the bottomsup blog

I didn’t just smile at this list I found in the back of my library book—I laughed out loud!

Alf and I discovered Basil Alcove the year we had Layla, and let’s just say we discovered real food there.

We’re both sentimental about this family-run eatery, it was our “everything” place and you’d find us there on date nights, nothing nights, friend nights, birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas. The Basil crew definitely got to see Layla grow up! If they were paying attention they might’ve caught us breaking up or making up, many times over. I guess Layla was the only one doing any growing up…

Alf found out recently that Basil Alcove will be shutting down in mid-Feb. If you’re in the area, stop by while you still have the chance. Try the Mushroom Bacon pasta, I was hooked on it for years!

* Basil Alcove is at 01-12 Fortune Centre (Middle Road).

p.s. If you’re not chatty and you’d like better service at your favourite restaurant or coffee joint, try this: Order the same thing in the same way, every single time. I think servers get a high from correctly predicting what you want; they’ll like you better for it (and you’ll like them) and you can work your way up to a friendship. It works for me!

With Layla being home all these years, we could always afford to do things sloooowwwwly. Now that she’s five, everything about her is laid-back. Even the way she talks, where words practically drift out of her mouth before fading away.

Layla’s week is now filled with school, ballet, swimming, and two hours of Chinese tutoring, and it seems we’re always chasing time getting ready for something or other. In school, both Layla and her teacher have told me that she’s usually the last kid to turn in her work.

We know she’s had plenty to get used to with her new routine, but it hasn’t stopped us from yelling for most of January to get her to speed up!

The teacher recommended that I use a timer, and I’ve just started setting time limits for her homework and her lunch. It’s definitely easier to ask her to dump her food when the alarm goes off than to plead, nag, and snap at her to eat just a bit more, and to hurry up with it.

We’re also introducing the sequel to her Happy Chart: The Speedy Chart. This time, she needs 15 smileys (for finishing her lunch in 30 minutes or less) to get her reward!

I know a lot of God-loving people who wouldn’t agree with this Christian mom. I’ve met them at work, at mom gatherings, in bible study.

They’ve never inspired me to find God for myself.

Do not be afraid of people who seem different than you, baby. Different always turns out to be an illusion. Look hard.

Among the many tips in The Happiness Project was one about not putting things aside for some vague perfect moment in the distant future.

Layla’s been asking to paint her wooden dress-up doll set for ages; it was a gift for her 5th birthday last August! I’d been saving it for when she got better at painting but who knows when that could be? And by then, staying in with me to paint dolls could’ve fallen off her list of fun things to do.

p.s. My verdict on The Happiness Project? I enjoyed the first couple of chapters but the ending chapters were harder to get through. I think the treatment on her web site is a better fit for her material: Short, snappy and with a much less prescriptive tone than in the book.

Layla was at her grandmother’s most of yesterday and today. It’s funny how a “break” to us now means managing one kid instead of two! I got up late, had a guilt-free nap, finished reading The Happiness Project, started on The Help, and watched Woody Allen’s Interiors with Z on my lap, so my little holiday wasn’t too shabby after all. Hope you’re all having a fab CNY weekend!

A friend mentioned that I should have an editorial line-up to organise my posts for the year, and I was thinking about it but wasn’t sure how to get started. So imagine my glee when I saw this on another of my favourite sites!

I’m still all over the place at the moment, with some ideas on Notepad and others in my head. But I’ve started to jot down some possible themes and directions in my sorely underused Moleskine, although I think a small ring binder file would be more appropriate for the long haul.

* Update: Our pinatas were a disaster, apparently! They started to smell like rotting meat! Pretty much like what happened here.

We met up with my friend E-lin and her son C to make pinatas today, just for fun! Here’s how we did it:

That’s all for now; we’ve left our almost-pinatas to dry. Next week (hopefully), we’ll be popping and removing the balloons and putting the finishing touches on the pinatas, as well as stuffing them with goodies. Not to mention letting the kids loose on them. We’re making Angry Birds by the way!

* Thanks again E-lin for having us over, and for all the prep and clean-up work! We had a great time!

The cool thing about hanging out with Ron is that I can say something random like “Hey let’s take a long walk” and he’ll say, “Sure, we haven’t done that before!”

Continue Reading »

While tinkering with my blog feed last week, I learned something about Google Reader: You can delete a post but once it’s been fed into the Reader it never disappears. You can edit posts and the changes will show up, but the Reader just doesn’t register deletes.

Today it occurred to me that I could read my old blog feeds on Google Reader even if I’d deleted entire blogs years ago, and that’s what I spent the afternoon doing! I retrieved two feeds dating from ’06 to ’08, and boy was I in a different place back when I was 29 going on 30. I wasn’t speaking to my parents, I didn’t have a parenting network, Alf and I had issues, I had issues… It was a terribly lonely time. I never thought I’d enjoy reliving that period, but it turned out to be fun.

Here are some highlights from those old blogs… Continue Reading »