Rants & raves » Hip to be Mom

Poisoned

Jun 282011

Okay, so here’s what I had for lunch. Sweet potatoes, boiled, not fried.

I’ve been poisoned!

Well, not really. I have food poisoning after last weekend’s wedding reception at a classy Italian restaurant in an upscale neighborhood. My tummy is very susceptible to ~~unhygienic~~ evil food. See why I’m such a food snob?

It’s been 2 days and my tummy still churns like a drum occasionally. Thankfully no throwing up or diarrhea, just the annoying discomfort. I’m trying to stay away from oily food, or any kind of food for that matter simply because I can’t stomach anything much.

Last night, I sleepily gulped down a glass of milk before bed, only to wake up with an even bigger tummy ache this morning. Brilliant, I’m supposed to avoid dairy products! What was I thinking?!

Granted I’ll live. I’m sure .

Our guilty indulgence

Posted by Clairity 6 Responses »

Jun 062011

You all know the girls and I love Japanese food. On a whim, we decided to do lunch at Mizu yesterday. It’s tucked away in some obscure corner of a nearby suburb, way off the beaten path. We didn’t even know the place existed.

Strangely there was no starving early bird of a Sunday crowd that we’ve come to associate with buffets, which was good. Up flights of tiny narrow staircases and we were in a cozy (read: small) place with a rather limited spread.

Skye and I were giving each other the puzzled look – this is it? Apparently there’s a menu checklist that you can check off items that are not on the spread and those will be served to you. Let’s just say that if I have to order off a menu, it’s not a buffet in the real sense of the word now, is it?

We weren’t particularly thrilled about that. We like to walk up and down, survey the spread and discuss what’s good to try or discreetly hoard the stuff we love. I mean, that’s half the fun of a buffet right there. You sit down, take a few bites, chat a bit and then you’re ready to go grab something else to try.

Salmon sashimi is my favorite-st that kept me going back for seconds, thirds and fourths! The slimy raw oysters weren’t for me, eww!

Pregnant fish. No way my girls and I would touch this. As a mom, I definitely couldn’t stomach a pregnant anything! It would just be wrong.

Teppanyaki salmon and scallops from the list. Loved this and the mackerel which I chomped down before I remembered to take a picture.

Chawan mushi which my girls love. I just like the pink spiral.

4 types of ice cream from the list. The cement-colored one in the foreground is a roasted peanut flavor. Pretty good, that!

So yeah, we love the idea of buffets (if only it weren’t so anti-waistline). But they’re so not worth it for us because we’re picky and not particularly big eaters. I know of folks who starve themselves ahead of time so they can binge and make it worth their money. If we did that, we’d only end up with tummy aches and not be able to eat much either. Either way we lose. So forget about it!

Still we ate a lot, by our standards. I think the word ‘buffet’ has a way of taking your brain down the dangerous path of telling your tummy that it’s got way more room than it really does . When we got up to leave, I swear I could hear the floor boards creak under our weight. In case you’re wondering, yes, we ended up skipping dinner altogether.

So when was the last time you had Japanese? Anything you wouldn’t touch? Any favorites you can’t resist? Any interesting buffet stories? I’m all ears!

How to BS your customer till you’re blue in the face

Posted by Clairity 14 Responses »

Jun 052011

On Wednesday, after picking Raine up at college, we headed to a nearby mall for a quick lunch before dropping her back at college for her next class. We had coupons for free drinks and desserts at our favorite chicken place. But when we got there, the waiter insisted the coupon had expired. Has it really?!

Wednesday was June 1. The coupon says it’s “valid for 1 month from date of issue May 10″. So we still have 10 days before the coupon expires!

The manager came over to point out to me that the coupon had expired on May 10. When I tried to explain, she then turned around and said oh, the date was incorrectly printed! I’m like, what!

When she lost on that one, she tried it from another angle. She said the button on the cash register was gone! Um, he-llo??

Pretty soon, they brought out her manager when it became clear that none of them could out-talk me! Quite honestly, they were just wasting their time, and mine. I’d had it up to here with folks who can’t read, don’t know their jobs and who think they can get away with BS.

So we got up and left. Yes, I know it’s not that big a deal. It’s only drinks and desserts, right? Thing is crappy customer service has become the rule rather than the exception and frankly, I’m getting very tired. Some folks might accept it because they’re gullible, or can’t figure it out, or are trying to avoid confrontation.

Not me. Don’t even get me started!

There was, however, a sweet ending to this whole story. My girls suggested we went back to the franchise restaurant that gave us the coupons in the first place. I’m so glad we did. The crew there happily accepted our coupons with a big smile and we got our Chocolate Crunch Roll. Too sweet! Literally .

