This little teddy bear that’s doing the rounds on Facebook captured my heart the moment I saw him because it reminded me so much of my teddy. I was given my little one on the day I was born and he’s spent every day and night on my bed since. I’ve always had a very over-active imagination and bad dreams, so I know my teddy kept the worst monsters away while I was growing up. And I think he still does

My faithful teddy

After a bit of digging, I found that this artwork is called Sweet Halloween Dreams and it’s by Alex Pangop. You can follow him on deviant art, he’s got some cool stuff.

I also found this website: The Teddy Bear Tales of Wonder and Adventure. It seems to use the slogan – Protecting innocent children… – as a basis for the books. I’m not sure what came first, the image or the tagline, but both are awesome

Some additional reading on this pic and teddies in general:

Grey Gecko Press

The Teddy Bear Wiki (I love the history of the Teddy Bear – I had no idea about it)

I always get mocked for my love of color and my sometimes – um – vibrant – fashion choices. But, as you can see, it started early for me… Two hats, hot pink, tartan – some of my favourite outfits

This one to the right is one of my favourite baby pics. It’s from my very first dance show. I think I was about 3 or 4. You’ll notice that my white tennis shoes aren’t exactly plain white I apparently flat refused to wear white tennis shoes so I attacked them with glitter glue!

I’m not sure why, but this is one of my absolute favourite songs

I have it on a CD playing in my car right now and it always brings a smile to my face.

Dear South African clothing shops

Please get your shit together and work out a way to standardise your sizing!

I spent the entire morning and half the afternoon yesterday walking around Canal Walk buying new clothes. Unfortunately, most of my time was spent heading back into the fitting rooms. This is because I genuinely have NO CLUE what size I am… None whatsoever.

I ended up buying pants and skirts in:

• Size 8
• Size medium
• Size 12
• Size 37
• Size 38
• Size 40 (actually I didn’t buy these because I refuse to be a size 40)

How can I be all these sizes at the same time?!?

It’s got to the point where I hate shopping because I never know what to pick up and take to the fitting room. With a limit of 5/6 items, my options seem to be to either take several items in a random size each and hope that one fits, or take one item in every possible size… In the last year or two I think I’ve bought 2 pairs of pants because I keep giving up after trying on 2/3 different sizes.

The only reason I ended up getting so much yesterday is because I just plain refused to give up. I was in desperate need of new pants and had to make something happen now.

This is kinda sad because I used to love shopping. But ever since sizes started to become so erratic, I dread trying to find pants to fit me… So please South African shops, sort this out!

Regards,

A sizeless shopper

*Image sourced here

Dear people who’ve never lived in Cape Town

I’m sorry that you have to hear us complaining about scorching heat and gorgeous summer days only a short while after we were bitching about the cold yet breathtaking storms. Unfortunately, that’s our thing.

London has complaining about foreigners. China and North Korea has complaining about freedom (well, at least they would if they knew they weren’t free). Australia has… Well I don’t know what Australia has, probably something to do with New Zealand having more sheep than they do…

But I digress, complaining about the weather is just what we do in Cape Town. Without it, we wouldn’t know what to do (aside from complaining about drivers with number plates that don’t start with CA).