lifeblood

today i am in a particularly grateful mood. i especially want to pay tribute to the lovely peeps who one way or another have made my life since 2007 a constant blessing. so here it is, oscar style:

1. I would like to thank Daljit for taking me in without prejudice, or even doing a background check, when i needed a job desperately
2. Susan Leong, for making my stint at AJ into a career which has seen me from relief to adjunct to a contract teacher
3. OCM for advising me on making the switch and securing me a stable income with medical benefits which was esp timely last year when i amassed a slew of dental bills
4. Soks for believing in my credentials to teach Lit just by hearsay and instinct, after which in 2009 my life transformed from mere minion to actual educator haha
5. my dear colleagues, namely the ones who were warm and accepting of who and what I am, never once questioning my culture or 'lifestyle', hence making the work environment really comfy
6. my dearest students, past and present who have made this such a rewarding career, from their artless insights to their sincere regard for what you are to them
7. God, for always having my back. You've never left me for a moment, even when times i wanted you off my back. you had a plan for me since i started life anew, and in every step you've made me provisions which i'll never take for granted
8. and this year Janey for appearing like a breath of fresh air, at a time when the rest of my day was suffocating in its tedious routines, when after 8hrs of work i felt like it was mere breathing in monotonous patterns, when you loved me freely and deeply, with nary a question or doubt. i needed that. and i need you.

i spent a large part of 2011 in a deep funk which saw me floating through my kids' weekends, conversations with friends and even time in class. those times i tried to focus on the tasks at hand, running errands mindlessly, replying distractedly and i think even forgetting at times if i had lunch or dinner

that must've been what we call clinical depression because i was merely existing, not functioning. if there was a reason for all of it, it was probably break up grief but i think beyond a certain time i just took the excuse to withdraw, because after awhile it seemed easier to just give up, to dwell in the resignation and i recall as a mantra, to be numb neutral needing nothing. i actually believed i had reached some sort of zen but in actuality it was me relinquishing to a certain state of perpetual rest.

i didn't have an active death-wish but i didn't resist it either. so well cut to a year and i'm mentally more grounded. i don't take myself too seriously anymore nor try to berate myself for my iniquities. it is what it is. i can't really alter the outcome of my shortcomings but i try at best not to be stagnated by them. i just look up often and say, hey if it must be today, i come. but if it isn't i shall continue to look at what's still beautiful in life, the laughter of my children, the taste of flavours, the wonders of natural creation, the cycle of seasons, the innate touch of an animal, the orchestra of sounds in a single chord, the magical rhythms of percussion arrangements. i take all that in and tell myself to go on. to just live a little longer.

wall of subtlety

now i can fill my wall with lovely memories again

had a lovely weekend of couple time, catching up later with jen and lor. i really love domestic simplicity all around. esp at baby's abode


my friends mentioned that i was fatter, but they said better than the unhealthy 'depressed' thin last year haha or in jen's candour, 'your head looked too big for your body'. well i can thank baby for fattening me up with her amazing culinary skills. i just wish i can give her a hand once in awhile coz she truly spoils me, even her mommy haha

someday i will just have to attempt to whip up a palatable meal...

no matter what you say about yourself...

i still think you're fan-fucking-tastic baby!

weekend: redux

well in an alternate reality, the last entry would be dante's hell. otherwise, the other side of life was a treat. baby picked the kids up at their dad's while i was meeting parents last friday. she proceeded to feed them a substantial dinner at soup restaurant while lugging a whole pot of homemade soup for us oh and papayas. she has the strength of a bull and the heart of a saint.

then she treated us for dinner at a not so respectable place on saturday coz i said the kids loved to pig out there haha. of course after years, they've also acquired and honed a finer taste for dining and only selected what was palatable and of value, something she beamed at. she has already decided they will be discerning from here on and well, leave it to me and we'll still be gobbling maccies.

the best part of the weekend i guess was seeing how they managed to cheer her up some. i've never met anyone, partners or friends, more enthusiastic about the kids. it's instinctively what she is. and i can see them gradually accepting her as part of our lives. even meeting with the immediate family for lunch is another hurdle. who would've thought i'd some day be sitting beside my partner, showing affection publically over badly mixed cocktails haha

so yup, the weekend wasn't all bad. i look forward to more family time all around and really, after that bad spat with the other, i think i can safely say i really don't need or want friends. least of all the sort who has the bedside manner of an iguana.

