We must admit!

Kiefer Sutherland is hot!

Baby Name Blame Game

This is becoming too much! Jim and I can’t agree on names for our baby. Coupled with the fact that we don’t even know if “he’s a he or she’s a she,” haha, this just makes things COMPLICATED!

Blame:

First of all, we had a huge fight because I found out he went behind my back and tried to find out the baby’s sex last week! I was SO mad! Have been mad at him for days now, but today I woke up and realized I am being irrational and over reacting a bit. He has apologized profusely and the number of roses all over my house is limit less so I think the man has suffered enough but I worry that we might have trust issues. We had a long talk last night and hopefully nothing like this will happen again.

Name:

We can’t agree! We know that God values names so we want to give our baby a name that will ‘prophesy’ his or her life. But then also Jim wants us to use names from our families, like we did for Ahava. Who is reading this? HELP!

Game:

Names in our family: We practically had to list them!

JAMES AND MELEASA

From our families:

JIM'S Parents: Jeremiah and Patience, both Luo.

Brothers
Jeffrey, Joel, John and Jim.
Indigenous: Milanya, Kidenda, Opondo, Jadier

Sisters:
Angela, Tiffany, Kellice and Gillian.
Indigenous: Nyahera, Awinja, Akinyi, Waga.

MY FAMILY:

Parents: Sobhuza and Kagiso, from Swaziland and Lesotho respectively

Brothers
Edward, Jerome,
Indigenous: Msimudze, She’she

sisters:
Sharon, Finesse, Meleasa (pronounced [muh-leeza]),
Indigenous: Tibati, Tsandzile, Phelele (pronounced Pe-le-le, not Felele)

OF COURSE we cannot use our own names so four names are excluded from the lists

This is only the immediate family mind you! Then we have the Biblical/Hebrew names of which I can accept ONLY:

Abraham, Aaron, Reu’el and Isaiah
For a guy and

Hadassah and Devorah
for a girl.

And we have WEEKS before our visitor is here! I am due Feb 17! What shall we do!

Sha! The headaches of pregnancy

Helele batho! ; Hello people; assuming at least more than one (me) reads this. I am on strike! And as such, I am going to blog about all who are trying to send me into a very ceremonious case of early labour! I want to carry this baby to term, premature births have complications, or so I hear.

First of all, it’s like I have 1000 mothers.

MME.
Yes, my real mother. She seems to have forgotten that she already bore and raised me and it is time for me to fly like a bird on the wings she watched me grow. She is always meddling and I know it is love but at first, I remember wanting to lock my house and pretend I was not there even though I knew she had flown across the seas to come and visit- read take care of- me for a few weeks. Now that she’s gone home, I miss her, especially during those moments where I have no energy to do much and am really thirsty but can’t get Jim to make me a smoothie because he is watching a game and I don’t want to disturb him. Mme would take one look at me and decided I needed a smoothie or a meal or vitamins. I think I should blame her for the fact that my weight almost exceeds the capacity of the weighing scale. So Mme, this is supposed to be a complaint but on proper thought, I have found that I should not be on strike against you, you should call a protest against me and my unappreciative ways. I actually retrace my steps and say, I appreciate her.

JIM
My husband, Jim is a mixture of sweet and loving and energetic and protective but there is something that changes when I am pregnant, I sometimes wish that he could get eye glasses and look at me nicely to see that I am not an egg! He calls me three times a day, when he gets to work, when he’s having his lunch and just before he leaves. I go to work three times a week for now, because of this belly that now even prevents me from seeing my toes. When Jim calls, usually I am in the balcony, enjoying this unseasonably warm weather which today decided to go frosty cold! Anyway half the time, my cell'ar phone is elsewhere so I remember it and have to get up and hobble along to find it, by which time it has stopped ringing so I turn and walk back to the balcony and then the landline begins to ring and I think, does this man want to kill me! Anyway we worked it out with a small remote control like gadget that enables me to answer my phone within a certain radius of the house. Trust Jim to find such a contraption. He tells me I look beautiful all the time but that there is something spectacular about me when I am pregnant. I think that he thinks I am concerned about how I look but I really am not, I just don’t want to increase any health risks that I might already have. It is sweet of him to pay me such compliments though. This is supposed to be a complaint against him but on proper thought, I have found that indeed he should be on strike against me and my unappreciative ways so I take the complaining back and appreciate my husband. I know that in a few weeks I will be punching him with each contraction as he tries to get me to a doctor so to make it easier for him to forget the punching, I will shower him with love before the big L. He already gets sympathy pains and even got sympathy morning sickness back last year. He is special, that one. I can't understand it in fact the other day he missed a day of basketball with the neighbours kids because he felt like he was in labour! How is that for true love. He feels my pain even when it is nonexistant.

