and the sublime, I can’t help but laugh at some of the situations I find myself in and the things I hear people say. Not a day goes by without my hearing someone say something as though it’s THE truth, when all it is, is that person’s perspective on something or other. Interesting how, when, and with what tone of voice people choose to express their insular opinions. Interesting how my life can be labelled “abnormal” because of the post-divorce living arrangements for the children, yet other people, no matter what they get up to, can be accepted as “normal”, just because they go to church regularly. It’s all quite arbitrary, isn’t it?

This weekend I sang at one of my dream venues, the Cape Town International Convention Centre – except not many people knew about it or even heard me. Funny! As usual, I learnt a lot. It was the annual Good Food and Wine Show, and I was part of the live entertainment for Pink Drive, a cancer activist group. They were going to open their truck, a mobile mammogram unit, to the public, and two of us were supposed to have performed, but because we ended up being indoors (weather!), we had to keep the sound smaller, so it was mainly me, singing jazz standards. The other musician was Elise “Black Athena” Fernandez, a hiphop artist and founder of Whiphop (Women in Hiphop). She did just a few songs and I accompanied her on guitar. What a ball of energy she is! I met her just a few weeks ago and took an instant liking to her – a real woman of substance. Looking forward to collaborating with her; even though we have very different styles, I think we might be able to come up with some really interesting songs.