Cold Water & Full Days

Life Lately: Sardines, Spreadsheets, and Solstice

With the upcoming winter solstice, we’ve had some chilly weather here this week. Considering our temperatures rarely drop below 20°C, even in winter, our mornings have been down to around 14°C. Which, let’s be honest, is not exactly cold by many people’s standards, but it is cold enough here that the sea temperature has been dropping rapidly, and that can only mean one thing… sardines.

Three times this week we’ve woken up to a message from my mom, who lives in town right by the beach, alerting us that the beach is full of sardine bakkies and boats and every man and his dog, and we need to get into town as soon as possible. So naturally, we’ve been rushing in, catching beautiful sunrises, and joining the annual sardine chaos. Jesse has been doing some fishing while we’re there. The fishing has been okay, not amazing, but good enough to keep him happy.

Jesse has become incredibly passionate about fishing over the past few years and now has his own fishing channel on YouTube and Instagram, which is doing amazingly well. I’m honestly so proud of him. He’s even landed a few sponsorships already, which feels quite wild.

These spontaneous beach mornings have meant our days have felt a bit chaotic, but in a good way. We’ve ended up having breakfast on the beach, lunch at my mother’s, and then heading straight into afternoon kid activities like gymnastics. Full days, but good ones.

We had the Gemini New Moon on Monday, a Super New Moon. According to pop astrology, as a Scorpio I’ve apparently entered a year of luck and success. Yay me, and honestly, much needed. Of course, I always take broad astrology predictions with a pinch of salt because there’s an entire birth chart to consider, not just a sun sign, but I still find it fun to read them.

I’m currently working with the lovely Kali Higgins to bring her website to life, and it’s been really fun. I always love her astrology updates, although I haven’t yet listened to her New Moon one, which probably tells you everything you need to know about how busy this week has been. Soon I’ll be having a full reading done by her too. It’s been a while since I’ve had one, and with so much shifting in my life lately, it feels like particularly good timing.

This week I also read Silver Elite by Dani Francis. It felt good to read a dystopian novel again after my recent obsession with Romantasy. I really love dystopian stories, both in books and films. The Road by Cormac McCarthy remains one of my favourites in the genre. I still haven’t watched the film adaptation, but anything starring Viggo Mortensen is usually worth watching.

I enjoyed Silver Elite overall and gave it three stars in my reading log spreadsheet. I liked the double-agent plot and thought that aspect was compelling. But if I’m being picky, it wasn’t nearly slow burn enough for my taste, and I didn’t feel much chemistry between the FMC and MMC. I’ve heard mixed reviews about the second book in the series, Broken Dove, particularly because it apparently introduces a love triangle, which makes me hesitate. I’m not sure I’ll start it this weekend.

I love beginning a new book on a Friday evening, and somehow that often ends up being my rhythm. I average roughly a book a week. I also have an entire spreadsheet system for my reading life: a library tracker, reading log, and series tracker. Yes, I am absolutely a spreadsheet nerd, and I make no apologies for it.

This weekend my eldest daughter has another gymnastics competition, which means another drive all the way to Glenwood in Durban so she can perform her three-minute ribbon routine and be judged, rather harshly in my opinion. I have a complicated relationship with gymnastics. I love it because it brings my daughter so much joy, and she genuinely loves it with her whole heart. But I struggle with the competitive side of it and, if I’m honest, the competitions themselves.

I think this is one of the hard parts of parenting older kids. Sometimes you end up supporting things they love, even when parts of that world make you deeply uncomfortable. Maybe that’s motherhood. Learning when to hold on, and when to let them have experiences that stretch both of you.

Anyway, that’s life lately. Cold mornings, full days, sardine madness, spreadsheets, books, astrology, and the beauty of winter on the South Coast.

With love,