MOSES MY BROTHER.

Sha Moses thinks my condition is the Red Sea and everything must be beaten to senselessness with his staff! He is also on a quest to jeopardize my already suffering figure with his sneaked pizza parties and the lovely subs he brings me from the restaurant near his temporary office- In Texas! Can you imagine the man does not trust me enough to take care of myself, or my husband to take care of me, he has already made four trips in seven and three quarter months across the country to see me! Does the man care that flight travel is not so safe anymore? No. Does he seem to understand that I have a husband who loves and is taking good care of me? No. it’s like when we were little! He was always ratting on me, she did this she did that, and it’s like now he comes to peek so that he can call Mbabane and tell Mme what I have been up to. However, I think about it, how many brothers would do that for their sister. And I am still trying to figure out how this guy brings a sub from Texas still hot. How is that possible, and where will I get the subs when his contract ends in April and it is time to go back to Mbabane? I cannot strike against him, he is too special and I love him too much.

PEA

She is 5 years younger than me which kind of goes against the rules of women aged between 20 and 30 but this one! Among my best friends, she is constantly trying to make sure everything is fine, as if Mme is not enough! She is the one that reminds me always that I am not an egg and I need to be healthy for easy shedding of the pounds and pounds that I have gained. She called me tonight to tell me she has began the dreaded Music Production and Sound Engineering class and she seemed like she was unsure what lay ahead but was confident that she would make it. She is very busy and has been unwell but is getting better. With her life which is that of a true New Yorker she still finds time somehow and comes to my house three times a week and we go walking, many times I ask if she is walking me back to Swaziland and she tells me how God smote the Israelites when they complained. I have walked these past few months, I think my calves are increasing in size no wonder my legs feel heavy. She has also cooked for me and Jim, she is like our new maid without pay and I dare not write that here because she will start charging me per hour for meals. Before our walk, she cleans the house, makes breakfast for Ahava, sometimes takes her to the salon or to get ice cream or to the park, then comes back and off we go, me, her and Ahava, for our walk, then we come to the house and have a healthy snack, this is the source of all my smoothie recipes and the sole reason I have forgotten the taste of things like Ketepa tea. We pray a lot and I think as the belly gets bigger its like the prayers get longer or the patience wanes I don’t know. However I know that I should be nice because one day she might be famous and I’ll need to say I know her. So instead of complaining about her walking me to Mbabane, I should be appreciative that it will be easier to shed these pounds and that she helps when I am about to scream at Jim and all that. She does a lot so I will not strike against her.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST -AHAVA.
My daughter’s name is Hebrew for LOVE and she has done nothing but show me that. She wonders how my stomach became so big and I told her that she was going to be a big sister. She seems excited about that but we will see when the time comes. She has large eyes like mine and sometimes she looks at me questioningly when I shout at Jim and when he walks into the room perplexed and wondering what he has done, Ahava says, “don’t worry Daddy, I will take care of Mummy” before lecturing me on how he is my elder and we should respect people older than us. I thought it was a case of discrimination but I one day overheard a conversation between her and Jim which I have to paraphrase because its hard to spell the way Ahava says some things.

