In-laws & out-laws | Hip to be Mom

Back in college, I received a pot of beautiful pink petunias as a gift. My very own plant, yay! I’m going to take good care of you, I whispered to my new companion. First thing after class every day, I would check on my prized petunias. Indeed I never wavered on my promise to water those babies and take the pot out to the balcony for a quick bit of sun every.day.

Not until the day I left my petunias out on the balcony in the summer heat of over 100 degrees F and forgot to bring the pot in. By the time I realized it, it was too late! My petunias had lowered their heads in a last ditch attempt to shield their faces from the blazing sun and turned to toast when I failed to come to their rescue.

Clearly I’m no green thumb. Everything I’ve grown, or tried to grow, has inadvertently committed suicide all too soon. Hence the reason why my little garden out front is bare, much like Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.

Not too long ago, an aunt of mine, our family’s bearer of birth announcements from far and near, stopped by to announce that a cousin has delivered a bouncing baby boy which by the way, is how I stay updated on the headcount in the clan.

As usual, Aunt Green Thumb paced around my piddly little garden and lamented its lack of living vegetation. While I was upstairs wrapping a gift for said cousin’s newborn, Aunt Green Thumb took it upon herself to do a quick bit of gardening on my behalf.

And behold, we have okra!

The gift

Posted by Clairity 5 Responses »

Jul 222011

I received a gift from possibly the last person on earth I’d expect a gift from. This was a couple of months ago but I totally forgot to blog about it. How could I ?!!

Considering that this is a genuine Louis Vuitton wallet (yes, I checked) from Paris, France (no less), I must seem awfully unappreciative not to have gotten all excited and blogged about it the minute I was done swooning, dancing around the room and singing praises to the creative genius of dear old Louis.

Truth is I am… appreciative, I mean… very!!

I guess I was more bowled over by the fact that I have at least this one relative who actually took time off to unwrap herself from the bragging, showing off and one-upmanship to buy me a gift! I mean, this fact alone is worth a thousand blog posts!

And not just any old gift at that!

Don’t get me wrong. One can never have too many wallets or too much cash to fill them with. But let me be brutally honest here. This is such an ugly wallet! No offense to LV lovers, of course. It’s brown, it’s boring and it’s got someone else’s initials stamped all over it. ‘Nuff said.

Okay, here’s the other thing. I’m not sure what prompted this sudden gift. It’s neither my birthday nor am I in the habit of distributing gifts to all and sundry in the hopes of getting something back.

So I’m guessing it could be because this brand-conscious relative of mine took one look at me and thought to herself – what an utterly deprived woman, how can she live without an LV?!

I know. It must be shocking to someone like her seeing as how we are are so often judged by the cars we drive, the brand names we carry and the size of gifts we give! I can’t blame her though. She doesn’t know me for the rebel who won’t subscribe to Beemer-worshipping or praying to the Money God or judging people by the size of their bank account.

As for my shopping philosophy, if it’s an item everyone else has, chances are I will avoid it like the plague. If I happen to like the design, fine. If it’s solely for the sake of keeping up with the Joneses, forget it! So I’m different. I’m me. Why would I want to be like everyone else?

Anyhoo, to my most thoughtful relative – Thank you, it’s very sweet of you. My LV now is safely locked away in my closet till it goes out of style and time turns it into a priceless vintage .

Say hello to Angry Bird, Minnie from Disneyland, Bobby John the Baby Panda from San Diego Zoo and Neal the Polar Bear from Seaworld, San Diego. Neal is Raine’s birthday present from her older brother, Steev.

When my kids were growing up, the only soft toys we had were a gorilla and a puppy which we had won at the Moomba festival in Melbourne, Australia and even then, those were stashed away, out of sight of the kids.

I have a ‘no soft toys’ policy and for good reason. First off, I can only imagine how much bacteria and dust is living in that oh so cuddly coat of fur. Surely that can’t be good for the kids, especially when they cuddle them close to their faces. Think allergies.

