Pearl and I brave the rain

Pearl was home sick again today, but she's not even pretending to be sick anymore. She arrived in my room before I was even up this morning and announced, "I'm bored!" I was already feeling hopeless because it was raining again, and it was also really cold. Houses in South Africa don't have central heating, so you're at the mercy of how hard the wind blows through the cracks in the windows, and how many blankets you have.

I got up and decided to go to the store because the rain had died down a bit, the sun was strangely out, and I was out of ingredients for muesli-plus-fruit-plus-yogurt. I thought bored Pearl might like to go along. She was already dressed for some reason in her heavy coat, ski cap, scarf, and huge school backpack, so she was completely ready for action. We headed out.

We walked along under a blue-sky rainstorm. When we got to the store, Pearl endured my photo-documenting with minimal rolled eyes. She was disappointed that the battery was dead in my tiny camera, which she likes to use these days. She has lost interest in the big camera, which used to entertain her to no end while she pretended she was a fashion photographer, circling me and instructing, "Action! Action! Very good, Maria, now try harder!" And then I would have to do the same thing with her, and then we would compare photos. But she's over it now. Now it's just me, embarrassing her at Checkers.


Later Pearl was much more enthusiastic about being photographed after I bought her a rum-and-raisin Cadbury bar. Pearl has a penchant for pushing the heavy cart really really fast and then letting her feet slide while the cart's momentum drags her forward. It looked pretty fun, but she kept slamming into elderly people, so I squelched it.


As we left the store, the sun was blinding from over the mountain. It was also still raining.

Pearl is a lot of fun. As we were walking home, she trailed behind me and lost her grip on her shopping bag on the station steps. I gasped, thinking she had fallen. I asked if her bag was too heavy, and she answered resolutely, no. I commented that my heavy bag would have been much heavier if she had really fallen and I had to carry her home in my bag between the milk and the juice. In her perfect little almost-British-sounding accent, she asked, "Perhaps you could put me in the bag with the chocolates instead? It's much lighter."