‘You know, Mummy has a baby in her stomach.’
Jim put down his newspaper. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah,’ Ahava said knowingly. ‘She does… and I think it’s heavy.’
‘I think so too,’ Jim sounded like he was wondering where this was going.
‘We should be nice to her,’ Ahava went on. ‘We need to think about the baby.’
‘Okay, dear. Thank you.’
‘So maybe you should stop reading your newspaper and go sing to her.’

I burst out laughing and it was so hard to keep it down. Jim actually obeyed and came with Ahava to sing for me and the baby. It was so beautiful. Ahava is my little watchman, she makes sure things are going well when I am not looking. She has taken control as the matriarch of the home because my stomach is heavy. I would strike against her for all the headaches she gives me when she refuses to let Jim give her a bath when Pea is not around but with the way she has my back? Never. I appreciate her.

Hullaballoo (H.B.)

There's practically nothing new about New York but its not easy to get bored in this Big Apple. In fact if anyone lives within the vicinity of this beautiful state and can claim to have even one second of boredom, such a person should be arrested with immediate effect.

H.B. In the Street:
These men, what should we do with them? If they're not too intimidated, they are too forward. I can't tell you the number of times I am hit on from my door to the subway to the time I get to my office on one of the streets that was hit by that worrying gas smell on Monday. Especially lately in my "condition" which I might explain later. It makes me just want to ignore everyone even before they do anything but then when you ignore people you never know you might ignore someone who really needs you. It's funny though how people decide to call the radio station and try to propose to us presenters during shows. Yes trust New Yorkers to be so crazy. Can you really blame all who have crossed the 25 landmark and are still single? Really, it's not that profane if you weigh the circumstances. And yes, nosy, I have crossed the dreaded line. I am unashamed to be the big 26.

My husband, who happens to be Kenyan, was quick to come to the defense of the New York crazies until one day we went jogging together and he learnt that they were unashamed to approach me even in his presence. His shock was a funny sight but a look from him was enough to send them all running off like the wind. I say them and make it seem like he chased an army but no they were just two. Since that day, he has shown extreme concern for my Manhattan escapades and is willing to drive through that crazy traffic and circle blocks upon blocks to secure parking, just to get to me if I need him. I might be accused of trying to start a UN Headquarters here, living in NY, being from Mbabane, born of a Sotho mother and Swazi father, married to a member of the fish-loving Luo tribe of Kenya but I must say I nabbed a good one! Talk about years of prayer paying off.

H.B. In the Nation
So George Bush is sending more troops to Iraq. What really goes on in that man's mind, how detatched from the American nation do you have to be, to go ahead with a plan that only 12% of the country supports? He does not make one ounce of sense, and now he's talking about invading Syria and Iran, too! God save America.... Can't wait for this year to be over so we can vote another man in but now with Habeus Corpus out the door we have given the lunatic W the powers of a king and so he just might at the end of the year decide to run for a third term in 2008. I would not be surprised.

Things get crazier by the day.

H.B. At home
So far at home in Mbabane things don't seem to be less hullaballoo, with the burning of the Exams Council building and dogs killing a poor old woman. Where were their owners if they had any, and could they exist and kill a woman without any warning signs?

H.B. In my back yard
I wonder who would believe me if I said I am seven and a half months pregnant and I go to work against doctor's orders? Jim and I decided we didn't want to know the baby's sex before he or she is born which has been so hard because I usually want to peep at the ultrasound and ask questions but the surprise will probably be worth it. My mother says the shape of my tummy is different from when I gave birth to our daughter Ahava who is now 2 and a half. She has decided it's a boy. I can't wait to meet the baby. I decided to work as long as I can before the big L, and then after that stay home and be with the child so there is a method to this particular hullaballoo.

Yes! It's true. Despite all the craziness going on in Blogger, I have decided to start a blog. I need a way to unwind and I think this is it. Hopefully one day it'll be one of those sites that get 3000 hits a day! I wonder though what a Swazi woman who can't speak a single word of Siswati, who lives in New York but can't stand it, and is a journalist who thinks the industry needs a revolution... Exactly what would I blog about that would bring 3000 hits my way? My days aren;t at all interesting! We'll see though, I'll come up with something.