Thursday photos - clouds & ice-cream

Johannesburg traffic on Beyers Naude

I had a bit of a traffic fail yesterday when I decided on a whim to drive another route to work...
There is a reason why we take the suburb routes to work in the mornings. The rest of the roads are a no-go! A murdering-no-go-not-moving-hell!

I had to turn back and go my usual route.
(I will not do it again!)

I love the clouds, especially now with the heavy downpours we have. See also the photos taken yesterday afternoon of the clouds from the University of Johannesburg.

Johannesburg city in the background

University of Johannesburg - Auckland Park campus

Another photo taken from the bridge from UJ over Kingsway

As I spend most of my working days indoors (without a view on the world), I love it when I have an opportunity to be outside.
 Although we are in the city, we can still enjoy a bit of Mother Nature, can't we?

Clouds are one of my favourite things to look at!
What do you love looking at in nature?

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And we had a perfect ending to the day.
Totally unrelated, but also totally worth it!

Ice-cream at Milky Lane

Looking at the stars

The blocked nose of the past few days made it very difficult for the toddler to go to sleep. More than the usual! Even breastfeeding did not do the trick; because she had to come up for air more than she was able to drink! The flu is a bummer!

She was crying and putting up a fight to go to sleep last night. Out of sure desperation I drew the curtains and blinds and told her we were going to look at the stars!

In suburbia there is not much to see through the haze of lights and smog. We could distinguish a faint glimmer of some stars above the silhouettes of the nearby houses in the complex. We did see two planes going by as well...

It was five minutes at the most, and I heard the faint snore of a blocked little nose... Mieka was gone for the night! I called Dries to come and look at the sweet figure lying on the bed. Very precious!

Dries said tonight he missed her in our bed last night! (We don’t know what we want, do we?)

I have found another tactic to get her to sleep: Looking at stars! Definitely worth trying again!

Transporters Deluxe

Parents are transporters of teenagers. I am still on the transporting theme…
Our parents were luckier than us. We used to go around on our bicycles, and we used to walk a lot more than the children of today. (Wow that could have been my grandmother saying that! I AM getting old!)
Our parents did not have to drive us everywhere like we do with our children. Is this a global phenomenon, or is it more so in South Africa? With our crime problems and bad driving cited as some of the main reasons for not allowing our children to go by themselves - by bicycle or by walking. Getting the bus is also not an option, because we have such a bad public transport system. It does not cater for everybody – we don’t have buses going to our neighbourhood. It has become a daily grind for all parents to drive their children to school, including all the extra-mural activities.
I think our children are losing out on:
- not being active as much as we used to;
- not learning about traffic rules while being taxied;
- not smelling the crisp fresh air;
- not learning about independence;
- not enjoying the solitude of a walk or a bicycle ride.
Our children can’t even ride a bicycle in our townhouse complex, because all the dogs start barking. We have definitely lost something in our urban jungle!