Tired

Had a very, no extremely busy day today and I am beat! I am just going to do the double falling

1. fall into bed

2. fall asleep

It is not easy being a wife, mother, elder sister…the whole title stands for different roles. When you are a wife, your husband makes demands and no matter how you look at it, it is his right.

When you are a mother, the children make demands, and with the internally built motherly instinct, you cannot help but fill their every need. It is not just their right to make demands, those demands give you a reason to live and keep on moving.

When you are an elder sister, your younger siblings make demands and heaven help you when they are in need and you are not there, you feel you have failed the entire universe.

All of these put together revolves around family, immediate and extended. Here in Africa family ties mean a whole lot and so the typical woman must learn how to play each and every role that comes her way.

Well like I said today was a seriously hectic day for me. I filled each and every part of those roles and still had to smile my way through visits from friends tonight, close friends who had to be entertained (see why I need the double falling?)

Today started with general housekeeping to preparing breakfast, to taking care of my sister, to shopping, to preparing two separate dishes (to be stored for the week), to playing video games with my boy (aren’t I a supermom? We played a game of car racing with the police at our heels!), to having a chat with my girls, to having friends over for dinner…hope I haven’t forgotten anything.

To sum it up it was a full day and like Kenny Rogers, ‘it’s gonna take more than waking to rouse me’ tomorrow morning!

Hope you all had a wonderful day, like I did today, and that you have a more splendid one tomorrow.

Nighty night.

Why So Many Angry People

Everywhere I look people are angry. When you drive on the road you encounter road rage. You get to your place of work and your greeting is not returned with a smile. You ask the question “How are you?” and they say you are prying. You decide not to ask and they say you are uncaring. There is nothing under the sun that people don’t pick as a basis for a display of anger. Have you tried breaking the ice by cracking a joke, they say you are making fun of them (another reason for anger).

With everyone so angry out there where do we get a respite?

Our homes should be a haven…a haven of peace and rest. Try to teach your kids to smile, to play, to laugh heartily, yes, heartily. Let the laughter bubble forth from deep in the stomach, let it roll and spin over, let it bring tears to the eyes. Yes, try and have that kind of laughter in your home at least once a day. Do not bring that anger from the street into your home. You can’t say but gradually, the anger out there would abate because a happy family is a happy community and invariably and angry home front gives birth to all that anger out there.

Have a happy night.

Sometimes I Wonder…

Sometimes it feels so lousy and frustrating being Nigerian. Imagine clicking on a film on YouTube and being told its contents has been blocked for your country because of copyright laws.

Don’t get me wrong, my problem is not with YouTube, it is with the country to which I belong, a country which ranks, no I don’t want to state that it is too embarrassing, in the list of corrupt nations. Copyright laws exist here alright, but do they go implemented? THAT is the point. And now the generalisation is making those of us who know what to and what not to do with copyright properties look like criminals.

Did I say criminals? Of course I said criminals! Anyone who has no respect for or steals others’ properties, intellectual or otherwise is a criminal, pure and simple.

I believe in calling a spade a spade, but I don’t believe in generalisation. I believe in judging each individual on their merits and not with relation to others of the same tribe or race or country. But then since the world thrives in generalisation, well, I have no choice but to look for alternatives that my “beloved country” can access.

Now I Actually Have To Double-Check

It was a sad night last night. Security has never really been my thing (I am quite careless I admit). Naivete must actually be a reason for that or just plain stupidity. But each time I hear about violent crime I get the feeling it cannot happen to me or my immediate family. But then recently, I am getting firsts in things unimaginable (to me that is). First my adopted daughter betrays me in the meanest way ever, then she tries to rub it in my face by visiting my home in my absence to gain solidarity from my children, then last night my home gets attacked by real armed men. Now THAT is what is unimaginable to me, that men can lie in wait for their fellow man in order to harm them…people who have done them no harm, who don’t even KNOW them…

I was roused last night by shouts from my backyard (my husband had gone out to put off the power generating set since the nations power generators prefer to keep everyone in darkness). Some masked armed men were grappling with my husband. They had been lying in wait for him knowing he would definitely come out to turn off the gen set. Well they surprised him when they put a gun to his head and asked him to hush, but he recovered quickly enough to not only disarm them but send them scurrying away the way they came (I know I don’t engage in hero worship but he is definitely my hero now). By the time the police arrived they were gone but my husband was injured.

It is indeed so amazing what people do in the name of robberies. These days you really have to be ancient to bring cash home (everyone is going cashless) so what exactly did they want?

I thank God my husband was not hurt more than he was and that he succeeded in keeping them away from gaining entry into the house. At least that spared our children that trauma. As for me, I sustained some injuries when I took off in blind anxiety to go and help him out and ran smack into the door (I blacked out for a while) and when I came to they were already gone.

Very sad experience that I have to live with, but now I know I have to check and  double check, be more security conscious. Though that won’t stop a determined criminal, but at least it would make me feel more at least.

I wish us all a safe, good night’s sleep.

Football

I love watching the game of football. Scratch that, I love a GOOD game of football. I love football especially when it is a tough match and keeps you on edge half the time, it keeps your adrenaline pumping (well that is if you are not hypertensive, we don’t want some cardiac arrests on our hands, do we?).

