Today, I...

...nearly freaked out at the sight of a parktown prawn on my floor, till I realised it was an old leaf that had blown in under the door. Then I came downstairs later and did it again. My husband obligingly stood on it and crushed it to smithereens. It definitely wasn't a parktown prawn. They aren't killed that easily.

I really need to get a doorstop of sorts so this doesn't happen again.

...went shopping for the first step of my home improvement program, and bought four sturdy wooden boxes to stand our computer screens on. Why they don't just make screens the right height for your head, I'll never know. But these will be a huge improvement on the magazine piles and old cardboard box we've been using, and we can also use them to store things we never use. Ooooh. I love storage. Mr Ruby Slippers was quite excited by the trip, mostly because he loves boxes. "They're so full of potential," he explained. I love him.

...had to sing Le Jazz Hot for the first time holding a microphone. It wasn't easy, but it sounds so much nicer! We also had to work out how to pass the four microphones around the six soloists during "You can't stop the beat". That was...interesting. Five and a half weeks till opening night. Yelp.

Home improvement

A few months ago, I was whinging  complaining mentioning that I really wanted a house of my own. I just have this idea that once I own a home I can decorate it the way I want, and it will all by beautiful and matchy and fabulous, and I can take you on virtual tours of its awesomeness, like Blue-Eyed Bride does with her yummy home. At the moment we're renting a garden cottage, and we've been here for three years and four months. And I haven't really done squat to decorate it. Why?

Well, partly it's the age-old money issue. We don't have the cash to buy matching furniture (or a dining room table) or pretty things. The other thing that's holding me back is we don't own this house, so we can't paint anything or put up shelves (we asked). We have hung a few pictures; I hope they don't mind those holes. I don't want to make curtains because every house has different sized windows, and "when we move out" (our constant phrase for the past three years) they might not fit the new place. And that would be a waste...and I hate waste. Thanks for that, Mom. :-)

But we're not moving out anytime soon, it appears. So why the heck can't I bring myself to make the place a bit more...I don't know.... How I'd like it?

It's funny, because the type of rooms that appeal to me are bright, clean, and minimalist. And I think that's only appealing to me because I've never had it. I am a Hoarder, people. It's not like those scary shows on tv, but I have bits and pieces everywhere, and tons of books and dvds and albums and mementos and a gazillion little thingymabobs and whatyoumacallems and doodymalairys. So I figure I'm just hankering after rooms that look like THIS because I've never had them, right?

 

I mean, come on. Could I even keep a room like that clean? Never mind tidy??

As proof, I offer you these photos. I can't even believe I'm doing this. I just took two photos of our computer room (affectionately known as the Spare Oom) and one of our bedroom. I didn't pick up or move anything. This is how untidy we are. I also apologise for the bad quality pics. I didn't feel like unearthing batteries for my flash.

Ok, so it's not 'crazy hoarding people on tv' material. But look at the piles of clothes by the bed (especially Mr Ruby's side!) Look at the stuff on the floor between my bedside table and my bookcase. Look at the stuff ON the bedside tables! And the cute kitty sleeping under the window on the left hand side :-) He makes more mess with his hair and little pawprints than we do.

This is our Spare Oom:

Yes, we each have two screens, because we're nerdy like that. Just look at all the crap on the desks, though!

And here's the opposite side of the room:

(Yes, we have a sink in our computer room. We don't use it, though. As far as we can tell, our house used to be an office, and this was their kitchen. It also accounts for the fluorescent striplights in the bedroom). Anyway, just look at all that random stuff on the floor and on the sink. It makes me sad.  How pretty are my dvds, though? :-)

A few days ago I stumbled upon a darling little blog called Life in the Fun Lane. Thank you (and I mean that sarcastically) to whoever linked me to it, because I'm completely enthralled by the author's adventures in renovating and in refurbishing old furniture and making it look all white and beautiful and shabby chic. I want some of that shabby chic action in my house, please.

LOOK at this. I mean, come on. No house should be that adorable, right?

The Halloween decor - elegant and delicious!

One of the items of furniture she's revamped.

And then, to make matters worse, I found these two pictures lurking on photography blogs, and they just leapt out at me and made me crave them. Seriously. I desire them in an unhealthy way.

Not the baby. The TREE. The beautiful, gorgeous tree, spreading its branches protectingly and lovingly. Swoon.

AND:

The BIRDS. Flying free from those cages that I love so much right now. I could cry, it's so beautiful. Waaaaaant. So badly.

And actually, this shouldn't be too hard, because I have a husband who can paint. I just have to convince him that he wants them too :-)

The other day that same husband of mine made me have an epiphany. I said, "I want to decorate our living room in black, white and green one day." And he said, "Why don't you start now?"

And I said. "Why DON'T I start now?"

Sometimes I'm so obtuse it frightens me :-)

I ♥ Faces Fix-it Friday

Another one!

