Considering the amount of time I spend hanging out in my minivan, you can well imagine the things I do while waiting for my kids. You’ll either find me playing games on my pocket PC, flipping radio stations, singing along to songs I like, or if it happens to be gym day and I’ve just washed my hair, I’d be busy drying my hair in the cool air from my car’s air-conditioning.

That’s exactly what I was doing this afternoon outside my girls’ school. I do this all the time. It’s not a crime, right? So how was I to know that today, someone who was parked in front of me was watching me from his rear view mirror. His windows were heavily tinted so it never struck me until he and his camcorder eyes slithered over to my car door and sneakily threw a glance in through my window.

And no, it wasn’t his car, he’s the chauffeur judging from his uniform. I hope he was bitterly disappointed that there was really nothing to see. I was covered all the way to my knee caps in my ugliest pair of black bermuda shorts.

What’s more worrying for me, as a mom, was when I saw who he’d come to pick up from school. It’s one of Raine’s friends and I hope, for her sake, that her parents know what kind of perv person they’re sending to pick up their 17-year-old daughter from school .

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You’d think that on weekends, I would be spared the annoying sound of my alarm clock. Well, I was… because I forgot to set it last night and I almost overslept this morning and woke up with a start.

Steev had to be at the driving school by 8:45am (yes, again!) but luckily I didn’t have to drive him to last week’s location. Raine had a movie date at the mall with her girl friends from school at 11:00am. Since everyone was going to be out, I thought Skye and I could hang out at the mall for lunch after seeing Raine off.

And of course, we just had to pick the last shopping weekend before Chinese New Year, to be at the mall. Well, I may be all done with my CNY shopping but apparently the rest of the world isn’t.

The basement parking was full within an hour of the mall opening and there must’ve been 100 other cars circling around like vultures trying to snag a spot. Admittedly I’m not a very good vulture so after half an hour, I decided it was time to call it quits, drop Raine off, pay a dollar’s parking for not parking and leave with my tail between my legs.

Skye and I then went to pick up some fast food before picking Steev up for lunch. He doesn’t quite relish eating at the dirty canteen near the driving school so he was going to have lunch at home and then have me drive him back out to finish the afternoon session of his driving course .

Now I’m home with a splitting headache from the mercilessly hot sun and trying to get a bit of work done on my computer before my cell phone starts ringing again for my taxi service. In an hour, I’ll be rushing out of here to pick up both Raine and Steev, and then go play vulture – again – at the grocery store.

Don’t you just envy my colorful Sunday? Please say you do.

I have no idea why the two digital clocks in my car are showing different times but they are . The one on the overhead tells me I’m late. The one on the dash says I’m early. So which is it?

Me being me, I’m almost OCD about being early to pick up my kids. Always. I don’t want them to wait. Like my dad used to make me wait and wait and wait till I was almost the only one left in school. That has scarred me for life, seriously.

My watch is the only one with the correct time. Normally I’d be flipping my wrist to check the time as I turtle down the highway.

But my watch battery died . Again? Didn’t I just replace it like a couple months ago? Dang, gotta get it changed again asap. And now, I’m left checking the time on my cell phone instead. I’m totally lost without my watch! Are you?

I decided to play hookie this morning and skip gym. Never mind that I’ve put on 2 lbs from eating irregular meals, even missing dinner (is that even possible ?!!) because of last week’s AAR concert hyperactivity – uptown, downtown collecting tickets, meeting the band, dancing the night away (I think that does it for gym) and doing all the crazy stuff that only a mom like me would do. No biggie, we had a blast!

This week, I’m trying to get back into the swing of things. For the first time in history, we ran out of hair shampoo we’ve been washing our hair so often last week. Hate being in crowds and having people breathe and smoke into our hair, ew!

Not only that, we also ran out of dog food and poor Tyson (our beagle, not Ritter though it wouldn’t be so bad having him eat out of our hands !) had to survive on bread crumbs.

What was heartening though was that I noticed quite a number of parents (mostly dads) at the concert that night. True, they looked rather disoriented. Maybe they’re not into AAR music. Maybe it’s their first concert. But at least they made the effort to get themselves involved in their kids’ interests instead of just dropping them off and driving away. Way to go, that’s what I call good parenting!

I think a lot of times, we limit ourselves by saying, now that I’m a parent, I’m too old to be seen doing this or wearing this or whatever. But at the end of the day, as long as I don’t go overboard, it’s okay to have a good time and be myself. To heck what people think, I just do my own thang, ya know .

