Mother vs Wife

"If you mother and I both fell into the ocean," said an ex-girlfriend, carefully articulating her words, "and you could save only one, who would you save?" Hahah. Sure, every girl wants to know this, but it takes a special girl (namely the ones who should be enrolled into a special school) to actually ask it. But yesterday, this scenario played out in reality.

Mom had gotten her cataract removed last week. Between her boys, we all decided that we would take turns going home to care for her, and also to take her. Although cataract removals are far more advanced that ever, with laser technology, faster healing, no bandages and all, no mother can ever have enough of good ol' fashioned TLC. And so, we boys set out to do our filial duty.

I had taken a week off of work for my shift. I was all packed and ready to go when Mae woke up looking like wilted white flower in a shitstorm.

"My stomach hurts," she winced in pain, clasping her enormous belly.

Here I was, on my way to being a good son, and there she was, my wife, expecting me to be a good husband and father. It should have been an easy choice, but I was torn nevertheless.

"Ma, Mae is sick," I told her, my voice wavering in grave concerned, "I'm taking her to the Gynae. I might not be able to come back today."

I hated myself for disappointing her. I had been a shitty son for some years now, and just when I was about to make right with her, this was happening. But Mom, bless her, was bigger than that.

"I'm fine," she said. "Stay home and take care of Mae."

And so I did. I took Mae to Dr. Huam and both mother and baby are fine. Mom's fine too, cos I got Jeff to bring her down to my place so I can watch over all of them. Thankfully, Mom's follow up visit to her doctor isn't due for another couple of weeks. Jesse's happy too since he always looked forward to his Mah-Mah visiting. And so, all is well in the LoopyMeals household once again.

And yeah, back to that loaded question at the start of this post; there is only one correct way to deal with a question like this. Remember you heard it here first. :)

"I'd let the both of you drown," I told the silly arse of a girlfriend "then I can get a new girlfriend, and my mother won't be around to stop me."

EPILOGUE:
"Between my mother and you," I told Mae in mock seriousness, as we drove to the hospital, "I choose you." And despite her unbearable pain, she found the strength to answer me. "You're such an idiot!" But out of the corner of my eye, I saw it - a shit-eating grin from ear-to-ear.

Getting On My Nerves

bone, drugs & disharmony

This was me last week. Actually, only the x-rays are me. The guy is Dr William Chan and he's showing me the error of my ways. Okay, no. I'm just being dramatic. I was in no way responsible for my own pain.

I got up some weeks ago with a stiff neck. Since I've had stiff neck for as long as I remember, I didn't think much of it cos this kind of stuff usually just goes away on its own. But no. Not this time. After almost a week of pain trying to turn my head, I had the miserable shitty feeling that I was not getting better. And as though I'm not suffering enough, I win a bonus pain in my arm as well.

As it turns out, I have bone spurs on my spine. These are nasty little buggers that grow out of your bones due to wear and tear. For some reason, that has caused one of my discs (that's the rubber jelly washer thing between my cervical vertebrae C5 & C6) to swell a bit. This has cause it to pinch my nerves, which leads to a whole world of pain in my right arm at the bicep-tricep area. This brings fresh meaning to the phrase "getting on my nerves".

I get a week off. Yay. And medicine for 10 days. Boo. And I go back for some comforting therapy. Yay. Which costs RM60 a pop. Boo. But I get goof off at home. Yah. But I gotta do the exercises for my neck. Boo.

So yeah, it's been a roller coaster ride for me.

Anyway, the medicine is long gone. I have also stopped going for the therapy. But it still hurts. And yet, I've decided not to see him again, at least until I can stands it no mores! Doc did hint at other forms of diagnosis and treatment, involving an MRI scan, injection into the spine, surgery, and other painful sounding procedures.

I hate getting old.

Brotherly Love

On Saturday, we lost Jesse's jacket at the supermarket. The boy taking it off and putting on again, just for the fun of it and somewhere along the way, we must have dropped it.

On the way home, when the reality that his favourite jacket was gone hit him, he started wailing. And quite melodramatically, too. (He gets it from his mother, I swear). To further dramatise his loss, he starts imagining things.

"A baby took my jacket," he sobbed. "I don't like the baby anymore!"

We were a little disturbed that perhaps he might be laying some blame on his little unborn sister in Mommy's tummy. I had read that kids tend to feel threatened by a new sibling.

