Hobbies & interests | Hip to be Mom

you can hear a pin drop

Posted by clairity Comments Off

Nov 272009

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!

books2

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 !!

porridge

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?

man smashing guitar It’s the weekend and I don’t have to take the girls to guitar class. any. more. We finally called it quits! What a relief! You should see my girls grinning from ear to ear. They love to play but apparently their guitar teacher isn’t too keen on teaching.

Or maybe he figures we’re easy money! Of late, he’s either reteaching the same old stuff, or flirting at the front desk. Most days, he’s in class for all of 10 minutes of the one-hour class.

Then out of the blue, the music school informs me the fees have increased because the girls have gone up one grade. They have? When? How? Did they sit for a test I didn’t know about? Nope, but apparently the school has been charging me the lower fee by mistake and now they want me to pay the difference for the past two months.

Frankly if the teacher had been doing a good job, I wouldn’t mind paying. But as it is, he’s been giving the girls a hard time, constantly missing from class and boring them with the same old and the girls’ enthusiasm has taken a nose dive ever since. They lost interest in practising and I practically had to drag them to class, the poor things.

Well, if the teacher figures it’s easy money, he’s got another thing coming. How about a taste of easy come, easy go!?

my latest bit of fun

Posted by clairity Comments Off

Aug 282009

This is what I’ve lately become addicted to. Does this somehow have to do with the fact that I’m 48% nerd? Never mind, don’t answer that .

crossword

I’m at this practically every night and the girls jump in to help me or cheer me on when I’m stuck. Growing up, I remember hogging the Sunday papers for these, much to the frustration of everyone else in the house.

Then there was a stretch when my Dad became totally obsessed with submitting his entries to some weekly crossword contest. He’d come by waving his stack of entries, and how could I say no? I didn’t mind helping with the crosswords but cranking out those slogans really threw me .

We’ve been talking about stopping Raine and Skye’s guitar lessons. It’s not that they’ve lost interest, no. But right now, they seem more interested in listening to music than playing it. True, they’ve been at it for almost a year and have the basics down. By now, I’m guessing they should be playing songs like gushing faucets. Not.

At the same time though, the classes are becoming more of a drag now. The teacher isn’t the fun guy they started out with. For some reason, he seems distracted and often disappears from class to smoke or flirt with the staff outside, leaving my girls to practise on their own.

playing the guitar

Earlier on, he asked the girls to give him a CD of their favorite songs that they wanted to learn. He said he liked the songs on the CD too and briefly taught a couple of songs from it. Our CD has never been seen again. Now he’s on to teaching songs by people whom the girls say are from their grandpa’s generation, people like Eric Clapton!! So let’s see where we go from here. We haven’t quit yet but we’re on the verge of.