.:shy:.

randomnous valentine

• i'm not a big fan of valentines and if it weren't for chaeli, i would do anything for this day. but like a good mom, i did whatever needed to be done to prep for her valentines day party at school - including a 30 mini spring rolls contribution for their food list. as for doug and i, we did get a chance to go for sushi this past saturday while chaeli stayed with my parents. it wasn't for valentines - just a regular date-night/outing because we haven't had one for so long.

• i'm glad that justin beiber didn't win last night. nothing personal against the kid - well, except for his hair - but it felt good to see esperanza spalding take the award for best new artist. she might have not won the hearts of teenie boppers more interested in getting a date with bieber, but her talent and lovely personality was definitely dserving of such an award. bravo, esperanza! bravo!

• so i got chaeli to point out her new boyfriend - i must say, he's the best looking kid in class. way to go, chaeli! but i learned that he's also one of the students that gets into trouble often. so young and she's already going after the bad-boy image.

• our roof is leaking again - propery management didn't fix it as they said they would two years ago and so now, we're looking at a worse leak then before. i've been spending a lot of my free time communicating back and forth with them - and basically nagging them to do it right this time. they are responsible for not only fixing the roof but also fixing any water damage the leak might have caused (and not just the cosmetic parts of our interior - but any material inside the walls and/or attic that the water has touched so they are not hotbeds for mould spores).

• we have now acquired an ipad and have been wasting our time with plants vs zombies.

2011 - year of the rabbit

happy chinese new year!

we're not celebrating until tomorrow night - easier for a friday. but it should be good - we're going to go to my aunt and uncle's for chinese hot pot. my favourite chinese meal, winter fix!

to all, i wish you a happy, prosperous year.

so ready for the weekend...

this is my 3rd day back from being sick - while i'm definitely much better then i was at the start of the week, i still feel extremely weak.

this is what happens to people like me. we go-go-go and have the amazing strength to hold off on getting sick. as soon as a big moment in our lives has passed, that's when it hits us like a ton of bricks. i've seen this happen to me over and over again.

at the same time, it does give me a good enough excuse to slow down. at least until i'm back to 100%.

so this weekend, we've got some fun family stuff planned.

to start, we're thinking of taking hobbes to an indoor dog park. it does cost us $7 (for the whole family) for 1.5 hrs but it's worth a try. we'll also be having a belated robbie burns day celebration, followed by family movie night.

tonight, we're probably just going to order in pizza and have family game night.

so looking forward to this weekend!

snubbed ubb

ugh - my nose is totally stuffed, my sinuses are achy and my throat is a bit phlegmy.

the worse? i had the weekend all to myself - but how did i celebrate this much needed solitude of mine? by getting sick. not ideal at all.

but anyway - i tried to salvage the alone time as best as possible. even though the majority of my weekend was spent in bed.

doug and chaeli had a last minute trip to t-bay to see my in-laws. i chose not to go - work has just been crazy with a lot of overtime. and even if i didn't have to put in some overtime this weekend, i was just completely exhausted.

hobbes stayed with me though. in fact, when i started to come down with this cold, he really stayed with me. for most of sunday, he was glued to the side of my leg. faithful dog - but a little bit of a space hogger.

i managed to at least do two things from my list of me-time things to do:

1. finished watching the final season of the L Word. I was actually really excited that the first episode showed them wheeling away a very dead jenny from bette's and tina's house. unfortunately, i still had to endure the annoying jenny as the rest of the episodes was a built up to the climatic ending. it's not just that jenny is one of those characters you love to hate, but in all honesty, as much as i loved the show as a whole, i wasn't at all convinced that the jenny character was believable enough. perhaps because her persoanlity really went through too many different transformations from season 1 - i felt as if the writers couldn't make up their mind what to do with her. and i also found it really hard that all those other ladies actually stayed her friend for that long. if it were me, i would have kicked her out of my life a lot sooner.
2. watched twilight eclipse. fun and an improvement from the first two movies. but when jacob first makes his appearance in the movie, they did that cheesy soundtrack in the background. that almost killed the whole thing for me. overall, it was entertaining but really, what i'm truly eager for is part I and II of 'breaking dawn'. i have a lot of questions and curiosities of how they are going to illustrate the last book on the big screen.

okay - i'm hoping another night of sleep (good sleep) will allow me to get back to work tomorrow.