Here's the before. Not too much wrong with it, right?

 

But look what you can do!

or

I was going to keep him in colour because of his beautiful blues, but when I tried the B & w (with cinnamon) he just looked adorable too! Children look so gorgeous in black & white.

The main thing I had to do on the original photo was even out the shadows on his face using the clone tool. Then I lightened, warmed, sharpened, made it contrasty, and voila.

Full of Pride

On Saturday I went with my friend Paul to the Johannesburg Pride Parade. Paul wanted to hand out flyers for our upcoming show, Babes on Broadway, and I wanted to help with that and take photos of the festivities. Mr Ruby Slippers decided to come along too, which was fab, mostly because he kept steering me out of harm's way when I was looking through the camera instead of where I was going :-)

It was SUCH fun! I love bright colours and clearly I had my fill of those! They closed of one of the busiest streets in Johannesburg for us, which left quite a few disgruntled motorists, but for the most part people were waving and cheering and hooting as we went by. I loved it. I loved it so much I didn't even notice we walked six and a half kilometres. This is not normal for me, and I felt like I'd been hit by a bus the next day. It was totally worth it, even though I had to go and dance at rehearsal. Ouch.

PS - apparently neither Mr RS nor myself can put suncream on properly, because we both have a lovely red rim around our hairlines.

Onto pictures!


These rainbow robot guys were AWESOME.


It takes balls to be a fairy..mwahaha.




Look at the little dogs! Awwwwww.




The girls on the left's T-shirts say "The Right to be right here right now", in case it's too small for you to read. And I love how they'd decked out this wheelchair in the middle pic!



These guys in the first three pics were representing a church that accepts everyone. Actually there were three churches there like that, but these guys had the best props! I loved the big crosses and the "Jesus inside" shirts. (To be clear: I don't care for religion particularly, but I do think it's good to be accepting of all people. Basically I just liked their props and things.)

The bottom pic shows us filling up Jan Smuts Avenue. It was such a pleasure not to have to stop at every traffic light as one usually does!


Two of the parade traffic guys, dressing up for the occasion. Loved them!


Bright colours and fairy wings. I was in my element.

Next:

Top left: this van was stopped in the traffic jam we were causing, and the group of guys in front of us had this idea for a photo. I thought it was hysterical!

Middle left: I wanted to take some close-up pics that showed the love and closeness of the participants. I caught this nice casual moment of the one guy tucking his hand through his partner's belt. There are a few more like that scattered through the other storyboards.


My favourites were the crowd reaction shots! These guys were hanging out on their balcony the whole time with a "We heart you" sign:



These construction workers all stopped working to hang over the scaffolding and see the crazy rainbow people:

A general "Um, okaaaay" look from passersby:


These guys were my favourite! Look at the middle guy. You could put his face in the dictionary next to the definition of "What..the...hey...?"

I had the most fun! And, while not wishing to use this blog as a politican platform, I'm so glad gay marriage is legal here. People who love people should be able to marry said people. The end!

I ♥ Faces Fix-it Friday

Oh, it's Friday again. This one was an interesting challenge - trying to rescue a completely underexposed photo without making it look terrible.



The problem with underexposed photos is when you lighten them they become very grainy and very reddish in tone. After I'd cropped and lightened this picture I opened the colour channel and moved the red options way across to blue and cyan. I also increased the yellow a little. Then I used Pioneer Woman's "Soft and Faded" action to get the little guy a bit less noisy and more soft, and then I used TRA's "Super Fun Happy" to make him even softer. Usually I don't much like the effect of Super Fun Happy, but I think in this case it worked!

I ♥ Faces Fix-it Friday

Yeah, um, I totally forgot to post this on Friday. Probably because I was ranting on about surrogacy :-)

So here is last week's Fix-it Friday from I ♥ Faces:

Before:


When I looked at this picture I decided two things. Firstly, her hands were way too distracting because they were becoming the focal point of the picture, and secondly, I wanted to draw attention to her cute freckles and red hair. This is what I came up with:


I really like the little light rainbow that fell across her hair!

Could you loan out your body?

I remember the day that Mr Ruby Slippers, BFF Slippers and I met Emma Thompson. It was in February 2007, and we (ok, BFF RS and I) were so giddy and excited that one of our favourite celebs was actually coming to little old South Africa, that we were on a high the whole day. Picture drunken, gibbering idiots and you have us, without the drunken. We were just drunk on celeb-stalking. Anyway, afterwards the three of us went out to lunch, and Mr Ruby Slippers got to listen to us yabbering on about how lovely Emmawas (she really was!) and how we wished we could be best friends with her. At one point I said, "Oooh, I wonder if she'd like a surrogate mother so she could have another child? That way we'd always have a bond and I could totally become her friend!" We laughed, and Mr Ruby Slippers didn't. He said, "Um, no."

