Fundamental differences between men and women

I received this email and I had to share it. It couldn't be more true. I always wondered, growing up, why I could hear my brother blowing his nose when I could also hear the shower running. I even asked 'The Hot Fisherman' if this was normal - to which he replied, 'Ya, pretty much'. Hopefully this clears up why we women take at least 20-30 minutes in the shower...on a rushed day :)

How To Shower Like a Woman:

• Take off clothes and place them sectioned in laundry basket according to lights and darks.
• Walk to bathroom wearing long dressing gown.
• If you see husband along the way, cover up any exposed areas.
• Weigh yourself on the bathroom scale.
• Take off dressing gown.
• Look at yourself in the mirror to see if there has been any visible reduction in your cellulite/love handles - make mental note to do more sit-ups and squats at gym. Vow never to eat chocolate again.
• Get in the shower.
• Use face cloth, arm cloth, leg cloth, long loofah, wide loofah and pumice stone.
• Wash your hair once with cucumber and sage shampoo with 43 added vitamins.
• Wash your hair again to make sure it's clean.
• Condition your hair with grapefruit mint conditioner.
• Wash your face with crushed apricot facial scrub for 10 minutes, until red.
• Wash entire body with ginger nut and jaffa cake body wash. Rinse conditioner off hair.
• Shave armpits and legs.
• Turn off shower.
• Squeegee off all wet surfaces in shower.
• Get out of shower, being careful to stand on the mat and not wet the tiles.
• Dry with towel the size of a small country.
• Wrap hair in super absorbent towel.
• Return to bedroom wearing long dressing gown with towel on head. If you see partner along the way, cover up any exposed areas.  

How To Shower Like a Man:

• Take off clothes while sitting on the edge of the bed and leave them in a pile.
• Walk naked to the bathroom.
• If you see partner along the way, shake willy at her making the 'woo-woo' sound.
• Look at your manly physique in the mirror.
• Admire the size of your willy and scratch your bum.
• Get in the shower.
• Wash your face.
• Wash your armpits.
• Blow your nose in your hands and let the water rinse them off.
• Fart and laugh at how loud it sounds in the shower.
• Spend majority of time washing privates and surrounding area.
• Wash your hair (if you haven't washed it for at least a week).
• Make a Shampoo Mo-hawk.
• Wee.
• Rinse off and get out of shower.
• Partially dry off.
• Fail to notice water on floor because curtain was hanging out of bath the whole time...
• Admire willy size in mirror again.
• Leave shower curtain open, wet mat on floor, light and fan on.
• Return to bedroom with towel around waist.
• Throw wet towel on bed.
• Prance around naked while deodorant dries under armpits.

Nom nom nom

I have a bit of a morbid fascination with gyms. They are strange places and they seem to attract some very interesting stereotypes. It makes me wonder whether gyms buy the stereotypes online and have them delivered in little labeled boxes. Let me illustrate:


Body Nazi’s:

This package includes tribal tattoos, bulging biceps and tiny calves, army haircut, visible scars, skin-tight gym shirt or vest, golden-orange skin and a heavy southern accent. Known to use at least one of the following words after every sentence: ‘boet’, ‘bra’ (as in brother and not as in the underwire garment), ‘right hey’ or ‘shweet’.

Desperate housewives:

Includes fake boobs, pink lip-gloss, frilly bra, tight gym pants with matching low-cut top and towel and bleach blonde or dyed black hair. This package comes doused in perfume and is often seen hanging around the water cooler or weights section. Been known to dig her manicured nails into innocent young boys and beefy, body Nazi’s if given half a chance.

Peacocks:

Includes a majority of the items in the desperate housewife package except these girls are half their age, don’t smile, never seem to break a sweat and never leave the cardio or mat sections. Looking good is top priority and therefore doing something which expends energy at gym jeopardizes this. These girls are on ‘display’ and therefore come fully clad in all the latest gym kit with matching I-pod.

Salmon:

These guys spend their entire life in the gym working out until they are pink-in-the-face and exhausted. Ultimately, they get screwed in the end with a fairly tragic outcome - they never get any bigger.

Elephants:

Usually pair up with the Body Nazi’s or are found in pairs. These guys barge in, make a lot of noise, drop weights on the floor and broadcast to the entire gym in their trumpeting voice how many weights they can lift. These packages move through the weights section leaving devastation and sweat patches in their wake.

Tourists:

People who attend one class, once a week, pretend that they are practically dying in the class and leave half an hour before the class ends. Usually overweight, wear tight Lycra leggings and large baggy t-shirts.

