Trapped!

After planning this children's story on my 9 hour drive back from Dar-es-Salaam, (hey, one has to think about something other than the other cars on the road or a noisy teenager singing at the top of her voice), I couldn't wait to get started with it.  So, I spent the next 5 days illustrating the story.  It didn't take too long to write.  I took photos of the illustrations, put them on Photoshop, gave them a border and wrote the text on them.  Then I saved them as a jpeg, opened a word document, inserted the jpeg images and then saved the completed word document as a pdf file.  Probably did it all the long way round, but it worked so I'm happy.  My next step, was to add all the jpegs to Movie Maker and record myself narrating the story on a digital wave recorder, then I added the audio file to the movie file and voila!  I made a movie which I've uploaded onto Youtube http://youtu.be/4KJ9AGBokTQ?a.  I've tried to embed it in this post but am not sure it has worked.  I'll see when I view the completed post, eh?

Anyway, the rain was good as it meant I couldn't go outside so I had to focus on my writing.  I do tend to get distracted rather easily.  It's what happens when you have a mind that is so full of noise.  Attention Deficit Disorder, that's me.  But Saturday, the rain was a bit too much.  Torrential downpour, I thought the house would cave in.  It started leaking around my back door of the house, and then I heard a huge crash and the power went out.  Siobhan went to investigate, she was brave enough to head out in the rain.  A neighbour two houses down, had a huge giant enormous eucalyptus tree come down across the road, effectively blocking our way out.  We were trapped!  They only removed the tree the Monday afternoon, and Tanesco braved the rain Sunday afternoon to repair the power lines which had come down, so we were close to 30 hours without power.  Of course, that meant we couldn't watch movies or use the internet, couldn't charge up the phone, pump water, have a shower.  So I just painted while there was enough light and Siobhan and I started playing Scrabble.  She's good, has inherited all my sneaky Scrabble moves.
Otherwise, we've spent the rest of the holiday just relaxing at home.  Can't believe it's nearly over!  The last quarter of the school year is going to fly as there is just so much happening, and before I know it, I'll be on my huge overland trip to Cape Town.
Oh well, have some more writing to do!
love
Cindy

Now I have no excuses!

As I come to the end of a very busy unholidayish holiday, I realise that I have not blogged since I landed back in South Africa. I have no acceptable excuse. Please queue up on the left to beat me.
This holiday has been very eventful and I have not managed to see everybody I wanted to, or do all the things I wanted to. It has been a little frustrating. What has been even more frustrating, is how little writing I have managed to do. It seems like I've been rushing off to Cape Town for the long list of medical check-ups I required, and then rushing back to Hermanus to try and get as many things done as possible for my Mom's Hermanus Rainbow Trust. All available funds has gone onto getting Tony all set up in Res at the Hotel School. Hopefully, he'll soon learn the value of money, as he's been tapping me for money every single week.
All my medical check-ups have gone okay, gynaecologist said I am far from menopause which was very sad news as I've been praying each month that it'll arrive. I rather fancy having hot flashes. He was very nice with a great sense of humour, which he needed after making me sit in his waiting room for 45 minutes clutching my urine specimen bottle which rapidly cooled down in my hot little hand. Nowehere to put it, so I couldn't even read a magazine! The physician was great as well, and has now put me on blood pressure meds and a special diet. the urologist reckons I have an irritable bladder which is what is causing the inflammation, so now I have to retrain my bladder by not going to the toilet when I need to, and rather doing the dance of pain and suffering as I clamp my legs shut and try and encourage my bladder to hold out. I'm not too sure how I'll stop the Niagara Falls in mid flow to practice clamping my muscles either. Oh well, guess I'll have fun trying! He also put me on a special diet, so I have to avoid any food or drink which irritates the bladder. There is such a long list of stuff I can't have. All that's left is a piece of steamed fish and a lettuce leaf!
As regards the Hermanus Rainbow Trust, I've managed to make a brochure, a movie, a website and run workshops for the Grade R teachers about planning and assessment. I really feel that when I finish my next job, I need to move back full time to help the Trust.
I managed to work quite a bit on The Case of Billy B, but not as much as I had hoped. Not nearly as much as I'd hoped. Never got to watch all the movies and series I brought along to watch either, or read the books.....ahhhhhh, time is the killer for me. There are definitely just not enough hours in the day. I'm still hoping to have The Case of Billy B and Toxic Weeds out before the end of the year! I'm going to have to work on them until the early hours every night. I haven't had a chance to do much writing on Hubpages either.
Somehow I also managed to sort through my shipment which arrived intact and unscathed from China. Julian's terracotta warriors remained in one piece. I've given all the boxes going to Moshi to the airfreight people. Reminds me, the buggers still have not sent me the invoice, must get onto them about that. Now, tonight have to do all our final suitcase packing. Luckily, have cut down so much, that I think Siobhan and I will manage okay without Tony as our packhorse. SAA only give us 20kg each to get from Cape Town to Johannesburg. But Kenya Airways gives us 30kg each to get from Johannesburg to Moshi. Now I ask you, isn't that ridiculous? I phoned SAA and they laughed at me and said thems the rules and suggested I go wild shopping at the duty free in Johannesburg to make up the extra allowance. Jeez, what a sense of humour!
Had quite a few games of scrabble with the folks and think that I'll be leaving here the scrabble champion. I plan on only returning in 18 months time, but members of my family have already bought books and maps of Tanzania, so think they'll be visiting, which is cool. Got to rush off to the website people and see if we can upload the website from the macbook onto the windows server.
luvya
Cindy