3CB

I’ve had the strangest day. Yesterday, I had a long conversation with a good friend and decided to make some changes in my life. It wasn’t so much about starting things or stopping them. The plan was to simply change my mind frame, my context. To go with my renewing attitude, I dressed fully in purple today. Well not fully – just my shoes and hat and armbands. Also, my hair. So it was really quite annoying when the morning threw me 27 curve balls.

My morning routine includes walking my baby to school, and it’s the best part of my day. She’s often asleep when I get home from work so if I don’t see her in the morning, I won’t see her at all. The ritual is important to both of us, and on the days I’ve had to skip it for an early morning meeting, her teacher has called to ask why she’s so moody and upset.

The only downside with our ritual is it sometimes makes me late for work. Traffic in our hood is so erratic that I get to work anywhere between 7.30 and 9.30, even though I always leave the house at the exact same time. I’ve been late this whole week, and that reflects badly on my record. That and the office lateness rule …

This morning we made it pretty early … but then I realized I’d left my ATM and ID behind. So we had to go back … which cost us about ten minutes. Once I got to town, I had to decide between fruit salad and a doughnut. I picked the unhealthy choice. The salesman convinced me to throw in a chicken pie and Afya Apple Juice. I got to work with barely seconds to spare.

Then I popped my food into the microwave. The plan was to warm the chicken pie. But about 30 seconds in, I noticed the icky brown goo and realized I’d put the doughnut in instead. How now? It was a mushy puddle of sticky white and brown and wasn’t appetizing at all. My first instinct was to throw it away, but I decided to grab a fork and see what wheat flour mush is like. Luckily, it tasted a whole lot better than it looked.

I got back to my desk to make an M-PESA payment. I even wrote it down and sent a text confirming the number. But the recipient made the same mistake that I did – we read what we thought was there. Seconds later, I got a confirmation text with a distinctly alien name. WTF? Luckily Safaricom sorted it out before the damage was done, so phew! Less luckily, I proceeded to key in a second wrong number … this time I noticed it before I hit send, so phew!

I went to M-PESA to make a second deposit, and ED decided if I could be moody, then so could he. He swallowed up the toolkit menu! Stupid Ideos. The agent had deposited the money, but since I had no menu, there was no confirmation on my side. The agent suggested I try putting the phone off and on again. *insert rolling eyes* Since we all know how long an Ideos takes to boot up *insert second set of rolling eyes* she was quite panicked by the time ED had coughed himself awake. But at least the SMS came through. Finally. I treated myself to chocolate and some ice cream, even though my lactose issues will be bugging me for days.

I suppose I should explain. I love milk. I mean, I really love milk. I’ve been known to drink two litres a day. But after 3 decades of excessive consumption, my body had enough. About two years ago, I ended up lactose intolerant. The doctor says the lactase in my system is depleted, so every time I feed myself some milk, butter, cheese, chocolate, ice cream, mala, or Maryland cookies, I experience three days of debilitating cramps. Sometimes they last for just a few seconds, sometimes they go a full three days. I’ve learnt to pace myself, and I even know which brands of lactose aggravate it less. The only thing that gets me is no more Weetabix! Sigh.

             In the middle of my ice cream binge, I bumped into an article about Queen Elizabeth II. It’s her 60th anniversary, so of course it had pictures of her in her 20s. Pictures like that always make me sad. As I look at the shots, I can barely see any resemblance. It’s like looking at two different people. It makes me sad that one day I’ll look into the mirror and wonder where my face went. It would tear me up not to recognoze myself. It’s almost like having alzheimer’s, which is another thing I fear. My mind is my greatest treasure. Losing my memory would have to be the worst form of torture. It’s why I’d like to die at 65.

I’m rereading one of my favourite books, Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch. Each time I read it, I wonder what the purpose of life is. For me, life is about having fun. Yes, I have responsibilities and obligations, but I find it hard to do anything if I don’t enjoy it. I’m blessed to be getting paid to write, which is my first passion. My second is reading, and I’ve neglected it for years. I’m glad to be finally leafing through books again. I had to sacrifice my Twitter time to do it, but in the past two weeks, I’ve done a handful of tweets and read four novels, which feels really good.

I love getting lost in music, and ever since I got my iPod, I can do that 24-7, another blessing that I’m grateful for. And my little girl is growing into a woman, which makes me terribly proud and terribly frightened. But she’s happy and healthy and loved, so we’re just going to play it a moment at a time.

I need to make some changes in my life, some drastic shifts in context, as my good friend Samsam says. So I’m going to take a Landmark class next week. I’m still not sure how I’m going to pay for it, but I’m claiming it by faith. I suppose that’s a strange thing to say seeing as I don’t believe in God. But I do believe in some higher power, and I know it gives us miracles sometimes. See, Samsam gave me advice. He said I should focus on getting the 2K to register first. I had no idea how, but I said cool. The second I put down the phone, I checked my Gmail inbox … and found a new 3K payment from a long forgotten client. Sweet! Since it was money I wasn’t expecting, I used it for my class – thank you George! That’s 2 down, 13 to go.

Meanwhile, rumour has it there shall be an office koroga later. I rarely drink at office parties. In fact, I never drink in public. I have this condition called FODOT. That’s short for Fear of Dancing on Tables. Anyway, the last time I drank at work, it was only because Bharat, Vimal, and Kevin insisted. I had one glass of wine. Well, okay, two half glasses. I ended up confronting a matatu driver for leaving us at the wrong stage, making a phone call on a wobbly River Road [yes, the River Road was wobbling] and threatening to kickbox anyone who tried to grab my Ideos. Please note that it was 9.00 p.m. and I was walking alone. I then got home and cried over the sad thoughts in my head. And that was two half glasses!

So today when I was asked if I ever take alcohol, I said no, and asked for Malta Guiness instead. Or Mountain Dew. I wasn’t really thinking about my answer, because I was twiddling with my phone at the time. But it might not be a bad rule to implement. Usually I only drink at home, with the doors locked and no chance of doing any damage to anyone. My preferred drink is Baileys, because it tastes like chocolate. But because it’s a cream liqueur, it affects me pretty much the same way ice cream does. I don’t get hung over. I’m just stuck in bed with cramps for the next three days. So, starting today, I am teetotaller, both in public and in private. It’s safe, it’s healthy, and it sets a good example. Besides, what’s the worst thing that could possibly happen?

♫ What goes around  ♫ Justin Timberlake ♫

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 ♫