Stockholming myself - Day 5

We had pancakes for breakfast because MadCat's jaw pain is kicking in, as promised, three days after he had the titanium rod drilled into his jawbone. Owie! So I've been puttering around in my nightshirt, and having spilled pancake batter on that, no way am I posting a pic! 

Inspired by the hoodies I have seen this morning, I decided to put on my Naartjie velvet hoodie (which creases badly but is oh, so comfortable). Not planning on going out today, so no make-up (hence the phone in front of the face), yoga pants and socks hand-knitted by my 91-year-old gran (okay, so she was 89 when she knitted them, but that's not the point!). 

Every year she asks me what I want for my birthday, and every year it's socks. Or a cheesecake. When I went down to Cape Town for my dad's 60th, I phoned ahead and asked her to make me a cheesecake to bring back up to Joburg. It disappeared within 24 hours. Same for the cheesecake she made for when MadCat and I went down for my mom's 60th ... and we did our best to hog the one she'd made for the actual birthday itself. Ahem. Mama Jo's Cheesecake: my personal crack. 


Here's my Mama: 

That's what I'll look like when I reach her age. I guess it's not a totally horrible future. I had a bad night last night, when I got home and saw the pics my friends had taken of me at the baby shower. But as MadCat pointed out, the pic that attracted him to my profile was taken by a buddy, not airbrushed, and showed my smile. So I just have to get used to the reality of what I look like when I smile or laugh, and that my real friends think I look lovely in those pics because they know the real me. It's harder than it sounds, but I'll keep working on, and hopefully this project will help. 

To answer some of TJ's questions in her latest post, it's definitely becoming easier to take (and post) the photographs, and having had people mention the difficulties they face in their own posts made it easier for me to post pictures I think are less than flattering. Is it becoming easier to accept myself in the pics? I'm still working on that. 

Temerity Jane is running the Stockholming Myself project and I figured, why not join? I hate having photos taken, so maybe this will force me to get rid of the rictus grin and lack of eye contact. TJ says: It's looking at yourself every single day until you like what you see – either through change or through acceptance. Go check out TJ's Stockholming page and visit the other players!