For a few weeks now, my desk has been full of static. At first I thought it was just the heat, while some of my more illustrious workmates made jokes about how hot they were. This after they touched my arms or fingers and got literally thrown off. I wonder – seeing as the static came from them touching me – why they didn’t decide it’s me that was hot. *shrug* The level of static was really, really bad, and it even made me squeal sometimes. I figured it was something on my laptop, or maybe just my usual gadget mishaps. I didn’t know how to fix it, so I just sat and waited. I figured it would stop and go away … eventually.

I usually carry my iPod in a pretty leather case. I clasp it on my belt, waistband, or pocket, and it’s usually quite safe. But two or three times, I’ve gotten off a matatu to find the iPod dangling by the cable on the headphones. It seems I’ve gotten bigger, or mathrees have gotten smaller, or maybe it was grabby little fingers. Either way, all the pushing and the shoving almost lost my iPod! After it happened the third time, I decided to ditch the case. Since Verdy is adorably tiny, I figured she’d be safer hiding deep inside my pocket.

This weekend, I went on a marathon of torrents. Why? Well, while back, I lost my music and the back-ups to my music when both my hard drives crashed. One was attacked by Kenya Power, the other one was thrown to the ground during a tantrum. No, it wasn’t me, and no, he hasn’t been forgiven. I keep meaning to re-gather my collection, but I keep putting it off because it takes time and work. Anyway, this weekend I finally got started with discographies of P!nk, Paramore, Eminem, Nickelback, and UB40. What.

Before I go on, I should say a bit about my home computer. It was built by my little brother. He’s in IT. And when I say he’s in IT, I mean he’s in IT. He gathered the parts from various dubious valid sources and held them together with … um … screws. And masking tape. Well, okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little. Because, you see, my computer isn’t really held together. The … um … parts, rest on various different .. um … stands.

You know when you walk into a nerd’s bedroom and find different bits of cables, shiny discs, and motherboard-looking things strewn all over the bed? The paraphernalia is held together with pretty plastic ribbons in red, blue, and yellow. And from that miraculous pile of junk, a sharp image appears on 62 inch screen, an image of multicoloured code or animated videogame vixens? Yeah, that’s my computer. I’ve asked him to seal the casing once or twice, but he says it’s easier to work with everything scattered about. I can’t complain because that scary contraption earned me half a million in freelance writing jobs.

The downside with my put-together thing is that I can’t see what to fix! So anytime it coughs, sneezes, or purrs, I scream and call my brother, who pokes it for a bit and then it works. The boy’s a bonafide Micah Sanders, I swear! Anyway, this weekend, I was trying to get the files onto my iPod. I placed the cable into the USB port and it … disappeared! No, I don’t mean the USB tooth disappeared. I mean the port disappeared. It fell right through!

I figured I should peep between the shiny bits of junk to see where it had gone. As I did so, I grabbed my iPod to make sure it wouldn’t fall. Bzzz. I was four feet across the room! Well okay, more like four inches – my hand was thrown clean off! I was still pretty confused by everything, so I did the obvious thing – I grabbed the iPod again. And my arm was thrown. Again! This time I felt the buzzing right through my arm! What the hell?

I touched the iPod a third time, and this time I screamed so loud that Princess came to check on me! A small idea was forming in my head – disconnect the power source. Duh! So I looked at where the hole had disappeared and tried to pull the cable. Bzzz! Christ! Okay, Plan B, disconnect the iPod from the cable. By the time my fingers singed the fifth time, I was starting to smell hair. I’m sure it was only in my mind, but still!

I looked around for some kind of insulation and all I could see was the marvin my baby sometimes wears to school. So I clumsily wrapped the iPod in it and disengaged it from the cable. Voilà! No more limb-throwing! Of course by now my computer was mad, so it went completely off and wouldn’t come on again. Oh crumbs.

