Conundrum

     How often do you use that in your daily vocabulary? Conundrum, it sounds so delicious when you say it out loud as in, "Please may I have another conundrum?" This week, writing this blog has been a conundrum: a difficult and intricate problem because I have spent my days doing ridiculously boring household chores, and I can't very well blog about that now, can I? Regardless of whether my mom suggested it or not. So helpful.

     I have set a goal for myself to blog, publish, and share something pertinent each Friday. I'm taking a Mulligan on the pertinence factor today, apologies!  I went back into my photographic vaults to haul out some things in the way of cool. Here you have a hodgepodge of conundrumness.

Number 1. A cat that closely resembles Groucho Marx reincarnated, say, as a cat. Met said cat at one of the Botswana / South Africa borders called "Martin's Drift". A cat....or is it....

 








Number 2. Do you read the fine print? Or, just pay the 50 Pula / Rand (equivalent to five US dollars), sign the disclaimer that you won't be mad if the cable car (wire mesh basket) breaks while it's transporting you from South Africa to Botswana (over the river), agree that it's perfectly fine if you go crashing into the mouths of a gang of crocodiles who proceed to roll you in the water like Tarzan and chomp your limbs off, or just get in the damn cable car/basket and sling yourself out over the Limpopo River? Here I'm asking, "Um, yeah, how far down is it?"

Number 3: Do you park your car indiscriminately, hop a fence, traverse a thick, brushy ditch-like animal path, keep a look out for random elephants, all to say, "Look, Ma! I'm standing in the Limpopo! I can see Zimbabwe from here!" Hmmmmm.....

Number 4:  Is it better to know where your food comes from before you purchase it? For example - side of the road? Or, magically delivered to a market near you by a few trucks, unloaded and pitched into a cramped refrigerated storeroom, touched by a few dozen potential customers? Or, my favorite, fresh and ready to skin, such as this lovely sugarcane rat found near the Komati River in Mozambique. Which begs the conundrum, if it exists on sugarcane, does it taste like candy?

Number 5: Live flamingos? Or, where all good, no longer useful, plastic lawn ornaments go to adorn this beautiful part of the coast near Walvis Bay, Namibia...Is it live, or is it Memorex? What did that even mean?!

 Number 6: The only conundrum that comes to mind is, what was he thinking when he got dressed that morning?

Number 7: Wow - so cool, right? Saw this as we were driving last year from Walvis Bay to Swakopmund in Namibia. Thought about giving it a shot, looks like a LOT of fun, and then I remembered that's what I thought before I tried parasailing at South Padre. Conundrum solved in nano-seconds.

Number 8: With every conundrum comes an answer. It looks like this:

Number 9: No conundrum here. As Winston Churchill famously once said, "When you're going through hell (or Mozambique after the Komati River has flooded) - keep going, put on your favorite tube socks, pour yourself some red, and cheers!" Maybe not the last part about the tube socks.  Have a fantastic weekend y'all!

xoxo