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a love of bread

i've read somewhere, or it could be in chinese, that bread is made from love. and flour and yeast haha
but when i chew into this awesome loaf after a too early morning class, i feel the tenderness of her fingers (!) and then some. it's that domesticity of being taken cared of. that same feeling of being held in the middle of the night.
all that from bread. homemade with love.

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and a weekend of guiness-valrhona baked indulgence.at this rate i will be a walrus haha

苦 / 甜

i look at daddy on his 77th flanked by his grandkids, surrounded by his kids, sans his wife.
he seems calm and has moved on, but this must be internally bittersweet for him. his first bd without mum.


how terribly lonely it must feel to walk the rest of your days without the love of your life. 'the girl of your dreams', your 'sweetheart'

as it were i was miserable spending my bd last year w/o the ex so i can imagine how it must be hundredfold for him. >50 bds with mum. now suddenly without. at certain points of the evening i could see him looking like he was somewhere else.i wanted to hug him but i could imagine how that may trigger the grief. he was down with the bug with no one to take care of him. irony that a doctor spends his life taking care of patients, giving remedies to loved ones. i can't begin to fathom the depth of his loneliness.

i hope he will find solace in his work, golf, the rest of us. but mostly i hope he will find peace and joy when he meets her again.
i could never live on without my partner, or if my kids go before me. it's pointless. life is merely languishing in a false pretense of peace or joy and all else is moot.

the compelling need to run away today is so real it's not even funny

pot shots and bad puns.

it's been a fab weekend of family time, something baby's honed as a part of list of things to anticipate after the grind of a work week.

starting off with a sumptuous dinner on fri nite

the mantous looking like pebbles which my cam skills did no justice haha

then after the kids sorted some of their h/w matters it was downtown for some shopping and the two potter-philes going potty over the displays at the museum while aunty jil and i had a spot of tea



let's just say much to jil's amusement/exasperation i thought gandolf was a character there haha that's the extent of my knowledge of anything ring-related or in this case, pottery.

then we chucked down to 313 for a light dinner followed with a substantial dessert of waffles and ice cream at maggie moo's. jo chose a strange blue ice cream resembling detergent but she would haha


we pottered around the stationery offerings in the vicinity before ending with hair accessory pickings, which to jill was 'praise the lord i'm home' hahah. something she also exclaimed while we trawled the designer stretch of mbs only to finally land at an artbox.i think it's hilarious how they find these overpriced retail a drone and light up when they see the heartland versions. i guess i've raised a couple of really simple kids with adorably aunty demeanours. baby gave them a couple of bags which she thought would be too old for their tastes but she was wrong! hahaha

i guess what really made my day most was watching how she delights in them, her maternal instincts to protect them, her nurturing and caring ways which make me trust her so profoundly. i really feel like i've landed the perfect partner who encompasses all the love and security, and the physique of a model which she dismisses with modesty and regretful self-effacing responses. all i know and feel is i am right with her, and the kids have become so much a part of us, and of her. they are starting to grasp what we are and are completely blase about our pairing. jil offered her a hairclip from her loot. jo was enamoured by her taking pains to get them tickets for the show and a whole lot of overpriced souvenirs but i know jo because she is not taken in by gifts, but rather how much she cares about her. that sorta regard has more mileage than a thousand gifts.

and in all this i am just grateful for the blessings of the year. a new love, a renewed family and a deeper faith in life.

in our elements

hehe my big baby lying on what looks like a strawberry

you.

holding you through the night.half-waking to your gentle kisses and carresses.
 this is all which matters darling.just us in a world of confusing flux.we remain rooted in our simplicity of breathing each other in, feeling our souls connect in our touch.that single moment in breathless ecstasy.feeling loved.clinging on to it.relenting to it completely.

my words hardly do it justice. but i know so deeply and  inexplicably that in these moments we really only need to allow ourselves that simplicity, and faith. nothing else should have to matter when you can feel that sort of love, don't you think darling?

that said, i know when you wrap me like that in your endless loving arms that the world and its constant troubles fade to irrelevance. because you are there. and you make my life relevant.

somedays the urge to fly away on a whim is doubled with discounts

ghosts.

'Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.' (buddha)

this is what i learned and tried to apply all of last year. if anything it helped me to grapple with my sense of futility and lost causes. it had been an arduous journey towards healing but i think i have made it thus far because i refuse to let ghosts bother me, something i learned from the novel i'm teaching, wide sargasso sea.

i recall being really bad at handling especially information about my partner's past. be it my then husband to the person i'm now dating. i chanced upon a set of photos with his ex-gf and it sent me in a flurry of irrational insecurity. i nearly called off the wedding because at that moment all i could process from them was, damn, he looked so happy with her. perhaps i wasn't the one he really wanted to marry and settled for me. of course that was just my obvious self-image issues haunting me which i readily transferred onto him, even without giving him the credit or regard of trust and faithfulness.

and then cut years post-divorce and i was dating a girl whom was very much a down-to-earth creature. she wasn't even my-type to begin with but i think i let her adoration blind me to believing it was love. so you would think it wouldn't bother me if i knew anything about her past r/s. wrong. i trawled into her old blog entries one day and boom, i found myself once again feeling out of sorts. here was something about her past love and how devoted she was and there i was thinking maybe she still had residual feelings, leading me to call in the middle of lord of the rings, forcing her to emerge from the cinema baffled and i'd think annoyed. but she assured me and i guess after a couple of hours i worked it out as really something in my head, a voice distracting me from reason, a mindfuck if you will.