2011 - happy new year!

what should have been a fun night with friends and then ending with a post-party with family, was just not in the books.

with chaeli's cough not getting better and me waking up feverish and woozy, we decided to cancel all plans and stay in.

and you know what? as much as i was looking forward to hanging out with my friends, it ended up being a great night. there's always the added bonus of not having to change out of one's pj's and being able to watch tv in the comfy setting of one's bedroom.

doug, chaeli and i even planned to do our own countdown (after i napped for the evening) but ended up completely missing it.

why?

we were watching lilo & stitch. after seeing disney on ice on wednesday, doug and i both realized that neither of us have ever seen the movie - and we've all seen pretty much all of disney animated movies. since the rental was on demand, we could have paused it, but we got so caught up in the movie that when i looked over at the clock, it read 12:01am.

oh well. we did pause the movie so doug could get the champagne. and with chaeli and her apple juice we did the fastest 10-second countdown ever.

i think we did it in 3 second. upon chaeli's request to "just do a really quick one."

the movie ended just 30 minutes later and when i tucked chaeli in, i could see her eyes already figting to stay open as she said, "wow. i should be asleep by now. it's very late."

and that's how we, as a family, started our new year.

all the best to all in 2011!

it's hard being lazy

sounds weird, but honestly, i find it exhausting just to try and relax. not that i haven't been relaxing but after 3.5 days of it, my skin was starting to itch. and i'm not even sure if my reference to being lazy constitute as true laziness to others because since monday, on my week off, i still got up at 6:15am to work out every morning.

a recap of this week:

sunday was sheer laziness. as mentioned - it was a day of video games.

monday, we did go see tron and then had dinner at my aunt's place. chaeli baked me a birthday cake with her new easy-bake oven. the cake was split amongst 6 adults and one kid. in other words, we all had a bite-size - more symbolic, really. and you know what? best birthday cake ever! simply because chaeli enjoyed making it for me.

tuesday, i got more into sims 2. i purchased and downloaded three expansion packs as they were all on sale for $15 ea. and each of them actually contained 3 expansion packs in them. other then that, i really can't remember what else i did that day. eat? sleep? poop? not much different from hobbes' schedule. wait - i did do some work in the morning. i suppose that counted as being productive.

wednesday, in the morning, i went grocery shopping. and mid-afternoon, we went to see disney on ice and then out to dinner. my parents came along. it was fun but the coolest part was on the way home. doug took a detour to show them parts of downtown they have not seen in almost a decade. it was interesting to see their excitement - and surprise. they both said that it was like they were seeing a whole different city. my father said that one day, he's going to come down by himself just to walk around and explore the downtown area all over again.

and finally, today. yup, today. today was the breaking point. sure, as you can see, i did get out of the house for some fresh air. but in between the outings, i was mostly in my pj's. and i just couldn't take it anymore.

so after lunch, i cleaned chaeli's room (it was a mess), reorganized it and put her jewelry in her very nice, new jewelry box which she got from my PIL. i'm gearing up to also cleaning up and storing away some of our christmas presents and finally, this weekend, taking down and putting away all our christmas decor except the tree. doug wants it up for one more week so he can enjoy his train set around the tree. he had made a winter village to go below it.

fine, fine - the boy needs his geek-outlet, too. his train set and the village to go with it is like my sims. only i have much more control over my manufacturered people.

anyway - i also did the laundry today and so there's a sense of me that doesn't feel as bad. i'm also not feeling sluggish.

the universe is on route to being normal again.