Yuppie schoolboys:

Vest or t-shirt, shorts, sneakers, protein shake and I-pod. Always found in the weights section, usually in pairs. Aim to lift the heaviest weights possible in order to catch the eye of a Skinny, no-fun package as she walks past.

I am not sure what I would define myself as. Definitely not any of the stereotypes above. I always wondered how girls looked so perfect at gym because I look more like a blushing beetroot after a work-out. I suppose I could categorise myself as a hamster. I am the type of person who goes to gym to run on the hamster wheel, just so that I can go home and stuff my pouches with delicious food and not feel guilty! Running on a treadmill is the most mind numbing exercise, but when you can’t get out of your cage to run on the road, what else is there to do? :)

My Jamie Oliver apprenticeship

It’s the end of the month and money is tighter than a kiddies swimming cap at this stage, so I have to be 'prudent' about my spending. I did the only thing that any intelligent, money-savvy person would do...I hid my credit card in my cupboard. What this means for me however, is that I can't purchase any food until Friday. Luckily, while rummaging through my freezer in my ravenous, post-work-out state last night, I managed to find the following: two packets of bread (each containing the two end slices of bread that I keep but never eat), a container of frozen coconut milk, 2 chicken breasts and a packet of frozen wraps. YES!!!! Chicken wraps for dinner.

Here's how to make the perfect juicy chicken wraps with very limited ingredients...

What you need:

• 1 wrap (Weigh less make their own wraps which you can freeze for a bloody long time considering how long they have been in my freezer for).

• 1 large chicken breast

• 4/5 cherry tomatoes

• Feta cheese

• 4 Baby spinach leaves or 1 lettuce leaf

• 2 tbs Soy sauce

• 1 tbs Olive oil

• Blob of Sweet chilli sauce

• Salt and pepper to taste
Method:
• Chop up the salad ingredients finely (the smaller thay are, the more you can stuff into the wrap).

• Heat the oil in a medium, non-stick frying pan.

• Add the chicken to the pan and stir-fry until cooked. Don't turn the chicken until the underside has browned since stirring too soon prevents the chicken from turning a golden brown colour and makes it look pale and pasty.

• When the chicken is nearly cooked, add a pinch of salt and pepper and the soy sauce.

• Remove chicken from pan and allow to cool slightly.

• Warm the wrap on a plate in the microwave for 20-30 seconds - don’t let the wrap bubble or get crispy since this somehow makes folding the wrap that much more difficult.

• Place a blob or two of sweet chilli on the wrap and spread with a knife.

• Add salad ingredients and chicken.

• Fold approximately a 1/4 of the wrap up from the bottom and then fold the left and right sides over this.

• If you can get this right without losing any ingredients while eating, then you deserve an award and I humbly applaud you. I won't judge if your wrap bursts open and all the ingredients pour onto your lap while taking a bite. This is normal.

Bon Appétit!

Just call me Mother Nature

I bought an Orchid from Woolies the other day. Yes, it was a spur of the moment buy but now I realise it was meant to be. I have found my true calling in life, and all this time I thought I was meant to help people, not plants.
I am a living, breathing, horticulturalist specialising in Orchids bought from Woolies. I know it sounds very specialised and perhaps there is not a very big market out there for horticulturalists specialising in Orchids bought from Woolies, but at least I have discovered a niche market.

I am thinking about putting an ad on Verimark:

Is your Woolies Orchid looking sad and shriveled? Are you struggling to remember to change your underpants, never mind remembering to water your Orchid? Have you forgotten to prune your Orchid in the last few months? If you answered yes to these questions, then you need the help of Leggi, specialist Woolies Orchid horticulturalist. If you phone now to arrange a personalised session with Leggi, you will also receive a free bottle of pre-mixed orchid food absolutely free. That’s right. Absolutely free.

You should see it. All pretty and pink and stuff. ALL the blossoms have opened (9 in total I might add). Have you ever seen an Orchid with 9 blooming flowers? No, I didn't think so! Just call me Mother Nature.

Flying tortoises

This weekend I went to see ‘The Hot Fisherman’ in the Eastern Cape for a little Valentines getaway. We stayed on a gorgeous hunting farm 2 hours outside of Stutterheim. On one of the game drives we saw a number of territorial Bontebok males courting the females with a display which looked very much like they were all constipated – tails curled up over their backs horizontally while holding their heads low with outstretched legs. It made me wonder what sort of display ‘The Hot Fisherman’ would put on if he was in rut. Maybe he would show off with his rod…excuse the pun.