manic monday, and thursday fri sat...you get the idea

so i've learned an important lesson this week. never trust your instincts about certain people, especially when their culture and behaviour are shaped by the family upbringing, by and large what they've come to expect of people in terms of favours and paying forward.

in a moment of generous oversight, i opened my home to a certain ex-colleague whom i considered a friend, one whom i trusted with my secrets and so i suppose my home would be naturally a part of this trust.

wrong.

not only did she display sheer inconsiderate behaviour from the start of not confirming her flight details and only after trying to reach her on fb message, she calls me close to bedtime to inform me she had landed in the afternoon and only to confirm her staying over hours later after arriving.

then the next day i find parts of herself, clothes personal effects and such strewn in my kids' room and bed. i came back with lunch for her and she had left to run errands far from home without so much as a note. thinking she had left, i tidied up and set up her place on the couch for her to crash because my kids would be home that evening. she returns in the afternoon and proceeds to sleep in jill's bed before her evening conference.

the next day she wakes with a fever to which i suspect has to do with exhaustion from jetlag and sleep deprivation. this could've been avoided i find out later had she taken the university's offer of 30bucks/nite accomodations. you saw that right. 30fuckingbucks. this was probably less than the cab rides etc. then she leaves the utilities, lights, fans, heater on after using and goes off without checking.

if you think i sound petty at this point, i will get worse. so the final evening of her conference she texts me close to bedtime again informing me she's crashing at her friend's room on campus. this after i had left my door perpetually unlocked in case she returned earlier when i wasn't home. and of course to complete her nightmarish houseguest manners, she books three different cabs on my landline and not informing me leaves for good and having my home and handphone ringing off the hook from the respective cab companies possibly annoyed by her no-shows coz it turns out (which i find out later at night) that she had flagged one down after all.

OMFG

this has put a final end to my patience and hence friendship. i won't even be surprised if the next phone bill shows up with long-distance or hour long calls on it. never again. and you can go fuck yourself if you think i'd ever entertain the thought of another stay-over. i'd rather let a vagrant into my home first.

and don't let me get started about the privacy invasion of my kids...

sigh

it's 242am and i couldn't sleep.up in the kids' room using their computer. probably due to that wretched nap late in the evening post-dinner which went on till 9ish.bad move.bad dinner haha

so im up watching tubes, arrested by nostalgia and sentiment, the worst kind to occur so late at night, where i truly miss just going over their beds,smelling their slumber, looking so safe and peaceful, hearing their deep snores, feeling comforted and moved.

i wonder if my mom used to watch us sleep, or did she in her final moments recall our childhood, reflect on her entire 48 years of being a mother, sentimentalize the entire process, or shrug it off in resignation? i guess i'll never know

i do know that i will be that sort of mother.always seeing them as the grubs, shrubs, till they have kids of their own. who knows, i may still annoy them with my mush. to me they will always be my angel-grubs. bunny and ducky. =]

---
funny how a student stopped me after class to confide about his mother, well mostly about her driving him up the wall with unreasonable demands about his grades.i couldn't empathise because i am not that sort of mother nor was my own.

anyway i just listened and asked if he was the eldest to which he replied in affirmative and then i realised i did empathise because, as i intimated, i was harder on my firstborn as most are because of our expectations, or maybe also because we project so much on them because they reflect our success or failure in the same token.  that insight helped him feel better.yes blame the mother.always do. that way you can do the same when you become parents and hence will never feel satisfied no matter what they do hahah ok. and funnily today's essay topic for discussion is about how parents are squarely to be blamed for how kids turn out...life imitates art much.

work matters (pun intended)

so 4 weeks into term and it's been vaguely rewarding, from watching the students improve to coworkers fuck up to dealing with a motherload of saikang, and i havent even begun to draft their testimonials due in two weeks, not before meeting parents on an extended work day this week.

it's my 6th cycle and im starting to question the validity of my goals. much as it pays the bills and occupies the ennui, it's starting to grate a little. my form class is showing a mix of progress and regression. i can't even begin to fathom why a handful of them is degenerating in their self-absorption but it certainly isn't a capital point and bodes badly in their future. i'm about to exile that recalcitrant lot whose names keep surfacing in the complaint department. and then there's the (mis)management who continue to display astounding levels of incompetence it's not even funny. speaking of, i've been tasked to work with a certain blonde colleague in editing my testimonials so i'm dreading that tennis match.

