Week 20: Chugging along

I picked up the wok after what seemed like a century of absence from the kitchen. I'd finally gotten fed up with all the junk we were eating outside - fried koay teow, mediocre fried rice, Japanese, steak - and the indecision that goes along with deciding where to eat. I was also starting to get a little worried about my intake of calcium, greens and fruits; not sufficient is putting it mildly. So off I went to the nearest Cold Storage on a grocery spree.

My fried rice last night could give Little Penang a run for its money. It was just as I predicted: I CAN cook better fried rice than that place. But then again I've never doubted my ability with a wok, a pot or a frying pan or even an oven. It's just my inherent laziness that gets in the way; if only cooking were less hassle and didn't take up so much space and time.

At least the blob can rest assured it had a home-cooked meal devoid of MSG.

According to the books, it should be about 16cm in length by now. I still haven't felt any movement from it yet, not anything that I can tell from the outside anyway. It seems to have a penchant for the left of my uterus; I'm quite sure my bump's skewed to the left. When I cough or sneeze too hard, I get a stitch on the left.

It's getting harder to bend down and lifting my feet to scrub them in the shower is getting to be a chore. I try to sit as straight as possible so that my bump isn't all scrunched up and the little tyke in there has room to move. Flats are definitely easier on my legs and feet now than even low heels. The boobs still seem to be expanding and sweat can now gather freely and uncontrolled under their weight. My usage of talcum powder has increased in a tangent with the sweat. It's just about now that I'm wishing I'd bought some padded maternity/nursing bras because the nipples just won't back down. I'm tempted to get some inserts just so to stop the peaks from peeping out from under my tops.

I still can't eat too much of a full meal at dinnertime. If I do, I need to walk it off or Rizal would have to contend with my moans and whines after dinner; doesn't seem like my metabolic rate is picking up, my stamina either. At the end of my cooking session last night, I was huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf from the fable, The Three Little Pigs.

I'm still hit by inexplicable waves of tiredness at odd times of the day and now, when it's really quiet, I can feel my heart going at it as if I was in a triathlon. I was looking forward to starting prenatal yoga with a friend's instructor, however that plan has been shelved because the instructor found out she was pregnant and bleeding so classes have been canceled. Talk about a weird twist of fate. I'm now on the lookout for other venues for prenatal yoga. I need to do SOMETHING to ease the dull throb at the base of my tailbone.

I'm looking forward to next week's detailed scan. I hope we'll be able to tell whether it's a girl or a boy. We can then move on to choosing names; I simply will not go through the trouble of going through every list of girls' AND boys' names to choose something suitable. Referring to the baby as the blob is also getting a bit old. The girl or the boy sounds so much more personable. I just hope the boy, as in Pixel the cat, doesn't develop an identity crisis.

Other than that, we were just ... spacing out ...

In case you were wondering what we were really doing during CNY

Chinese New Year Resolution: I Shall Get Along With My Brethren

A rare occasion indeed: all three felines together - Meg, Trixie & Pixel - in close proximity and no fur balls in sight.

Desperately seeking skin

I had a pau before heading out to dinner last night. The kitties were saved from starvation by an emergency pack of Whiskas soft food from 7E.

The two girls hungrily dug into their bowls. The boy refused to eat his food after a few bites. No help in that, we left him and went out for dinner.

When we came back with a pack of Iams, I found my leftover pau skin, which I'd left on the coffee table, gone. Nothing except for the paper that lined the pau.

Looks like someone chose plain pau skin over Whiskas cat food. Wonder what the cat food company would say to that?

If only my friends knew

Being pregnant addles the brains.

Just recently I bumped into a friend at dinner. The face was familiar and since he said hi, I acknowledged him. We got to chatting but at the back of my mind I was frantically trying to remember who this guy was. I had ABSOLUTELY. NO. IDEA. Other than the fact that I knew him from somewhere, I could not, for the life of me, figure out who he was, what was his name, when I'd met him, how I knew him, who we both knew, I just could not place him. If he'd looked closer, he could have seen the beads of sweat forming on my brow and threatening to rain down my face. Luckily, the lighting was far from perfect.

It wasn't until about 5 minutes or so into the conversation when he made a reference to his work and someone we mutually knew that it hit me; so THAT'S who he is!

Needless to say, I was as relieved as if someone had come put out a major fire forming at my feet. I didn't have to look like a complete moron and ask him who the hell he was after 5 minutes of conversation.

You would think this is an isolated case but no, this is the second time this has happened to me since I found out I was pregnant. The first incident was worse: I walked away without an inkling of who the guy was. And I hadn't asked. It wasn't until I'd jogged my memory thoroughly the next hour after the encounter that I hit on the answer.

Today, I told myself to remember to buy cat food for the kitties before I came back home. We're down to the bottom of the tub and there's not one bit left for dinner. Of course, I came home and totally forgot about the poor kitties until I walked in the front door.

