So I woke up this morning and hit the gym (now that I have an end date to my life of leisure I'm trying to make the most of every day) and am now wandering around my freezing house in a towel waiting for the hot water to sort itself out so I can shower my horrible sweaty self.

Fan-tashtic, no? No.

On a brighter note, the terrible Cape Town storm that everyone's been making dire predictions about hitting us today has...er...not. There is actual sunshine outside. Which makes a nice change from the sodding cold and torrential rain of late.

Okay time to try the shower again. If you hear some high-pitched swearing echoing around the country, you'll know it's me being doused in ice cold water.

Ask me what I do. Go on, ask me.

Usually to the inevitable 'So, Jade, what d'you do?' question (I wish people were more original, I really do), I simply say:
'I don't.'
Which has the desired effect and is a more than efficient conversation killer to that line of questioning.

But really now, ask me.

Because now I can reply,
'I'm a copy editor.'

Yes, that's right ladies and gentlemen, I am entering into employment, to be confirmed on 29 July, my first official day of work. Apparently - miraculously - my interview in the middle of my train wreck week last week actually went well, and they offered me the job this morning.

Can you spell H-A-P-P-Y?
(I can, but maybe that's because I'm a copy editor. hahahahahahahaha)

It's Monday and therefore time for....(drum roll) The Weekend in Numbers

Number of hours spent at work: 0. Had the weekend off. Lovely.

Number of boyfriends returning for the weekend: 1. Double lovely.

Number of Fringe episodes watched before we ran out of season and proceeded to mope disconsolately, wondering if life would ever be enjoyable again without such viewing pleasure: 2

Number of ridiculously delicious sushi dinners: 1. Wasabi, Constantia Village. Go. Now.

Number of newly discovered words to filthy: 1. 'Eruption'. Was used on the menu in the context of a Lindt chocolate ball dessert. Is now used in a vastly different context.

Number of times got staggeringly drunk and woke to embarrassing recounts of the previous night and a hangover so blinding it necessitated laser-eye surgery: 0. I'm turning over a new leaf. For real this time.

And (sneaking into the weekend tallies, because when you're unemployed you can count Monday morning as part of the weekend) number of call backs from last week's interview: 1. Please let this lead somewhere.

Well

Weekend: fuck up

Public holiday: recovering slowly

Today: another interview, for a different media house. Went alright. Cross your fingers, do your dances, as per usual.

Tomorrow: hoping for the best

(Apologies for the gloom. Let's pretend it's the weather.)

And the rain came down...

Which is typical really, since every day of the week - all those nights that I didn't go out - the weather was good (well, good for winter anyway).

I know...my social life is all a-tatters at the moment. Jade's rocking Friday night consisted of a belly-dancing class at gym followed by eating takeout and watching The Kite Runner for the second time. Not that I didn't enjoy my class. Quite the opposite actually. Our instructor, Desiree (what else?), is just lovely and laughs at all her own jokes. The only problem is that she keeps shouting 'And loosen girls! Shake it! Loosen! Loooooooooooooooooooosen!' but I'm seemingly inept in the looooosening department. Probably because of fourteen years of ballet, during which we were constantly entreated to 'Tighten girls! Pull up! Tighten! Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighten' by a teacher who probably wouldn't have laughed at her own jokes, even if by some small cosmic glitch she ever happened to make any.

But anyway, of course it rains the one night that I have plans to go out and party like I'm seventeen again (except without my mother waiting up, on the verge of calling the police should I arrive a minute past my curfew). What will I do about my hair?

In other news, I think the test on Thursday went well. They must have thought so too, since I was contacted on Friday with inquiries as to my 'expected salary' (er...forty five grand a month should cover it guys, thanks).

It's D-day

9.51 am
Today is the day I find out whether or not I have a job. I have been on tenterhooks since early this morning (I really have, but also I've just always wanted to say that).

11.30 am
Wandering aimlessly around the house, too strung out to concentrate on anything, too lazy to go gym.

11.37 am
Have taken to carrying phone around in pocket of slouchy pants whilst meandering from room to room, just in case it rings and I don't hear it. Or worse, am in bathroom.