I was taken aback, because Mr RS and I have a very easygoing relationship, and he doesn't usually say the "N" word to me! So I was all, "What, you wouldn't want me to do that?" and he said, "No, I wouldn't", and I said, "So if I wanted to be Emma's surrogate you would actually forbid me from doing it?" and he went, "Yes, I would." At which point I probably made some stupid comment about how he couldn't because we weren't married (it was a bit of a sore point with me that we'd talked about it but he had yet to propose), and we stopped arguing about it because it got awkward. Possibly more for BFF Ruby Slippers. Anyway, it wasn't like I was actually serious. It's the same thing as saying you wish you could marry Josh Brolin so Barbra Streisand could be your stepmother (BFF Ruby Slippers wants this). You know it's never going to happen, and when it came to the moment you probably wouldn't even like Josh Brolin in that way, so it'd never happen anyway.

So what I took away from this conversation was that Mr Ruby Slippers had very definite ideas about my loaning out my uterus, even to someone totally awesome like Emma Thompson, and his ideas were that I was forbidden from doing it. Which might be the only time he's stopped me doing anything. I can wear what I want, watch what I want, go where I want, because, hey, we have that easygoing relationship. But clearly my body is his.

(So no letting Robert Redford have sex with me for one million dollars, darn it).

Anyway, it wasn't like I was serious.

Fast forward to now. A few days ago, a friend of mine mentioned on Facebook that he was looking for a womb to incubate his baby. You gotta love Facebook; nothing is TMI. :-) So everyone started making jokes in the comments, and I went, "How much are you offering?", and there was a bit of back and forth banter about me being *wide open* (read in all the innuendo you like) to high offers, and so on and so forth. And I started feeling very weird about it, because although it started off as a joke, and it was still kind of playing out as a joke on Facebook, I had caught myself wondering, "could I actually do that? If someone paid me enough money to be a surrogate mother, could I do it?"

My first instinct would be to say, "No, of course not! That'd just be weird. I couldn't be pregnant and then give the baby up, could I? Could I?"

But thousands of women do it. How do they reach the point where they're able to go through the amazingness of having a child inside them, and then just handing it over to someone else to raise at the end of nine months of sickness, aching backs, peeing all the time, and utter awe at seeing a tiny body move inside their own? How do you not become attached to that child, even if you know all along that it isn't yours, that it doesn't carry your DNA, and that you're just growing it for someone who is unable to?

But other people can do it, I told myself. And then the mercenary side of me kicked in. If they paid me enough money to do it I could have things I'd always wanted but was never able to afford. We might be able to afford to emigrate, which we keep talking about but never actually do because we're poor. Or we could have our own house. Or see the world. Or.....you see, I've grown up without money. We weren't well-off when I was growing up, and the money I made at the bookshops I worked at shocks most people when I tell them. So I live without spending much, most of the time. I've moaned about this before, so I don't want to harp, but because I live on so little money I get really excited about free stuff (Yeah! Free sweets at a function! I'm going to take them all home with me!), and when I see some way of possibly making a ton of money I'm all over the idea without really thinking it through.

You see where this is heading? I had actually started, in a mild way, considering carrying a baby for my friends. Mostly for the money, because it's not like I'm going to go through the crap that comes with pregnancy without any of the joy to go with it for FREE. But these guys would be great parents. Yes, they're both men. Which makes me want to help them out even more, because I'm 100% for gay rights, and so many people will NOT want to help them just because they're gay. And they would be great parents. They got married two years ago and were together for at least four or five before that. The husband that I know better, from my community theatre, is something awfully clever in IT that I don't understand, has a really sharp, clever sense of humour, is a good actor with an hysterical sense of comic timing, and just an all-round fun guy to hang out with. His husband is a doctor (hello brains and money!) and loves musicals and theatre (of course, I love that about him.). They love each other and they want a child. They have money with which to pay for said child. And the very fact that I considered doing this for the money scares the heck out of me.

Enter Mr Ruby Slippers who, of course, put a stop to any notions I was having, by forbidding me from doing it. I asked him, if I really wanted to do it, if I was 100% certain and wanted with every part of me to do this, would he really stop me? And he said it would just freak him out too much, to have me pregnant with someone else's baby. (Can you imagine those awkward scenarios when you run into old friends? "OMG you guys are having a baby!" "No, we're just keeping it warm for someone else.") But jokes aside, it's too personal, too intimate for Mr RS to deal with. I think it really is for me too. As usual I've just let money cloud my judgment. But I can't help wonder, if I was single, would I be considering this more seriously?

This is quite the controversial issue I've raised here. What do you guys think? Would you be able to carry a baby and give it up? Do you think it's something that should only be done out of love and friendship, and money is just an awful thing to bring into it? Because I know how mercenary I sound when I say I might do it for the money. I really do.

If it was your sister or your best friend who was desperate for a child, could you do it? Would you ever be able to "forget" the baby that was part of you?