Hanging out » Hip to be Mom

After lunch this afternoon, the girls and I wound up at Coffee Bean sipping an iced lemonade and a large ice-blended hazelnut coffee between us. These days, we don’t even have to make much of an effort at a girls’ day out. Since Steev left for college in Cal, it’s been just us girls.

We don’t do coffee very often. Living in the city, we’re always rushing to get some place – from school to extracurricular activities, from the gas station to the grocery store, it’s never-ending.

So this being able to sit back, sip a nice cold drink and watch the world go by is really nice. And quite frankly, there is so much to see and hear, and laugh and joke about. We really should do this more often.

I heard that someone at the gym lost her cell phone the other day. She’d left it in one of the pigeon holes and gone home, only to realize oops! She called the gym immediately and was told it wasn’t there any more. Gone. for. good!

Steev lost his iPhone while he, me and the girls were peddling a rickshaw (like crazy, I might add, it was such great fun!) along this busy beach front in Monterey.

Have you ever lost your cell phone? Can you imagine losing all your contacts and personal settings? OMG, such a big headache!

We split up and backtracked, tracing our steps back along the entire length of the beach front but we might as well be looking for a needle in a haystack.

Finally, Steev decided to call his own number hoping its ringing would lead us to it. Instead a guy answered and said he had the phone and that he would wait for Steev to meet him along that same stretch of beach. What a dear soul!

So Steev got his phone back. Quite effortlessly, I might add, though we were really doubtful at first. It was a happy ending, one that we didn’t even dare to hope for.

In most cases, chances are if you lose your cell phone, you will never see it again. And you can only hope and pray that whoever’s got it isn’t using it to call the rest of this planet and beyond before you can make a report and get your number deactivated. Peace!

Time for a random post simply because this Chinese New Year is so quiet I can hear a pin drop. No doubt, it’s because we miss Steev. No one has officially voiced it out but I think we all feel it . Skyping with him every day before and after his classes helps but it’s not the same.

To kill the boredom, the girls and I had 4 movie nights in a row. We watched both parts of “National Treasure” which had us on the edge of our seats. And we watched “The Losers” again because we like Jensen and his elevator song , and “Eclipse” for the first time which, if nothing else, was good for a few laughs.

We scaled down our reunion dinner partly because Raine and I have been working out so hard at the gym we didn’t want to pile those nasty calories right back on. So a very simple meal it was – takeout fried chicken (mm, so fattening!) and chicken curry, and 2 homemade dishes of stirfried Pacific clams with shiitake mushrooms and fish maw, and stirfried broccoli with ginger.

We haven’t visited anyone but my Dad stopped by as did one of my cousins and her family. Her husband is one of my favorite relatives simply for the fact that he does his own thang and could care less about the family politics and what the herd does.

Random quote from him this time: I don’t have an iPhone. I don’t have an iPad. I don’t have an iAnything. And I’m not on Facebook because I don’t have any friends.

Priceless! Now there’s a man I respect! He took the words right out of my mouth!

On an even more random note, Skye and I are missing these Danish cookies (and I’m not even a big cookie person!). I bought two 4-pound boxes of these at Costco and we finished one-and-a-half boxes while we were traveling up and down the coast, and left the rest for Steev and his Roomie. Heard the cookies are almost gone now .

Skye and I went grocery shopping for Thanksgiving this morning. Just the two of us. Raine is cramming for her big exam so we left her at home with a bit of quiet study time. Looks like this will be the first of a good many girls’ days out for Skye and me in the coming weeks while Raine hits the books. Yay!

For Thanksgiving next week, I’m going to roast a large chicken and potatoes, and put together a simple salad. Steev will be celebrating Thanksgiving with his roommate and his parents in California. So without our big eater, we’re just going to cook something simple here.

We set out armed with a long list of ingredients to buy and as usual, we still managed to miss out some items. Sigh! But never mind, that means we get to go out again tomorrow . The perfect excuse for another girls’ day out!

And since Tyson, our playful little beagle, has chewed up practically everything within his reach including his collar, Skye has been wanting to buy him a new one and a few new toys as well. I don’t think he deserves them but she is intent on spoiling him. That’s Skye, our pet lover! No wonder Tyson is crazy about her !

So we decided to stay home and not hit the malls at all this weekend. I think I may finally have to admit that I’m getting tired of the mall because this time of year, it’s so crowded with miscellaneous characters from goodness knows where!

I even decided to skip groceries this weekend, something I’ve never done before! No big deal though since I’m a chronic bulk shopper so it’s not like my pantry and freezer are ever bare like Mother Hubbard’s. We won’t starve!

On the other hand, we’ve been shopping online for winter wear in anticipation of our upcoming Christmas in CA! Since it’s summer here all year, the girls have to practically shop for winter clothing from scratch! They don’t mind it, of course! Raine is already proclaiming her love for winter shopping !

As for me, I’m just glad I can do my shopping over “there” where the selections, quality and prices are far better than they are over “here”. We ordered this soft and sexy multi-way wrap from Victoria Secret! In our hot, sweltering weather, the best we can manage is to look soft and sweaty. Soft and sexy, not so much !

I scream, you scream, Happy Halloween!

Posted by Clairity Comments Off

Oct 312010

At this time last year, we were all so excited that Raine had won tickets for us to go see the All-American Rejects in concert. I was trying to learn the lyrics to their songs so I could sing along. Tyson Ritter was just too cool in his Halloween costume (see it here if you can’t guess what he wore).

Seems like such a long time ago and now Halloween is finally here again. It seems Halloween, which was never a big thing here, is suddenly all the rage and the malls are decked out in plastic pumpkins, life-sized witches and ghoulish outdoor lighting!

For us, Halloween is simply about Baskin-Robbins. They have a 31% off promotion on the 31st of each month. So that’s what I’m talking about. Raine and Skye went out early to snag two tubs of Strawberry Cheesecake, Baseball Nut, Rainbow Sherbet and Chocolate Chip Dough ice-cream. Happy Halloween!