The importance of being a drama queen

Apparently, I have a  flair for dramatics.  When I was recently explaining to my friend Sandra why I was walking with a limp, she just rolled her eyes at me "You are such a drama queen".  Usually I would take offence, but I take Sandra's opinions pretty seriously.  So she got me thinking ... Am I a drama queen.

The story of the 2 plasters:
I was making supper whilst my boyfriend was having a nap on the couch, and decided to add some grated carrot for flavour.  The carrot slipped, and well ... next thing I know I have 4 cuts on 2 of my fingers.  I screamed out but got no response my boyfriend.  I went hunting for plasters, making as big a racket as I could ... still no response. That's right, he managed to sleep through my entire injury.  Eventually my tortured noises woke him up and he helped me find some plasters.  But the sympathy was rather lacking.  Sandra just told me I was a drama queen. Even when I told her "What if I had been stabbed and he slept through the whole thing?" ... "Drama Queen" was her only response.

The story of the limp:
A couple nights later I walked into a chair and hit my knee. Hard.  This time he was awake and witnessed the whole thing.  I kind of collapsed on the floor.  He kind of stared at me like I was a nutcase.  The next day I was telling Sandra about it ... "I can just imagine it" she said, "You are such a drama queen". There was absolutely no sympathy.  Even with the limp.

I knew next time I injured myself, it would have to be big if I was to get any sympathy.

The story of the train:
Two days ago, whilst taking the train home, I suddenly started feeling weird.  I blacked out and when I came to I was sitting on the train floor.  I tried to get off at my stop and blacked out again whilst I was walking off.  Some good Samaritans had apparently helped to carry me off and sat with me whilst I regained my composure.  Although I still could't get up, they sat with me at the train station until I called for help.  My boyfriend called our neighbour to come fetch me, another good Samaritan because really, how many neighbours still go out of their way to help you these days.  And my friend Verenique kept tabs on me whilst I waited for my neighbour, and whilst I was sitting in the waiting room at the doctor and the next day. For once, I got loads of attention and lots of sympathy ... although to be honest, I wish I could just have had a quiet evening at home.  As the doctor at the hospital hooked me up to a drip, I just kept thinking: If Sandra could see me now, she would agree: I do have a flair for the dramatics.
She hasn't actually called me a drama queen yet ... but I am sure that after a reasonable time has passed, she will start to make fun of me again.  She loves to keep me grounded and I love her for it.

A shout out:
So here is my first ever shout out:  Here is to good Samaritans, good neighbours and good friends.  People do still care about helping out strangers, helping out neighbours and standing by their friends in their time of need.  And here is to my boyfriend, who dropped everything and rushed out to help me when I truly needed it.

Although I don't even know who the strangers were who helped me, and I can't remember their faces, I will always remember their good deed and hopefully one day soon I will pay it forward.

Die Hard Fans Die Hard

The definition of someone who is a "die-hard" is someone who will do anything for a cause or goal.  In the Die Hard movies, John McClanes cause is to defeat the bad guys whilst causing as much destruction to property as possible and squeezing in his famous line.

Usually I hate sequels.  I have long soliloquies* where I talk at length about how much I hate sequels.  But I kind of like Die Hard, so I put up with it.

I was busy watching the 5th installment in this movie franchise and was thinking to myself, "The reason why action movies are not based on books is that there is just too much explosion and not enough plot."  Imagine my surprise then when I discovered that 2 of the movies were based on novels and 1 was based on an article.

The other things I thought to myself when watching the movie was:
1. Bruce Willis is starting to look old
2. I can't believe they made a 5th Die Hard Movie
3. I just can't take a bad guy seriously who eats carrots and tap dances

The movie basically goes like this: (and if you haven't seen it, then *spoiler alert*, this one was not based on a book):
# Introduction to explain why McClane goes to Russia
# Explosion
# Car Chase
# Plot
# Shoot Out
# Break in
# Bad guy monologue
# Shoot Out
# Escape
# Father/Son Moment
# Car jacking
# Stake out
# Father/son Moment
# Plot Twist
# Shoot Out
# Explosion
# Yippekiyaymotherfucker
# Shoot Out
# Helicopter sabotage
# Bad guy dies
# Helicopter crash
# Good guys fall in slo-mo
# Explosion
# One good guy thinks other bad guy is dead
# He is not dead
# Father/son moment
# Manly jokes to compensate for all the tenderness
# Happy Ending



*means I talk to myself, kind of like a monologue

RaNdOm CaPitALiSaTiOn

Part of my job involves reading through masses of correspondence.  For the most part, the major annoyances are (a) the fact that people give quotes to clients without reading what the client wants and (b) clients who accept quotes without reading the quote then getting angry when its not what they want.

Sigh ...

But the quotes become especially annoying when people forget altogether how to write normally.  I'm not even talking about incorrect grammar and spelling (which I hate), but then you get something like this:

PEOPLE WHO WRITE ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS WHILST GIVING A QUOTE.  I WAS ALWAYS TAUGHT THAT ALL CAPS MEANS YOU ARE SHOUTING.  WHY WOULD YOU SHOUT AT SOMEONE WHO IS ASKING YOU FOR A QUOTE?

PEOPLE WHO WRITE PART OF THE MESSAGE IN CAPITAL LETTERS and then part of it normally.  You're not really sure WHY THE WORDS are in caps because they do not denote THE IMPORTANCE that you WOULD EXPECT.  It just SEEMS RANDOM.

