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Steev has been getting an increasing number of late night cell phone calls since he started college. If I were like most parents, my first suspicion would be girlfriends. But I know my son better. In fact, I know most times he switches off his phone at night and those other times when his cell phone rattles and plays his ring tune, I sometimes hear him swear under his breath.

Yup, his popularity rating seems to soar during the semester, not because he’s a party animal who flaunts expensive men’s polo shirts but because he’s a serious student who does his work, pays attention in class and has a sound command of the English language. He’s frequently the only one in class who knows what and when assignments are due and is clear about what the lecturer wants. Hence the late night phone calls from desperate classmates!

Steev doesn’t like team projects, not that he’s not a team player but if only his team members would carry their weight. In most projects, he takes on the role of compiling the project paper in addition to writing up his own part. Most of his group members submit their portions of the project to Steev, copied wholesale from the internet.

Steev takes it upon himself to rewrite all of his group members’ work (not just compile them) complete with sources and citations before turning it in. That’s a lot of work, additional work. I don’t blame him when he goes off into a bad mood, typing furiously into the night or waking up before dawn to finish up.

I teach English in college and when my students hand in plagiarized work, I will happily give them a big fat zero . Not having a good command of English is one thing, dishonesty is something else. And get this, some of Steev’s classmates even have the nerve to call saying they want to make advance bookings to be in his team for the next project !

Okay, I can’t keep this to myself any longer. When I first noticed that my newest follower on Twitter was Martha Stewart, I thought my eyeballs needed Battery replacements. bad!

There’s just no way a big star with 1.9 million followers would be following a tiny speck in the universe like moi! But guess what? It’s a verified account so it’s really her, not some impostor. Man, I must’ve done something right. So stoked !

Here she is on my twitter page. I’m a big fan of her cooking site. Listen, if you would like to follow me on Twitter, I’d be just as thrilled .

… jumped out at me at the drugstore yesterday,

Yes, I know it’s your job to help customers make a biased choice. But please, please don’t jump on me from out of nowhere just as I’m reaching to have a closer look at that eyeliner. I don’t know if you recognize me or not but this is the second time you’ve scared the living daylights out of me.

See, I’m someone who prefers to dally and consider all my choices before making a selection. And I prefer to make that selection without a sales promoter breathing down my neck, thanks.

You people talk too fast. You confuse me. And it really gets to me when your answer to all my questions is Yes! Is this on sale? Yes! Will the eyeliner stay on a whole day? Yes! Can I use it to write on the whiteboard when my whiteboard marker runs out of ink? Yes! See what I mean?

Okay, so great, you tell me this crayon eyeliner won’t smudge and it has this cute little sharpener in the back. Nice! But you know what? I really don’t appreciate your drawing lines on the back of my hand with each color . It took me several hand washes to get it off!

You know, if you hadn’t done that, I might actually have bought that new-fangled crayon but since you chose to annoy me instead, don’t blame me for making a hasty exit without buying anything. Probably another day when YOU aren’t around to breathe down my neck.

Signed,

Shop-Stopped

We dragged ourselves out of bed on a Sunday morning to go to a golf tournament. Can you believe that? But only because my three teens were once budding little golf players and Hip2bDad is trying to inspire them to pick up the game again. I say, anyone would be crazy to send their kids out into this unbearable heat to chase a little ball!

Anyhow this was a one-off. And you know why we prefer to stay away from these events? Because they’ve got all these stupid rules about what you can and cannot wear and do! And quite frankly, on a hot day like today, we’d rather not be strutting about in the sun wearing polo shirts with long pants and proper shoes !!

I parked the car miles away and we hopped on a small shuttle bus to get to the main entrance of the golf course. Then we hopped onto a golf buggy to be transported to the main event. The girls got a big kick as they often do when they caddy for their daddy and he lets them drive the buggy into bushes and trees!

After asking about 10 completely clueless people for directions, we finally stumbled on the food tent where we stopped for some breakfast. One thing’s for sure, the food they serve golfers makes me look like a top-notch celebrity chef, booyah!

We passed many interesting people, most notably the scantily-clad air-heads hired by the companies sponsoring the event. I think I understand a little better now the scenarios that must’ve led Tiger to his downfall predicament.

And by the time we got back to the parking lot, I found someone had parked behind my car (obviously someone with a brain the size of a golf ball) and I couldn’t get out!! Thank goodness for the golfer who ran around my car telling me how much space I had to maneuver. It took forever to inch my car out of that impossible space!

All in all, the morning put me in a really foul mood for a Sunday. I’m going to take an indefinite break from golf. That’ll be all. I won’t be taking any questions.

So just what have I been up to? Apart from the wedding, and hanging out at a friend’s casual outdoor party, and shopping for a new washing machine which turned out to be a little more of a run-around than I expected, that is.

The fun wouldn’t be complete though without a line-up of exciting administrative errands that I so enjoy – like waiting endlessly at the bank, waiting endlessly at Steev’s college for his transcripts, waiting endlessly at … well, you get the picture.

With all of this new-fangled technology that the world’s geeky community throws at us every other day, you would think that waiting would be an obsolete word by now, if not already banished to the lexical museum.

So what have I been up to?

Bank teller’s answer to my question: Wait, let me check!

Steev’s text message to me: Wait, need to go to library to return books!

Tell me you’re just like me, that you hate to wait.

The longer school hours this year is really taking its toll on my two girls. Not only do they have to be in school for 9-11 hours on some days of the week, in the hot sun, with only recess but no lunch break, they also have tons of homework.

As a result, they frequently have tummy aches from not eating proper meals at the proper times. Lunch time is now 3:00pm for us on days when they finish school at 2:30pm! I try to wait till they get home so we can all have lunch together. And even for me, after eating 2 breakfasts, my tummy is already in knots by 3:00pm, not to mention for the poor teens.

Their complexions too have suffered. My girls are so tanned now it’s ridiculous, and before they never had problems with pimples, etc, but lately I’ve had to buy these nose strips for them to remove blackheads!

They have to rush through their meals to get to the mountains of homework. By the time, they get through that, there’s barely any time left to study as it’s already past their bedtime. It’s so hard to wake them up for school the next morning. So school ain’t no fun no mo, like I say. I just can’t wait for my poor babies to be done.

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.

I met a jack@ss the other day. Lots of them on the road and they’re either fearless or stupid, I can’t figure out which. This particular one decided the grass on my lane was greener. So as we both rounded a bend side by side, he cut into my lane like his grandfather owned the road.

Good thing I was driving like a turtle. If I’d been going any faster, I might’ve ended up hitting the concrete kerb. Anyhow I leaned on my horn but let the poor misguided soul rush ahead like I normally do. Maybe his bladder was full and he needed to get to a fire hydrant. Or maybe he left his brain on the ceramic tiles at home and had to rush back to get it.

Whatever it was, he sure had his middle finger on him and he didn’t hesitate to stick it up at me ! J.e.r.k!! He’s lucky I was in a good mood and Steev was in the car with me or I would’ve no qualms about returning the favor!

Like I once did to the jerk who cut me off just as the traffic light was turning red, leaving  me sitting in the yellow box. I gave him a little honk to get him to look into his rear view mirror and when he did, I gave him the middle finger. Ah, the sheer satisfaction!

Speaking of which, there’s just one more thing. To yesterday’s jack@ss, since I didn’t get a chance yesterday, here ya go, buster, enjoy !

Aah, I feel so much better already! What would you have done?