A pretty wonderful Mother's Day

I love my mum's chocolate chip cookies. My daughter likes to be allowed to bake. Yesterday on Mother's Day, these 2 combined into one of those loathed corporate lingo: SYNERGY My mum mixed the cookie dough and my daughter was put in charge of the baking - both preferred their respective tasks as my mum finds the repetitive scooping out, baking and cooling of cookies, tedious.

My son and I were at the delightful end of the assembly line - the eating of hot gooey chocolatey cookies. Bliss bliss bliss.

With our bellies stuffed, we proceeded to take a 2 hour nap. A pretty awesome Mother's Day! Love you Mak. Love you my kiddies.

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I haven't been on a date with my favourite girl in months! As a surprise for her and early birthday treat for myself, I picked her up from school and we went to watch "The Mermaid" - movie tak payah pikir and can just laugh at the lawak bodohs. We both love watching and rewatching Kungfu Hustle and enjoyed this latest movie.

Afterwards we had her favourite Hot & Roll wrap thingy

And took cheesy photos. Bliss.

💟

Love

To me, this is what love looks like. I have known her for more than half my life. One of my most treasured gifts is a handmade pop-up card from her which I still have to this day, given when I was at a really low point in my life. She cheers me up like nobody else can. She is an amazing daughter and mother. And of course the most amazing friend. I am so very blessed to have her as my friend. Love you, dear.

Kids in their Lalaland

My 5 year old ties an orange ribbon around his waist and wears a yellow hooded mask. He tucks his Transformer foam sword into the back of his shirt and jumps and leaps around my room pretending to be a ninja. Earlier this morning he and his sister set up their three different play tents and aligned the openings so that collectively they became a multi-roomed mega tent. I love watching my children use their imagination to build their own worlds and play together. It is the happiest part of my day. It is the happiest part of my life.

My favourite ninja

2am ramblings

Woah...poor blog, so dusty and unused. Can't believe last entry was last year. Less than a week to 40. Woohoohoo! Can't wait for this long holiday weekend. Absolutely nothing planned. Just hanging out at home. Maybe do laundry. Loll about and read in bed. Bliss bliss. Have about 7 to 8 books bought which I haven't read yet including Above (looking forward to reading this abduction story), Us, Gone Girl - both seem to be marriage gone wrong stories - have watched the Gone Girl movie, loved it, mostly because of the delicious Rosamund Pike, And the Mountains Echoed which I feel I have to conserve emotional energy for as the previous books The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by the same author drained me emotionally, though I loved both books, I cannot bear to reread them as I felt stabbed in the heart, especially when reading the latter one. Too heart wrenching. Also bought The Museum of Innocence and My Name is Red, both of which I would like to read from beginning to end in one sitting (which I can't do on a normal work week as have to get up early the next day) so yeah, am really looking forward to this public holiday weekend. Note to self of the future: "Don't waste this weekend in front of the tv watching crap!" Happy times, simple pleasures. On a side note, I find as I get older, I'm enjoying chocolates less...how strange that is given my addiction to it all this while. A Hershey bar previously would not have even made it to the fridge before being stuffed in my face in its entirety in one go...and yet now, there is a half consumed bar which has survived almost 3 weeks in the fridge ...how can that possibly be? Have I suddenly grown up now that I am reaching 40, God willing...Naaah...that can't be it. Side side note - bought a 40th birthday present for myself - Bryan Adams compilation of hits CD ("Summer of 69 still makes me feel young, especially while singing to it off key in the car) & Sade, best of CD - still haunted by the tune of By Your Side. Do people even buy CDs anymore? Maybe just old farts like me. I just like listening to familiar music while driving.

Monday night ramblings

Getting in one of my depressed moods,it usually wears off in a few days so I just have to ride it out. These past few days I just feel a bit pulled down by the state of things, of costs getting higher, too high for my unstable income to catch up with, by worries that my children's future will be that of similarly and seemingly endlessly working just to fund the necessities, of politics or rather politicians sounding more stupid and dangerous by the day..it almost makes me believe in what the doomsday preppers are doing i.e. getting prepared. I don't know if it's my mood ranting or perhaps some makcik sixth sense kicking in but I feel the way forward is to have skills. I'm trying to steer the kids to hopefully have useful skills that they can put to practical use in the future be it cooking or mechanical or handy man skills (as an unskilled person, I obviously don't even know the proper words for it) or teaching or sewing or whatever, whatever they can use to survive or even better earn a living from instead of just some office job without substance that's not going to help them if this whole system or environment or the world even (getting moody also gets me dramatic..ok, more dramatic than usual) goes to shit. I don't know what the future is going to hold, just some days it doesn't look pretty. I am even thinking it might be high time for me to learn about making bread from scratch...and if that isn't a sign of things going pear shaped,I don't know what is..have just googled about how to make naan bread from scratch...and even thinking about trying it out this weekend. Sometimes I scare myself.

Malas nak baca paper, fed up with haters, nyampah dgn politicians and other rants and ramblings

There seems to be a lot of stupid things happening lately each time I read the news:- -After the consecutive price hikes, the whole kangkung fiasco (all that good money spent on public relations gone down the drain...) -Pigs' faces getting blacked out (Goodness, the pig is one of Allah swt's creation, created among other things to consume the filth on Noah's Ark - or so I've been taught. Because of its unsanitary diet - (which is the role it plays in this world, God knows shit happens and someone's got to clean it up, ok digressing...) - it is therefore prohibited to eat its flesh. If you touch it, you have to properly wash the part of your body that touched it. Not once have I ever learned it was haram to see a pig! Come on lah, I am not offended at all by the sight of one of God's creatures - some humans maybe, but never animals; -And now the latest news about monetary reward being offered for slapping a female politician. Really? I cannot claim to be a good Muslim, I am a sinner, we're all sinners, aren't we? So I think I'm not trying to be holier than thou when I ask this - "What would our prophet, Nabi Muhammad s.a.w. say if he saw the people with the banners offering money to anyone who slapped the said politician? What would his reaction be to the poster of the said politician's head on a chicken's body (betul ke ni - I was too fed up to really analyse the animal body being used in the poster). Do you - people carrying the poster, people who created and printed the poster, people chanting what the poster offered - think Rasulullah s.a.w. would be pleased? Aren't we better than this? Aren't we supposed to be better than this? If we are so worried about people of other faith trying to undermine our faith, our akidah, surely the best "revenge" would be to strengthen our faith, by learning more about the beauty and meaning of the words of Quran and the context in which they were revealed, the stories of our beloved Prophet and how he lived his life, his kindness, the hardships he faced and how he dealt with them, etc. He had enemies, including members of his family but I don't remember ever learning about him offering rewards for people to harm them. -I think what has been pissing me off most lately is the energy being poured - in the name of religion - into various issues allegedly attacking or prejudicing our faith. How wonderful would it be to see that same force of energy being channelled into making sure nafkah anak was being paid consistently and sufficiently especially in post-divorce cases; how great would it be to see the same energy being used to make sure zakat payments were paid to those entitled to receive them without making them have to go look for the pusat zakat and then once they've gotten there, having to go through so much red tape and procedures to beg for something they are entitled to. Sadly, in my line of work, I hear so many times about how single mothers have to keep going to court to get their errant ex-spouses to pay their own children's nafkah, how people in need have given up trying to get any help from pusat zakat. Where are the banners and posters for these real issues? Ok penat membebel...