7 Years Ago

7 years ago today, hubs & I started dating. It's an anniversary that I hold more dear than our wedding anniversary. It was a new beginning, my 1st relationship after my divorce. New relationships always start out with trepidation. You're learning about each other, wondering what the future holds.

I had an early finish today & we went out to swap our empty gas canister for a full 1. On the drive out, I teasingly asked, "Aren't you glad that you started a relationship with me 7 years ago?" There're no perfect marriages. We quarrel, sometimes really badly. We have good times too. We're such opposites. He doesn't think much of being politically correct. I prefer to be nice. But on the other hand, it'll only mean that he won't pretend to like you but secretly curse you in his heart. At the same time, we're so similar. Our love for food, our love for travels, our mentality towards marriage & finance.

I still send him off to work with a hug & kiss. He still greets me with the same when I get home from work. We irritated each other to no end. In fact, we all have nicknames. It started with Ton Ton. He has always been possessive & somewhat territorial. If he's in the bedroom, he doesn't allow Basil in. Similarly, if he's already on the sofa, he'll growl & bark at Basil if he attempts to jump up. But if it was the other way round, he'll just step all over Basil before planting his ass on Basil's head. So I called him the "big fat bully". Basil is no push over either. He'll push Ton Ton out of the way while Ton Ton is receiving scratchies from hubs so that he can take Ton Ton's place to be scratched. Hubs came up with this new nicknames for all of us. Ton Ton, the small (referring to size) bully. Basil, the big bully. He, the big fat bully & finally me, the house bully, becoz I bully all of them. That cracked me up good.

It scares me to think of the many couples who stay together without love between them & the possibility that we can be 1 of them. I'm thankful for the painful divorce I went through. Pain is a good teacher. Hopefully, I'm a good student.

Driving Incident

Oh dear. Nope, nobody crashed into my car. But people who've crashed into me were way nicer than this man who didn't. I really do wish public transport is an option for me. It is what it is & I'll try to keep as safe as I can.

I was driving to work yesterday morning & was approaching the city when it happened. There're 2 lanes in the direction I was travelling in & I was in the left like I always do as I believe in keeping left. This Hyundai on the right lane drifted past the lane divider without any signals on. I have no idea if he was trying to change lane without signalling or he wasn't paying attention & had just drifted out of his lane. Naturally, I slowed down becoz if I were to proceed & he really came into my lane, he would have crashed into me. It wasn't even a hard brake, nowhere near qualifying as e-brake. I think I lost about 10 km/hr in speed. This Hyundai probably realised that he was 1/3 into my lane & went back into his own lane.

Crisis adverted. Then I noticed this truck behind who continuously high beamed me non stop for perhaps 10 seconds. I check my mirrors rather frequently but the last time I checked, this truck wasn't behind me. I probably was also focused on slowing the car down enough to avoid the Hyundai coming from my right to be checking my rear mirror in the seconds prior to that. I ignored him. The left lane that I was on became the right lane somewhere further down. That was when I noticed the truck driver had cut into the left lane. He was held back by several slower moving cars & bus & we probably traveled another 2 km or so. About 100 m from the right turn into Vincent St on Fitzgerald, he finally caught up to me, flicked me the middle finger & drove off, cutting back into the right lane several cars down to make the right turn onto Vincent. That was a lot of trouble just so he could give me the finger considering that we were only 100 m from his turn.

I cannot say I know exactly what happened but he probably was following too closely behind me when I had to slow down for the drifting Hyundai. Maybe he thought I was braking on purpose to deter him from tailgating like some people do. I think this is probably the most possible scenario. I knew it wasn't my fault. I was just trying to avoid collision from the Hyundai. But the rest of my day, I felt absolutely shitty.

When I was safely parked at work, I texted hubs that someone gave me the finger on the way to work. He immediately texted back saying he knew it wasn't my fault becoz I always drive safe & I don't speed. That was even before I told him what had transpired. He's not siding me becoz I'm his wife. He's ever told me off very harshly when I was the 1 at fault. He told me that he meets these kind of drivers all the time on the road & not to be affected by them. But even till now, I still feel like shit. I'm not angry, just really upset & I don't even know why. Too sensitive for my own good.

