My family and I aren't the emotional, touchy feely type (not that I'm knocking that kind at all promise) and we don't speak all that often. Sure we have the odd e-mail going back and forth but it's usually a joke or some kind of inspiration religious type thing that I seldom read anyway.

So when I received an e-mail about my mom from my sister yesterday, I knew that it was something that needed my full attention. It seems that my mom is having a bit of a melt down. She had lost her e-mail inbox along with all the wedding related e-mails, her mom (my gran who has been mentioned in previous posts) is giving her a hard time again and her she's been told that her car is going to blow up on her if she doesn't stop driving it. My sister went on to mention that my mom isn't eating properly again and has reverted back to an old trick of eating a bag of popcorn instead of real food in the evening.

This got me thinking, it's been really easy for us to pass the details of the wedding over to my mom, she loves doing it and always seems to cope so well. Maybe though, we've been a little slack in checking that everything is ok with her and maybe things are going on back home that I should pay more attention to.

So I phoned my mom nice and early this morning to have a little chat. She's ok but I can tell that she's getting stressed about having people (the RO's mom, dad and gran) staying at her house in December. You see, life in SA is expensive and my parents have always spent every cent on their kids. When she got the news about her car, I think it was just the last straw and everything became too much to deal with. After a nice long chat, I think that I managed to help her see what is important and what she really doesn't need to expend any energy on, little steps, little baby steps.

It's so frustrating having my parents struggle back home. Don't get me wrong, I love South Africa and I love being South African even more, but life back home is so difficult. Unless you're especially lucky, every month becomes a magic trick of juggling finances and cutting back on the little luxuries. Hopefully things will get better for all of them soon - I can hope can't I?

On a lighter note, the house is really coming along now. The new windows arrived today (hard wood and beautiful!) and the interior doors upstairs have been expertly hung.

Now for floors, final render, central heating and finishing touches....

Oh and the massive tv has arrived but the poor RO can't play with it until the tv room is finished :-)

VP