Five more months to go, five more months to go...

One day it's there, the next day it's GONE!!

I almost collapsed from a heart attack this morning. I've taken to watering my pots of plants in my driveway in the mornings before I head off to work. My giant bonsai's bed of moss recently started turning brown and threatened to wither up and die from the dry weather, hence the dilligence in watering. I bought the pot complete with lush green moss surrounding the foot of the trunk and almost covering the entire span of the 2' diameter base 2 years ago. Half of that green carpet has turned to brown fur.

Imagine my shock this morning when I discovered not a brown patch in sight, but even the healthy green spots were completely dug up and all that was left were a tangle of roots and earth exposed in their entirety! I could have dropped dead right there on the driveway if not for the fact that I was too shocked and heartbroken to ellicit any response from my body other than a faint sputtering.

"My moss! My beautiful moss!!!"

I initially wondered if any of the stray cats within the area had made a litter of my pot and dug up the earth to cover up their poo but upon watering and not detecting any pong, I ruled that out. The only explanation: my maid had dug up the moss, thinking that it was unwanted, and thrown it away. Why she would have done that after having worked for me for close to a year and not paying any attention to it whatsoever, is beyond my understanding.

When I called her, she confirmed the fact: she'd dug up the pot and thrown the disgusting brown stuff away. Whyyyyyyy???!!!!!

There is no help for it. It's time to go back to what I remember doing as a child, being dragged by my parents around KL city when there was still a racecourse at the current KLCC Twin Towers site. They were bonsai freaks; they'd bring me on their expeditions ot the many drains in and around KL, near the former race course and we'd have a ball digging up the lush green moss from the damp drains.

I think I'd find more than just moss in KL drains now. My uncle claims that his garden has an abundance of moss. I guess I'll find out after our reunion dinner this saturday when we head over and I go equipped with a little spade to transfer some moss to cover my poor naked, exposed bonsai base.

Pre-Valentine's Day Surprise

I'm hopeless at the romance stuff. There used to be a time when I'd handmake cards and write soppy, mushy loveletters. Key phrase here is "used to". These days my shows of affection include not burping too loudly when Rizal's around or not whining too much when I'm annoyed.

So as Valentine's Day rolled around the corner I vowed not to have to do the Valentine's Dinner circuit just because everyone charges exorbitant prices for a regular dinner packaged as a lover's dinner. I also conveniently forgot about getting Rizal a present because seriously, there really isn't much that he wants (other than his D&D books, of which I'm not sure which one). I expected no more from him.

Hmm...I underestimated my husband.

He presented me with a Crumpler 6 Million Dollar bag, in black for our Nikon D80 (which is currently unceremoniously sitting in one of the free canvas bags I picked up from a trade show). A friend had suggested a bright red (red, RED!!) but he picked black because he thought there'd be an issue with dirt and grime.

God bless my thoughtful husband.

Experiencing the growth spurt I never did during puberty

It's a good thing growth spurts only occur at certain specific times in your life: puberty and pregnancy. I never had one during puberty, having reached my height potential by 5' and stopped growing by the time I was 11.

The latter growth spurt, the one that happens during pregnancy, is actually quite frightening. At least, that's what I feel as I go to bed with my belly a certain size and then waking up 7 or 8 hours later to a different rounder, bigger size. I'm loathe to note that this is only Week 17 of my numbered weeks and already I'm wondering how I'm going to cope with anything bigger than a honeydew melon stuck between my pelvis and my chest. Suddenly those maternity pants I bought about a week or two ago don't seem so big anymore.

It suddenly dawned on me that my encounter with mild diarrhea yesterday might have been my body's way of preparing itself for the imminent swelling and taking up of valuable shelf space between the internal organs. It's like the uterus telling the intestines and bowels, "Hey, growing baby in here. Make space!"

But then again, it may have just been the rib-eye steak from Monday's dinner and the result of stuffing my face during lunch yesterday.

Who knows? I've got a ways to go and I'm not kidding when I say I feel more than a slight twinge of alarm at how I could possibly cope later on. And we're not even talking about labour yet.

An indication of our weakness?

The more I read about our country in alternative media (i.e. not sanctioned by the government or any other media that is not the local dailies), the more disillusioned I become about our future. And more specifically, my future here.

So, what did I learn today? Well, that our FDI lags those of our neighbours by light years behind. Here's a summary of the local region's 2006 FDI:

Vietnam : US$9.87 billion
Singapore : US$9.33 billion
Indonesia : US$5.71 billion
South Korea : US$5.11 billion
Phlippines : US$3.94 billion
Thailand : US$2.94 billion
Malaysia : US$1.44 billion

Source: LOCO Monitor


These are the hard facts despite the recent splash of media hype over our country's so-called economic strength.

I say it's time we brace ourselves.