How do you deal with crappy customer service? Do you just let it slide or do you stand your ground?

A soft toy story

Posted by Clairity 9 Responses »

May 302011

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?

Crazy is a bit of an understatement

Posted by Clairity 3 Responses »

May 212011

And if I thought we were going to slide smoothly into the weekend, there was just no way! It’s been a czary day (how do you spell crazy again? did I get it right?) from sunrise to sunset.

After dropping Skye off at school around 7:oo am, Raine and I headed straight to the gym. I tweeted about hoping the gym wouldn’t be crowded so we could get a really good workout before the weekend. I should’ve known. Everyone else wants to exercise on a Friday so they can pig out guilt-free over the weekend.

Just 30 minutes in, it got claustrophobic. So we left. At any rate, I needed to get my car to the mechanic’s. Something had been leaking since I got my air-conditioning ‘fixed’ last week. Somehow it’s impossible to associate my mechanic with the word ‘fix’. He never fixes anything, he just creates a whole other problem!

We got into the workshop super-early. In fact, we were there when the first of his mechanics started strolling in to work. That’s how early! Long story short, we wasted an entire morning waiting, only to be told at around noontime that my car wasn’t going to be ready and that Mr Mechanic would generously loan me his bone shaker to do my afternoon errands!

That left me an hour to get home and get out of our aromatic gym clothes and have a shower. Raine had a lunch date with her friends from high school and she was already late. So I dropped her off at the mall before picking Skye up from school.

I was starving. There was no time to cook lunch. So Skye and I headed back to the mall (since I was going to have to pick up Raine there later) for a quick lunch and grocery run. Later we met up with Raine at The Face Shop to pick out the nail polish colors she’d been hankering after.

Turned out this was the highlight of our day!

I called Mr Mechanic while the girls were in the store (I knew he certainly wasn’t going to call me!) and apparently my car was ready. Really? Wow! I was so ready to get rid of that old bone shaker. A few more bumpy rides in that thing and I’d have to sign us up for chiropractic school to learn how to fix our poor rickety shook-up bones!

We made it to the workshop in one piece before the daily late-afternoon storm hit and man, was it good to climb into my minivan! Enough of sitting in that bone-shaker of a car that’s so low we could practically jam our feet into the floor and start peddling, like the Flintstones!

On the way home, we decided to stop and pick up some KFC. Not a fave of ours but it’s conveniently on the way and we had a $10 coupon to waste. Obviously I’d forgotten how oily the Colonel’s chicken can be. So I ended up having a bowl of oatmeal for dinner. How’s that for a last supper before the Apocalypse hits today?

What would you have done?

Posted by Clairity 6 Responses »

May 042011

The air-conditioning in my minivan isn’t working and if it’s one thing that really stresses me out is where to get my car problems fixed. I’ve got a regular mechanic but since the old man stepped back and allowed his son to run the business, it hasn’t been the most honest business in town.

I only continue to go back there because the old man has been my dad’s friend since they were young men, and we’ve traditionally been patronizing his shop for all our car repairs. The old man was a pretty good mechanic. His son is not.

His son fixes problems by trial and error. When he’s clueless about what’s wrong with the car, he will get his men to start swapping parts. Sometimes even after swapping several parts, the problem is still not solved. And with each part he swaps, he continues to make us pay through our noses till he gets it right!! See the problem here?

So I decided maybe it’s time to find another mechanic. I called my dad, the go-to person for car repair advice, and asked if he knew of anyone else who could do the job. The cell phone reception in my area is pretty bad and I don’t have a home cell booster. So to cut the conversation short, I agreed to meet him at the workshop he suggested.

I arrived ahead of him and started briefing Mr AirCon about my problem, even as Mr AirCon’s friend strolled up to join us. When Mr AirCon stepped away to retrieve his tools, his friend (whoever he is!) started telling me how expensive repairs are, yadda yadda. I listened and merely nodded.

Then when Mr AirCon came back over, his friend started criticizing my car and I mean, totally running it down. Completely from out of the blue.

It’s not a good car!! (Yeah, so? My minivan is 10 years old and it’s still serving me well except for the occasional aging problem!)

The parts are expensive! (Yeah, so? Like I’m asking you to pay for them!)

He even went on to say that when he wanted to buy one, thank goodness his friend talked him out of it!!! And he just went on and on!

Er, he-llo? Who are you again and who asked you?

It takes all sorts to make the world go round. I don’t even know this guy, never seen him in my life! I could’ve told him off and I probably would’ve if my dad hadn’t been there. But I didn’t! Seeing as Mr AirCon is an old friend of my dad’s and this guy looks to be a friend of Mr AirCon’s, I thought it only polite to ignore him and let someone else teach him a lesson.

What would you have done?