So, you know that party…

It’s a strange sensation, a flogging.  Particularly when it’s the last thing you imagined you’d be doing on a random weekend night in the suburbs.  But there I was, shirt off.  Back naked, vulnerable.  While an experienced Domme ran me through my paces….and a series of increasingly intense floggers.  Not painful, as such.  Well, except for ‘the bitch’.  Rather a combination of sensation and anticipation that left me giggling and grinning like a loon (and, yes, I’ll admit…more than a little aroused).  That said; I suspect I was treated gently.  Kinda like a pusher deals with the noobs.  The first one’s free.  After that you pay.

“…after that…”

Now there’s a thought.

They say you don’t miss what you don’t know.  And that’s the bastard truth.  Now I know.

(For more on this strange night…a link that’s decidedly NSFW, BTW)

Buddism and dealing with Barons Claremont…

According to Buddism there are Four Noble Truths:

1. Suffering exists

2. Suffering arises from attachment to desires

3. Suffering ceases when attachment to desire ceases

4. Freedom from suffering is possible by practicing the Eightfold Path

Well.  Let me tell you something.  Suffering exists because Baron’s Claremont exists. 

The short version?  They are the recommended service providers for Volkswagen in SA.  I have a Golf Chico, for my sins.  In a misguided attempt to keep its perfect service record, I’ve dutifully popped off to Barons for every service.  Except, they’re a bunch of rip off artists. 

I’ve had a dodgy noise emanating from my dashboard for months.  At the last service, I asked them about it.  Naturally (and sod you, Murphy) said noise was absent when they checked, so cue a shrug and a “sorry lady, we can’t help you”.

Noise gets worse.  I take a camera phone video. 

 

I phone for an emergency appointment.  They say they can only fit me in sometime in the next millennium.  So I go into their office to complain and see if I can get an earlier appointment.  Because, you see, I’m worried. 

Service manager first tries to tell me that they don’t offer “emergency appointments” because dodgey cars aren’t life threatening.  (Do you LIVE in South Africa, moron?)  He sees me begin to boil, so he cleverly shuts up,  attempts to help me, diagnoses the problem, quotes me R3 800, which is a LOT of money and tells me to come back on the 19th. 

I go back.  Leave car.  Get phone call saying “we don’t have the right part.”  So, like every self respecting consumer, I lose it completely and write a strongly worded letter of complaint to Barons, the principle dealer, VW SA and a consumer watch editor at a local paper. 

The principle dealer gets back to me.  Very apologetic.  Very efficient voice.  Promises the car will be dealt with on the 22nd.   I move more meetings.  Arrange to take the car in AGAIN.  They fix car.  Manage, somehow, to discount the cost by almost 40% for “the inconvenience” (how much ARE they ripping me off under usual circumstances?) and send me on my way.

This morning, I get in car and attempt to turn on the radio.  Broken.

Riiiiiiiiight. 

I’m STILL waiting to hear back from VW complaints.  I’ve now got to take my car BACK to Barons at lunch time for them to look at the sound system.  And I’ve run out of patience.

Barons, not only have you lost a customer, you’ve now got one who will now actively go out of her way to tell everyone she ever comes across that you suck. 

VW, when I upgrade, which will be in the next two years, I will be buying another brand.

Here endeth the rant.

*deep breath*

Ommmmmmmmmm.

Bedfellow FAIL

This is not what you want to find in your hotel bed at 01h32.

Ever.

I can haz cheetah

Ja, so one of the bonuses to living in Aaaafrica darlin’, is the access to wildlife.  Right?  But you don’t expect people to be driving around with a cheetah in the back of their bakkie, do you?  Do you?

 

Well, apparently you do.

 

Dolce, dangerously photojournalling in trafficis

No really, look…

 

Home, Jeeves, and quick about it!

I nearly drove off the road.

Hello Kitty!

visiting the poesarts*

Another year, another trip to the gynae.  Christ.  I fuckin’ hate the small talk.  Some dude has his fingers up your love tunnel, and you’re chatting about how your mother’s slipped disks are being treated.  The boob mashage.  The uninvited invasion of rubberised fingers.  The teeny, tiny, barely there Biggie-fukken-Best gown.  The Buzzy McTwatprobe.**

 

I thought that was bad.

 

Excuse me while I’m crushed into one imploding atom of excruciating embarrassment.

 

For just when I thought it could get no worse….

 

[WARNING: do NOT read further if you are easily horrified]

 

lergy

Meh.  For the last two weeks I’ve been woman-down. For the last weekend, I’ve been dead.  Drowning in gloop and goo. Coughing like an Alsatian on a choke chain.  Covered in soggy tissues and Vick Vapour Rub (don’t even think about it Vapour man).  All in all?  Not pretty.