"You don't like our baby anymore?" I asked our son in the saddest tone of voice I could muster.

"No! It was another baby!" he protested, his crying now toned down a couple of notches. "Baby Madeleine is a good baby," he added assuringly and earnestly, "I love our baby very much."

It was heartwarming to hear that our little boy can have so much love for his little unborn sister. It was like the way we had loved him while we waited for his arrival. It might be a little too soon to tell, but I think they're gonna get along fine.

And incidentally, Big Brother has also decided that his baby sister is going to be named Madeleine because he's convinced that the name is wonderful for her. :) More on that soon.

Bad Moon Rising

I was reading in the papers today about a sudden appearance of thousands of mudskippers in Gurney Drive. Apparently, some experts think that this is an indication of the cleanliness of the beaches in Gurney.

GEORGE TOWN: Penang’s famed Gurney Drive has a new slippery attraction for locals and tourists – thousands of spotted brown mudskippers can be seen flipping and hopping around the 100m-long mudflat just beyond the embankment wall over the past several months. The presence of the amphibious fish is believed to be a telling sign of the cleanliness-level in the coastline.

So, thousands of these little buggers are here cos it's so clean? Or is there, perhaps, another reason? How about the 400 dead turtles washed up on Bangladesh's beaches just last week?

Dhaka, Feb 10 (APP): Thousands of dead sea turtles are found being washed ashore along the coastal lines from Cox’s Bazar to St Martin’s island in the Bay of Bengal with bruises all over their bodies. The mass circulation Daily Star, quoting locals in Cox’s Bazar reported Tuesday, over 400 female dead turtles have floated ashore over the last two weeks alone. Experts say that these turtles meet their death as they travel the stretch of nearly 120 kilometres from Sonadia Island in Cox’s Bazar to St Martin’s island to lay eggs on the shore.

And it doesn't end there. Hawaii's got some stuff up their beaches too. Although it's a monthly affair, it's a little creepy that suddenly 700 jellyfishes are washed ashore.

HONOLULU - Officials closed Hanauma Bay on Wednesday morning because of the monthly influx of box jellyfish that washed onto Oahu's south shore beaches. About 700 jellyfish were found on Waikiki Beach with another 100 on Ala Moana Beach Park, according to the city's Ocean Safety and Lifeguard Services Division.

I dunno about you, but I'm starting to think that perhaps our seafood is trying to tell us something. Philippines's got a phenomenon too with dolphins.

Manila, Feb 10 (Xinhua) More than 100 dolphins were found stranded at the coast of a northern Philippine town early Tuesday, the local media reported.

It doesn't end there. Dead whale in France! And this was just 2 days ago.

CHERBOURG (AFP) — A French fisherman found the corpse of a humpback whale caught up in his net, excited conservationists said Monday, noting that the species is extremely rare in Channel waters. "It's a historic moment for the region. You could count the number of humpback sightings off France over the past two centuries on your fingers," said Gerard Muger, of the Cotentin Whale Studies Group in Normandy.

And just 2 weeks back, hundreds of live fighting conch shells wash ashore in Florida.

It looked like an amazing phenomenon on Bonita Beach, but it was really just a quirk of nature. Hundreds of live fighting conch shells washed up on the sand this morning. Many were flapping their hard, dark foot as if signaling for help. The shells lined the beach along the dry sand and the wet sand just above the water line while even more rolled in the shallow surf just inches from the beach. “I’ve never seen it like this,” said Paul Salay of Bonita Springs, who said he regularly visits the beach.

I got a bad feeling somethings going down. It's too much of a coincidence for these things to be happening within just two weeks. I remember reading reports of marine life being washed ashore just before the Boxing Day Tsunami of '04, and I'm thinking that perhaps these events over the last couple of weeks may be some kind of warning sign.

I'm staying the hell away from beaches.

Girl Power

27 weeks and all girl

Last Friday, Doc confimed that we were indeed, without a doubt, looking at a little girl in Mae's belly. 100% sure. So it's no longer just a guess or wishful thinking.