Sure soft toys are cute and all but I can’t see much of an educational value in something that can only sit there and do precious nothing else. Hence, my ‘no soft toy’ policy. My kids never asked for them and I never offered to buy them any. We would see them at the store, remark how cute they are and move on.

But now we have a small collection of soft toys, no thanks to my estranged half-brother and half-SIL who gave my kids their first soft toys. Said half-SIL was having trouble conceiving a child after 5 years of trying and according to some old wives’ tales, it seemed it would help her conceive if she were nice to other people’s kids.

What a ridiculous idea but hardly surprising considering how full of –it she is. Of course, I had no idea what she was up and why she was being so nice to my kids all of a sudden since clearly, she isn’t a nice person to start with.

Even after I told her I didn’t want my kids playing with stuffed toys, she still went ahead and brought a small army over and handed them to my kids. I understand her desperation but she could at least have respected my stand on the issue and bought them some other kind of toy, no?

Then again, we’re talking about a couple who would bulldoze their way through and do whatever it takes to get what they want, right or wrong. So that’s the story of how stuffed toys came into our lives. As the kids have gotten older, I’ve relaxed the rule. But it’s more of a rare indulgence though, like when we were on vacation earlier this year.

Are there any toys you don’t like your kids playing with for one reason or another?

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 ?

What a great weekend! We spent the better part of it at a wedding on the in-law side. Friday night, it was raining elephants and gorillas. Visibility was poor and parts of the highway was flooded when we drove out to the bride’s open house.

As usual, each time we see the clan, there are the exclamations of how big the kids have grown and the repetitions of names, ages and school year to jolt everyone’s memories. Now that my teens are old enough to answer those questions themselves, my days as a human tape recorder may be numbered .

Saturday morning, we were off to the church wedding and reception. The bride was radiant, of course. Thankfully too the service was short and sweet, and the day got noisier as more of the clan crawled out of the woodwork whom we’ve not seen in ages.

The hotel dinner party that night was huge. There must’ve been at least 800 guests. In the midst of camera flashes and toothy hugs, Steev bumped into a guy from college that he vaguely knew. Someone he would say hi to as they passed each other in the hallway between classes.

In the small talk that followed, that guy turned out to be a cousin (?) Steev never knew he had. Can you imagine that? Right now, we still have no idea who he is but I’m sure with a little nosing around, we’ll soon find out he’s related to us. It’s the first time we’ve ever encountered something like this. Have you ever found a long-lost family member through casual conversation?

the games have begun!

Posted by clairity Comments Off

Feb 132010

I’m up early this morning to start preparing for my Reunion Dinner which incidentally became Reunion Lunch somewhere over the course of yesterday. The story is this. I invited two of my favorite aunts to join us for our Reunion Dinner tonight.

Yesterday they got a call from my uncle (the one who excluded my kids from attending his son’s wedding dinner recently) inviting them to his Reunion Dinner. He said he’d booked his dinner reservation at a restaurant two months ago and that he’ll send his son to pick them up at 5:00pm today. When my two aunts told me about it, I said, fine I’ll reschedule my reunion to lunchtime so they can still join us.

This morning, my uncle apparently called my two aunts to say he’ll be picking them up for lunch. Er, say what? Theirs was supposed to be dinner which is why I shifted my reunion to lunchtime to accommodate them . My two aunts were surprised too and reminded him what he’d told them earlier. He brushed them aside and insisted they should’ve called him back yesterday to confirm.

I’m like, err, are we playing some sort of game here?? Am I sensing a complete lack of sincerity here in his invitation to these two old folks? So yeah, see what I mean about family politics stress and Chinese New Year? Well, whatever! I’ve got everything ready to start cooking my Reunion Lunch now and my two aunts have decided to join me. Lunch will be fairly simple so no worries about the need for stomach fat loss later . Catch you guys later.