Moving…
I am sick with sadness. Yesterday it was confirmed that my husband is being transferred to Johannesburg on 1 December. It is a permanent position, so we…me included…have to move.I don’t want to go. I love Cape Town, I love my life here. I have put down roots and established a kind of security and contentedness that is new in my experience, and it is precious to me. My previous moves have always come with the sense of either moving away from something I did not like or moving to something better…this move feels like I am being ripped away from the very fabric of my existence. I do not know if I can ever again feel as settled and secure as I have over the past six years. N

After this, I will be wary of October forever!
Well, I’m back…and hoping that the last days of October do not continue the trend of disasters, large and small, that have plagued me for the month.I am ordinarily one of those perpetually optimistic and relentlessly cheerful individuals, the one you could cheerfully choke when she responds to your own litany of disasters by saying “Well, the bright side of this is…” Even when I run into a string of woes in my own life, I tend to view the most recent calamity as the last, and do not look forward with trepidation. As the end of this month approaches, however, I am beginning to waver. The fact that all of the crises, from major to minor, seem to be resolving helps…but

Landlording is not for the faint of heart!
My husband has never been a landlord before. When I was in my teens, my mother and stepfather were landlords and I learned a lot…too much!...from their experiences.One of the tenants we ejected last month has come back to haunt us. They moved out on August 11 and, despite my written request for a forw

Are you looking for a job?
When I was in college, I managed a local branch of a nationwide résumé service during my summer breaks. Later on, I operated a desktop publishing business in which résumés were among my biggest sellers. And I spent four years in the trenches as a technical headhunter in Silicon Valley followed by a year managin