That means we'll be buying plenty of dresses, hair clips, pink stuff, barbie dolls, chastity belt, and other girlie things. Which is a good thing. If we had yet another boy, the poor little guy will no doubt be inheriting a lot of Jesse's hand-me-downs. And the poor kid might feel a little slighted that Daddy and Mommy never gets him anything new. And that would eventually lead to resentment, feelings of inadequacies and expensive psychotherapy bills. So yeah, girl is good.

Also, it'll be a totally new experience for Mae and me. How do little baby girls behave? What do they like? How do they manipulate their parents? What do they eat? It's all very exciting.

Anyway, now that we know, it's time to get cracking on the shopping and stuff. We're steadily collecting a whole repertoire of pink things from mitts to booties, to jumpers, to towels and such. We'll also need to get bottles and diapers and a cot and car seat and playpen. All the ones we bought for Jesse have been either given away or are in bad shape.

Imagine that. A little girl of own, to complement our little family. It's wonderfulicious! Quick, quick, congratulate me again. :)

Valentine & Old Couples

So yeah. Almost everyone online seem to be calling it Sucker's Day and we're inclined to agree that Valentine's Day is just another excuse for businesses to bleed your wallets.

But Valentine on Saturday was just another Saturday to us. We took the kid to The Curve and let him run loose. Meanwhile, young lovers (and suckers) were everywhere, dressed to the nines lugging around bouquets, gifts and other Valentine paraphernalia. As Mae and I watched with amusement, we were also painfully aware that this part of our lives is now over.

Let's face it. Mae and I are no spring chickens. Pushing 40, married for 7 years with a hyperactive 5-year-old in tow and another in the oven, we don't really get much more alone-time to be together anymore. In fact, it's probably never gonna happen until we ship the kids off to college and stuff. Sure, when Jesse was younger, we could always just dump him at my In-Laws and go for a movie or something, but now that he's bigger, we're never gonna get this past him.

Last Saturday, we took him all over and let him stay at the playground to his heart's content. He had a ball, running up and down like a monkey on speed. By 9pm that evening, the boy was out like a light. And so, after leaving the household under the care of our maid, TheaVy, Mae and I snuck out for our Valentine's Day Dinner. And, having the wisdom of our years (*ahem), we did not submit to the crass commercialisation of the day. There was no bouquet (sorry Honey!), no dressing up, no make-up and no pretenses. Instead, we ended up at our favourite Pokkari haunt in the Chow Kit area, in our t-shirts and shorts.

So there we were, right smack of the seediest side of downtown KL, surrounded by a community of traders, prostitutes, drug addicts and transvestites, backdropped by raging traffic and screeching Mat Rempits. And right there in the midst of it all, we were alone at last. And for a fleeting moment, we were like young lovers once again. Until the night air caused our bones to ache, that is. Okay, I was kidding about that last part! We're not quite that far over the hill yet.

So yeah, Valentine's Day may be Suckers Day to you, but hey, we old couples need this. If only as an excuse to drop everything for a couple of hours and pay attention to each other again. Tragic as that may sound. :)



happy valentine's day

Cookie

Baby is in her 25th week now and she would be starting to hear right about now. So we talk to her every now and then. And just like we did with Jesse, Mae and I ran some names by our soon-to-be little girl just to elicit a little reaction from her.

"Hey there Baby Madeleine," I called to my baby. "That's Madeleine with the French spelling," I tell Mae, "cos it looks nicer that way." But Baby couldn't care less, or otherwise.

"Then how about Amelie," Mae tried, digging the recesses of her faulty pregnancy-afflicted memory of French movies we had seen. Still nothing. Nothing too for Hayley, Elena, Jasmine and Emily.

"Maybe we oughta try names that have songs written about them," I suggested to the wife. I reasoned that when Baby grew up we could just tell her that there's a song written about her. Heh. But Baby wasn't cooperating with any of it. Not Layla by Eric Clapton, Not Jezamine by the Casuals, Not Amanda by Boston nor Deborah by the Crickets. (Yeah, I'm THAT old!)

Nothing too for the girls of the bible - Rachel, Naomi, Esther and Delilah. Okay, okay, I was kidding about that last one.

"Then I guess we'll just call you Cookie," I proclaimed. And there it was, a kick. Mae repeated the name, and Cookie repeated the kick. So yeah. Cookie, it is.

"You think she'll like cookies?" Mae asked with a chuckle. "I dunno, would she?"

"Well," the wife reminds me, "Noodle likes noodles, remember?" Indeed he does.