People who write Normally But Then Capitalise some words. Words that are not Pronouns.  Words That are Not Important.  You Aren't really Sure Why the words that are capitalised are Capitalised.  When reading, You Tend To Think that they are Important, but When you try To Emphasise those Words, the Sentence starts to Lose Meaning.

AnD dOn'T eVeN gEt Me StArTeD oN pEoPlE wHo TyPe LiKe ThIs.

Here is a conversation between my friend and I trying to make sense of the situation:

Sandra: the incorrect use of capital letters here throws me off when reading this email:

Sandra: , When the Client Stated that they where not Happy about the Venue i asked them if they could please tell me What specifically was Wrong as i would want to make corrections and insure that if there is a problem that we can Fix it, the client then stated that we advertise as 4 Star and we are not (please do find Attached)

Jennifer: I totally agree

Jennifer: Its like you want to place emphasis on the words with capital letters, but it you do then it distorts the meaning a bit

Sandra: so its like you keep raising your voice in places where you shouldn't be, it just doesn't make sense

Jennifer:I was doing that exact same thing. In my head. I was raising my voice in my head ... is that a thing

Sandra: (rofl)

Sandra: i do that too

Sandra: its how i read

Jennifer: SO WHEN PEOPLE WRITE ALL IN CAPS

Jennifer: Do you read it really loud and fast

Jennifer: cos that's what I do

Jennifer: I always assume all caps means you were talking loud AND fast

Sandra: yes!

(... later that day...)

Jennifer: I am sure they will let him take it Rather than Pay a Month SALARY and pay OUT his Leave

Jennifer: Sorry .. halfway through my sentence I decided to try the "random capitalisation" method

Sandra: what now? am i supposed to be shouting there?

Sandra: this is giving me a headache

Jennifer: WhAt AbOuT iF i TyPe LiKe ThIs

Sandra: (rofl)

Sandra: Don't U Dare HEY

Jennifer: its like, you don't know whether to shout or half shout

Jennifer: like start the word off soft and then end in a shout

Jennifer: or start in a shout and then go soft and shout the last syllable

The Moral of the Story:  I spend WAY too much of my work day debating totally RANDOM things.  Caps Intended.

Exaggerate much?

It has been brought to my attention recently that I am prone to exaggeration.  I guess I kind of knew this for a while, so "brought to my attention" isn't really accurate.  And actually, it wasn't all that recently either. So I guess that makes it another exaggeration.

It was while contemplating my proneness to exaggeration that I realised a trend ... I tend to use the word "like" just before I exaggerate:

For example... She asked me the same question, like, 4 times or There are, like, a thousand emails.
In reality, she only asked me twice.  And there only about 15 emails.

I do sometimes under-exaggerate, but mostly I am the over-exaggerating type.

Which got me wondering ... is there some kind of formula that I automatically (and unconsciously) use when I pick to what extent I am going to exaggerate or which random number I am going to choose when exaggerating.

Okay now stay with me, cos its been a while since I used algebra:

If x = the real number of times something happened and y = the number of times I said something happened
And x (the number of times that something really happened) is less than 10 times, then:
x = y / 2 (if x is an even number) or x = y/2 + 1 (if x is an odd number)

If x (the number of times that something really happened) is more than 10, then:
y always equals 100 or 1000, depending on how much the thing that really happened got to me

If that made no sense to you, then don't worry... I'm not sure it made much sense to me.  But if you were able to follow me then maybe you finally cracked how to work out what actually happened when I tell you something.

And who says you never use algebra after high school.

Cape Town, you are so fickle

Cape Town had its first really bad storm of winter, and I spent most of the weekend snuggled under a blanket in front of the heater and desperately missing summer. And I don't even like summer. Mostly because I have fair skin that freckles and burns when I even just think about the sun.  The thing is that my fair skin isn't really thick enough to keep out the cold either, so I spend most of winter layered with jackets and under blankets.

The thing about Cape Town winters is that even bad weather here is never really that bad.  Our winters are mild compared to the rest of the country; we can have beautiful days in the middle of winter which are warm and sunny.  So when we actually do have bad weather, it takes us completely by surprise and makes Capetonians a little crazy and cranky.

Iit has been raining, hailing and thundering for almost 48 hours straight displacing thousands of people across the city.  This Capetonian girl is suffering in the cold and regretting every terrible thing I have ever said about summer, but ever so grateful that I have a stable roof over my head.

I did an online search for things to do in Cape Town in winter, because although the weather this weekend is enough to make me want to hibernate for the next 3 months, I know the mild winter days will come.  Also, I work in the hospitality industry and we only get to take our leave in winter ... and I am not going to spend 3 weeks in front of the tv watching series and playing games.*

On every website I went to, most of the suggestions included:

- Going to restaurants

- Going to pubs

- Going to winefarms

- Several outdoor activities, meant for the milder winter Cape Town days

So ... besides eating and drinking, is Cape Town a summer-only town.  What is it that we really can do in winter besides drink wine, eat comforting food and hopelessly wait for the bad weather to pass.  Well, this winter I plan to spend a significant amount of time playing tourist around the city, and hopefully I find more to do than eating and drinking.**

On the plus side (for me) I finally found a scarf that my boyfriend would let me knit for him.***  

The deal was that he would wear a scarf if it had skulls on it ... I think it came our pretty well and he is already wearing it.  The truth is that the scarf was considerably more trouble to knit than I first anticipated, so he better wear it every day.

And all I can hope is that when this storm has passed, Cape Town treats us to a few sunny days to make up for it.

*although those are two of my favorite winter activities

** although these are another two of my favorite winter activities

*** knitting is my winter sport