Hi !  Welcome back. Happy Mother’s Day, if you are celebrating… (it’s not a happy day for everyone, so be kind). This week I am thinking and writing about paddle games, unexpected gifts, penciled notes, time travel, grave robbers and fleeting thoughts  - Eve D.❣️

Week in review…

🎾 Played paddle (!). This is my #novel thing of the week, and let me tell you…all that hype is justified. I loved it. I am amazed that I - someone who is the least sporty person I know and who last held a tennis racquet in 1992 - can step onto a paddle court and play a proper game with three other people who don’t all want to kill me with frustration, while also having fun. It’s that kind of sport. And it’s quick! One hour, you’re done, and then you do the country club thing and have a leisurely lunch with your team (#didthat). Great fun, highly recommend. 

👟 I finally hiked again. I am so on the fence with all this walking, still not sure whether I love it or hate it. I certainly am not having too much fun while doing it, but then feel great afterwards. But still 100% committed to doing the Camino later this year, and then a much more ambitious hike next year. But one step at a time, literally. 

🎁 I got gorgeous gift bag filled with extremely generous goodies from a friend, as a thank you for a favour. There were so many surprises included, but one of my favourites was a handbag with my name on it. Love, love, love! (Another favourite item was a box of roasted coffee flavoured chocolates which I don’t have to share because my kids hate coffee. Double win! And also a personalised pencil bag…and, and, and. You get the picture #somuchstuff ❤️ 

🍽️ Took G to a hidden-gem restaurant in Joburg. Funny how life moves in circles. I used to love this place, many many years ago, even before my kids were born. I frequented it often with my then partner but had long forgotten about it (and him! :lol). It crossed my path recently, in an opportune manner, and I am glad I re-discovered it. (I’ll link to the website but it’s literally 14 years outdated). The food, company, space and vibe was superb.  

😸 We have animals in our ceilings/attic, but luckily it’s not rats! It’s genets, which are these tiny cat like creatures, and they seem to be very popular in my neighbourhood. I hear them running up and down - they drive Lisa mad. Every once in a while they will move from ceiling/roof into our trees and will tease her mercilessly. They laugh at her, as she literally barks up a tree. (I have no idea how they actually get into our ceilings). Unfortunately, this week we found one lying on the grass, without any visible injuries but obviously in distress. We gently took it into the house, where it died within minutes. It was very, very sad. Micole dug a big hole and buried it. 

☕️ During the week, I drove to my local coffee shop so I could work, and it was full. So I drove another 2km up the road, to another coffee place, and it was almost full. People love spending a lot of money on coffee. Maybe I should open a coffee shop. I’m not even kidding. I like the idea of owning an offline business, more and more.

Free therapy…:

Old-school stuff…

One undeniable truth about my life is that I consume so much content that I overwhelm myself with it. (Another undeniable truth, btw,  is that I HATE the term “consume content”). I read and watch a lot, and the fact is that unless I take notes I forget most stuff. I have a very complex “second brain” digital system to help with this, and it works for most parts, but I often read/watch when I am away from my computer, and that causes issues. Also, re-discovery of notes is difficult with a digital system, even though I have ways to randomly “re-surface” it. 

I am trying a new, old-school system, and it seems to be working. Now, when I read or watch non fiction stuff, I try to do it with a dedicated notebook nearby. Then, when I come across something I want to remember, I write it down by hand in this notebook. There is something very awesome about writing things out, and as a bonus I write it in cursive so it’s like a secret Gen X code 😃.

But the best part of my system is this: I only write on the right page. I leave the left page for random things that pop into my head as I write the stuff on the right page. And this is the secret sauce. I don’t have ADHD but I often feel as if I do, because I have a dozen random thoughts a minute, and this system allows me to just dump them. See below…all those bullet points on left side were written as I was writing the right side. That’s how hectic my brain is. 

(One thing I have learnt about “systems” is that other peoples’ never work for me, they can at best only inspire me to adapt my own. So I am not suggesting you do what I do, but maybe this sparks some ideas.) 

Notes on notes….

And on that note…let me share some of these random notes with you, both from the right page and the left page. So a bit different, but hopefully fun.

✅ I have never seen G’s handwriting! How strange is that? We live in such a digital world these days, but you’d think that it would have showed up somewhere. (If you walked into my study you’d see my handwriting everywhere. I scribble things on any writeable surface all the time.)