On one of the game drives, we saw an old tortoise next to the road. We got out the car to have a look at him (I made sure the farm didn’t have any animals that could eat us before I got out). The tortoise wasn’t too impressed with all the attention and made a sluggish sprint for the closest bush. Shame…I felt bad for barging in on his chill time.

This story is going somewhere I assure you, just keep reading…

The time finally arrived for ‘The Hot Fisherman’ and I to get some shut eye at around 12pm after several Savanna’s and a few glasses of vino. I plonked myself down on the bed and fell asleep before my head hit the pillow, and that’s when it happened…

All of a sudden, I heard a noise on the roof. Startling from the clamor, I looked up towards the roof and saw hundreds of tortoises all looking down at me. I could ‘see’ how frantically they were all trying to get away from the edge of the roof as more and more tortoises appeared out of nowhere. I grabbed ‘The Hot Fisherman’s’ arm with one swift motion crying out, ‘Shit, shit, shit’. ‘The Hot Fisherman’ sat bolt upright in the bed requesting an explanation for my very strange behaviour. I told him hysterically that, ‘the tortoises were on the roof’. He then calmly asked how I knew that they were tortoises, to which I replied, ‘…coz I can see them’. At this, ‘The Hot Fisherman’ candidly turned over and told me that I was dreaming. Flabbergasted at how abruptly he had written off my obvious concern for the lives of the innocent tortoises, (which could have been on the roof for all he knew) I called him an asshole and turned over, fuming in the darkness.

Needless to say, I felt like a tool the next morning (on Valentine’s day nogal) and I think ‘The Hot Fisherman’ has placed me on a waiting list at the Happy Campers mental health clinic.

Fly fishing is not for ants

Over my December holidays, I spent two weeks with ‘The Hot Fisherman’ in the Eastern Cape. On one particularly sizzling day, we decided to trek to Stutterheim to do a little fly-fishing. I thought our little fishing trip would be quite romantic. Hells bells, could I have been more wrong?


I caught everything – dead trees in the dam, reeds, the branches of trees behind me and I even managed to hook myself (twice). After just about every cast, I found myself trudging up the hill to locate my fly (prickly little suckers those flies are) which had lodged itself in some immovable object. The funny thing, is that I could cope with the leeches burrowing little holes into my feet and ankles (unfortunately they weren’t big enough to justify quitting for fear of blood loss) and I could cope with the Horse Fly’s making mince meat of my calves with their little serrated mandibles, but what I couldn’t handle, was the fact that I was undeniably a terrible fly-fisher woman. To make matters worse, ‘The Hot Fisherman’ has been doing this since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. There I was, stuck on the side of a leech infested dam, bleeding and feeling about as useless as a pork chop in a synagogue. It did get better though. Eventually, I was only fetching my fly from the grass behind me on every second or third cast!

Here is some common fly fishing terminology I learnt on my outing:

Stripping line – the point at which you begin removing your saturated clothing, because you are dripping sweat like a sumo wrestler in a sauna while waiting for the bloody fish to bite.

Unloading the Rod – when your hot fishing partner gets turned off by your dismal attempts to cast, your bleeding legs and the mud splattered all over your face.

Wind Knot – the knots you get in your line because of pathetic casting.

Sink Rate – the speed at which you become submerged in mud while attempting to retrieve your fly from the immersed branch you just caught.

Impressionistic Flies – the mark the hook of a fly leaves in your skin after catching you in the back.

On the whole, I would say it was a very successful trip and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

How to lose your thighs in 10 days

Catchy isn’t it? I thought so too. If this were a diet, I probably would have tried it already. Maybe that could be my next career move - inventing names for diets and diet food. ‘Lose the wobble with no trouble’. ‘Fat Combat – the all new diet pill and weight loss fitness program’.

With so many different diets out there, all promising you will look like Jessica Alba and Jennifer Aniston sooner than you can say starvation, how can you choose a diet that will work? Luckily for you, I have tried them all and am willing to reveal them to you:

Myth No 1: You can eat as much as you like, as long as everything you eat is fat free.

I believed this and I stuck to fat free everything for almost 7 months. I sacrificed creamy milk for milk flavoured water, chocolates for marshmallows and wine gums (nom, nom, nom) and pizza for tuna salads and stir-fry’s. All my fat free dieting ultimately resulted in hungry bum (when your pants begin to ride up between your bum cheeks while you walk) and muffin tops (rolls of fat - better known as love handles which fold over the tops of your pants) because I wasn't exercising and I was consuming tons of sugary foods with the belief that all that sugar would magically dissipate while I sat watching Grey’s Anatomy re-runs.

Myth No 2: Eating nothing all day will help me lose weight.

