For weeks, I’ve been without my car CD player. The freakin’ bad roads killed it, that much I know. Not being able to play my CD is an added stress to driving, something I really don’t need. Half the time, I’m flipping between channels trying to avoid those darned ads. The way the radio channels are besieged with ads, believe me, it’s really hard finding a song, never mind a good song .

Then there’s all that talk and news and information updates. Listening to those fake accents, mispronunciations and half-past six grammar drives me nuts! For years now, I’ve kept the radio off when the kids are in the car with me. They don’t need to hear all that. They’ll have lots of time to pick those up at school .

Yesterday while waiting to pick Raine up, I had some time to kill so I started fiddling around with the CD player to see if I could get it to work. Please, please work!! It coughed and spluttered. I gave it a few encouraging whacks and whoa, we’re back in business! Woo-hoo !

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I hate to admit it but I went to the I-sale last weekend. I know the place spells furniture heaven to a lot of folks. Not to us.

We were only there because we happened to be having breakfast at a nearby building and decided to see if I could find a new chopping board, the white plastic one I use for cutting fruits.

Their furniture and stuff are overrated, in my humble opinion. I know a lot of die-hard I-fans are waiting to beat me up for saying that . But it’s true. Once I bought a cupboard with their signature flimsy plywood back. We are gentle creatures, yet within a month, the doors and drawers started coming apart, leaving big gaps and refusing to shut tight.

I read on someone’s blog that they had to attach a string to the back of their I-cupboard to keep it from falling forward ! That kind of quality is clearly not for me. With kids in the house, I can’t afford to have cupboards collapsing and drawers disintegrating. We spent so much money kid-proofing our house, we really don’t need safety issues like that!

I had an adult student who worked there and she told me their merchandise are manufactured in China at very low cost and sold here at (what I consider) exorbitant prices. Yes, I understand we’re paying for the design but if I have to pay so much, I’d expect them to last for a lot longer than a few months.

Back to my hunt for a white chopping board. The only ones they have are so thin that Steev says he can break them in half with his wimpiest karate chop! Five minutes in the store and we left empty-handed as the weekend crowd started hitting our butts with their shopping carts. Definitely time to flee !

I’ve had a rough week both physically and emotionally. I said in my earlier post that I would blog (rant is more like it) about what happened, so here I am.

Suffice to say I’ve wasted an entire week making plans in good faith based on some people’s empty promises and lies. If only I had known that I was being given the runaround, I would not have subjected myself to all this trouble.

I especially hate it when people assume that just because I don’t work outside home, I have nothing else to do but sit at home and wait for their phone calls and be at their beck and call at a moment’s notice.

Yes, I’m tired of dealing with people who have no respect for me, my capabilities and my time. I’m tired of people who sit on their *sses high horse and spit out empty promises from forked tongues. I’m tired of people who think they’re high and mighty but don’t even have the common decency to apologize for having wasted your time and made you look like a fool. End of rant.

That, in a nutshell, is exactly how pissed I’ve been feeling. Have you ever met people who really, really make you fume? In fact, I was so pissed last night I slept like a log, woke up this morning, baked a blueberry cheesecake and made waffles. The way I was feeling, I just needed to focus my energy on something constructive, not destructive, know what I mean?!

I actually thought I was going to have a stress-free Chinese New Year this time. I was just going to lay back and enjoy the lazy days with my family, visit a few tolerable relatives and go hang out at the golf club. Heh, who am I kidding?

Minutes before I could even step out of the house for our reunion dinner, the stress arrived. The Out of Town clan on my side of the family wants to meet up with the Local clan and I’ve been requested to show up.

Let’s put it this way, there are certain people I don’t want to see. But there’s always the nosy-parkers and self-appointed do-gooders who will try to arrange these massive get-togethers so they can watch the drama play out when those of us who loathe each other meet.

I’m a peace-loving person. A rebel at times, yes but harmless nonetheless and a little too nice for my own good. Over the years however, the peace in our clan has been shattered by a certain b*tch who’s been doing nothing but stirring up a whole lot of sh*t since she married into our family!

Enough is enough. I mean, festive occasions are meant to be a joyous time. All I want is to have a great time with my kids, ya know. The last thing I need is all this unnecessary stress of dodging backstabbers, taking sides and pretending to be nice to people who deserve a punch in the face, know what I mean ?

Just before school started, the girls and I baked their recess food - blueberry muffins and carrot cake. They’re tired of eating store-bought cookies and biscuits.

So what else is there to eat? None of my picky eaters have ever eaten canteen food in their school life. I don’t blame them. I’ve seen what canteen food looks like complete with flies a-buzzing, and frankly I wouldn’t eat it either .

So we made blueberry muffins (recipe at my food blog)…

… and carrot cake.

Then on the first day of school, we found out their school hours got extended to 2:30pm on certain days of the week. Which would be fine if there was a lunch break and the teachers actually use the extra time to teach instead of leaving the kids to do nothing!

Don’t you just love how our schools come up with ‘brilliant’ ideas like this?! Talk about screwing up the children’s meal times instead of instilling the good practice of regular meals. Just brilliant!

So since there’s NO lunch break after their recess at 10:00am, I had to get up the next morning at 5:00am to fry some rice for the girls to bring for recess the next day. They need something substantial or they’ll have to starve till they get home at 3:00pm!

The next morning, I was up again at 5:00am to cook this… spaghetti with red sauce (recipe at my food blog).