My girl friend from the States is here. In town. She called me on my cell phone from out of the blue, trying to sound all official and everything thinking she could trick me into thinking she was someone else. Not a chance!

Well, I wasn’t expecting her call, right, least of all on my cell phone? She’d never call me on my cell if she were in the States.

So of course, I was fooled for the first 3 seconds or so but then again, I’m not easily fooled. I played along and she ended up going, how’d you know it was me?? Bwahaha.

Anyhow she wants me to drop everything and hang out with her. And I would jump at the chance too, if school were out and I’m not the resident chauffeur. See, she knew me at a time in my life when I was a carefree college kid, single, no worries, no responsibilities.

She and I would drive around aimlessly on summer evenings and honk at shirtless guys out jogging , jump in the car and go away for the weekend or simply curl up on the sofa in front of her fireplace hugging mugs of steaming coffee and watching movies. Those were the days!

It’s not so easy now. I have schedules coming out my ears and alarms on my PDA phone that won’t let me forget. I can’t just up and go at the drop of a hat. Time for some fancy juggling. Let’s see how I go with that !

These are bookish weeks in the Hip household. Raine is done with her finals, thank goodness, but Skye isn’t… yet!

Fast asleep with book in hand and music blasting in both ears is apparently the new way to score good grades, so my teens tell me .

Okay, so maybe I’m a little outdated in this respect. In my day, we used to glue our eyeballs to our books and fry our brains to a crisp.

Not so these days and I should know. I’ve spent every few minutes this weekend waking Skye from her sweet slumber with books and listening to her lament about how she can’t wait till her finals are over! Frankly neither can I. I don’t think I’m cut out to be an alarm clock .

If I were like half the moms out there, I’d be snatching the books from my kids to burn the midnight oil myself. But no, I trust my kids to know I will not tolerate poor grades when they know they’re capable of doing better. But if they’ve done their best and still don’t do as well as expected, I’m okay with that.

I never offer rewards for good grades. I think that’s the surest way of creating devious and materialistic monsters, a fact many parents are happily ignorant of as they run the rat race making more money and more money for houses, vacations, rv insurance and to feed their children’s ever-growing materialistic frenzies.

As for my kids, I offer to take them out for dinner to celebrate if they do good at school. That way, we can grow fat together and that’s one big sacrifice on my part !

Steev, Raine and I went shopping for colleges yesterday. No, no, not that we struck it rich overnight and decided to buy up a couple of money-making machines, nothing like that. Instead we were there to offer our hard-earned money to make some college very rich.

So anyhow, my time schedule was so tight that between shuttling one kid and the next, I totally forgot to check my battery water. Halfway on the highway, I glanced at the meter reading which instantly made me sweat but then again, it’s not as if I’m not used to living dangerously!

Then my mind switched to something else. I stuck my hand under the driver’s seat to feel for my shoes and guess what, they weren’t there!!! Dang! Now I had to end up flip-flopping around talking to college officials in my driving slippers which, by the way, were in danger of coming apart !

The good thing was we managed to get a lot accomplished in one afternoon and drove home in good spirits, never mind that half the time, I was pretending not to notice the radiator reading shooting steadily upwards as we sat endlessly in rush hour traffic.

So that was my day *sigh*. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get on with sorting through the heaps of brochures we came home with. Why is it that sometimes I feel like I’m the one going to college?

Steev and I just got home from half a day at a business event. His business event, not mine! I was his chauffeur and ended up posing as his office manager as well. I mean, who ever heard of a CEO bringing his mom to a business event, right?

Steev hasn’t got his driver’s license yet. It’s usually Hip2bDad who drives him to business events like these. But today I got to dress up in office wear so I wouldn’t stand out like a sore thumb. Can you imagine the things we do for our kids sometimes?

The event went well and we ended up being treated to a 9-course lunch at a Chinese restaurant tucked away in a country golf club. Who knew that playing second fiddle to my son offers such gastronomic benefits, eh ?

Lunch was nice, sorta civilized which explains why I only managed to discreetly snap one picture of the steamed fish. I didn’t want to look like a desperate mom hungry for photos to post on her blog, geddit?

I had a great time today but darn it, the week-long break is coming to an end! I love long breaks when the kids are home and we can do interesting stuff like this.