I call this the acetone breath diet, because that’s what happens to you. Starving yourself results in breath that smells like the inside of a nail salon, skin break-outs, brittle hair and nails and most of all, irritability. Sounds appealing right? Then, when you do decide to snack on a celery stick or two, your body believes that this wholesome goodness needs to be preserved for the duration of the fasting period, and deposits it on your inner thighs and buttocks for ‘safe keeping’.

Myth No 3: Drinking all my food will help me lose weight.

How ridiculous is this concept? I chuckle at the very thought of this absurd theory. Do you want to know why you lose weight? BECAUSE WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND BLENDS A CHICKEN BREAST OR A STEAK? The only stuff that tastes ok blended is cooked veggies and fruit. Any guesses as to how long you will last on a diet like this?

Myth No 4: Drinking apple cider vinegar will burn away my fat.

Seriously? If you are truly that desperate for a miracle cure that you are willing to drink litres of apple cider vinegar which is thought to help reduce appetite instead of following a healthy, well-balanced diet, then nothing I say is going to convince you otherwise.

Myth No 5: Diets that promise more than 0.5 – 1kg of weight loss per week.

Anything more than this and you are losing water. Don’t be an idiot and attempt to lose 5kg in 7days. You will just end up really dehydrated. Slow weight loss over several weeks is much easier to maintain over the long term.

What worked for me is this:
1) Get your lazy @ss off the couch and go to gym, go for a run on the road or walk for AT LEAST thirty minutes 4/5 days a week. A combination of weight training and cardio will give you the best results (more muscle = more energy burned).

2) Eat 6 small, low GI meals a day. Foe example:
Breakfast: ½ cup of All Bran Flakes with 1 cup low fat milk.

Snack: 175g low fat or fat free yoghurt (plain is best but I eat the flavoured ones.)

Lunch: 30g whole-wheat bread with 50g of chicken breast and a side salad.

Early afternoon snack: Piece of fruit (green apples, plums, and any berries are best).

Late afternoon snack: Piece of whole-wheat toast with peanut butter.

Dinner: 50g pasta with steamed fish and a Napolitana sauce or one chicken breast with plenty of salad or veggies and 2/3 tablespoons of cous cous.

3) Allow yourself one cheat day a week where you can eat all your favourite foods. Fat Fridays are my favourite day of the week.

4) Weigh yourself once a week. No more, no less. This will give you a much more accurate indication of your progress because your weight fluctuates each day depending on hormones, how hot or cold it is, whether you have exercised or eaten etc.

5) Don’t let weight loss consume you. Too many women lose sight of themselves and become wrapped up in a world of size 8’s. Have a healthy goal in mind and stop when you reach it. Skeletal is not sexy.

I heart Pirate Hookers

There is an expression my friends and I use to explain the incredible transformation which occurs whenever the consumption of alcohol and the wearing of black stilettos occur simultaneously. This expression has gained quite a bit of recognition in recent times, so much so that it could almost be called a movement. The first time it happened was at a little club in Greenside called Tokyo Star. As Barney Stinson would say, it was “Leg.En.Dary” and the Pirate Hooker was born.


Now it may sound derogatory, but a Pirate Hooker is not what you are thinking. All girls, no matter their size and shape, no matter the colour of their skin or hair, will act like a Pirate Hooker when the time arrives. Let me explain…

Time: 1:30am

Location: Dance floor, Tokyo Star

Parties involved: Myself, TTB and Snow

Dress: To-the-nine in heels, LBD’s, push-up bra’s and bling.

All of a sardine, the most incredible, all-consuming song starts playing. Immediately, the transformation begins and before you know it, all three of us were busting out the best Pirate Hooker poses we could muster…unintentionally. The Pirate Hooker pose cannot be taught. It’s already there, hidden somewhere in that X chromosome just waiting for ‘your’ song for its big reveal. Have you ever heard a bunch of girls on the dance floor all yelling in unison, “It’s my song”? Pirate Hookers. Or have you ever noticed a girl with her eyes closed, one arm in the air, bobbing her head back and forth and swaying her hips in time with a song, as if in a trance? Pirate Hooker. At that moment in time, that girl is not thinking about you, she doesn’t care how she looks, and you better not interrupt her because it’s HER time, HER song, and all she wants is to dance.

Yes girls, we all have a little Pirate in us…the only reason the Captains Pose originated was because the male species were beginning to feel a little left out. I am proud of my inner Pirate Hooker, as we should be, because for those two or three minutes on the dance floor, or in the car, or in the bedroom with the music blaring, I couldn’t care less about what people think and I embrace every inch of myself. If only we could learn to do this all the time. What a beautiful sight the Pirate Hooker is.

