Boatride back home at sunset in the harbor.
I protect that which matters most.
What matters most for me?
My girls.
The sun rises and sets with them.
Peace be with you,
Eunike
Fool!
This guy is very very stupid. I thought he had never come school. so he's stupid like this. Do you also think like me?
car hit-plane???
Stupid car crashed into a plane,How could this have happened? Very strange, or indeed just who stupid human hahaha
look at behind the car
I didn't hit anything. No damage to the truck or plastic. It did snow last week but it got up to 50F today. So if it was ice it would have melted. It feels like there is something shoved up under the plastic. Any ideas about what this might be and how to fix it?
Snow mold shaped like a car???
A car like this occurs approximately where? and when? hahaha,the owner no matter until his car buried in snow
Showing posts with label Stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stories. Show all posts
What matters most
Boatride back home at sunset in the harbor.
I protect that which matters most.
What matters most for me?
My girls.
The sun rises and sets with them.
Peace be with you,
Eunike
Starved in a Foreign Land
In this week I've been abroad, I have been periodically - actually, daily - craving
something besides Korean food. Although I reserve breakfast for my daily bread, rice , and cereal, which I've been eating since as long as I can remember, lunch and dinner are almost always Korean affairs. Of course, we eat pizza outside once in awhile, but it bears almost no resemblance to its American progenitor. I crave the salt and grease of a patriotism-inducing pepperoni-and-sausage pizza. Ironically, this situation inversely mirrors the one I was in while backpacking through Singapore. Back then, I craved the spicy richness of Korean food, so you can imagine my ecstatic surprise when I found an Italian market that had Shin Ramen. It's times like this when I realize just how Indonesia I am and need variety. God bless( food)!
KOREA
anyang hasio! yeah. 5 days vacation in korea was a trip to remember, in fact one of the best trip we've had. fffuuuuhh glad to be home, close to friends! but its back to normal whether, hot. xx syoiik. :P and it was hell freakin cold there. Anywayyy *meen's way* hehe meen was our korean tour guide, a very cute and very nice korean citizen. we arrived there early in the morning and we had to wait for meen for about an hour because she kinda messed up the time a little, so we waited for her at the airport and there u know, theres this kind of police i think.. they wear all black with their rifle and black sunglasses. exactly like the one in the drama kan.. and silly little me, spontaneously made some stupid gun shot action when they were right behind me, and they saw me..! so they just stare at me when they passed by.. and i smiled at them! and thank god, the gentleman smiled back :P fuuh. first korean lunch wasnt so pleasing, obviously the restaurant smelled so ikan-ish. but what to do, still had to eat my lunch. before the day end, we went to a little street where winter sonata was shot, and when i came out from one of the shop, i heard someone saying 'hello hello' so i turned around and didnt bother, she keeps on calling so i turned back again, and then she asked , where we're from. tu jeee. another friendly korean citizen because u know, korean ppl are quite shy with foreigners, thats what meen says la.the 2nd day was the climax of the tour. skiing! 1st and hopefully not my last time. my 1st attempt was infact good, i did not fall! hehe adam too was really great, i think he looked the part most. very smart. i cant post any pic now cuz havent upload em. i will post later. anyhow we ski at the beginners zone je la. bossaan. i wanted to go a little higher but my dad didnt wanna take me because he cant ski that well! ahaha where by i can. lol =p so xpela. show some mercy.basically we spend the whole day at the ski world, but at night we went to the top of the cliff and the temperature was as low as -4 degree and i was kinda shaking gak ah and i took a picture with a korean guy. x tau malu*the rest of the day was fun! i think i shouldnt elaborate because then i dont know when will it end la. ouuhh yeahh.. the food, they have this one specialty, they have it everywhere.. its called 'kimchi' some kind of a spicy cabbage, and i kinda like it. and theres this day where we had lunch the tradition korean style, its in a metal Tupperware. something like that la. they call it 'lunch box' kot and theres only rice, egg, and kimci in it. we have to shake it so that it mix well before havin it. i remembered qasim told me bout this dish where he said ' x lalu makan'. but it turns out good for me, i even finished it. and for that matter, Qasim said im weird, dier yg weird. for a matter of fact, im unique not weird ! sengal nye budak.after the 2nd day, we did the typical touring la. goin around the city, museum, shopping n all. mama got herself a handbag and fazril! i said 'no thanks' to my mom when she asked if i wanted to buy. HAAA! cun gile kan. so i end up buying accessories and souvenirs for friends, that all.o and a necklace. there was no line for any of our phone line accept for 3G so handphone was off all the time and when i reached malaysia, i couldnt receive any msg for the past 5 days. i wasn't really tired when i reach here because i slept in the plane. ouh and brought home flu and cough with me, a souvenirs for myself from korea. mcm TOOT. im still havin em rite now. haih. and then later that night i accidentally had a long phone call with qasim. sengal nye qasim. thats all la, kinda lazy to write dah! 'kamsa hamida!'