As I sat staring at the angry machine, it all fell into place. I’ve been charging my iPod on my desk at work … without its case. That’s probably what causes all the static! I suppose the shiny casing has its downsides. My computer was still acting like a b* so I called my brother whining. He said he’d come fix it, but seeing as we’ve fixed it five times already, it might be a good idea to just go get a new one. This time, I’ll insist on solid casing and no relation to Alienware. Meanwhile, lesson learned: never charge a shiny thing without its leather case.

♫ Fade Away ♫ Breaking Benjamin ♫

I’m not particularly happy with my Ideos. He gives me all kinds of grief, like here and here, and his appointed gender varies, depending on my mood. But yesterday, for the first time in six months, I was glad I bought a smartphone.

It was a fairly slow day at work and I had finished the book I was reading in traffic, so I decided to dig out some PDF. I spent the rest of the day reading The Burden, a romance-ish novel by Agatha Christie. Yes, romance – six novels that she wrote under the pen name Mary Westmacott. I found the book quite gripping and when it was hometime, I didn’t want to leave it halfway. The trouble is I don’t have a Kindle [yet], and I wasn’t going to lug my two-tonne laptop all the way. It’s a bit hard to read a laptop inside a matatu.

I wondered if it was possible to somehow get the file onto my Ideos. First, I downloaded Adobe Reader, but that was no good, because The Burden was a .LIT file. I tried to find Microsoft Reader for Android. No luck. I asked my friend Kevin. He’s my go-to guy on all things confusion, and he hasn’t failed me yet! The man has answers on everything from embedding WordPress to buying BMWs!

He suggested I download Moon+Reader, but that still left me stuck, since Moon+Reader can’t open .LIT files. Now that I knew what files they were, I hopped onto Google to search ‘How to read .LIT files’. Google led me here, and I quickly converted the .LIT to PDF. Yay!

Now here’s the thing. The Ideos screen is … well … small. And Adobe Reader doesn’t come with a ‘format to screen’ option. So to read the converted book, I had to keep scrolling up and down a single line! Not fun. I screamed for help and Kevin suggested what should have been obvious to me. Instead of converting to PDF, convert to a format that Moon+Reader can … well … read! I tried converting the book to Epub and hey presto voilà – I could read!

I spent the entire commute home [plus four more hours] reading the book cover to cover. Well, okay, scroll bar to scroll bar. About 200 pages in, I accidentally noticed I could flip the virtual pages instead of merely scrolling down. Pretty! Of course I had to keep ED plugged in while I read, but luckily my sofa is next to the wall and the socket is quite nearby, so that didn’t affect my reading position.

When I finally finished the book at 10.30 p.m. I was elated in more ways than one. The book is winded and has a pretty loose structure. I wondered if it might be her first novel. [A quick search on Google shows it was actually her 6th Westmacott novel. Interesting.] I skipped 50 pages for being purely description. [The book is 299 pages long.] I wonder if she wanted to edit at some point and make it more polished once she got famous. But I loved the book and wouldn’t change a thing … except the 50 pages of description.

I often toy with the idea of being a novelist. I released a book in 2008, got it published and everything. Whenever I’m really down, I take it out and look at it. Few things give me greater joy than running my fingers along the words A Novel by Crystal Ading’. When I wrote it, it was meant as a trilogy, but I’ve never gotten round to the rest.

Sometimes I think novels will be my ticket to financial freedom, and that someday I’ll be a millionaire through writing. I remember watching an episode of Moesha where she wanted to be a writer, and a mentor told her she couldn’t write because she hadn’t lived. She was only a teenager and had no experience to write about. I think about myself and the only experience I have is with my schooling, my work life, and my child.

When my baby was born nine years ago, I thought about chronicling her life in a book. I planned to write a baby journal that I’d publish and make millions. But then I watched a show about a single dad. He had a comic in the daily paper. It was about a kitten, but everybody knew the kitten was really his little girl. So when the kitten goes shopping for a training bra, the world put two and two together. At school, the child was tormented about her new … chest … and she resented her father for humiliating her before the world. So even though my little girl would make a great character in a story, I worry about intruding on her privacy.

