wax on, wax off

Waxing, plucking, shaving, blow drying, straightening, cutting, dying, tweezing, squeezing, steaming, poking, pricking, cutting, trimming, the list is ´beauty-fying´ experiences goes on. Not only are all of these things expensive, but they are all fucking painful! 


I have had facials that have brought me to tears, eyebrow plucks that have grabbed and pulled off bits of my skin, eyelash dye run into my eyes blinding me for hours , face masks on my skin that I can only assume were made from pure acid and many other painful experiences. But the worst, the absolute worst, is the bikini wax...


I´m sure we all agree that this...

Looks better than this...

(FYI - neither of the above images are me. Unfortunately and fortunately for each respective image)


If you´re the tree hugging type,then all natural fur burgers might be okay for you, but in my experience, men prefer just the patty. What this means for them is a nice clean, good looking canvas. What it means for me is 20 minutes of absolute pain and discomfort with my legs spread on a communal table with a complete stranger pouring hot wax all over my va-jay-jay and then ripping it off with such force I have to think about if I am having a wax or being tortured for information. 


Some women don´t mind the pain but I do. I really do...


After about 10 bikini waxes, I have learnt to handle them the way I handle most things.. with alcohol. It was my friend Chelsea´s first time getting her hoo-hoo waxed and this was my advice to her:

• have a couple of shots before you go
• wear a free flowing dress with no undies for easy access
• don´t look down
• and breathe...

my load of crap

When it comes to buying things,I have learnt to listen to that little person inside me (or should I say, that little bank statement inside me wallet) that says do you NEED this or WANT this?  

Me with my regret face on after making a purchase that I knew I shouldn't have.

I thought a good idea would be to make a list of things you think you need and then bracket in reasons why you need it. Mine would probably look something like this...

• New bras (coz for some reason my boobs got big)
• Pregnancy test? (nah, can´t be that)
• Socks (because it’s about time I owned a pair)
• New shoes (because I´m not very good with remembering to cut my toe nails so have moved up from a size 6 to a 7)
• A bottle of wine (for emergencies)
• A box of wine (for the time in between emergencies)
• Vitamins (because my diet is unhealthy so I need to take supplements)
• Clothes pegs (so my neighbour doesn’t continue to think he is a rockstar when my panties accidently land on him)
• Full brief underwear (now that I´m back in Cape Town with these wild South Easters, I´ll have to start wearing them)

Let´s talk about a person we all know. A person who goes shopping when they have no money, or just for the sake of it. A person who convinces themselves that they have made the right decision to purchase something they know they don´t need. The following quotes come to mind:


"you can dress it up or down!"
"you can wear it during the day or night!"
"you can wear it with heels or flats!"
"you can wear it with anything!"
"i only bought it because it was on sale."
"I can always take it back"
"I just thought it was so me!"
"i just had to have it!"


I must have been this person because I recently went through my stuff in storage and couldn't believe the amount of crap I had!  Not only did I have too many things, but I had too many of the same things...


10 bikini´s for example.Does one really need this many bikinis? 

Here are my favourite "what the fuck did I keep this for?" 

 "I don´t need this" items:

I don´t remember ever being into construction but yes I have these.

Another 5 more where these came from

A box with a CD, fake eye-lashes, a peg, a hair band, nail clippers, a tampon , a lighter and a highlighter.  An amazingly random collection of rubbish.

Another bag of random crap (that leather thing on the left hand side is an Absolute Vodka bottle case by the way, not some kind of dominatrix piece)

Vaginal thrush cream applicators. NOW WITH A NEW MOTH BALL SCENT!

Four golf vests, just in case I decide to take up golf. When and if I do,I will have not only have one,  but FOUR golf vests!

I don´t remember buying this

Suprise!! You used to be a 6! I must have loved this dress so much that I just couldn't bear  to wear it - price tag still attached.

4 hours,10 boxes and 5 Chinese bulk bags later I had completed sorting through my load of crap. Would you believe that after 4 hours, out of 10 boxes and 5 Chinese bulk bags, I walked away with 3 items...My Nelson Mandela vest, my Beatles shirt and my Aberdeen hoody....and a mouse.

it´s just plane fun

I wouldn't be the first person to write about airports and planes and people on planes and people in airports, but I might be one of the few people who really enjoy all of these things. 


Airports are so glamorous with all the smartly dressed air hostesses and pilots strutting around, the shiny duty free shop and of course the big fancy planes landing and taking off. There is such a wide range of human energy in there. People happy to go, happy to be back, sad to go, sad to be back, people rushing, people looking bored, people excited to see a loved one, mortified to say farewell to another. There is just so much going on! There are downsides like delayed flights and expensive food, but over all I always have a fine time at the airport. 

The sparkling perfume bottles at duty free and of course the beautiful
Candice Swanepoel in a Versace ad. 

