As we've discovered, I'm a rather distracted driver. Successful adults, however, take road safety seriously. With this in mind, I made sure that Dandelion buckled up before we headed anywhere. 

In an attempt to be a responsible driver, I insisted that Dandelion wear a seatbelt.

Fortunately, there are others in Grahamstown who recognise the importance of road safety.

This gentleman is clearly succeeding as an adult - he knows that you have to fill up before a long drive.

Besides being safety conscious, grown-ups should also be well-read. So, off I went to the library.

Maybe donkeys aren't as dim-witted as we thought.

It seems that wherever I go to in order to fulfill my goal of becoming a successful adult, there're always donkeys there. Does that mean they're more accomplished grown-ups than I am? Perhaps...or maybe all successful adults are just asses.

I have a new life plan. Let's see how long this one lasts (the last one was concocted less than 24 hours ago). Generally, these plans are just variations on each other - less "I want to be a ballerina" versus"Marine biology is my calling", and more should I do a fourth-year of journalism studies, or an honours degree in politics?

For some reason I've had a very uncertain week. It might be because my brother's starting to apply to universities and the conversations I've had with him make me doubt my present and future. Or, perhaps it's because I'm getting to the end of my university degree, and this just happens to everyone. The only thing that I can be certain about is that I expected adulthood to deliver on the assurance front. 

Aren't age and certainty directly proportional (look at me getting me high school science out for you guys)? I genuinely thought that the older I got, the more certain I'd be about life. It seems that I've gotten it the wrong way around. Either adulthood leads to uncertainty, or I'm doing this adult thing wrong (it could be either - someone let me know please). 

I feel as if the only person who understands this problem is Hannah Horvath. This is problematic because she's a fictional character...or maybe it's ok on account of Lena Dunham's exceptional writing (I've been watching a lot of series this week due to the ridiculous amount of work that I have). Actually, Descartes probably relates to being flooded with doubt (yeah, that's how unclear I feel). 

As a writer, I know that this post needs a conclusion, but I'm not quite sure how to end it (see what I did there), so here's a video that a fellow Writing and Editing student suggested that's relevant to my general lack of confidence this week:

P.S. This post was written straight after I showered, still wrapped in a towel, because we all know what happens in showers...clear and distinct perceptions!

 But soft! What light through yonder breaks? It is some hope, and successful adulthood is the sun. Arise, fair sun!

By Shakespeare's beard, the sun seems to be rising. Granted, it's just peering over the horizon, but my "grown-up"attempts seem to be more Horatio than Bottom. Although, the sun only seems to be rising in the kitchen. My flatmate's rather thrilled at that thought - she no longer has to eat bland, burnt food. Who knows, maybe she won't have to supervise me in the kitchen anymore...

I reached the peak of my culinary excellence last night when I made chickpea and butternut curry, and puris (puris are a type of fried Indian bread). My flatmate and a friend who joined us for supper agreed that the meal was positively delicious. 

Double, double toil and trouble. Miraculously, this tasted nothing like eye of newt or toe of frog.

Technically puris are meant to be round, but I'm sure there must be a culinary version of poetic licence that I can appeal to.

For sooth, I am no Nigella Lawson. I was somewhat hesitant about mixing butter and flour together with my hands (that's the beginning of making dough - yeah I'm smart like that now), but eventually started enjoying it. It reminded me of play-dough. Alas, I had to stop short of colouring it green and making dinosaurs - I'm trying to be more Horatio than Bottom, remember? Instead of brontosauruses, I had to roll the dough out flat. This meant I needed a rolling-pin. I didn't have a rolling-pin. 

A little improvisation led to me using the cardboard tube that cling wrap is winded over. Judging by my mother's roar of laughter when I told her, I assume that this wasn't a particularly "grown-up" thing to do. I did say the sun was just peeking over the horizon.

Evidence of my creative recycling. 

I had a brief respite from my attempts at adulthood for the past two weeks as I was home for the holidays. For me, this means no laundry, no cooking and a general regression to a slothful teenage existence. Unfortunately, I'm back in the land of responsibilities and apparent Arctic weather (i.e. Grahamstown). I decided to make myself pizza for supper last night (yeah, I cook sometimes - hello thriving adult). 