12.00 pm
Finished Love in the Time of Cholera. Feel I have somehow betrayed Gabriel Garcia Marquez by not really being able to concentrate on the last few pages.

12.05 pm
Back to wandering aimlessly.

12.10 pm
Realise that if call ever actually comes, am not even entirely sure what I'm hoping they'll say. A normal person would be gunning for a yes, I know. But who ever said I was remotely normal?
Possible reaction if yes: Hooray, have job can shop. Followed swiftly by The Fear, along the lines of, oh fuck can I even do this job? Is this what I want? What if something more me is out there?
Possible reaction if no: Relief. Can continue living in pyjamas, drinking too much tea and dreaming of finding The Perfect Job...ie not having to live in the real world. Followed swiftly by despair, along the lines of, will I ever find a job? Or will I slowly drink myself into insolvency and wake up one morning cold and alone and with no prospects (or nice shoes)?

1.00 pm
Seventy-fifth cup of tea (or near estimate). Decide it's time for lunch. Cannot settle on anything except rusks dunked in tea.

1.30 pm
Come up with novel idea of boiling an egg. Oh the excitement. However it did distract me for a whole five minutes, so thanks little egg. Sorry I ate you.

2.23 pm
Boyfriend kindly takes my mind off things work-related.
(No, not like that. Perverts.)

3.20 pm
Voicemail. Why oh why does my phone decide not to ring sometimes? Possible future employers want me to come in tomorrow to sit a test. Waiting finally over. Inner debate still rages, but have been given stay of execution.

Just got back from Hell on Earth (or, as the government persists in calling it, Home Affairs). What a fucking nightmare.

Now, everyone who knows me knows that I'm ever so slightly (read: to the point of psychosis) obsessive compulsive about, you know, organisation, cleanliness, that sort of thing. Therefore, spending an hour - minimum time it takes to accomplish anything in that vacuum of efficiency - in the kind of place that asks you to deposit your valuables into an empty beer box while you step through the metal detector...well, it really does my head in.

Swiftly was I robbed of any delusions I might have been clinging to regarding anything along the lines of a 'Q Here' sign. Bugger that, I'd settle for an actual queue.

The ninth circle of hell is reserved for those of us who dare request the issue of an ID document. Enter, the fingerprinting station. As if having my digits blacked and then plunged into the nausea-inducing bucket of cleansing gel wasn't bad enough, my happy little fingerprinting technician couldn't begin the process until he'd fiddled around on his phone and then balanced it on the counter, where it proceeded to blare Gospel music at me. Jesus loves me? Oh no, I rather think he does not.

Last but not least, please note that no gifts are 'excepted' at the Wynberg Home Affairs office. From this I assume we are to conclude that all gifts, without exception, are accepted? Maybe if I'd slipped someone a fiddy, I'd have been in and out before you could say 'corruption'.

EDIT: Well, colour me surprised. Home Affairs just SMSed me to acknowledge receipt of my ID application and to provide me with a reference number. Miracles do happen...

Career (hahahahaha) update

So finally, after months of sending applications and CVs and sample pieces out into The Void (also known as HR staff and recruiters who never get back to you), I had an interview with a media company this morning.

I like to think it went rather well, although cannot for the life of me remember any of the questions I was asked. Post-traumatic memory loss maybe? Probably, given the collection of vibrating nerves in a dress that constituted my person this morning.

At any rate, it's over, and I should be hearing from them, yay or nay, by Wednesday. Which is nice. Nobody likes the jury to be out for too long.

So hold your thumbs, cross your fingers, whatever you have to do. Because I need a job.

Like, now.

We're a little strange, my friends and I.

I sometimes wonder if it's a natural predisposition or if it comes from growing up together and spending far too long in one another's company, in a kind of strange plus strange equals stranger sort of phenomenon.

Either way, today after a dignified Sunday afternoon tea date (hahahaha not) we realised that at some stage we might have to integrate ourselves into society. Either that or start our own coffee shop, the reason being that apparently you can no longer say the word 'lube', fall off your chair laughing, or talk about suffocating into your breasts while doing a shoulder stand at yoga without people at other tables furtively signaling for the bill and beating a hasty retreat.

