If you're new here or have previously subscribed at my old domain, go ahead and subscribe to my RSS feed for more hip parenting posts.

What a laid-back weekend! We were out only for a couple of hours yesterday to go on a hamburger binge. We’ve been so hamburger-deprived all last week, you wouldn’t believe! No fast food during the school week because I cook at home.

Since Skye has extra classes after school and I need to drop off her lunchbox, I prefer her to eat a wholesome homemade lunch. She says her classmates’ moms bring them McDonald’s and KFC every day and I’ve only brought her McDonald’s once.

Steev has his lunch at college and I’m constantly on his back to eat more veggies at dinner. My poor baby seems to have lost weight since he started college. But he insists he is eating the same amount except maybe less carb.

Since there’s only Raine and me eating lunch at home most days, I usually whip up something simple like sandwiches, pasta, pies or grilled chicken and potatoes or something. We’re not big fans of rice and Chinese dishes anyways, so I don’t bother cooking up a storm.

I knew it!

I knew I should be sleeping with curlers in my hair and following dear hubby around like a little lamb singing praises about everything he’s doing wrong and darning my children’s socks endlessly with a smile on my face!

39 As a 1930s wife, I am Poor Take the test!

I stopped for gas yesterday. A full tank now costs me almost rm120 and it sometimes lasts me less than a week. Mom’s taxi is becoming very costly.

Even with Steev taking the college bus one-way, I still have to pick him up at the end of class every day and his college is like 20km away.

Sometimes I wonder if we should switch him to an online university degree program instead. If nothing else, it will definitely save us a bundle on transportation alone. So I foresee online degrees will gain popularity simply because of this.

But I wouldn’t want Steev to forgo the social aspect of going to college which he won’t get to enjoy if he does his degree online at this stage.

This blog post is based on information provided by Blogitive. For more information, please visit Blogitive.com.

Well, next month is already here and today is Steev’s first morning taking the college bus. Whew, no more carpooling and worrying day after day about him being a car driven by reckless noobs who give no thought to their road safety.

His friend charges the same amount per month as the college bus. We found out that although he says it’s for gas money, Steev is the only one he collects from.

He doesn’t charge his other ‘good’ friends and as far as we know, his parents are still forking out the gas money. This can only mean he’s pocketing the exorbitant sum without his parents’ knowledge. What a crooked kid!

At any rate, enough is enough! I’d rather be paying for peace of mind here. It costs me the same price anyhow. The college bus looks good. It’s air-conditioned. It’s convenient and there’s lots of other kids taking it. So I’m happy .

Well, sorta! First off, we didn’t get invited to the wedding of the niece of DH’s longtime friend. DH’s friend didn’t know and innocently told DH he would be seeing us at the church wedding.

This was like 2 days before the wedding, and it set off a series of confused questions, raised eyebrows and debate on whether we should tell his friend we weren’t invited or just play along. To cut a long story short, DH’s friend inadvertently ended up “inviting” us to the church wedding.

His sister was shocked to see us (since she didn’t invite us) and she didn’t hide her surprise either. She pretty much snubbed us. I can’t imagine why since we weren’t exactly excited to be there ourselves. No disrespect but we find church weddings to be extremely boring.

We wasted an entire morning at church, the kids plugged into their MP3s and me playing Solitaire on my PDA phone while DH snored nearby. We left without eating lunch and instead headed for McDonald’s for some much-needed comfort food.

What a laugh we had when DH’s friend messaged later to say he didn’t know the venue of the wedding dinner. And dinner was just hours away! At that point, I decided that we shouldn’t even go. It was quite obvious DH’s friend had accidentally slipped out about the wedding and felt he “had” to invite us.

It’d been awkward enough at the church wedding. I just couldn’t imagine dressing up and spending hours at the dinner afterwards knowing we hadn’t been sincerely invited, know what I mean?

But we did go, finally. But only because by then, DH felt he couldn’t say no since his friend had gone through all that trouble to get us invited. I felt wierd walking in, all dressed up almost expecting to be pounced on and thrown out the front door. It’s my first time gate-crashing, you see, so I guess it’s natural to feel a little paranoid.

Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy the dinner. Not one bit. Heck, by the time we got settled in, I didn’t even feel the least bit sociable and had to resort to perfunctory nods and courtesies to get me through the rest of the evening.

I’ve always been the family hairdresser. I don’t have any formal training in cutting hair but when the ‘job’ fell on my lap, I picked it up and ran with it.

So I didn’t have the stress of making any of my kids sit still at the salon and praying the hairdresser doesn’t put out their eyes with her scissors! It also saved me lots of money because no matter how little they cut or how quick a job they do, they still charge you.

Over the years, I’ve gotten so good at cutting different styles of hair that even Steev, now almost 17, still trusts me to cut the modern spiky look for him. For the girls, I do the layered cut. All without training .

Oh, and DH is the most demanding. He always changes his hair style. Hey, I’m no Vidal Sasson, okay? So I have to crack my head a little. But he looks good enough to go to the office and even to those stuffy power meetings.

I also cut my own hair but only the front. Unfortunately I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. But hey, if there are salon jobs available at Beauty Jobs, you reckon I should moonlight ?

Yikes, driving Steev to/from college every day seems to be quite a hazard. Ninety percent of the cars in that area are driven by new and probationary (P) drivers!

It’s like stepping through a land mine literally. Every other car that either moves very slowly, cuts you off from out of nowhere or is speeding out of a junction is a P driver.

Well, P drivers obviously aren’t the only one who take two lanes to turn a corner or who speed up to prevent you from changing lanes.

I pray each morning for the patience to tolerate the pea-brained drivers I meet every day. Om!

Two of my gym buddies have started working out under a personal trainer. Wow, I thought personal trainers were only for celebs . But it’s pretty neat that they can afford one.

It seems he drives them pretty hard too. I guess he has to if he wants visible results quick. I can’t wait to see how they turn out.

The trainer has asked if I’m interested in training under him. Nah, I told him, I’m not sure a structured approach will work well for me at all.

I’m happy to plog along at my own pace and I pretty much know what I’m doing. I’m not saying I know everything but enough to see that my workouts have been effective.

Most importantly, I’m very pleased with the shape I’m in. At this point, I don’t need someone to crack the whip on me and turn me into a reed. But if I go to any more of those wedding dinners, I just might .

My first car was a Toyota and I loved that thing. It never gave me any problems and even after years, I’d only changed the tyres and battery but not the Toyota Radiator or any of the major parts.

Well, if I’d needed to look for spare parts, I’d have gone to Radiators.com as they carry a wide range of parts at very affordable pricing.

But here the mechanics will do everything for you. They’ll source the parts and fix everything. I don’t have to lift a finger but then I have to pay the price. I have no control over what they charge me.

I’m parked outside Raine’s tuition teacher’s house. My car CD is blaring. There’s a lovely evening breeze blowing and I’m blogging on my laptop.

It’s a one and a half hour wait but it’s quite a long way from my house. Instead of going home now and picking her up later, I figured why waste gas, I might as well stick around and use the time to blog. Seriously.