It's been a while since I paid attention to Time magazine, but last week it was impossible to ignore.
Four years ago I was obsessed with a tall, dark and handsome man.
Once upon a time, trips to the sea were a joy. But that was a long time ago. Now that life is about protecting my young offspring, the beach is hell.
I've been a little baffled by the sisterhood. At a recent Elle magazine discussion, the convenor asked those of us who think of ourselves as feminists to put up our hands.
I am not squeamish. I've plucked feathers from chicken carcasses, eaten road kill and watched pigs being slaughtered. I've always understood where my food comes from. But it's been a while since I last saw the insides of a dead animal. The food I eat now is supermarket-bought and requires unwrapping, not gutting.
Did you dream last night? Not a question you need to ask people. The information is mostly offered, even if it isn't always welcome.
We know women are treated differently in the workplace. There are pay disparities, and too few women are in leadership roles, executive positions and in boardrooms.
There is a big hole in our ceiling. An electrician, while clearing the tangled mess of wiring in the attic, stepped onto the old ceiling and left a gaping hole. When the "ceiling man" came to give the electrician's boss a quote for the repair, I was amazed at what I heard.
The world becomes a shifty and insecure place when you're reminded that your moral universe is not the only one.
How strange it is when the most unexpected of exchanges gives you the most pleasure. A conversation between my youngest child and a friend - let's call her Sarah - did just this.
I AM not a Mrs. At school I may have been a Miss, but for as long as I can remember I have filled the title section of boring bureaucratic forms with a Ms. Being called a Mrs implies you belong to someone else. My marital status is nobody's business but mine. If somebody calls me Mrs A, I refer them to my mother-in-law.
A colleague, when I asked him for names of young married friends, sent me a list of exclusively black couples. He also sent me a note saying that he was still trying to make white friends.
It is the year of the dragon. The dragon, a symbol of power, brings optimism, Chinese astrologists say.
We have all done something embarrassing.
Cruising along the N1 while listening to Indie group Cornershop's Good to Be on the Road Back Home, I was hard at work trying to convince myself that although days of lazing in the sun along a slow-moving Karoo river were over, all is in fact good.
IT IS time to return to work. It's hard to believe, but I am fairly relieved about this.
In bed one night after a sweltering day last week, I lay, wide awake, striking out at mosquitos while avoiding the lengthening limbs spread across my bed.
My nine-year wedding anniversary is coming up. Or, as my husband would annoyingly say: "Nine years each. So make that 18."
A young boy's mother has been asked by another parent to dissuade her son from speaking English to his classmates.
I fear that, like Lily Allen, I may become a weapon of mass consumption.
Making our souls sing is, among many things, what good art can do.
Once population control was a no-go topic in nice, liberal circles. For good reason: it leads to distinctly uncomfortable discussions, such as abortion, eugenics, one-child policy and the killing of baby girls.
I have a friend who years ago gave up creating fictional lives for a local soap opera to instead live with a US comic earning his living as a proselytising atheist and rock musician.
There has been much talk about Man Flu recently. It is being taken seriously as a real condition - not just as an allegation that men take to bed and become useless to the rest of humankind at the first hint of a sniffle.
I don't often ask for sartorial advice. But I feel that we should urgently develop a national dress.
My children have a plan to butcher me.
Why should we be kind and considerate?
I don't often do online banking - maybe twice a month to make crucial once-off payments.
What drives you to be who you are and to live the life you are living? That's the big question, isn't it? Money and work, fun and happiness. Being idle? One or another, or all of the above?
Much has been said about Barack Obama's summer reading list - the books with which he has stuffed his Martha's Vineyard beach bag. I've also added a few words to the twitterverse about his collection. I am rather childishly chuffed that I've read one of his choices and am busy reading another.
I've banged on about this before - how to teach ethics in a godless home. Do you whip your kids for every misdeed?
By the time you've read this, we - that's me, my husband and our children - would have been to our first wedding together as a family.
I AM an ignoramus about many things, not least about rugby. To me a mass of big, stocky, heaving men running and scrumming around an oval ball seems pretty senseless. I apologise in advance if this offends anybody, but I find the game very unaesthetic.
WE SHOULD be celebrating, respecting and acknowledging each other every day. Of course.
GLUED to the screen as many of us were last Tuesday, I tried to listen to those vacant and defensive answers by James Murdoch to questions by the UK's parliamentary commission into the News of the World scandal. I also tried to listen to the awkward silences and unbelievable, short utterances by his father, Rupert. Or, like one of my best Twitter friends, you may have been trying not to be annoyed by Rebekah Brooks's tossing of her trademark head of red curls.
I'VE HAD to send the children out to write this. It has been school holidays, and I have been sick. Three days at home with three children.
I ONCE dated a music critic. I learnt as much from him about music as I did from my five years of high school piano lessons. Nothing. I am tone deaf, and no amount of anything can help me. I did learn that a yelling habit wasn't going to see me through long-term love. I also learnt to shut up during a classical music concert.
IMAGINE a society facing an existential threat. It doesn't take much of a stretch to imagine. Think of Japan.
YOU could be forgiven for believing you were on a pop psychology course if you'd been following US First Lady Michelle Obama's trip to South Africa last week. I did.
We all know boredom. Those endless hours of sorting admin, when your eyes glaze over SARS return forms. Or listening to deathly dull speeches, and long sermons. Or when you have a day like I did yesterday. Alone at home is in theory a fantasy, but after an hour I lost all motivation to do anything and slouched about, bored.