How not to run 5km

Secret confession: I run because I have to.

I am not going to sit here and tell you that running changed my life, or that for those 30 minutes or so on the road, I feel free. Nope. Perhaps, you would disagree with me if you like the idea of cars full of young testosterone-injected students whistling and hooting at you, or being attacked by swarms of miggies (tiny fly-jobs that lodge themselves in your nostrils or the back of your throat when attempting to breathe). So to be blatantly honest, I run 5-6 km on average and I try to get it over with as soon as is femininely possible – I say femininely because I was once told I look like a giraffe on steroids when I am running and since then I have attempted to shorten my stride length to look more like a female. But, and this is a big resounding but, on some occasions, running feels…great. It’s addictive. If I don’t run at least three times a week, I struggle to sleep, I eat whatever edible thing I can find in the fridge and I feel like a puff adder – fat, lazy and ready to strike at anything that moves.

So, shortly after moving into my new apartment, I decided to go for a little 4km jog to check out the area and hopefully learn the back roads to beat the morning traffic. I asked my flat mate, to tell me her 4km route, which she dutifully did.

Unfortunately, I did not listen and the leisurely 4km run turned into a 6km run-walk, to be known from here on as the '6km Run of Death'. Now I know what you are thinking. "6km is manageable" and "2km is not that much more". To both of these responses I would say "yes I agree", except that I was completely unprepared for the 'Extra 2km of Death'.

I was buggered, to say the least, when I arrived back home, gasping for air and sweating like a foot in a plastic shoe. I threw down my iPod, smashed two glasses of Oros, choking and spluttering because I was still sucking air like an acute asthmatic and vowed never to run in my area again…and then ran the same route the following day. So there it is. Running is addictive and it feels incredible when the routes you initially found so tough start to get easier.

Here is some practical advice from my own personal experience in my purple Nike’s:

I. Measure your routes and don’t take to the road willy-nilly or wear a watch and time how long you have been on the road for so you have an idea of your distance. You are not Bruce Fordyce (but if you are then I would like to take this opportunity to say hi and tell you what a huge fan of your work I am sir), so unless you are training for Comrades, keep to your target distances and times.

II. Don’t run faster when cars full of young talent are approaching and then slow down when they pass you. Firstly, this can be extremely tiring and secondly, nobody is really looking at your running style or speed. They simply want to check out your bum.

III. Carry tissues in the little pouch they sometimes put on the inside of your running shorts (I am convinced that’s what it’s for). Your nose will inevitably run or you will need to do some heavy trumpeting to get those delightful little flying jobs out of your nasal passages.

IV. Run with someone a little more experienced than you are, but at your pace. You have two options for this. A) Run with someone hotter than you. This obviously has advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are that if they run ahead of you, you get to watch and you will also try to push yourself a bit harder because you don’t want to look like a moron. The disadvantage is that they will probably see you at your worst – red faced and smelling a little funky. B) Run with someone who really encourages you and has your best interests at heart (alternatively someone who is not as hot as you). This way, you can exert yourself, push a bead or two and still take comfort in the fact that your running partner will not suddenly leave you in a cloud of dust when the inevitable car full of young talent approaches.

V. If you are one of those people (like me) who doesn’t usually (ever) spit, don’t attempt to do this while running. The odds are against you…seriously. I tried, I failed, and it landed on my left shoe.

I am a sucker for tears

Jozi has a vast array of beggars, drifters and hawkers at every thinkable street corner, robot, stop street, intersection, parking lot and sidewalk. They are super sneaky and have developed many astounding ninja tactics to entice you to buy superglue, hangers and black plastic bags by the truck load. I know all this because I have the evidence on the floor of my passenger seat. Now there was one particular run-in I had with a drifter I wish to share with you. This sneaky traveling worker has gained the force of red weepy eye, and he is not afraid to use it.

So I stopped at a busy intersection, window down, sunglasses on, listening to John Meyer...as you do…when out of nowhere, the weepy red-eyed travelling worker appeared. Squinting down at me, he asked if I had some change or cigarettes for him. I told him I didn't smoke and that my wallet was in the boot. At this, the travelling worker looked directly into the 12 o'clock sun for a split second, and back at me. I was horrified. His eyes had welled up, and tears streamed down his face. I crumbled. I took the glasses off my face and handed them over to him, telling him that 'it is important to protect your eyes from the sun'. And just like that, he was gone.

Beware the force of red weepy eye, for it attacks without the slightest warning and leaves you squinty and exposed.