 

a geeky-family type of birthday

as a continuation from our geeky-family type boxing day, my one wish for my birthday was to see Tron.

and so, now at the age of 38, over 18 years ago after i saw the first movie in the theatres, my wish came true.

happy birthday to me!

and as for the movie...

stunny CGI and great graphics.

everything else was... meh.

a geeky-family type of boxing day

doug is playing his new firefighter game on the wii.

chaeli is playing one of her new 7 nintendo ds game.

it's only natural that i should devote my boxing day afternoon to the sims. no, nothing new from christmas - just a game i got two christmases ago of which i have yet to fully enjoy for a very, very long time.

we'll be screening calls all day.

think of it as a big 'do not disturb' sign on our entire household.

twas the night before...

i am exhausted. chaeli's been in bed for over two hours now and we just finished laying out all the gifts under the tree and stuffing the stockings as much as possible. when we were done, doug and i just sat there. i turned to him and said, "i thought we were all going easy on the gift-giving this year?"

it still looks like a crazy amount of gifts to go through tomorrow.

hobbes definitely senses something is up. he's been excited all night, following one of us right at our heels as we walk back and forth, each trip carrying more gifts to the tree and stockings. i find it funny - he has no idea why he's excited. just that he simply knows something is up.

anyway - it took a lot of energy to get everything ready for tomorrow morning. but i think both hobbes and chaeli are in for a real treat.

i just hope she lets us sleep in.

and with that, merry christmas to all and to all a good night!

chaeli pre-holiday update

so it's that time of the year again. the pre-excitement of christmas has made my sweet, little darling into the the spawn of lucifer.

alright - that was definitely an exhaggeration. but if you compare some of chaeli's more recent behaviour to who she truely is - a very well natured and well behaved child, you can imagine how challenging it's been these past couple of weeks. and it's not that she doesn't try - i can tell that the pressure of being good, the extra sugar intake (not to mention the caffiene intake from all the chocolates), plus just the sheer excitement of christmas itself, has collectively funnelled together in her little body, causing her to basically act, well... possessed. for a lack of a better word.

oh... and speaking of being the little devil, my own offspring went to school the very next day after doug and i took that sample, canadian citizenship test to announce how i did.

from what i was told, the conversation started something like this:

chaeli: ms. kothari?

teacher: yes, chaeli?

chaeli: do you know what mommy and daddy did last night?

teacher: wait... chaeli, do i really want to know what goes on in the privacy of your home?

chaeli: mommy and daddy were taking a test - and mommy got a LOT wrong! daddy only got two wrong and mommy is usually always right.

teacher: test? what test? why were they taking a test at home? you must mean they were playing some sort of game.

chaeli: no. it was a test. i saw it. they had to pick a, b, c or d.

btw, that's how the conversation always goes with chaeli and her teacher. she learned to first ask if she really needed to know what we do at home after chaeli told her that hobbes likes to bark at GO trains and daddy barks with him and mommy doesn't like that, leaving the poor teacher to wonder why doug barks along with our pet dog to begin with. chaeli omitted to explain that sometimes doug likes to get hobbes going for sport; he gets close to hobbes and lets out a low 'woof' which is like an on-button that gets hobbes all worked up - OF COURSE I DON'T LIKE THAT!

anyway, i was pretty sad that neither doug nor i could attend chaeli's christmas show. this was just not a good year at all for me to take time off work and the show was in the middle of the afternoon. just in case, i asked chaeli what she would prefer - that i arrange to leave work early and go by myself or have both my parents go and video-tape the whole show. she was excited about the latter so it all worked out.

but here's the deal. the day before the show, she came home with a letter stating that if we wanted to, we could pack some make-up with a comb for the day of the concert.

i looked at doug and said, "make-up? do they know who they are asking this from?"

aside from eye-liner and eye-brow definer, all i have is a plethora of lipstick and lipgloss. i use to have eye shadow and blush but i threw them out years ago after never using them for a very long time (and was pretty sure they went stale). they couldn't have asked the least likely person to own enough make-up to lend to her daughter... had they had asked a week earlier, i'm sure my mother would have had somethng.

anyway, chaeli went with just red lipstsick and glittery lip glass, as well as some glittery hair gel from earlier that morning.

and i thought my baby-in-blue looked smashing!