Skye is studying for her school exams. Raine and I are in the same room. Every now and then, our resident cheeky girl would enlighten us by reading aloud or commenting on what she’s reading in her book.

Skye: I don’t understand why I need to learn about checks and banks!!? What do I care?

Raine: What you studying for?

Skye: Commerce.

Raine: Oh, I never studied Commerce. I did Cooking instead.

Skye (shaking her head!): Uh-oh, that means you got to walk 10 steps behind your man!!

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At our cousin’s wedding recently, one of Hip2bDad’s aunts took one look at me and lamented loudly, “You’ve lost so much weight, my dear!”

Have I? Really? That was Friday night at the bride’s open house and it got me wondering about that scale at the gym, hmmph!

Then on Saturday morning, another aunt came up while I was talking to a cousin about what garden pond filter he uses, held me at arm’s length and exclaimed, “Oh, you look so much better now that you’ve gained weight!”

Have I? Really? I hadn’t noticed, hmmph. As far as I know, my weight has stayed the same in the past 7 years. Well, okay, maybe a pound here, a pound there. No biggie. Still. When I hear such drastically different views, it makes me wonder.

Have you ever had different people tell you different things about your weight? Who do you believe? What do you believe ?

We were having a super laid-back week last week… for a change . No school, no taxi runs, no hurry. So me and the teens decided to mosey on over to Tony Roma’s. Huge big lunch orders. This yummy onion loaf on the house.

Lots of laughs. Good service. Um, a little too good apparently. The maitre’d came over (surprise, surprise!) and asked about our meal. Good. Hmmm. Great. Hmmm. Yep. Hmmm. Those were my responses answered with my mouth closed. Well, almost.

On any other day, I would’ve flashed my big ol’ smile and rattled away. But not today. Even though the service was really quite good and deserved a big smile of satisfaction! Darn that parsley in my teeth !!

What would you do? Use it to scare away an over-zealous insurance marketing agent? I would !

Okay, so we have a wedding to go to this weekend. The girls and I have been through our closets and it’s official! We have “nothing to wear”!! Well, okay, we do have closets jammed with clothes but we can’t wear the same thing twice, can we now? I mean everyone’s seen it before !!

So we totally need some new dresses for the dinner reception.We’ve spent hours at the mall this past weekend, trying on stuff and trying on stuff. And finally when Raine found her criss-cross spaghetti top little black dress, we collectively let out a huge sigh of relief!

And then we were off again to help Skye pick out her little black dress! We were browsing at this store when I turned to Skye and asked, “See anything nice?” just as we happened to be passing by this door. Her response was “Yeah, nice font!”

So here we are, sitting around in sauna weather waiting for the Year of the Tiger aka the Big Food Fest to begin. Dare I say the sun is a ridiculous 95+ degrees that feels like 120 degrees and I’m sweating like a pig (do pigs even perspire?) from a humidity of, oh, only 95% ?

To all the ladies who wanted to trade in their snow for my sauna in my previous post, great choice! This here is the best natural weight loss system ever. Yes, this is typical Chinese New Year weather tailor-made to counter the effects of the Big Food Fest!

So while I’m languishing in perspiration wishing I could dive right into that,

let me just say I can’t believe how laid-back I am about Chinese New Year. I didn’t bake a single cookie this year because my oven’s kaput since Christmas and I haven’t gotten around to buying a new one yet. Talk about procrastinating.

I’m so glad I only have two traditional meals to cook for the five of us – the reunion dinner on CNY Eve which is tomorrow night, and the kick-off lunch on the second day of CNY – and that’s it. Easy-peasy! Stay tuned for more updates and pictures when I’m done slaving and serving, or follow me on Twitter for fat, juicy titbits on the fly .

I’ve just finished my second breakfast – a stack of 20 crackers with kaya (coconut jam), a cup of mango yogurt and a bowl of herbal soup. Quite frankly, those 20 crackers, they do nothing for me. That’s why I have to supplement them with yogurt and soup, and even then *sigh*…

I have two breakfasts every morning. My first is at 6:30am with my 3 teens before they leave for school. Usually it’s two slices of wholemeal toast and a cup of coffee. I hate to say this but bread does nothing for me either. I eat it and minutes later, poof, it’s gone!

I’m a pig not because I love food, but because I have a metabolism rate that turns its nose up as skimpy, frivolous food like bread, cookies, cakes, chips and salads. Last year, I went on a one-month vegetarian diet and almost starved myself to death .

My tummy needs substance, that’s all. It needs something to hold on to, something to waltz around with. Believe it or not, I don’t eat a lot and I’m not greedy. Heck, I’m not even that crazy about food. I mean, have you ever met a Chinese who is not a food-crazed lunatic (no offense)?

Well, howdy doody, nice to meet ya, I’m 4th generation and maybe somewhere along the line, my genes got wrapped around the wrong beanpole . Goodness knows I’ve passed this defective interesting gene to Skye, my 14 year old, who is perpetually hungry like me.

And lest you think we look like brick houses from this constant eating, we’re both rather slim. Not skinny but slim. Even the best weight loss supplement would be lost on us. That said, I’m hungry again and lunch time is still an hour away.

The bookstore seems to have found itself a permanent spot on my Saturday morning schedule. To be honest, I don’t remember making half as many runs to the bookstore in my entire school life as my kids do now in a month.

Every Saturday, at least one of my kids will go, “Mom, we need to stop by the bookstore. I need some stationery” and I’ll go “What? Again?” and this is where we’ll end up.

At the rate we’re going, you’d think my kids eat stationery for lunch. The truth is if they so much as leave an el-cheapo pen unattended for even two seconds in school, it’s gone! Poof! Never to be seen again.

And since it’s not feasible for me to hire a security guard to protect our stationery investments at school, we have no choice but to go replenish the lost items every Saturday! I guess I should thank my lucky stars our trips are not to buy books. Books here are so freakin’ expensive I’m telling my kids to quit reading !

How often do you and your kids go to the bookstore?

I had to pick Steev up from college this morning and I was running really late. Isn’t Monday always crazy like that?

Anyhow as I was running out the door, I decided to text Steev to let him know I’m on my way. Right after I did that, Raine’s cell phone chimed in a new text message. First thought that hit me:

Now why would anyone text her when they know fully well she’s in school?

I peeked at her cell phone screen and it said right there the message was from “Mom”.

Mom?!? Who the heck is that?

Oops, I guess that would be…. me!

In my hurry to rush out with car keys, purse and shoes in hand, my text message had gone to Raine instead of Steev!!

I blame it on Monday!