Oh my lawd … today has been NUTS!!

And it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any less busy (quite the opposite in fact) until we close for our Christmas break.

Anyway, I promised that I’d write about my FABULOUS weekend away in Durban, so here goes …

Do you know what made this so incredibly special? I got invited by beautiful Cath, a lady I’ve known online for a while, but have never actually met! I think that’s amazing for starters! And she totally went out of her way for me too … I know for a FACT that she spent like 3 weeks preparing for my arrival. Wow, talk about making someone feel special. She even had her sleeper couch recovered … in the colour of my choice, dammit! On the day of my arrival, she sms’ed me to tell me she was sooooo excited that she couldn’t stop weeing WAHAHAHA!! Loved that.

So I landed in Durbs on Friday afternoon and was greeted at the airport by the Queen of *my* blogosphere, SheBee. I finally met Her Beeness!!! And what an awesome lady she is my friends – every bit as real, lively, friendly and mad as you’d imagine 😀 Instantaneous connection for me.

And then we arrived at The Shath, and there was Cath, sitting on the wall outside waiting for us to arrive. Oh my heart. When we pulled up, she promptly burst into tears! I’ve never felt so unbelievably welcomed by anyone. Ever. Gushes of love for this lady.

So we got inside The Shath. The famous Shath. It was perfect 🙂 Pina Coladas were made and we settled down to get to know each other. In Real Life. And let me just say right here: I’ve had Pinas from a LOT of places and Cath makes the BEST Pinas EVER!!! Totally delish.

The rest of the evening was spent yakkity yakking. Well, let me re-phrase that. I got GRILLED. 143 Questions fired at me in astonishingly quick succession hahahaha 😀 Totally what I expected though, trust me. What I *didn’t* expect though was that tiny little Cath is just about the LOUDEST, most ANIMATED individual I have EVER met. Oh my hat. Seriously, one would think it was The Bee who was more like that hey? Nooooooooo … it’s Cath who is ridiculously energetic and over the top. I don’t know where or how she gets that vigor. She’s just brilliant! Tiring? Oh yes 😀

This is when I tried to hook up my new little toy to my phone and get online but sheesh, it just wasn’t happening. Yeah, I was pissed off, to say the least. So I couldn’t get into my site to update anything like I had planned to, but I did manage to take some photos and upload them to flickr straight from my phone. If you haven’t seen them yet, they are here.

Later on in the evening, Vincent Hofmann and his fiancé, Talita, arrived. They’d driven down from Jozi and stopped by to meet SheBee and Cath. Vincent is someone I’ve wanted to meet for quite a while now as I think he’s awfully interesting. And he didn’t disappoint 🙂 And Talita … woah! Seriously bright young lady with a heart of gold that one. They make a stunning couple – it’s always SO nice to see love being expressed with no conscious effort at all. It’s just so effortless and true …

And even later in the evening, Cath’s man arrived. Now HE was a surprise to me. I had never perceived him to be as wickedly funny as he actually is … I’ve seen him around online for a while but I obviously got the TOTALLY wrong idea about him! Hah!

So that was Day 1 in Durbs. I crashed at about midnight I think, can’t really remember. Hmm … yes, that’s when my stomach started doing loop-de-loops and I wasn’t feeling too good at all. I thought it was just from drinking one too many Pinas perhaps, and I was pretty sure I would wake up and all would be right with me.

Sadly, no.

I felt pretty crap the next day. Ok, yeah, I had a minor overhang but my poor tummy was in knots and I was horribly nauseous.

I kept it pretty much to myself though, I didn’t want to worry anyone and I thought I’d be ok after brunch. When I say I didn’t want to worry anyone, I really mean that … Cath is VERY maternal and if I let on that I wasn’t feeling well, she would have been stressed and I didn’t want that at all.

Five of us had brunch together at the NSA Arts Café, and just so you know, French Toast with bacon and syrup IS the bomb. That was SheBee’s suggestion and it ROCKED!

From there, we made a quick pit stop at The Shath and then went on to Taco Zulu for our lunchtime tweetup to meet B … yaaaay! Another online friend became a real-life friend. B is JUST as vivacious and gorgeous IRL as she is online. Got to meet her Sexy G too 🙂

Mmk, I was still feeling pretty kuk – food in my tummy had not done anything to help it – so I decided not to drink and stuck to Coke and water. I think there were 11 of us altogether on Saturday arvy and what a cool time we had. It’s so brilliant to finally meet people you’ve been reading and hearing about so much In the Flesh!

When we got home after that, The Bee and I decided that weren’t really feeling up to clubbing that night, so we stayed behind for heart-to-heart chats while Cath went out with a bunch of friends. Urgh. I was STILL feeling so lousy 🙁 And I was missing Sir G. Very much.

I got up quite late on yesterday and we actually spent just about the entire day in our pj’s sitting on the couch, drinking tea and talking crap. It was divine 😀

All too soon, it was time to pack and leave! Good grief … I can’t believe the time went that quickly. But I was looking forward to getting home to my boys and all my animals and to seeing Sir G again. By this stage, I was HORRIBLY nauseous and my stomach was cramping SO badly, I could hardly walk, so home was looking like a mighty fine plan to me.

Unfortunately, my flight back to Cape Town was delayed by and hour and a half, so after I’d grabbed some grub at the Spur, I had the most uncomfortably long wait on hideous steel airport chairs in the departure lounge. Blegh.

When they called our flight, I just about died with relief!

Sir G came to fetch me when I landed. What a marvelous moment it was to see him again … I missed him SO much! I got back home at about 10pm or so, hugged my beautiful boys and stroked and cuddled all my furry friends but I was still feeling like hell so I crawled straight into bed. I didn’t have the energy to unpack but I stayed up for a while and filled Sir G in on my awesome weekend.

I’ll never EVER forget my Durban Adventure and it was all made possible because of Cath. I can’t thank you enough my friend, for extending such a wonderful invitation to me and for taking such good care of me while I was with you. You and SheBee both. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me the opportunity to do something I’ve never done before. It was so very special to me and just what I needed.

I’m SO looking forward to being able to reciprocate 🙂