Last week was definitely my kind of hyperactive. I met a lady at the Jusco Sale grocery checkout as we were both complaining about the long lines and who later turned out to be the mom of Skye’s classmate. So that made for a morning of interesting chit-chat.

Right after I got home from the sale, I started feeling warm and achy-breaky all over. It couldn’t have been over-exercise because I’m so conditioned I don’t feel the muscle aches after my workouts any more.

As the afternoon wore on, my temperature rose and rose… till over 100 degrees. Between OD’ing on vitamin Cs, I drank a cup of hor yan hor in between, plonked an ice-pack on my head and went to sleep.

I jumped out of bed next morning, chirpy as the birds outside my bedroom window. The fever was completely gone and I was off on my taxi runs.

Friday morning, my girl friend from California was in town and I met her for a coffee and a two-hour chat. DH had promised to pick Skye up from school but he was stuck in a meeting so I had to cut short our visit and rush back. Duh!

Saturday morning, the girls convinced me to go to a book sale. Frankly I’m not keen on MPH book sales because their discounts are pretty miserable. We ended up with just a few books, enough to keep my bookworms off the computer for a few hours.

We were constantly out over the long weekend because we had so many free food coupons to finish up before they expire today. Free burgers, donuts, pizza, fruit juice, latte… no purchase necessary so what the heck!

If you liked this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed for more hip parenting posts. Oh and do leave me a comment, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

We had a quiet, kinda low-key week because Raine was busy with her pmr exam. I don’t know how she does it but she wasn’t the least bit flustered or nervous as she flipped through the pages of her book lazily with one hand.

How can you study when you’ve got an MP3 perpetually plugged into your ears? How can you remember anything with that music blasting right into your brain?

I can, is her smug reply, and I don’t blast the music the way kor-kor (older brother) does, Mom. Wokay, I’ll just hands off for now and see how you do in the exams.

Like I said, I’m usually the nervous one during exam time. But I’ve gotten less so with practice. So yeah, we had a low-key week with boring, low-key meals and quiet, humdrum days.

The nights were far from quiet though. Just before bedtime every night this whole week, Raine and Skye ‘force-fed’ me Simple Plan videos and songs till I’m now hopelessly in love with Pierre .

So hip moms, this is now my latest favoritest song, courtesy of my two girls. Love you, Pierre *muaks*

Um, just between you and me, I can’t believe this is all happening during exam week .

You know what’s been refreshingly different about this week-long school break?

We stayed home more than we went out. On a couple of days, we only went to the gym or out for a quick breakfast, came back and didn’t go out again. This is quite strange for us.

Part of it has to do with Raine’s exams which are coming up in a week so she needs to act busy and look like she’s studying really hard so her mom won’t get all jittery and worried .

The other part has to do with me trying to impress on the kids that with the weakening economy, we must all try to cut back and be more aware of our spending. A good real life lesson for them anyways.

So what have I been up to if we haven’t been going out? Yes, cooking up a storm in the kitchen. I cooked this big pot of chicken curry to go with bread or rice.

I also made different kinds of pasta and roast chicken with potatoes and salad. Recipes are on my food blog.

I like cooking without the rush which is not something I get to do very often. I’m always putting meals together in a hurry. So this laid-back cooking was kinda nice . We must do this more often.

I met my neighbor. for the first time. in all the years that she and I have been living 3 doors away from each other. Can you believe that? I mean, we know each other on sight and have been waving as we drove past each other, or from a distance at the gas station.

But we’ve never spoken. until today. when we again waved at each other from our front gates as we were getting our kids into the car. As she drove past my house, she slowed down, then stopped and wound down her window.

I opened my car door and we started talking. for the first time! How cool is that! She’s such a nice lady I wish we’d spoken earlier. We’re both so busy running Mom’s taxi I don’t think it even occurred to us to stop and chat.

But it was great. I really wish we’d met sooner, and I sure look forward to seeing her around and finding out her name . What do you think? Do you have a neighbor you’ve never met?

I thought I was going shopping today. Jumped out of bed, woke the kids and we were just going to do an hour of gym before heading to the mall.

It sounded like a great idea but by the time we got through the gym and the showers and a quick brunch of bacon and cheese baguettes, it was close to lunch time.

Mmm, these were so-oo good. Recipe is on my food blog if you’re interested.

And frankly there was no way I was going anywhere near the mall at that crazy hour when everyone’s trying to park to go up for lunch.

I was disillusioned. I really want to go shop for my shorts and jeans. We ended up staying home the whole day and I even got to enjoy a nice, long afternoon nap!

We missed the opening ceremony of the Olympics. All because our Astro decided to give up on us just days before the Olympics opened. Perfect timing.

My girls had been so looking forward to it. They had such fun cheering the last Olympics and were so-oo disappointed when it ended. I remember telling them it’ll be on again in 4 years.