Heard about the most bizarre New Zealand custom yesterday. Only people in a country filled with sheep who have a prime minister with a name like John could have come up with this one.

Apparently, if you are single in New Zealand (and, I should imagine, not at all particular about your sexual conquests) you trawl the supermarkets with - please just listen to this - bananas in your trolley. People see your single-person-on-the-prowl bananas and sally forth to pick you up.

Opening lines probably include, 'Baaa baaa baaa. Wanna shag? Baaa baaa baaa.'
Not that I'm judging.

It gets even better. Possibly due to previous awkward, banana-related episodes, they've come up with a way to negotiate the tricky issue of sexual orientation. If you are heterosexual, please place your bananas into your trolley with the ends curving upwards. Jolly girls and boys, bananas curving down please.

I ask you...

Top 3 things annnoying me today:

1. Imaginary service delivery in South Africa. In general, but also in particular...how hard can it be to have a pair of boots sent from one branch of a shop to another, without them disappearing into an alternate universe (presumably one filled with shoes) along the way, so that now the staff at both branches claim complete ignorance and are looking at me like I might go Britney on them any second.

2. Club stamps that just won't come off. Is this just me? I mean, I shower a requisite number of times a day, and yet I'm still branded with the evidence of excursions of evenings past. Finally managed to de-ink my forearm by removing most of my epidermis, but hey at least it's clean again.

3. Jacob Zuma's face. Is nobody else worried that Mr Toad from Wind in the Willows is running our country? I keep trying to discern lily pads around his feet.




On a different note, a big thank you to Marc Perel and From the Couch for the publicity and advice. I owe you 1 x cup of tea.

Something I forgot to mention yesterday...

Number of times got paid this weekend for freelance writing: 1
Now according to a writerly friend of mine, what one aims to do when starting out in the business, is to cultivate an attitude of indifference, presumably so that everyone wonders what they're missing out on, and falls over themselves to commission you.
I'm finding this hard to accomplish.
The fact that somebody handed over actual currency for something I'd written...well it blows my mind and gives me the warm and fuzzies. Sure, I wasn't even credited, but I got paid. Clearly it's not critical acclaim and creative prestige I'm after...just show me the money.
Which, admittedly, wasn't very much, but I feel like I can justifiably call myself a writer now that there has been actual commerce involved. And a penniless writer at that, so it's definitely official...

The weekend in numbers

Number of boyfriends who came home from Jo'burg for the weekend: 1

Number of tickets to the Good Food and Wine Show won: 2 - and ps: wasn't I more excited than Janice Dickinson in a collagen factory? I never win anything.

Number of wine tastings - you know, those itty bitty sips they give you so you can swill the glass all knowledgeable-like under your nose, dribble some liquid into your mouth and then stare off into the middle-distance, pretending to distinguish certain bouquets or noses or topnotes (maybe that's perfume) or whatever when what you really want to do is whack the glass back onto the counter and say, 'Another one Barkeep, and make it a double this time' ... well, number of those it takes to get me on the express road to Smashedville: about six, apparently. Maybe five. What is happening to me? Perhaps indulging in some more of the Good Food and less of the Good Wine would have been an idea.

Number of spontaneous visits to Tiger Tiger: 1 (please don't tell anyone)

Number of vodka limes at said Tiger: enough not to remember how many. And then a couple more. Just kidding (no I'm not).

Number of cheesy 80s rock songs danced to on side of dance floor, attempting to drag Boyfriend onto floor with me: too many. Thank God he managed to resist.

Number of head-throbbing, seriously-contemplating-suicide, please-god-let-it-end hangovers at work the next morning: 1. But you could divide it into four, and they would kill a small horse each. Of course, it only kicked in at around ten, before which time hindsight reveals me to have still been drunk.

Number of rugby matches watched on Saturday afternoon after recovering: 1. Incidentally, my very first. Have managed to live in SA for twenty-two years without being forced to watch one. But figured I owed lovely, forgiving, saintly boyfriend this much.

Number of resolutions to really start taking it easy from now on with the drinking: 1, and full intentions to stick to it this time.