ghosts
While in the drop off lane yesterday morning, Chrissa started telling us about what they'd done Monday on the field we were inching past. She and her friends had told scary stories and someone had said there was a ghost at the gym next to the field.
I reminded him that God is stronger than any ghosts or spirits, and he should remember that if he got scared. But I also assured him that there wasn't a ghost at school and nothing would bother him. Then he said, "You can be friends with ghosts." I let him know I didn't want him being friends with any ghosts.
Last night he lingered on my bed after story time and prayers, too scared to go to bed even though he rooms with his sister. I prayed one more time, specifically about his fears, and he went off to bed happily.
Joseph said that someone had told him there was a ghost at their school, as well. He sounded worried, and the night before had woken up from a scary dream involving ghosts. Chrissa said there isn't any such thing as ghosts, but there are spirits.
I reminded him that God is stronger than any ghosts or spirits, and he should remember that if he got scared. But I also assured him that there wasn't a ghost at school and nothing would bother him. Then he said, "You can be friends with ghosts." I let him know I didn't want him being friends with any ghosts.
Last night he lingered on my bed after story time and prayers, too scared to go to bed even though he rooms with his sister. I prayed one more time, specifically about his fears, and he went off to bed happily.
Lights, tinsel and chocolate what??? (story only artificial, not true)
A few of my acquaintances have suggested that, as a heathen, I have
no place celebrating Christmas and, probably because its expected of me,
I usually ramble on about how the intrusion of religion into a long
established orgy of consumption and consumerism does indeed threaten to
water down its magic.
Be that as it may, we like Christmas round here and we always put decorations up. We're almost always late with this, and so a week or so before the big day I'll be dispatched to the attic with a flaming torch and a ball of string to ensure I can find my way back to collect the series of mouldering cardboard boxes in which we have stored a motley collection of tinsel and baubles collected over a period of a number of years. I'll also bring down the lights, and the tree. Its an artificial tree, by the way, we don't actually have pine plantation in the loft, though I have found ivy forcing its way inside in the past. Shame it wasn't holly really.
Those lights... oh how glad I am that LEDs have taken the place of those malicious little filament bulbs we used to have. It was inevitable, wasn't it, that the first time I plugged in the string of 52,000 bulbs each year I'd be rewarded with... nothing. One of the evil little buggers would have blown during the eleven and a half months during which they had absolutely nothing to do but sit there. Then I'd spend two hours searching for your spares - which always turned out to be at the back of a cutlery drawer which I'd already searched three times, lacerating myself badly in the process. Finally, I'd spend what felt like a lifetime swapping each bulb in the string for a new one until I found the culprit before, with bleeding fingers and terminal cramp, I could move on to erecting the tree itself.
Our tree has a 'base' which despite its innocuous appearance, has clearly been constructed from a parts left over after an explosion in a garden shears and spring factory. It has also, at some point, been gifted with a vicious personality, presumably by a disgruntled voodoo practitioner. One wrong move, one lapse in concentration, and I'm off to casualty with a bag full of fingers.
Finally, the tree's up, and the lights are on. Now for the tinsel. Which would, in times past, be on the dog. Our tree is 5 feet tall and, unsurprisingly perhaps, green. Our dog is three feet tall, near enough, and yellow. How the kids could mistake the one for the other, without fail, every year, is beyond me. But they managed. The thing is, the dog seemed to like being decorated and would quite strenuously resist any efforts to untangle him from his shiny accessories.
Finally, it would be bauble time. Again, there is much to be thankful for now that these are made of plastic. Until recently these would be little balls of blown glass, one of which would invariably escape only to be trodden on almost immediately with predictable and painful consequences.