✅ G told me an amazing story of a cat that went missing in Zambia just as the family was packing up to move back to Johannesburg. After a couple of days searching, the family had to leave the cat behind as they made their way back to South Africa. And wouldn’t you know it? Six months later, the cat walked through the kitchen door of its original Johannesburg home. The cat travelled about 3,000 km. And this happened to G’s family friend, so we know it’s true. (My theory is that the cat got into the car in Zambia, as it was busy being packed up. But G says no.). 

✅ Speaking of cats, someone wants to adopt my stray cat but she’s in Cape Town and is willing to drive to come fetch it (1,600 km). I am now hesitant…what if my stray cat (who has been living in my garden for 2 years) decides it too can travel thousands of km to come back to me? 

✅ Substack cost $100 millions to develop, which I think is too much money for their current business model (they take 10% of paid subscriptions). Something will need to change, but I am not sure that writing a free publication on Substack is a good long term strategy. 

✅ This is hilarious. And it’s real. It’s about books about menopause written for men. They are literally guides on how to survive living with a menopausal woman. I haven’t read any of the books, but this article about them had me in stitches. I quote a chunk of it below, but seriously…go read the whole thing. 

✅ In English we say “I overthink”. But in poetry we say “I replay your words a thousand times, searching for a meaning you never meant”.

I’ve been reading …

I finished reading In Five Years. I rarely highlight text in fiction books, but I did in this one:

The story opens up with a bang. In the first chapter, Danielle is getting ready to be proposed to by her longtime boyfriend, David. In the second chapter, she wakes up the morning after the engagement, but quickly realises she is: in a different apartment, with a different man, with a different engagement ring, and….the date is exactly five years later than it was the day before. She had somehow jumped in time, and gotten a glimpse of her future life that is completely different to the one she knew just a day before. She does quickly go back to the original timeline, but retains full memory of her “dream”. Plus, she knows that it was in fact a premonition. True enough, within days of her timeline glitch she meets the “other man” from her future, and…he’s her best friends beloved new boyfriend.

The book then follows Daniele for five years, as she edges closer and closer to the date of her premonition. Can life change 180 degrees in a short period of time? And if so, what does it mean for us to make plans for long term future, when life takes unexpected twists and turns anyway? And, to go back to the quote I highlighted, is it true that love doesn’t need a future? That it only matters in the now?

(By the way, I didn’t love the book. I felt it was a bit slow in parts, and it left some big philosophical questions unexplored. But don’t listen to me. The Amazon book reviewers are raving about it.)

Fun note: The “five years later date” is December 2025, which means the proposal date (the date the timeline shift happened) was December 2020. Ha ha ha!! The poor author published her book on March 10, 2020, oblivious to the fact that life was about to be massively different and no, the restaurants and streets of New York City are not going to be crowded in December 2020. It’s a bit surreal to read a book in 2025 that talks about 2020-2025 without mentioning Covid once 😃 .

Speaking of writing…

This is how I feel whenever I publish anything:

I’ve been watching…

My movie buddy (Nik) and I alternate who chooses a movie, and we like to choose movies “blind”. The less we know about the movie, the better, as long as its well recommended by someone we trust. (I know I link movie trailers here, but honestly trailers these days give half the movie away. If I ever watch a trailer, I will watch the first 10-15 seconds only, just to confirm the movie’s mood). 

Anyway, for this week I chose La Chimera which is a highly awarded Italian movie, with English subtitles and I thought it was a love story. I had this gentle expectation of watching a romance unfold, in Italian. Instead, I got a very weird movie about grave robbers 🤣 . This is definitely one of those movies that we would analyze for a full semester in English class, and then write essays on “Explain how the director uses different cinematic techniques to convey the main characters torment”. If you like artsy movies, I highly recommend but otherwise probably give it a skip. (It is a beautiful movie though, and has stayed with me for days). 

Next week we are watching A Simple Favour 2, Nik’s choice and because he’s a man he didn’t know anything about the Blake Lively drama, and why she is now hated by many, and why this movie didn’t even make into theatres and went straight to streaming. Being a public persona must be the worst and most miserable “job” in the world.

Thanks for reading!

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P.S.