Marshmallows & Merlot

it's off to Oz I go... well, not quite, but nearly. You see, one month from today I will be jumping up and down on an over-stuffed suitcase full of my prettiest, strappiest, globetrotting gear. I will be glowing courtesy of an oh-so-natural (could've just spent a week in St. Tropez) airbrush tan and my mostly grey (sad but true) re-growth will be a thing of the past thanks to Carlton's finest hair saviour, Rudy. I'll also hopefully be having to hold my favourite jeans up with a belt cos the muffin-top I'm sporting today will have been banished.   The 'reunion tour' as it was coined two years back when the idea of this 3-week holiday was conceived, is just a month away. My flights are booked and I've written my 'out of office' email message in my head – ready to be typed at a moment's notice. The only thing standing between me, two of my best friend's in Perth and 21 days of girlie shenanigans is the dreaded visa application – a pile of p

and I am a berry, berry happy Sandtonite (I apologise for the über cheesy play on words but I'm practically delirious). Vodacom hooked me up and I am back to my BBM-ing, emailing-like-a-ninja, tweet-ready,  'Facebook stalking' self.  Without my smart phone I was like a rubber duck without a bubble bath, a horse without its carriage... you get the idea. The not so starving artist is free again. For the past week I've had to chain myself to my desk in my new super-fabulous office to make sure that I didn't miss an email from a copy seeking client. The thing about freelancing is that there's not much freedom in it if you have to be office-bound. I'm all for hard work but I've never really slotted into the nine-to-five world that comfortably. As hubby says, I'm more like a 3pm to 2am kinda girl. I only really get going when my clients are wide awake and have had their sixth cup of coffee (a.k.a 'personality') – and that only tends to be after lu

Approximately 96 hours ago a stranger adopted my Blackberry... I was having a spur of the moment post-work glass of vino with one of my favourite blondes in the Wild Wild West – what an expensive glass of sauvignon blanc that turned out to be. I hadn't realised quite how smart my smart phone was until I was involuntarily stripped of it. For the past few days I have been finding creative ways to get hold of people, typing rather odd 'out of office' automated responses for my email account and relying on Ellie's morning wake-up (a.k.a 'I need to pee!') to stand in as an alarm clock. It gets worse...  Ask me what I'm doing next week Thursday and, unless I'm at my laptop, I can't tell you. Gone are the days of filofaxes and literally penciling things in. I have gone from being 'lost' 20% of the time to being 'lost' 80% of the time. Having SatNav at my fingertips hasn't made me a better navigator, it's made me more directionally c