I could write about the seven great men in my life, or stories from my family, but they all threatened to sue me if I ever said a word. I could write about my high school … after all, I loved Enid Blyton’s St Claires and Malory Towers. I might get sued for that as well, but it’s either that or a book about my industry. I’ve always wanted to write crime novels, but I don’t have the discipline for accurate research. Besides, talking about guns bores me.

I started my first novel in Form 3 and didn’t finish it until I was 27. I’d like to start some more long-term writing, and hopefully it won’t take 10 years to complete. So I’m reading a lot of Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie, and anything unlikely to make me cry. I have tomes on PDF,  untouched books on my shelves, and reading makes me happy, so I’m glad that I’m reading again. I don’t know if my books will ever sell like Danielle Steele or Jackie Collins, especially since there’ll be a lot less fashion, drama, and sex in them. But you can’t be a millionaire novelist without novels, so I’ll just have to try it out and see. I already have a pseudo-agent-cheerleader and I’m itching to tell these stories, so here goes nothing!

♫ 911 ♫ Wyclef Jean ft Mary J. Blige ♫

When I woke up this morning, I was exhausted. I’m not really sure why, since a blackout sent me to bed very early last night. Every morning, I get up at 4.00, do my Zumba for a bit over an hour, get my baby ready, and walk her to school before I head out to work. Some mornings, like today, I skip the Zumba part and sleep in for an extra hour instead. It really depends on how tired I am.

This morning as we walked to school, we saw a rainbow cloud. It was a pink cloud draped across the sky, and it was shaped like a rainbow. The rest of the sky was a lovely turquoise shade, so it was really something. We also saw a KCC saloon car. It’s blue number plate said KBJ 666U, and on the side, it said ‘Cheese’. I really need to get a serious camera.

Anyway, we stared at our rainbow cloud, and my princess noted it followed us while we walked. She said we must be rainbow babies, because the pink mummy rainbow cloud was running after us to keep us safe. How I love that child.

At the school gate, I kissed her goodbye then crossed the road to head toward the stage. I’m not sure why, but I suddenly felt like playing curb-curb-pavement. It’s a game where you walk on the curb  and try not to step on the pavement or the tarmac, because they are oceans full of sharks. You basically spread your arms for balance and pretend you’re walking on a  tightrope.

I was concetrating so hard on my game that I almost fell over when I heard laughter. I looked up to see my baby’s  teacher grinning at me. She was standing with her teenage son, and it was him that had laughed. I suppose I made the boy’s day. I smiled and waved, then continued with my game. I felt like a little girl again, and it wasn’t a feeling I wanted to let go.

I suppose that scene could work against me. I suppose the teenage boy could walk into school and make torturous fun of my child,  saying her mum is a bigger baby than she is. It’s hard enough maintaining credibility when the other mothers show up in power suits and car keys while I routinely attend meetings in jeans, a hoodie, and a backpack. Plus, when I was asked to give the Class 8s a motivational speech on Prize-giving day, I said, “I went to school here, and I turned out okay. Besides, KCPE isn’t the end of the world, you’ll be fine.” I’m not sure if the uproarious laughter was ironic or not, given the purple dreads and tattoos, but at least my baby hasn’t melted with embarrassment … yet.

I think of my mum when she was my age. She was in the church choir, had 4 side businesses, 69 chama meetings, a different hairdo every week, 53 pairs of shoes, 45 handbags, tons of well-used make up, and a mother-in-law. She was beautiful and stylish and my teachers were always hitting on her. She had one full time job, two part time jobs, a husband, and 3 kids. She could cook, sew, knit, plait, dance, give shots, speak French, and at my dad’s office diwali party, she sang a Hindu song just to impress his boss! She was – in my eyes at least – the ultimate woman.