 

Now that I’m faintly recovering, I would like to know who invented lergies?  WHO?  Because I’d like to give them a stern talking to.  I’d like to breathe my wheezy, bubbling breath all over them, and question what they possibly could have been thinking. 

Feeling like someone filled your lungs with cement and you nasal cavities with mashed slug is not fun.  No. Not at all, thank you very much.  Flying on an aeroplane with congested sinuses is painful.  Trying to contain the dripping mucus that flows from your nose at inopportune moments is embarrassing.  Sweating like a paedophile at a school sports day is unbecoming of a lady. Rasping and growling like Janis Joplin after a bender makes me sound like a tranny. 

This is not cool.  I’m sick of being sick. I’d like it to stop now. 

‘kay?

Woe

And so it is, that once again my will to live is sapped by two inalienable facts:

The Spitz sale is on,

And I have no money.

Excuse me while I retire to weep loudly and inconsolably into my pillow.

Wicked*

**

 

There are days when I just feel wicked.  Bad.  In a B-Grade movie, rub your hands together, cackle and cause a little mayhem kind of way.

 

Today is one of those days.

 

Now where did I put that superglue?

 

*Normal broadcasting will resume shortly.  “Teh work” is having the audacity to interfere with blogging.  Pah!

 

**Courtesy of a T-shirt stand in Grahamstown.  The one I got for LB was the funniest though.  Although I don’t think the extremists are going to be laughing any time soon. 

 

The Madness Unleashed

Right.  *deep breath*.  I’m alive.  But, fuck, only barely.  I’ve just spent 3 days in the Waterberg*.  Nice, I hear you say?  WRONG. There were 7…yes, count them, *seven* children under the age of 8. Chaos.  Pandemonium.  Colossal mayhem.  Oh.  My.  God. 

Now amongst my mates I’m either called the baby whisperer, “the bad influence” and /or “Mad Aunt Dolce”. 

The first refers to my ability to put any child to sleep.  I don’t know how, but it’s possibly because I don’t care if they scream themselves to sleep, that they can’t manipulate me with their wiggling and whining and that, for me, it’s more about giving their harassed parent a break, than actually getting them to snooze.  I can be fairly fierce. And once they calm down, the patented combination of a crooning song/softly read story and the ability to rock like a legend, and they are gone. 

“The bad influence”, let’s be honest, is because I have the mental age of a 6 year old.  I stick out my tongue, pull faces, talk gibberish and bang things against other things with the best of them.   I’ve been known to encourage children to jump on beds, eat their bogies and share gross tales of slime and grunge. 

“Mad Aunt Dolce” is because I do this as a grown up.  I will crawl through a storm water drain (if it’s safe), eat an ant on a dare (slight of hand rocks) and bark like a dog on command (if it distracts a fractious child).  Parents are both appalled and delighted.  Children generally get completely past themselves and get wild and overexcited.  They are told, in my fiercest voice, that they must do as I say, not as I do.  As I swear at caterpillars and howl like a loon at the moon.  The best part is at that exact point, when they are getting revolting, I can give them back and walk away.  *grin*

But this weekend?  Ggaah.  One child had the will of Hitler, as well as his genocidal tendencies (towards insects).  Another was his willing Goebbels.  Another, who despite being very sweet, had a catty and wanted to shoot everything.  Another was teething, and screamed for most of the time she was awake.  Which was a lot.  One refused to wear clothes.  One chewed everything she got her paws on.  And her brother whipped his willy out every 6 seconds to piss on everything, including a rather annoyed sleeping grownup. 

They climbed, crawled, shuffled, bit, wailed, shrieked, poked, prodded, beat, wiggled and snot trailed their way into every single crevasse and hole.  They trashed every room.  They demolished every toy.  They tripped and bashed and fell.  They bled and oozed and poo’ed.  Generally, they were madness unleashed. 

And, of course, every time one of them snuggled into the crook of my arm and gave me a cuddle, I was lost again.

Fukkin’ kids.

*melt*

Grrr.
One massive prophylactic weekend!

*It was absolutely stunning though. Even if I was pining.

Accidents, HIV and the Public Health System

So, this morning I did what every self respecting girl of the modern times does and pottered off for an AIDS test. *pat pat pat*. I didn’t want to faff with the whole doctor/gynae/pathologist=large sums of money routine, so I thought I’d take advantage of the VTC* programme that the government insists is the inalienable right of every South African. Or something.