Writing 101 – Twenty Minute Musings

I’m doing the Word Press Writing 101 course in order to create a blogging/writing habit. So the first assignment is to write freely for 20 minutes about anything and then to post it. Hmmm…I’m not too sure how I feel about this and I’m not going to edit it (except of course for any typos). So, without further ado, here goes.

The timer is set so there’s no turning back.

My mother arrived today 🙂 I don’t get to see her as often as I’d like and it’s great that at age 70 she’s happy to jump on a plane and fly for 12+ hours to come and see us. When I speak to her and see her, I’m reminded of how alike we are. I’m reminded of how some of the irrational fears that I have, I probably got from her. I’m not sure how. Osmosis maybe? For example, my mom has a fear of water. She hates going near a pool, won’t go into the sea (not even the Dead Sea on a recent trip to Israel) and will not go on a boat. I have this same fear but I’ve managed to work through some of it. As a kid in primary school, I hated swimming lessons. So much so that I’ve never actually learnt to swim properly. What kind of South African am I, right? I love the beach and sea, I’ll go into a pool as long as my feet can touch the ground. Hell, I’ll even float around and on our honeymoon in Thailand I was even swimming with my head under water. It just took a couple of days for me to build up the courage to do it. So the fear is there but just to a lesser degree. I feel apprehension getting onto a boat but once I’m on it, I’m usually cool.

I wonder though, how did this fear that she has pass onto me? How did I become like her? Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother and I think she’s awesome. I just need to figure out how to not pass any hangups that I have onto Baby Girl. Life is tough enough without having irrational fears and unexplained hangups that stop you from just going out there and enjoy life.

She looks frigging amazing! My mom, that is. I mean the woman is 70 right and there was a time when I thought I knew what 70 looked like but when I see her, I’m not so sure any more. Most people women would say that he beauty regime sucks. She’s never used a cleanser in her life, just soap and water. Never had a facial. Goes out in the South African sun without any sunblock. It makes me wonder if all these lotions and potions actually do any good. So many of them have so many chemicals in them that I wonder if she actually got it right. Instead of putting loads of crap on her face, she just uses whichever soap they’re using at the time. Who knows what’s right? What I do know is that when I’m 70, I hope to look as good as her and have as much get up and go as her.

I don’t usually spend this long writing a post so I feel like I’m running out of things to so even though my mind is full.

Today I was on the bus fetching Baby Girl and saw a woman shouting at her crying daughter. I was so quick to judge her as a bad mother. I think I’ve said it before, that I need to stop judging. It broke my heart though, seeing that little girl crying and the mother just shouting at her, earphones still in her ears. But I don’t know her situation. I don’t know the kind of day she’s had. I don’t know if the child was particularly testy at that moment. The snapshot that I saw though, had me wanting to go to the mother and tell her to hold her child instead of screaming at an already upset little girl. I’m not perfect and I’ve shouted at Baby Girl before and felt intense guilt immediately after and then cried because I was being a bad mother. Like we don’t have enough to feel guilty about.

Times’ up. 

Oh my, what a mishmash of a post.

Ummm…thanks for reading? x