So, I went off to the supermarket to buy my pizza-making ingredients. When I got back home and started unpacking I realised that I'd bought all of the toppings for my pizza, but had forgotten to buy the actual pizza. Maybe successful adulthood isn't as close as I thought and I'll have to put the last line of the previous paragraph down to youthful optimism (apparently optimism decreases with youth). Of course, I had to go back and buy pizza bases. 

As my youthful optimism decrees, I shall focus on the positives of this experience. I didn't burn anything and I did remember to buy the toppings at least. And, all of this resulted in an edible pizza!

It's not that attractive and it wasn't downright delectable, but it wasn't completely unpalatable and that's quite an achievement for me.

I'm as surprised as my mother that I made an edible dinner.

As my cooking is more comedy than cuisine, I went in search of a pre-cooked lunch on Monday afternoon.

What's a "bagget"?

This discovery provided an epiphany on adulthood. Disclaimer: I didn't actually buy this because, firstly I'm a vegetarian and secondly, I would never buy something that's spelt wrong (I'm one of those grammar snobs). I assumed that this was meant to say "baguette" and not "bagget" (unless that's a thing). That's right - adults with actual jobs and probably more adult things like mortgages and appointments can't spell. This gave me great satisfaction. I'm not the only one failing at adulthood! Heck, maybe there isn't even such a thing as a "successful" adult.

It's called a straightening iron for a reason!

My mother's always telling me that I can't leave the house without brushing my hair or ironing my clothes. Usually I ignore her, but now that I'm living on my own and attempting to shade in the outline of the adult that I apparently am, I find myself taking note of her advice more and more often. So, I decided to iron my extremely wrinkled shorts this morning. I thought we had an iron lying around somewhere, but I couldn't find it and my flatmate was out. Fear not, for successful adulthood may just be near - I changed my outfit! Unfortunately this outfit had a collar that needed ironing too, so I used what my momma gave me and came up with a savvy solution. I used my hair straightener. And it worked. As you can tell I was rather pleased by this, unlike my mother. The conversation went like this: 

Mum: [Gasps dramatically, like Elizabethan heroine who has just had her honour questioned] "Did you burn it?"

Me: [Smugly] "No."

Mum: "You should just buy an iron. But, do you have an ironing board?"

Me: "No, I can just use my bed."

Mum: "No! You're going to burn all your clothes!"

At this point I started laughing. But, I wasn't laughing at the thought of myself in slightly singed shorts. It's hilarious that my mother thinks I'm going to iron all my clothes. 

This is not the post that I initially intended to put up as my first ever blog post. You see, after a pep talk that allayed my fears of sharing my life of almost accidents with the World Wide Web, I was hell bent on publishing the post that has been sitting on my desktop since Monday night.

On my way back home to begin with that post, while driving towards a four-way stop at a swift 40km/h, I got distracted by a doggy. By the time the handsome hound left my sight, my head had turned a full 90 degrees and when it had turned back to the recommended driving position of looking straight ahead, the front of my car had almost embraced the pretty little Prius ahead of it. Oops.

There's a lesson in that: I shouldn't be allowed to drive. The lesson is definitely not “do not be distracted by dogs while driving”, because that is just impossible. How could anyone drive past a face like this?



This is not the aforementioned doggy. This butterball lives in my house, attempts to eat all of my food and on most occasions answers to Rani.

As much as I would have liked to provide a photo of the dashing doggy, my survival instinct thought otherwise. On a side note, I'd like to share a little piece of inside information: it is perfectly acceptable for an adult to say "doggy", or "piggy" or anything of that sort. I know this for a fact. This vital piece of information presented itself to me at a schoolboy cricket game late last year. A man well into his fifties sat next to my dad on a bench discussing things involving "wide legs", "slips" and "balls" (clearly an "adult" chat), but abruptly left the conversation to look over at the adjacent racing course and exclaim, "Ooh, look at the horsies!" This fact was then genuinely established when I noticed that he was wearing chinos, a collared shirt and crocs - basically the weekend uniform of the bourgeois male adult.