Imagine I have to wrack my brains several times a week from now on, planning what to cook at 5 in the morning! As if moms aren’t busy enough as it is, rotten eggs to that!

Today has not been a good day. Top that off with the fact that it’s Monday. Not my favorite day of the week either. This is a long post. I really need to rant!

My kitchen faucet decided to spring a leak last Saturday. The plumber came, took a look, drew me a picture and asked me to go buy a new faucet myself. It’s cheaper, he said, plus the fact that my current kitchen faucet is a mixer with a retractable hose which cost me rm1k many years ago, so “better that you go choose what you like”.

Of course, with these things, it’s never as simple as it looks. I’m very scared of walking into the store and seeing 100 different taps with 100 different features and trying to decide, with my zero knowledge of taps, which one is the correct one that will fit my sink. Luckily the sales lady was nice and said she’ll exchange it or refund me if it doesn’t fit. So that gave me the courage to go ahead and buy it.

Well, today would’ve been a good day if I’d bought the right faucet. But the plumber said the base is too small and that it won’t fit snugly into the existing opening. So I agreed to go exchange it. Except the store didn’t have taps with a wider base. So I asked for a refund and ended up driving all over the countryside trying to find the nearest bath and kitchen store.

Yep, found one and since I was in a hurry and the area is a parking hell, I just parked along the kerb like everyone else. The wholesale guy told me the only taps with wider bases are the ones that come with retractable hoses. I needed the retractable hose previously when my kids were little and couldn’t reach the water to wash their hands. But I don’t need that now.

Five minutes later, I came out of the shop empty-handed, walked to my car across the road and found a ticket for illegal parking stuck to my windscreen (along with all the other cars’ on that kerb). WTF! What pisses me off is that I’m one heck of a law-abiding citizen and this is one of the extremely rare times that I’ve parked my car illegally.

And only because the plumber was waiting at my house and calling me every 10 minutes saying to hurry up, he needed to go to his next job. I told him what the wholesaler said and guess what the plumber said. Never mind lah, bring back the first one you bought lah, I will fix it for you.

OMG, that was it! I snapped!! I totally lost it!! If he freakin’ could’ve fixed it, why did he send me on a freakin’ wild goose chase??? I was so pissed I told him to go and come back later. I needed to go back to the first store and buy the same tap AGAIN! In the first place, he should’ve supplied the tap and charged me for it !!

So now I have a ticket for illegal parking, no tap and no water supply to the house as I had to shut off the mains when he dismantled the faulty tap!!! Grrrrrr!

The latest hero in our family is *drum roll please* DH!

Yesterday he saved a two-year-old girl from choking on a piece of soft candy.

He was hanging around the reception area of his office (well, apparently he does work sometimes ) and noticed this little kid gagging and rocking her head backwards in distress!

DH alerted her mom who was sitting there looking pretty and totally unaware that her kid was choking! Her mom panicked and burst into tears. Well, I don’t blame her, it would’ve scared the daylights out of any mom!

Quick as a flash, DH picked up the little girl, tucked her under his arm and started racing to the nearest clinic with his staff and the mom running close behind.

Since the girl was so small, it was almost impossible to grip her under her diaphragm from behind which is what experts recommend. The candy, being soft and sticky, would’ve been much harder to dislodge. That was DH’s biggest worry.

As he ran, he tilted the little girl upside down in the hopes the candy would come loose and fall out. I think it worked. The candy dislodged itself and the girl started crying for her mom. Definitely a good sign because she couldn’t make a sound before!

Poor kid must’ve been wondering why she was going on a marathon race tucked like a baseball under this man’s arm . By the time they got to the clinic, the candy was already out and the girl was crying from the sheer sight of the doctor (must not have been a very good-looking doctor)!

His job not yet done, DH darted across the street to buy an ice-cream to cheer up the kid whose life he’s possibly saved. And yes, it’s all in a day’s work for our superhero (when he works, he really works, ok? )!  We’re so-oo proud of him!

So moms, be very careful about giving your toddlers soft, sticky candy like Sugus or gummy bears. Our ex-pediatrician also warned us about giving kids whole grapes and rambutans. These are common choking hazards so either avoid them or cut them down to small pieces.

I ran into a whole bunch of my tai-tai (aka ladies of leisure) friends while out at breakfast with my girl friend (who is not a tai-tai).

I love my tai-tai friends. They’re the ones who can tell me where to get the freshest veggies, how to brew herbal soups,  how to spy on my hubby (think I’ll wait for the book) and they can make the darnest traditional Chinese stuff like bachang (glutinous rice dumplings) and mooncakes, all from scratch.

The thing that really scares me though are their organized home invasions visits when they go through my home inch by inch, flipping every drawer and cupboard, inspecting everything that’s inside, from my crockpot to my underwear, all without a search warrant.

Back to me bumping into them at breakfast. A few of them instantly pounced on me and started interrogating me as to how I’ve managed to stay so slim even after I quit dancing (I used to be in the same dance class). As if I was ever fat before ?

But never mind that, the machine gun fire of questions has started and they’ll never let me off without answers. So I’d better start coughing some up, pronto.

So how come you’re still so slim? Um, exercise. What kind of exercise? Um, I walk. Where? Morning or evening? How many kilometers? With your kids or alone? Bang, bang, bang *shielding my head*

Gimme a break, is this the Spanish Inquisition? So many questions, so much rhetoric! *squirm* Think I should take up jogging or kungfu instead.