Me, I have a gorgeous baby girl and a backpack. Every morning when I leave the house, the neighbours ask if I’m going to college. I’m sure they wonder exactly how my rent gets paid.

I feel like I skipped ten years of my life – the ten years where they taught us how to be grown-ups. I look at my classmates. They all have marriages or managerial jobs or shoes that aren’t made of denim and canvas. They drink wine, get waxed, drive cars, dress up, and wear their hair like … hair. This morning I saw a girl who was a mono when I was clearing, and she looked like … my mother! A close friend once pulled me aside and said, ‘We’re at a point in our lives where we need to stop wearing jeans and t-shirts. We’re not in college anymore.’ She was wearing linen pants and designer blouse at the time, and that was two years ago. Am I missing something?

The thing is … I don’t want to grow up. I don’t want to dress in silky tops and high heels while listening to jazz, neo-soul, and Afro-fusion. I don’t want an active credit card. I don’t want my investment banker on speed dial. Okay maybe I do, since I’d like to make my millions fairly soon.

I don’t want to watch business news instead of Boomerang. I don’t want to read newspapers instead of Twitter or Kite Runner instead of Sweet Valley High. I don’t want to go for Blankets and Wine instead of Terrific Tuesday, or eat tiramisu instead of vanilla ice cream. Okay, actually, tiramisu would be awesome if I could have it once a week. Just as soon as I taste and decide that I like it, which I will.

I don’t want to play office politics to get a promotion, or join a women’s group, or host my mother-in-law’s chama – partly because I don’t want a mother-in-law in the first place. For me, it’s enough to know my baby girl is happy, my bills are paid, my flat has keys, my taxes are handled, and I can buy Baileys legally. That’s as grown up as I want to be. All that other stuff is overrated, and being a rainbow baby is a lot more fun.

If the little boy whose day I made turns nasty, it mighht not go so well. The princess is emotional. She gets that from me. She’s the type to burst out crying over name-calling, even though her tears are driven by her temper, and every tear will be punctuated with a barrage of returned insults. She gets that from me as well. So I hope he doesn’t use my dance against her. And I hope I can teach her the opinion of the world isn’t as weighty as it seems.

Opinions are things that upset me, even though I have some strong ones of my own. I just finished reading Approval Addiction, and I took a lot from it. For one thing, I realized I’m not quite as addicted as I thought I was.  Two, my outward action may not change, but I’m now completely transformed on the inside. I’m doing all the same things, but for all the right reasons, which is a really good thing. I’ve learnt a lot about myself and had a lovely healing phase. Plus, I was actually reading, so yay!

A lot of things have gone my way today, and I’m now a lot more hopeful for the future. I don’t know how long this up-mood will last, because my feelings are fickle. But I’m going to enjoy it for as long as it is here, and then I’ll deal with whatever comes next. I waste so much time trying to worry about the future and figure things out that I don’t enjoy each moment in the present. I choose not to do that anymore, and I hope my guardian angel will remind me every day.

In other news, I’ve had a rough time recently, and was thinking about getting a tattoo of a tortoise. I figured it would be my new spirit animal, since whenever things get thick, I can retract and hide inside my shell. Plus, it makes its way so slowly, is said to be wise, and never goes house hunting. But a quick search on Google showed me tortoise tattoos aren’t very … pretty. Plus, they may not work well with my skin tone.

I thought about getting a turtle instead, but that beats the purpose, since turtle shells are so much softer than a tortoise. That’s why people can, you know, eat them. So I thought hey, what about a Ninja Turtles Tattoo? But nah, they don’t work without the colour. Also, I’m not entirely sure I want another fresh tattoo. So now I’m looking for a Ninja Turtle Wristband … holla if you have one for sale! I don’t really need to hide anymore, but a Ninja Turtle Wristband is an awesome thing to have, no?

♫ Drive ♫ Incubus ♫