So there I'd sit, utterly exhausted, sadly trying to pick tiny shards of broken ornamental glass from the sole of my foot with my teeth - because my right hand would be a mass of bandages under which the fingers had been superglued back on by a nurse, and my left had swollen to twice it's size having been bitten by a disgruntled golden retriever.
Eventually, it'd all be done, and be time for my reward - a dip into the brightly coloured tin of chocolates that I brought home from the supermarket not two hours previously. This is where I'd discover that the kids, immediately after their adventures in canine tinsel festoonery, had eaten every last bloody chocolate in the house, and the exciting rattle in the tin would be explained by the fact that they'd thrown all of the wrappers back in, along with a solitary half eaten coffee/butterscotch surprise, which would have been weighed, measured, licked and found wanting.
But this is all in the past. The LED lights don't go out, except as a feature of the exciting electronic sequence they're programmed with. Age and familiarity has tamed the tree base to the point where I'm lucky to get it to grip the tree itself, and we have three dogs - too much trouble for the kids to decorate them, so they don't bother. They still eat all of the sweets, though.
Except I think we may have found a solution to that last problem in the shape of one miraculous box of choccies given to Mrs Grumbler by her sister. That's right - a collection of tasty soft centres; dark, milk and white chocolate, all lovingly filled with creamy ganache by a lady called Ann Summers, and totally impervious to the kids. The simple fact is that each of these delicate little treats is shaped like a little "meat and two veg". Yup, confectioners "wedding tackle". The embodiment of the "wife's best friend" in, er, "the wife's best friend".
So, I can guarantee the availability of chocolate at all times next Christmas by the simple expedient of buying a box or two of chocolate Willies. They join Brussels Sprouts on the very small list of things my kids wont eat..
Thing is, though, neither will I...
Be that as it may, we like Christmas round here and we always put decorations up. We're almost always late with this, and so a week or so before the big day I'll be dispatched to the attic with a flaming torch and a ball of string to ensure I can find my way back to collect the series of mouldering cardboard boxes in which we have stored a motley collection of tinsel and baubles collected over a period of a number of years. I'll also bring down the lights, and the tree. Its an artificial tree, by the way, we don't actually have pine plantation in the loft, though I have found ivy forcing its way inside in the past. Shame it wasn't holly really.
Those lights... oh how glad I am that LEDs have taken the place of those malicious little filament bulbs we used to have. It was inevitable, wasn't it, that the first time I plugged in the string of 52,000 bulbs each year I'd be rewarded with... nothing. One of the evil little buggers would have blown during the eleven and a half months during which they had absolutely nothing to do but sit there. Then I'd spend two hours searching for your spares - which always turned out to be at the back of a cutlery drawer which I'd already searched three times, lacerating myself badly in the process. Finally, I'd spend what felt like a lifetime swapping each bulb in the string for a new one until I found the culprit before, with bleeding fingers and terminal cramp, I could move on to erecting the tree itself.
Our tree has a 'base' which despite its innocuous appearance, has clearly been constructed from a parts left over after an explosion in a garden shears and spring factory. It has also, at some point, been gifted with a vicious personality, presumably by a disgruntled voodoo practitioner. One wrong move, one lapse in concentration, and I'm off to casualty with a bag full of fingers.
Finally, the tree's up, and the lights are on. Now for the tinsel. Which would, in times past, be on the dog. Our tree is 5 feet tall and, unsurprisingly perhaps, green. Our dog is three feet tall, near enough, and yellow. How the kids could mistake the one for the other, without fail, every year, is beyond me. But they managed. The thing is, the dog seemed to like being decorated and would quite strenuously resist any efforts to untangle him from his shiny accessories.
Finally, it would be bauble time. Again, there is much to be thankful for now that these are made of plastic. Until recently these would be little balls of blown glass, one of which would invariably escape only to be trodden on almost immediately with predictable and painful consequences.
So there I'd sit, utterly exhausted, sadly trying to pick tiny shards of broken ornamental glass from the sole of my foot with my teeth - because my right hand would be a mass of bandages under which the fingers had been superglued back on by a nurse, and my left had swollen to twice it's size having been bitten by a disgruntled golden retriever.