But I get totally bored to tears when some football team comes up and has to go home with a basket full of goals, I mean this is not basketball, IT IS FOOTBALL…call it soccer if you like we are on the same page. When that happens a serious match begins to look like some kind of joke, a highly hilarious comedy or laugh riot (now I got that last term from the book Iceberg by Clive Cussler…interesting book).

Anyway, would someone ask me why I am rambling (this is not exactly ranting…)?  That is because I just watched Tahiti thrashed 10 goals to nil after they also suffered a 6-1 defeat a few days ago. The entire match felt like some kind of comedy.

There… I am done with my rambling!

Sleep Debt

I am coming down with something I cannot put a finger on…maybe a flu or a bug. Whichever it is, it is a three-letter word that is making my days a nuisance. I find myself falling asleep when I have a pile of work to do (Last week just before the TV show I co-present I found myself nodding off to sleep…it caused quite a stir.)

Anyway I am eagerly looking forward to this coming weekend, I would have to pay a lot of sleep debts I owe. I really need a whole day…or two, to do nothing but sleep. Then maybe I would shake off whichever three-letter word is try to get me down.

There is a lesson to be learned in this, whatever you owe, never owe sleep…it would definitely collect, you really MUST pay!

Sunday Lunch

This afternoon, in spite of my ill health (I really needed to spite it) I made a dish of ham and black-eyed beans casserole…sorry you can’t get a picture of it, the family was too much in a hurry to eat it while it was hot, there was practically no chance of taking a snapshot!

Preparing the dish took hours and every hour was made to count. And how happy I was with how everyone dug in with unison.

Anyway I have been down since Friday…I think it’s pneumonia, and I have been incapacitated. But this afternoon I dragged myself into the kitchen and prepared lunch and you know what? I feel a lot better now than I ever felt since Friday (that doesn’t mean I have not been taking my medicines, I have) and I believe I can face tomorrow with more enthusiasm. Only I pray I don’t have a relapse…there is no kitchen in my office!

One instruction the Kids Don’t Want to Hear

Have you noticed how much the kids hate it when you tell them, “It’s bedtime, go to bed”. Well I don’t know about you but I have to repeat that instruction over and over each night before they get a move on.

I wish I had someone to tell me to go to bed by 9 pm, I would be so elated! After a hard days work, sleep is the primary thing on my mind as I head home. But alas! I can’t do that once I step in. I need to perform all duties common to wives and mothers so that when I finally hit the sack, there is no looking back.

But not so the children. They spend all day in school, come home have their homework done, play more than they should, help out as little as they wish and then settle in front of the TV and when it is time for them to retire, they wail as loud as they can.

Well I try not to get swayed by them and their wails and complaints. Bedtime is bedtime and must be adhered to because whether they like it or not, it is for their own good!

WhenTeens Begin to Wish to Die…There is a Problem!

When I remember my childhood, I remember dreams…dreams of castles and princes in shining armour, dreams of having a dozen adorable children to dote on, dreams of living to be a hundred and fifty and yet NOT growing old, dreams of my parents always being there no matter how old we get to be, visions of becoming a celebrity and always rising to the cheering and applause of a massive crowd (even rehearsing how I would wave to them in response to the applause).

Tall dreams all of these, but such was the joy of childhood and adolescence, NEVER in the agenda was death! Then the world was more focused, though the badness was still there but the most heinous of crimes were only found in the movies.

Now worse crimes than movie makers can conjecture are committed in real life, the resultant effect? Our children who really should be living carefree lives now want to end it all. We have severely depressed children than at any other time in our generation. (I remember it was considered impossible for a child below 18 to have a headache when I was growing up, the general thinking was, “What is the child thinking about so as to have a headache?) Now children are born with headaches, they have brain tumours and problems that even adults find difficult to understand.

When I read about what is happening to Paris Jackson, I cannot help but feel for the poor fifteen year old who preoccupies herself with thoughts of dying. She is simply re-living her father’s life…no childhood.

We need to feel pity for the children, the teens of this generation. They have far more in their plates than some of us had for two score years put together. Could it be TV, the world’s warped idea of entertainment and humour? Are we in such a dead hurry to have our children grow up that we bring them face to face with adult problems and expect them to rise to the occasion?

Whatever it is, let’s let the children play, when they want to, skip about when they deserve to, talk like children when they have the chance…Let’s let the children BE children.

One Hell of a Cold Day

Many of us would come down with pneumonia this season. No I am not some some sort of dooms day prophet(ess), I am just stating facts. The rate at which it rains and the rate at which the wind blows when it rains is no joking matter at all. Sometimes the wind howls so hard you think it would blow off the roof! The good thing is the torrential rains facilitate a good nights sleep. You don’t toss and turn the way you do in hot summer nights, draped in sweat.

Today was really no exception, the rain was HEAVY, and the wind was unstoppable, bending trees but thankfully not breaking them. I kinda began to wonder how warmly the children dressed to school today, we should NEVER overlook what they are wearing these days. Anyway I am happy about the weather tonight and I am going to sleep very tight and try not to get pregnant while I am at it (a couple of my friends got pregnant about this time last year…typical!)

So it’s just one of those days that I never set eyes on the sun. Hopefully we may see it tomorrow, but if not we can rest assured that soooooner than we think, the sun would come out in all its glory and majesty.

See you all tomorrow and sleep tight, (that is if it is bedtime in your part of the world right now).