cut to present and i remember months ago chancing upon my present partner's old blog. i knew if i scrolled back just a little bit i'd uncover a pandora's box of things i didn't want to know or address. but as curiously foolish creatures we go see. and indeed for a good moment i felt uncomfortable, seeing how smitten and fond she was of someone else, the terms of endearment similar, the way she loved her familiar, the heart that i thought was connected to mine suddenly like a strangers. there again was everything i perceived for a moment because i allowed myself to focus on her past, not our present and promising future.

so i still maintain that much as our past is relevant and special in how it pieces our lives, forms us to who and what we've become, we ought to leave it there, much like we shouldn't examine the stitching on the attire once we've put it on, but relish in how it makes us look and feel, looking at the mirror ahead and its infinite possibilities of happiness, good memories, and loyalty. that to me is how you commit yourself. always forward. never looking back.

changing the world one day at a time.

as i regard the coming term and its work schedule, i feel a sense of dread overcome me. nothing new, just the expected hectic days of marking 285 prelim scripts in 2.5 weeks while drafting their sgcs all 23 of them and trying to tie up all loose ends of their final year and fielding endless hours of consults with individuals. its the tsunami of nightmares. haha i really don't know how i can plan our wedding with focus at this rate.

anyway a little anecdote to lift my spirits. besides these job requirements there are the unexpected perks which make your heart smile. last week a girl in my other class had spinal surgery which rendered her almost immobile and with sitting difficulties. so we had our class in the dance studio and i didnt realise she was standing for a good 10min coz i thought she just wanted to talk to her friends in that posture. so i asked and she said it was hard to sit for long. so i just turned to the class and asked them to move the tables to the side so we all could sit on the floor and she well, lie on her front, which she of course felt self-conscious about then her classmates all also got on their fronts and we all proceeded with the rest of the hour in that fashion. it was so sweet and well, haha synergy if you will.now the powers that be would be so proud.

after class i advised her on good sleeping postures to ease the pain and then went off to my next class, not before she stood outside the door and just thanked me. i wasn't expecting that really but i guess perhaps i did inadvertently cheer her a little. it must be misery to have this happen so close to the exams. at her age at that. so well, it's good to know i do these things, say certain things, and it may make a small but significant difference in some kid's life. that i guess cancels out the agony of the other things mentioned above. well with a little help from mr beer/latte/wifey  not necessarily in that order hahah! and her lovely soups =]

fabulous shrubs

sometimes in a random moment i catch myself marvelling at how fast they've grown up into discerning little women.

they've become more self-assured and aware of the world around them. my only concern is how one may be affecting the other without my knowledge. like is jo looking at her sister adjust to school so well and feel slightly inadequate? is that why she seems to have self-esteem issues? i don't think it's any form of sibling rivalry because growing up they've always given each other acknowledgement of place and talent. i've seen how beautifully they function in a symbiosis of give and take. but i can't help but wonder if jill's remarkable success socially in school may in some way make her sis feel abandoned or alone. sigh i guess it's just typical maternal anxieties.

one thing for certain though is i'll never let anything within my abilities to harm or hurt them, well save those i inadvertently caused in folly. i just hope they'll always know i have their backs, yes even in prison haha!

a new month, a new year

today i was chewing something in between a pizza pocket and rubber. one of those pms-induced junkie days where your food choices are irrational and you'd subject yourself to the unpalatable. what i did appreciate though was that i could try to tear through the morsel with my incisors, without so much the pain or discomfort after that ordeal almost a year ago.

last week while heading home a student ran up eagerly and persuaded me to make my way to the blood-donation truck. all i could tell her short of sounding like a wuss was, it's ok it was an unpleasant experience so i'll pass. she looked apologetic yet embarrassed for my overshare. a simple no thanks would've suffice, i can imagine haha

but yup my fear of donating blood remains even if the reason for my fainting injury was probably caused by bad nutrition and wacky sleep cycles. yet it doesn't escape me how i've come to heal from it after too many root canal surgeries and lip ointment to recount. the scar on the lowerlip is still bumpy but otherwise not bothersome and the 8 incisors are somewhat odd, with the occasional dull pain when imbibing something cold or rough-textured. i'm glad though for the ability to smile unself-consciously which i recall was an issue during assorted photoshoots last year. i kept thinking i had godzilla teeth and a prize-fighter's lips.

so well it's all good face-wise and perhaps in time i will overcome that fear of blackouts, which i think is more about the fear of falling. that moment when you feel your physical body beyond your control and watch yourself crumble heavily into asphalt with that dread of permanent scar or injury. i know that i don't want to languish in those elderly years where that is the sole concern of your day. i have decided a good time i would go would be 45-50. when the kids would be well into uni or work and very much self-sufficient. my duties would be fulfilled and i would only really need to get by on some good food, a spanking convertible and a retirement plan ample to provide for all who matter, and of course a decent legacy when i do pass on.

it's really that simple. god knows we've made life more complicated than it deserves.