My kids are all teenagers now and yet they’ve never eaten dragon fruit before. I rarely buy this fruit because I’m indifferent to it myself ! Bad mommy!

Of course, they’ve seen the fruit before but the inside, probably not so they’re mesmerized by the brilliant fuchsia flesh. Who wouldn’t be? Just look at this! Mother Nature sure had a bit of fun with her water colors there!

Apparently the dragon fruit has detox qualities. With 3 teens, you can’t blame me for wondering if it works like acne products in clearing the complexion.

As for trying a piece of this, my 3 picky eaters are like:

Them: Ew, what’s it taste like, Mom?

Me: It tastes like… (long pause) nothing!

They look at me wide-eyed.

Them: What do you mean? You sure?

Me: Yep, it tastes like nothing. Try it!

With exaggerated looks of fake horror, they take a tiny bite each and reel back in real horror!

Them: It’s tasteless.

Me: Exactly what I said . Good, huh? Want some more?

Guess who ended up gobbling up the whole dragonfruit?

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I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot this week. I got around to the bank (finally), got my groceries done early, mentally planned my lunch menus for next week (more or less), dissed the marketing kid from OneCard who doesn’t know the first thing about customer service, bwahaha.

Feels good, yeah, that I got quite a bit done though I missed gym again yesterday. No big deal, that’s what happens when the kids are home and my first reflex is to reach out and slam down the snooze button, then drift blissfully back to la-la-land.

But this morning, I had to drop Skye off at school. Her project paper is due today and knowing Skye, she’ll be restless till she turns it in. I’m worried, of course, compounded by the fact that even Raine’s teacher was telling the class she doesn’t want to die! OMG, coming from a teacher, this is terrible!

There’s been a second round of confirmed HiNi cases at her school and short of going in there to disinfect the classrooms myself, I guess I’ll just have to hope the multi-vitamins do their job. Judging by what I saw when I dropped Skye off, there aren’t many kids in school today. Glad some parents are finally wising up and keeping their healthy kids home.

After a rather stressful weekend, I was hoping this would be a good week. Still it’s only Wednesday so there’s every chance it could still turn out to be a good week but for now, I’m pretty stressed.

Skye has just recovered from fever and flu. I didn’t take her to see a doctor lest she gets exposed to even more deadly germs at the clinic. Besides there’s already a doctor in the house. Hi, Dr Mom here ! I kept her from school for 3 days and pumped her up with Vitamin C, cod liver oil and lots of fluids.

Barely 3 days back in school and I’ve pulled her, and Raine, out of school again… for the rest of this week. There’s a full-blown flu bug going on out there and folks are still happily sending their kids, coughing and sneezing, to school.

On a good day, fine, they can bundle their kids off to school or camp, farm them out to every tuition class in town, sell them off on eBay, whatever, that’s their prerogative but not when their kids are sick as rain-soaked kittens.

Same goes for the bank officer who was openly sharing his cough with everyone and everything. Nice going, man! I had to do a quick errand at the bank this morning and dang it, this bank officer handled my transaction!! Ew!

I complained to another bank officer that the guy shouldn’t even be at work! Strangely all the other bank staff were wearing masks except him!!! Geez! When he’s not processing transactions, I sure hope he’s not looking for panama city beach hotel deals so he can share his germs with the rest of the world, the nerve of him!!

After I left the bank a half hour later, my throat felt itchy and scratchy. OMG, so soon? I sped home, drowned my bank documents in antiseptic and OD’d on 2000mg of Vitamin C! Thanks, man! No, really, it would be nice if people just keep their germs to themselves.

When blinka, my longtime blogger friend, made a comment about good genes on my earlier post, it made me smile thinking how Hip2bDad and I are always trying to see ourselves in our kids. We’re joking about our quirks, similarities and differences, likes and dislikes all the time.

When Steev was little, he was full of impressive surprises. At 18 months, he could assemble a pretty complex 36-piece jigsaw puzzle completely unassisted. Hip2bDad is quick to claim Steev got those from his good genes. Yeah, right!

Everyone says Raine looks like me, even to the extent of her full moon butt (think JLo and Beyonce). Hip2bDad claims it must be Mom’s bad genes. But I say it’s my good genes she loves to write .

Skye likes things like sweet potatoes and green beans which the other two would barely touch! See, she has Daddy’s good genes, he brags. But my good genes say she’s so slim and trim she won’t ever need to read a noxycut review.

How is it that all the good genes come from Daddy and all the bad ones come from Mom ? Hmmph, I wonder.

I finally got off my butt and hit the gym this morning. Yep, after what seems like two weeks of playing hooky. If I sit around any longer, I swear I’m going to need diet pills.

Speaking of which, I came across an interesting article today on BBC News. Researchers from the UK and US say if you want to stay slim, you shouldn’t hang out with fat friends because they are going to make you obese too.

I think there’s some truth to that. Case in point, my roomie at college was plump and her boyfriend was not. But over time, I noticed he got fatter and was looking to be her size.

Now between me and my roomie, she was the better cook. So she did most of the cooking while me and her boyfriend did most of the eating. We would sit around the dinner table, chat and eat and eat, a lot.

After a while, I could feel my clothes getting tighter. Living with her was definitely making me fatter. Thankfully it wasn’t as drastic for me as it was for her boyfriend. But even then, I definitely gained weight and noticed a change in my eating habits.

Tam Fry of the UK Obesity Forum says in the article that “it boils down to shared bad habits. If you go to dinner with your friends who are fat, you are liable to eat the same foods that made them fat. Research shows children could also pick up bad habits from their parents.”

When my picky eaters were little, I would say “don’t be picky, this is good for you”, and I’d be happy when they polished up what I served them. Now that they’re teens, I’m insisting they be picky and “you shouldn’t be eating that, that’s bad for you” .

When my kids were younger, I couldn’t do much serious shopping when I was out with them. I had to watch them like hawks, well, pretty much. I’ve seen first-hand how parents lost their kids in the crowd and that desperate look on their faces is enough to scare the daylights out of anyone.

Sometimes we tend to get carried away with looking at stuff and we leave the kids in their strollers, or the toddlers to wander off on their own. There are a few things you can do though to avoid losing your kids.

(1) Always keep your kids in sight.

(2) Hold your child by the hand to keep them with you all the time.

(3) Have your wandering toddler on a leash.

(4) If you’re out with more than one kid, do a regular headcount to ensure everyone’s accounted for before moving on. Better yet, put an older sibling in charge of headcounts.

(5) Do a show and tell of an agreed location so your kids know where to go in case you get separated.

Yes, yes, we’ve gone without sleep for 20 hours so I don’t know if I’m still talking straight. I’m starting to see Oreos floating across the wall. I reach out with one hand , they vanish before my very eyes.

So what are you seeing on your wall?

All my kids were reading by age 4. Steev and Raine, my older ones, could read Peter and Jane books by the time they were 3 years old, and Skye around 4. I started late with her because I was too busy with the two older ones. Not an excuse but you know how everything becomes a blur when you work full-time and have 3 kids. But I guess as long they learn to read before they turn 25, they should be okay.