I am not going to lie to you. I have been craving the peace and quiet and me time to sit quietly in the corner and blog away. I have had zero luck with that.

Load shedding is killing me, the time slots that I keep falling into, it is just soo dam draining and then the unexpected power cuts. Take for example today. I went to bed at midnight and 2am I was abruptly woken up by the message alerts in the neighbourhood watch groups, asking what happened to the power and then I had to get dressed in the dark and leave home without my morning coffee and if that wasn’t bad, no power, for close to 6 hours, caused the backup UPS battery at home to run flat, meaning I had to manual crank open the garage door. I have a fear, with those doors, last time I cranked it manual, also during load shedding, I might add, I created a nest of tangled wires that could only be fixed the following morning and my car was stuck outside. So you see my fear. I managed to get the door up and down in one piece, after I instructed my mother to send a million different prayers into the universe to make sure that the nests did not occur.

After we had safely gotten to the bottom of the drive way, my car battery decided that it had had enough, even though it has just gone for its yearly service the past week. So I was stuck, I had to wait for my father to come back home to jump me and then he gave strict instructions, no aircon, no radio and no lights till I got a new battery. So in the cold I had to drive with the window down and listen to my mother panicking in the seat next to me, because she didn’t want the car to die at the robot of one the busiest intersections in our town. I mean she is my mother, she is supposed to be the strong one, the one who prayers. I am supposed to be the sacred one, the one who craves McDonalds, after the first day of fasting, but here I was screaming at her not to panic, because she was freaking me out and if we had to get stuck, I was ditching her and the car and hiding my face in shame.

Long story short, we pulled up at the intersection and she made me pull up the hand brake and rev the car while we waited for the robot to change green. People around us, must have been thinking I am one loaded chick to be revving the car like that at the current price of petrol.

We made it to work in one piece, a little frazzled but in one piece.

Let me not even mention the water shedding part. I do my part; if it is yellow let it mellow, if it is brown flush it down. I haven’t had a shower in so many weeks, I don’t even know what it feels like to see steam in a bathroom. I have braved the freezing mornings to bucket bath, cow boy style, only washing dishes once a day, using bottled water to cook with, a JoJo tank for back up, no watering the garden, no car washes, no unnecessary loads of laundry and yet when the water gets cut off, I am affected like everyone else who isn’t doing their part and it just pisses me off. I feel like taking a long long hot shower and saying stuff this. But I won’t, don’t worry.

I do find it all exhausting and there are times when I feel like just throwing in the towel and saying to hell with all of this, I am going to buy myself a one way ticket to Mars.

Today was the first time in a very long time that I actually sat down with a recipe book and paged through it, looking for inspiration. Please do not ask what my food menu has been, it had been no existent, I have been cooking anything that is in the freezer and my shopping trips have been disastrous, I just add quick and easy ingredients into my trolley.

To thank my parents for not complaining too too much, in front of me about my inability to muster up strength to bake up a storm, I thought I would treat them. I was thinking about my dad when I saw this recipe and the original recipe had blueberries in and vanilla ice cream in, so I was safe no chocolate of any sort. I had prepped all the ingredients when I went to the freezer to get the tub of vanilla ice cream and guess what some clever person, put the empty container back into the freezer so seeing as I had already told my parents I was making a milkshake, I had to improvise, there was a tub of chocolate ice cream in the freezer as well. So instead of a blueberry milkshake, this was now going to be a chocolate milkshake, my father was far from impressed, but after a good amount of nagging from me, he had a glass full.

The milkshake is out of this world, who would have thought of adding cake mix to a milkshake. Not me that is for sure. This drink was a meal all on its own, I was busting at the seams after a few sips.

Whoever said chocolate can’t fix anything was lying. This long tall glass of chocolate milkshake, topped with fresh whipped cream, whispers, grated chocolate, drizzled with chocolate sauce and with a cherry on the top has fueled my tank for a few more days of craziness. It also gave me the strength to put my mother on the car dealer and she gave them a piece of her tongue.

Well, we survived the day, barely seeing as I needed to be jumped at work again so that I could get home and all I can say is that the new battery was waiting for me when I got home, so hopefully tomorrow, there will be power for the kettle and my car will obey my commands.

Ingredients:

• 7 x scoops chocolate ice cream.
• ¾ x cup milk.
• 1/3 x cup vanilla cake mix, I used Woolworths vanilla cake mix.
• ½ x slab Cadbury mint crisp slab, roughly chopped.

Method:

• Place all the ingredients into a blender and blitz for a few minutes till there are no visible lumps of cake mix.
• Pour into a milkshake glass and decorate as you wish.