Well, they waited 4 years only to miss a whole 10 days of it. Poor us have been watching bits of the games at the large screen TVs at the mall. Can you imagine that’s where we got to watch Michael Phelps swim a few laps? How sad!

I called Astro and after listening to their usual mumbo-jumbo, we were no closer to finding out exactly what was wrong. I mean what kind of serious troubleshooting do you really expect to come out of a script?!

After a couple of weekends of running around with our decoder to try and isolate the problem, it turned out that’s not where the problem is. DH figures it has to be satellite dish! Aaargh, the girls and I fainted - almost !

So how? We have to get the service guy to change the whole thing?!!! That’s going to take another two weeks by which time, it’s bye-bye Olympics for another 4 years!

Luckily DH had a better idea! He surprised us by coming home early, throwing his power tools up on the rooftop and fixing that darned problem. Yay-yay-yay! We got our Astro back, no thanks to Astro *blek*. The girls and I were dancing around the living room while Steev was helping his Dad with the ladder and stuff.

Mr Fix-It has outdone himself again and deserves a big wet kiss (bwahaha!) from his girls! We’re so thrilled we will get to watch the closing ceremony at least. I’d better get the popcorn ready!

Let me look into my crystal ball. Ah yes, I can see some school holidays coming up… very, very soon. And I can definitely see me doing less driving and cooking and staying home more.

Skye will be preparing for her P6 exams and Raine her F3 exams. They’re all done with the school’s additional classes for the exams, thank goodness. So I don’t have to bring food to them after school any more. That sure is a relief.

Their tuition classes are still on during the school holidays but it’s minimal. Raine goes to tuition for 2 subjects and Skye only 1 subject. I don’t believe in too much tuition. If I can help them or they can handle the subjects on their own, that’s good enough.

The countdown to the exams are on. There’s a flip chart at school reminding the kids how many days to the exams. But the kids these days aren’t like us. They hardly worry about their exams. They’ve been having trial exam after trial exam so they’re already very well prepared (I hope! *bites nails*).

In fact, they can’t wait for the exams to start so they can get it over with sooner. Ya, neither can Mom so she can stop worrying .

My kids want these

But we’ve got these

I really don’t have the time or the inclination for pets. Puppies are cute but they’re a lot of work, and a mom with 3 kids and a ‘taxi’ to run don’t need two more ‘kids’. Honest .

The two beagles in the photo above belong to a friend and were from the same brood. The male puppy went missing more than a month ago and has never been found. His sister is very lonely and has since put on weight. Worry can do that to you .

The fishes are leftovers from Skye’s school project. Skye’s Dad decided the fish deserve a better home than that small square plastic box Mom got them. So he got them a ‘castle’ with piped-in fresh water and an underwater forest to play in. Mom’s just thankful fishes don’t have legs!

I got an earful from the ‘auntie’ next door yesterday who, how shall I put this?, is such a nice, well-meaning person but who talks a bit too much, at the wrong time. Ever met one of these people?

She popped her head over the fence just as I was rushing out to pick the kids up from school yesterday. And yesterday was the day I was seriously sleep-deprived after my 24-hour blogging marathon and 2-hour workout at the gym the morning after.

So it was definitely not a good day to be trying to start a conversation with me. Guess I can’t blame her. I was wearing sunglasses so she couldn’t see those dark circles under my eyes!!

There she was, going on about how we should prepare ourselves for the worsening economy by maybe buying gold or silver bars. Who knows when money is going to become obsolete? she moaned.

And I was going, okay, auntie, I’ve got to run! for the sixth time. Um, maybe you can go to Monex.com and do some homework on precious metal investments while I’m gone, okay?

Or better yet, go cook me your yummy beehoon (rice noodle) soup and leave it beside the fence like you always do. Please, can I go now? I really need to go now. Please???

Duh!! The dark rings under my eyes just got darker!

What a laid-back weekend! We were out only for a couple of hours yesterday to go on a hamburger binge. We’ve been so hamburger-deprived all last week, you wouldn’t believe! No fast food during the school week because I cook at home.

Since Skye has extra classes after school and I need to drop off her lunchbox, I prefer her to eat a wholesome homemade lunch. She says her classmates’ moms bring them McDonald’s and KFC every day and I’ve only brought her McDonald’s once.

Steev has his lunch at college and I’m constantly on his back to eat more veggies at dinner. My poor baby seems to have lost weight since he started college. But he insists he is eating the same amount except maybe less carb.

Since there’s only Raine and me eating lunch at home most days, I usually whip up something simple like sandwiches, pasta, pies or grilled chicken and potatoes or something. We’re not big fans of rice and Chinese dishes anyways, so I don’t bother cooking up a storm.