It’s been a rather busy week for someone who’s on leave and supposed to be living her best lady-of-leisure life – especially considering I’m back to work next week.
🧵 Sewing updates & questionable shorts
The Bali dress I hemmed this week – finally the perfect length. Domestic goddess unlocked.
Continuing my domestic era – remember the Bali dresses I bought that were too long?
Finally hemmed another one, and honestly, I can’t believe I actually know how to do that. I only learned to sew a couple of months ago, and now I’m obsessed.
However, measuring tape? Never heard of her. I fully girl-math my way through it and somehow it still works.
The best part?
I only learned because I bought the wrong size curtains (and curtain rail!) and couldn’t be bothered to return them, so I decided to sew the curtains shorter instead. The full story’s here if you want a laugh – it’s probably my favourite post I’ve written and it’s absolutely lols: Botox, Curtains & Stroopwaffles: My Chaotic Glow-Up Week.
Anyway, back to the week’s other domestic drama: the white denim shorts.
Online they looked like a lovely, reasonable length.
In real life? Criminally short.
Half my butt was out – maybe fine when I was 18, but now? Absolutely not. So, they’re my next sewing project.
I’m adding lace or frills or something to make them wearable. Mum’s been assigned project manager/supervisor duties, and I’ll just be there pretending to help while she does 90% of it.
☀️ Beach walks, bluebottles & near-death flashbacks
Aside from pretending to be a seamstress, this week’s been mostly workouts and beach walks.
We’ve had a few beautiful days – proper feet-in-the-sand walks. Barefoot on the sand, earth or grass is called “grounding”, and it’s meant to calm your nervous system and balance your body’s energy through the Earth’s negative ions. I love stuff like this – it actually makes so much sense.
Anyway, during one of these walks, I saw an enormous bluebottle (technically a Portuguese Man-o’-War – apparently not even a jellyfish, it’s a siphonophore according to Google – just a bunch of tiny creatures pretending to be one big one, which is somehow worse??).
The sight of it gave me the heebie-jeebies. My body did that full-body shiver – somewhere between the log-truck scene in Final Destination and that cursed 2000s jump-scare car video.
If you know, you know. 👇
Image: the source of my lifelong trust issues (my heart nearly stopped just googling it).
I got stung by one about two years ago when I was walking on the beach. A wave washed in and over my ankle, and the little bastard got me.
And when I tell you – the PAIN.
It shot all the way up to my stomach. I was 2 km from the car at the time, basically crawling by the time I got back, then spent the rest of the day lying in bed in agony.
That episode of Friends where Monica gets stung?
Yeah. I get it.
(But how beautiful is this! 👇)
☀️ Poolside panic & uninvited wildlife
I did manage to get a bit of sun this week – sat by the pool for a while because the sun was warm, but the water definitely wasn’t.
I probably could have gone in, but honestly? Between the bugs and the massive moth floating in there, no thank you.
And as if that wasn’t enough, apparently the neighbour had two snakes on his terrace/ stoop last week.
Cape Cobras, no less.
Snake season, apparently – which explains why I spent my pool time turning around every two seconds, convinced Nagini was about to join me.
Apparently, if you see one here, you just call the fire brigade – they literally have a “snake department” that comes to help.
Love South Africa, but I swear the wildlife here has a personal vendetta. The official list of things I cannot cope with:
- Swarms of flying locusts.
- The enormous black-and-red grasshopper things that make me want to pass out.
- Moths.
- Snakes.
Sharks don’t even make the list – I’m not going in the water anyway.
Sidebar trauma: a few years ago, we were driving back from breakfast in the bush (already not my cup of tea), sitting in the open back of a truck/ bakkie, when we hit a massive swarm of locusts – easily 500 metres long. I just pulled my hood up, tucked everything in, closed my eyes, and prayed for it to be over. We drove straight through them. Full sensory nightmare.
And just to prove I’m not being dramatic here’s a video from the same area around that time. Absolute horror movie stuff.
They were everywhere, completely decimating the farmland for weeks.
(⚠️⚠️⚠️ Warning: if you hate bugs, scroll past this. I still feel itchy just thinking about it.)
💆🏻♀️ Maintenance week: achieved
Once I got my flight back to work for next week, I went straight into “get work-ready” mode.
- Botox: fully topped up. Inject it all.
- Lashes: tinted & lifted today – my absolute favourite treatment. Especially when I’ve been using LiLash (pricey but wow does it work – my lashes look fake).
- Pedicure: finally done. My feet were in their trotters era.
- Hair: booked for Monday.
Also – life hack from my dental assistant: dishwashing soap cuts through product buildup like nothing else (but dries your hair). I use a wax stick most days to slick my hair back, so this week I nuked my scalp with dish soap + shampoo + a hair mask. My scalp has never felt cleaner.
(Not a daily recommendation, but desperate times.)
☕️ Coffee school chronicles
I did a two-day barista course this week – I love refreshing skills and learning new things, and honestly, it was so fun and interesting. It’s wild how much coffee training has changed since I first learned in 2010 (there’s actual maths now?).
But I loved it.
Perfecting the milk, coffee extraction, flat whites, little hearts – all the important life skills, really. ☕️💅
If you’re in South Africa, I highly recommend The Neighborhood Barista – Garith was great!
🌸 Vibes summary
Barista qualified (again).
Beach-walked and grounded (literally).
Sewed things.
Survived a bluebottle flashback.
Got botoxed, lashed, and spiritually cleansed via dish soap.
Did Parkrun (enjoyed 3/10).
This week’s snack of choice: cold custard. No regrets.
All in all – a solid week somewhere between productive and peacefully unbothered. Five sleeps left till I fly back to work, and I plan to stay that way.
If you missed it…
I wrote a post about yacht coffee training – The Coffee Lesson No One Teaches You as a Superyacht Stewardess ☕️.
It’s mostly what I learned during my recent barista course, but explained the way my brain made sense of it – the kind of stuff no one really tells you onboard, but absolutely should.