i think i will perhaps do a final cycle before my 45th bd and go see the world. i shall save up a substantial amount for 2014 so that i can take the kids to far flung places like london and possibly parts of aussie. jo would've been done with her Os and jil her streaming year. so yup, that's what stays in my agenda for the coming years. i work for vacations indeed.

prosper and plenty

and soon we should be eating this with the family for our wedding.

i know things look grim and hopeless. but i believe in my heart that you will see good things because you bring that to me and the shrubs. you of all people in this world deserve so much more.
<3

some classic hymns just never go away

speaking of blessed, that's how i feel these days.
it's been a physically challenging week of work stress, catching a bad bug and pms-y fatigue. i guess i hate being ill and useless.
but baby's been anything but a sweetie with her attempts to help me cope with all this.
and today when i mentioned how my form class was down with post-exam blues, the room was literally thick with despair, she baked a batch of cookies for them despite being on m.c and feeling badly all day.

while her awesome mommy brewed this pear soup for the kids and i! feel so loved =]]]

triggers.

i've always been born with an acutely sensitive nose. i recall how as a child i would steer away from peers who had a strange or unsettling stench.it could be their breath, body odour or even some shampoo they were using.conversely it could be the pleasant smells of a person which draws me to them, some strange attraction of phrenomes or muskiness. perfumes to me are artifices of this and seldom do the trick.

likewse, my memories are unfortunately also controlled by scents. i recall that unpleasant funk when that stranger took liberties to molest me in a book store when i was 13. or when my car broke down on the way to work and the burnt rubber smell always makes me think of a crisis looming, possibly wth pyro-potential disaster.

eversince i walked into that hospital that saturday morning, i've found that smell v nauseating n unsettling.it smelt of death disguised by medicine, the same smell which i recall sitting in the dentist's chair for 5hrs with 8 teeth askew last august. it's horrible...that smell carries on my clothes.it's not even like dettol which is comforting.it's some indescribly sick sweet mixed with chemicals.

anyway laely i've been grappling with an irratonal fear well more like, aversion to doctors, the waiting rooms to be exact. just walking past a clinic i instinctively hold my breath.  i think it has a lot to do with the recent passing of my mom.

and last night in some drug-induced sleep, well antihistamines more like, i dreamt i was woken by my kids who were asking me what time it was, i couldn't be sure because i glanced around and all my watches were telling different times. i looked at the ceiling and it had some magnetic force which held up assorted jewelery and watches, including baby's tiffany's bracelet. so i walked out of the room to find my mom sleeping in the next one with the ceiling leaking but she wasn't aware. i woke her and ran to the kitchen to fetch a pail. when  returned i saw an entire tidal wave heading through her room window. i yell 'tsunami'  and we ran for cover under some tiny ikea cheap square table like that would help  only to find the entire room gushing with water. woke up completely baffled. maybe i'll look into this later hahah.ok off to class

in his time he makes all things beautiful (ecclesiastes 3:11)

so for some compelling reason i rummaged this out from storage today and looking at the time-stamp it's been almost a decade since

i recall that year was a tumultous one at home -- we had filed for separation but not to upset the kids we stayed in the same home so that we could gradually break it to them. as i watched my taciturn and painfully shy 5yo first-born take the stage for the first time in her life (while recovering a nasty case of chicken pox), i recall how tears fell freely for so many reasons. the inexplicable pride mixed with the sadness of how i may break her fragile heart, and the regret of being then in a relationship with another who made me feel so conflicted internally about loving my children so jealously which made her feel alienated and resentful.

and cut ten years later i look at her with jo and it's something short of a miracle.

because here is a partner who not only loves me so completely, she loves them without prejudice,with a maternal fierceness which moves me. and jo is likewise adapting so well to our relationship. and here she is, from a 5 y.o runt to a lanky 15y.o to be. it doesn't escape me how beautiful he has made our lives, shaped by experiences of both joy and pain. but in the end, always beautiful.

how many bd cakes can girl have?

not enough apparently haha


first tapei, then my bd dinner itself, and last night a lovely home-baked accompaniment to a home-cooked meal! i'm sucha blessed soul


and a lovely weekend with fab peeps

so glad they finally got to meet her!

the event was a tad commercialised, tho it was heartening to see all 15000 strong supporters as compared to last year.
all i know is love is just the  most liberating gift from god. it makes you forgive, it makes you gracious. and it teaches you how to embrace everything in your stride, taking the good with the bad