Rants & raves | Hip to be Mom

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?

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?

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?

So Raine and I are back to the gym after a week’s slack. Shame on us! Blame it on Sam and Dean, and the incessant rain.

Well, we may’ve been away for a whole week but it’s still the same old, same old over there. Like it being 85 degrees outside, rain or shine. Like some people showing up in long sleeves, long pants and wrapping themselves up in bath towels to work out for 2 hours in a gym with no windows.

The minute we get in, we switch everything on – the fans, the air-conditioning. It’s a thankless task, let me you. I’ve lost count of how many glares we’ve gotten for doing everyone a favor and ensuring they can breathe!

They claim to be shivering cold or that they want to sweat it out. Either way, they don’t want any air circulating in that gym. And anyone who dares touch that switch gets the evil eye!

So far, no one’s confronted me – yet – though I daresay I often hear them cussing me behind my back.

Anyhoo, this is how I look at it.

When you work out, you tend to require more oxygen than usual to fuel those strenuous activities. So you need air!

Without any fresh air, we’ve got a closed up area rapidly filling up with carbon dioxide replacing any last bit of oxygen. So you need air!

The windows are only open a teeny tiny crack which isn’t enough for a roomful of oxygen-deprived lungs. So you need air!

Your body produces heat when you exercise and you need to cool it down so you won’t faint. So you need air!

No brainer, right?

Not to these ladies. I assure you they can’t wait to see our backs, and the moment we’re out the door, they jump up and turn everything off again! At the rate they’re going, they might as well stay home and work out on their Nintendo Wii.

As for me, I’ve got to have air when I exercise or I will feel nauseated and then I get a freakin’ migraine that ruins my entire day!

I heard that someone at the gym lost her cell phone the other day. She’d left it in one of the pigeon holes and gone home, only to realize oops! She called the gym immediately and was told it wasn’t there any more. Gone. for. good!

Steev lost his iPhone while he, me and the girls were peddling a rickshaw (like crazy, I might add, it was such great fun!) along this busy beach front in Monterey.

Have you ever lost your cell phone? Can you imagine losing all your contacts and personal settings? OMG, such a big headache!

We split up and backtracked, tracing our steps back along the entire length of the beach front but we might as well be looking for a needle in a haystack.

Finally, Steev decided to call his own number hoping its ringing would lead us to it. Instead a guy answered and said he had the phone and that he would wait for Steev to meet him along that same stretch of beach. What a dear soul!

So Steev got his phone back. Quite effortlessly, I might add, though we were really doubtful at first. It was a happy ending, one that we didn’t even dare to hope for.

In most cases, chances are if you lose your cell phone, you will never see it again. And you can only hope and pray that whoever’s got it isn’t using it to call the rest of this planet and beyond before you can make a report and get your number deactivated. Peace!

Announcement at departure gate in Hong Kong: We are now boarding passengers from rows 50 to 70.

Hordes of people jump up to get in line.

Me to the girls: Oh, that’s not us yet. Let’s sit back down and wait.

Big mistake!

Next announcement some time later: We are now boarding the rest of the passengers.

We get in line. There’s only like 30 people behind us. We get on board and practically the whole plane had been filled and I don’t mean just the overhead compartments!!

Hello??!