Eventually, it'd all be done, and be time for my reward - a dip into the brightly coloured tin of chocolates that I brought home from the supermarket not two hours previously. This is where I'd discover that the kids, immediately after their adventures in canine tinsel festoonery, had eaten every last bloody chocolate in the house, and the exciting rattle in the tin would be explained by the fact that they'd thrown all of the wrappers back in, along with a solitary half eaten coffee/butterscotch surprise, which would have been weighed, measured, licked and found wanting.
But this is all in the past. The LED lights don't go out, except as a feature of the exciting electronic sequence they're programmed with. Age and familiarity has tamed the tree base to the point where I'm lucky to get it to grip the tree itself, and we have three dogs - too much trouble for the kids to decorate them, so they don't bother. They still eat all of the sweets, though.
Except I think we may have found a solution to that last problem in the shape of one miraculous box of choccies given to Mrs Grumbler by her sister. That's right - a collection of tasty soft centres; dark, milk and white chocolate, all lovingly filled with creamy ganache by a lady called Ann Summers, and totally impervious to the kids. The simple fact is that each of these delicate little treats is shaped like a little "meat and two veg". Yup, confectioners "wedding tackle". The embodiment of the "wife's best friend" in, er, "the wife's best friend".
So, I can guarantee the availability of chocolate at all times next Christmas by the simple expedient of buying a box or two of chocolate Willies. They join Brussels Sprouts on the very small list of things my kids wont eat..
Thing is, though, neither will I...
Seagull
When I was at the beach over Thanksgiving, my Boyfriend and I enjoyed a morning of walking on and around Kuta Beach. I ran into this very vain seagull there. I love when impromptu photo shoots happen when you least expect it. This is what happened with this guy.
He was pearched on a pole and everytime I got close to him, he would jump to the next pole about 3 feet away. He was completely not scared and he had no desire to fly away. So I just kept walking up to him and he kept jumping back and forth between poles.
I could only take one photo each time he jumped. It was a crap shoot as to what I would get. There was no time to frame the shot or to think at all. I just kept clicking.
The very top shot is the money shot. I love it so very much. But I had to take many, many pictures to get that one shot. But that was more than half of the fun. I loved hanging with this very vain guy and the experience of trying to catch him in flight.
Looking through all of the outtakes was great fun. I've posted a few of my favorites. Sometimes the not so perfect pictures are pretty darn great too.
Below is my guy looking oh so very cool. He was still there when I walked away. I don't think he was ready to end the photo shoot.
The Hammer People
There are many days that for one reason or another, I wake up somewhere in my sleep cycle where I am not meant to, and the result is a staggering, drooling idiot who can’t remember how to make coffee. S and I have a code name for these days: “Hammer People”. Implied in this phrase is the fact that, like elves or ninjas, there is a clandestine group of villains that visit us during the night and beat us with hammers. These are hammers of the mental variety, obviously, or else we would wake up during their attack. Duh.
I’m sure you have had a similar group visit you from time to time.
If the only outcome from being attacked by the hammer people was that we became temporarily dopey, that would be fine. Unfortunately though, sometimes the hammer people can set the tone for my day if I let them. In addition to the general anesthesia that they bring, they can also pump a ton of cranky into my veins which, believe me, is no good for me or anybody around me.
My less-than-optimal mental states, I have learned, have everything to do with projecting into the future or dwelling in the past, as we’ve spoken about many times here before. When I wake up from a hammer attack, I am particularly vulnerable (see drooling idiot sentence above). I’m both dopey and sort of neutral, which means my mind is free to push me around and start projecting images about how bad my day is going to be or how bad yesterday or a day ten years ago was. I am like a mental marionette, subject to the whims of my overactive imagination that dances me further and further from the present.
My only recourse is to take notice of my “strings” and cut them, one by one, by returning to my body, noticing my breath, and being mindful of all the sensations I’m feeling in the present. How does the floor feel under my feet? Am I warm or cold? Can I feel my breath rise and fall? What noises can I hear? Do I have any soreness or other sensations? By asking these questions, I bring my mind back, and back, and back to the body, until I’m in the present again and I have stopped projecting myself into false futures and distant pasts.
