If you like this post, subscribe to my RSS feed via reader or via email, or follow me on Twitter for daily updates.

If you read my blog regularly, you know I’m a very hands-on person. I love doing everything myself (except washing and cleaning, of course ). Heck, I’d grow my own pasta and bacon if I could!

So like I said, I cut my own hair sometimes and I cut my kids’ hair when they were little. Just the basic cuts because I’m not a trained hairstylist and have never attended any hair schools in Wichita or anything.

So now that my kids are older and want different styles, I have no choice but to take them to the salon and let the trained professionals do their thing. If I could learn how to style, I would too !

Like I said I’m not a big TV fan. You can hardly find me watching more than 3 hours of TV a year. But here, I’m totally hooked on Food Network. It’s a never-ending parade of chefs whipping up meal after meal after meal.

My favorite chefs to watch are Rachael Ray, Sandra Lee and Tyler Florence. I love how Rachael Ray has 2 or 3 dishes going on at the same time. That’s very real for me because that’s how I cook, I multi-task .

I love Sandra Lee’s tips too on saving money and using both fresh and prepacked items to save time. Again this combining fresh and storebought is very real for me. So it’s great to watch and learn.

And Tyler is very interesting because he talks about being hungry and can’t wait to eat what he cooks. That’s me too!! I’m an impatient person and his pace of cooking is pretty similar to mine – dancing back and forth and getting everything quickly together.

Do you watch cooking shows? Who’s your favorite and why?

… try on? Self-confessed shopaholic that I am, I find a certain thrill, a feverish excitement about trawling the malls for clothing and accessories.

I just can’t wait to try on fashion jewelry and shoes…

… but hate trying on pants.

How’s about you? Come on, spill the beans!

Raine is both a bookworm and prolific writer and she’s something of an authority on the English language at school. Her friends are awed by her writing and speeches. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she knows what irvingia gabonensis is and can even pronounce it .

Recently one of the boys in her class asked if she would be his unofficial English teacher. Says he wants to brush up his English so he can impress a girl he likes from another school. What a funny guy! Kinda reminds me of a scene from one of those high school movies though I can’t think which one, off the top of my head, can you?

We dragged ourselves out of bed on a Sunday morning to go to a golf tournament. Can you believe that? But only because my three teens were once budding little golf players and Hip2bDad is trying to inspire them to pick up the game again. I say, anyone would be crazy to send their kids out into this unbearable heat to chase a little ball!

Anyhow this was a one-off. And you know why we prefer to stay away from these events? Because they’ve got all these stupid rules about what you can and cannot wear and do! And quite frankly, on a hot day like today, we’d rather not be strutting about in the sun wearing polo shirts with long pants and proper shoes !!

I parked the car miles away and we hopped on a small shuttle bus to get to the main entrance of the golf course. Then we hopped onto a golf buggy to be transported to the main event. The girls got a big kick as they often do when they caddy for their daddy and he lets them drive the buggy into bushes and trees!

After asking about 10 completely clueless people for directions, we finally stumbled on the food tent where we stopped for some breakfast. One thing’s for sure, the food they serve golfers makes me look like a top-notch celebrity chef, booyah!

We passed many interesting people, most notably the scantily-clad air-heads hired by the companies sponsoring the event. I think I understand a little better now the scenarios that must’ve led Tiger to his downfall predicament.

And by the time we got back to the parking lot, I found someone had parked behind my car (obviously someone with a brain the size of a golf ball) and I couldn’t get out!! Thank goodness for the golfer who ran around my car telling me how much space I had to maneuver. It took forever to inch my car out of that impossible space!

All in all, the morning put me in a really foul mood for a Sunday. I’m going to take an indefinite break from golf. That’ll be all. I won’t be taking any questions.

If you’ve been following my tweets on Twitter, you might just have caught on to what happens in my house every weekend. Yes, my three teens would set up their laptops in a row and play their computer games.

It does get quite noisy as they cheer, jeer and laugh at each other. I jokingly threatened to send them for rapid detox for opiates, more like rehab for computer addicts, if they make too much noise.

My smart alecks argue that this is their family time . They’re too stressed out by the extended school hours this year, they say. They don’t get to spend much time together and this is how they destress and stay sane.

Okay, so we’re on this fish and chips binge right now. We’ve had it two weekends in a row… New York fish and chips which the chef must’ve drowned in breadcrumbs before dropping into the fryer, then generously topped with melted cheese. Mmmm, swimmingly good!

And as if that’s not enough, I even ventured to make my own fish and chips for lunch on a school day. Fish and chips ‘homecooked’ in heaven complete with salad and tartar sauce, yum!

So we go through these cycles of food obsessions when we simply must go back and eat the same thing over and over again. Then there’ll be a lapse when we’re on the prowl for a new obsession…

… when we’d gladly go back time and time again to have our tongues singed silly by the spiciness of peri-peri chicken. And all those weekends chomping down Vietnamese pork chops over rice, by the end of which the cute waiter knew our orders by heart and had become our personal server. And not forgetting that incredible garlic shrimp pasta which we never seem to get tired of.

Are you as crazy as we are, or crazier? Do you obsess over a merry-go-round of food like we do?

Yesterday was a quiet day at home. Unusually quiet. So quiet you could hear a pin drop! After sending Steev to class, the girls and I headed for the book sale. Yep, that one, the big bad one where books were going for a steal (at 70-90% off, I would definitely call it that)!

Once we got into the sale, Raine (our resident book fanatic!) went berserk with Skye only two steps behind. In 30 minutes, my dear girls managed to pick out 29 of the books they’ve been waiting to get their hands on, the poor kids, hmm!

Yes, thankfully we have incredible sales like this once or twice a year where I can afford to let my hungry bookworms loose! If we shopped like this during normal times, I’d be like Ma Baker sending my kids out to rob banks!

Now that my wallet is lighter, I told the girls we can only afford to eat porridge for lunch. But this here is no mean pot of porridge – it contained 3-year Japanese scallops (luckily we didn’t die from this) which have been sitting around forgotten !!

We had a quiet Thanksgiving dinner, just me and the girls – partly because we were hungry (porridge digests too fast!) and partly because our tongues were on fire, the black pepper lamb chops were oh so spicy !

And why is the house so quiet again? That’s because the girls and I aren’t speaking to each other! Well, they’re in their rooms, eyeballs glued to the new books (duh!) and remember, there’s 29 books so I reckon the house is going to be quiet for a while?