A DILF at EZE airport in Argentina

A very cute Chinese girl who kept chatting to me.  COULDN'T UNDERSTAND A WORD! Not so much for her little sister who cried pretty much the entire way and whose cry sounded like a wounded pterodactyl (didn't know it was spelt like that till today) 

My most recent flight was back home to South Africa after being away for a whole year. I was incredibly excited to be going home and celebrated at the airport by drinking overpriced beer. I find flying drunk a must for long flights. 
I love the mini-ness of the food and drinks on the plane. I get to feel like a giant for a few hours. Even more so, I love the in flight movies. I was very lucky that the in flight entertainment contained THREE Ryan Gosling movies which kept me quite content throughout the flight, although it did make me want to join the mile high club on my own after that Crazy Stupid Love scene where he takes his top off.

The only thing that has put me off flying in the past year was caused by watching a series called Banged Up Abroad. A show about people´s experiences being locked up in a prison in another country. For the most part they are there because they got caught smuggling drugs that they had agreed to carry. In some cases someone else has put drugs in their bags without them knowing. It´s a great show, but really made me paranoid that someone was going to put something in my bag. 


I landed in Johannesburg, picked up my bags and within about 10 seconds of collecting them a customs official passed a crowd of people and walked straight up to me. In a split second a million thoughts when through my mind.
" I am being framed. This is a set up. Someone has put something in my bag and told the officials to keep an eye out for the girl with the pink bag."
He started asking me questions and I lost it. I started to sweat, couldn't talk properly, and worst of all I needed a poo. 


He asked me to go into a room with him and of course, I did. I non nonchalantly stood there while he searched my bags.I couldn't ask if I could go to the toilet because I figured they would probably think I had something up my bum, so I stood there doing the ´I need a poo´ bop while they completed the search. Of course there was nothing to be found so he wished me well and said goodbye. Turns out JHB is pretty tight on their checks and check every second person (I should have known when the most innocent looking 100 year old man got pulled aside) but my paranoia totally got to me. As a result, I have decided never to watch Banged Up Abroad again. 


I eventually got to Cape Town and my first day back home after a year couldn't have been better...

browsers bum booking

Out of all the blogs I have posted so far the one that had the most page views for the longest time was my ´art of farting´ piece. This just goes to show that although most people will never talk about things like farts, they do enjoy hearing someone else do it.


In light of this, but also due to a recent event that occurred, this blog is about 
´browsers bum´. A term coined by my fabulous Aunt, Lianne 
(check out her blog -  http://www.raisinell.blogspot.com/)


Constipation is a common thing amongst most people I know. Constipation and what Dennis calls ´irrational bowels´. The kind of bowels that don´t ever budge when you´re at home, but the moment you step foot outside, they decide they wanna get moving too. It has happened to me more times than I can count. I am in my apartment all day, doing nothing, and when I decide to leave, my bowels say "is it?" and I need to boom. Stemming from ´irrational bowels´is browsers bum. 


If you have time to do something like browse a book or CD store it means you are not busy because if you were busy you would be stressed and if you are stressed you probably won´t poop.  Get what I´m saying? If you don´t, your brain will process this and the result: bowel moment in stores!  Every time I begin to browse in a store, I clock all of the above information and need to poop. I´m aware of the fact that I have time to do what 
I´m doing and am therefore relaxed which means my body wants to get rid of breakfast.


For this reason, every store should have bathroom for its customers to use. There is nothing worse than being in a store and realising you need to go. If you are in a music store you can get away with it because if you need to poo you can just bop around as if you are enjoying the store music when in actual fact you are trying to hold in your business. You could moonwalk out of there if you wanted to and no one would think anything was up. Bookstores are the worst because someone ALWAYS asks if you are looking for something. They approach you when you are mid anus clench trying to focus on keeping your shit together and if anyone breaks that focus you could end up crapping in the adventure isle. 


Whats worse is if that bookshop is in a mall. If you manage to get out of the store in time you can use the public bathroom.Problem, is that the girls bathrooms ALWAYS have queues. This means A) you have to hold it in longer B) when you eventually get in, you have an audience who has nothing else to do whilst waiting in the queue but listen to you releasing your do-do demon. When I leave the bathroom after letting one go I never look the next cubicle tenant in the eye. Instead I storm straight past her mumbling under my breath making out as if it was the person before me. 

Browsers bum also pertains to browsing on the internet and I had the worse case of it a few weeks ago. I was on booking.com trying to book a hotel for a sultry night away and while I was looking at the rooms they had pop ups saying things like...


"you got the cheapest rate! Quick! Book now!"
"someone in Brasil has just booked a room in this hotel!"
"someone in Germany is looking at this room too"
"this is the best rate for this room. Book now!"


It´s a clever buyer-pressure tactic because I do admit that I was thinking "oh shit! I better book now otherwise I won´t get a room!" but it´s not really fair is it? If you´re like me who is as indecisive as a virgin in whore house this kind of buyer-pressure can make you really anxious. I was sweating and shaking and getting confused but most of all I got a text book case of browsers bum, except this time it was buyers bum. 


I have gotten better at controlling myself in stores as I have adopted the "shit before shop" motto and if you suffer from BB, I hope you will too.