Most of you know that I have a morning routine that includes meditation on different things and a clarifying of my intentions for the day. The problem with days where, upon waking, I immediately get thrown into the spin cycle of time, is that they will often preoccupy me to the point where I will skip the rest of my routine and just fling myself into my day, having not prepared myself at all for engaging with anyone. I don’t think that I have to tell you that these days are never my best. Anytime I set myself up for that much vulnerability, and by that I mean the negative sort, I’m in trouble.
It’s heartening to know that there’s a way to back out of crankiness, though. Even if I throw myself into my day without having an intention of mindfulness, I can usually pull myself back from the edge if I can diagnose the problem and begin treatment. It’s another one of those things that is so simple, but so hard to remember for some reason. Perhaps it’s because when I’m all wound up, my mind is rebelling against any kind of quiet or reflective activity. Once it starts racing, it doesn’t want to stop. Also, speed can be fun for awhile…until the wheels come off, that is.
Better a judicious application of the braking system that slows things down and brings me back to mindfulness, I think. Or else the hammer people are in danger of winning…and nobody wants that.
Painting
I lament the loss of my income sometimes. Usually at the beginning of the month when most of our bills are due. And I think about not eating out. Or not getting the boots that I want. And then I pick up the wee one from school, and we leisurely paint and make sea serpants out of leftover holiday chocolates, and we giggle over her ridiculous rules (you can't put red and black markers together because they like each other!). And I take one million pictures. And I smile. Because I never had time to do this before. And it is worth more to me than those new boots.
Dear santa
The girls wrote their letters to Santa this morning. The tweenager does not believe in him, of course. She just knows that if she says really sweet things about all his "hard work" and how much she "appreciates" him (and once again reminds him that the only thing she wants for Christmas is a cell phone) that maybe when she wakes up on the morning of the 25th, she'll find that elusive gift under the tree. The present that her parents have sworn she can't have. The only thing she wants.
The wee one is in full Santa mode. She's been dissecting the whole magic thing for about a week now. How does he know where everyone lives? He used to use Google Maps when he was first Santa, but now he's so powerful that he just knows. What does he do when he can't make a present? Why, he just buys it at the store. With the money that he keeps in his beard. (Apparently he keeps candy canes in there, too, in case you were wondering). Her Christmas letters each year thinly mask her unspoken apprehension about what it means for a man (with big, fat and jolly Ho Ho Hos) to come into our house in the middle of the night. However good his intentions might be, there is always a chance that he might break something. Or (gods forbid) wake the dogs. So she is always sure to warn him to be quiet. And careful.
I don't have much on my Christmas list this year. Santa already brought me the one thing I was pining for (a new camera!). But here is my letter.
Dear Santa:
Thank you for stopping by our peaceful and quiet house this holiday season. I appreciate that you got all of your shopping and wrapping done early and that most of the gifts that you are giving were made and purchased locally. Thank you for giving me two children that understand that, while presents are awesome, Christmas is a holiday to celebrate the people we love. Paid days off to sleep in and play and raise a glass to each other. Thank you for giving me a husband that believes in me, totally and unconditionally, and who proves to me, year after year, that I was lucky to find my soul mate so early in this life. Thank you for giving me a little sister who is an incredible addition to our Portland existence. Who has grown so, so much in the last year. And who I love to hang out with. Thank you for bringing the in-laws to celebrate the season with us. And thank you for making them such lovely house guests. Thank you for my two ridiculous little dogs (please don't wake them up). And thank you for all of the amazing people, chosen family and blood relations, that serve to enrich our lives. Have a cookie. And please don't break anything.
Love,
Olive.
At the pool
I laughed in sorrow and pleasure at the pool to see my friends go away from my house after we finished work and play.
We had pictures taken together, swim together, laugh together and all that is over.
See the sweat that has been out, and it was not made aware (you can feel it yourself).
and I smile, could leave my bad habits
the perfect cinnamon roll
#9 on the list
I don't usually tackle baking when yeast is involved. I don't have the patience to roll and wait and roll and wait some more. Or to get up before dawn to make something for us to eat at 9:00 on a Sunday. But, once I decided that it was okay for us to have cinnamon roles for lunch today, I braved this fantastic recipe from smitten kitchen. Thanks, Jessica! I can honestly say that I have baked the perfect cinnamon roll.