What do people get out of being mean & nasty? Hubs showed me this quote he came across on FB. "There are many nice people. If you can't find one, be one." It's a great quote. It's something I'm striving towards too. Now I can only let time lift up my spirits & confidence again.

Midland Farmers' Market

In case you're wondering what am I doing on a Monday morning blogging away while I'm supposed to be working, I have the day off. (Surgeon is away, no list for the entire day.) I've just returned home from my car servicing which is 500 km overdue. It's actually quite hard to estimate when I'll hit the 20000 km mark with unscheduled pick ups & drop offs. Even harder when I can only book in on a day off. It always feels so amazing driving the car that had just been serviced. It handles better, the car is more responsive & as a bonus, it gets a complimentary wash & vacuum. If I'm excited about the wash & vacuum, it can only mean how severely the hygiene part of the car has been neglected. Lol. 

So. My colleague was telling me about her weekly trips to the farmers' market in Stirling, where she lives. It piqued my interest enough to try to find 1 near me which I did. Midland Farmers' Market opens every Sunday from 7 am to 2 pm. Ordinarily, I would have preferred to go early in the morning to avoid the crowd & to avoid the midday sun. But I had yoga & I didn't want to wait another week (coz next weekend's already packed to the brim again). By the time we got there at 11.50 am, most of the crowd if any, were gone. We were able to get a parking lot easily & we didn't have to elbow throngs of people out of the way (just kidding, I don't elbow people). 

1st, we walked through to the end of the market for a quick browse. I quickly identified the stall that received good reviews for its Dark Chocolate Salted Caramel Cake on FB. We got to chatting with the stall owner, Paul & he mentioned that it was hard to get right as the different ingredients cook at different times. So the honey would be burnt by the time the rest of the cake is ready. It took him a while to perfect the recipe & he now supplies various cafes & restaurants in Perth. I got 1 slice of the cake while hubs got a slice of banana bread for $9. Even hubs agreed that the cake's pretty decent. It was a little bit too sweet for me but probably will do very well with a nice cup of tea. Here's a picture of Paul with his award winning cake, photo courtesy of MFM's FB page. 

Next, we stopped at John's artisan bread stall. That late in the day, the popular choices, namely his White Sourdough & Pumpkin Loaf were all sold out. But we did get the Potato Loaf which according to my palate is just amazing. We haven't cut into the 2nd loaf which is the Olive Sourdough but I can just imagine it lightly toasted & well buttered. Yum. The breads were going for $6 a loaf but he sold the 2 loaves to us for $10 being that late into the day. 

There were many stalls selling fruits & vegetables. Some of the stalls are big, have huge varieties & have large trucks used to transport the produce parked right behind. But 1 make shift stall caught my eye. 2 elderly men were sitting on their empty crates watching everybody pass them by. They aren't the cheapest & they had about only 5 types of produce but we both felt we should buy from them. So we got a kilo of fresh broad beans, 3 onions & 3 garlic bulbs from them. The man who served us was a bit hunched over & he wasn't walking super well as he moved about weighing our selection. They were definitely more expensive but in life, there are more important things than money. I felt great buying from them & hats off to hardworking, independent seniors.

I turned 1 onion, 3 garlic cloves & the entire batch of broad beans into a beef curry, served with sliced potato bread for dinner. That was how we spent our Sunday. Hope you've all had an enjoyable weekend too! ;)

Our loot from the MFM. Total damage: $35 including the cake & banana bread.

De-podded fresh broad beans.

Beef curry with broad beans & potato bread.

Beautiful Positivity

There's too much negativity in this world to the point where positivity is quite a rare commodity. So I'm going to strive my best to post happy thoughts, more encouragement, less disheartening words. Ultimately, just remember that you alone hold the power of change, of courage & nobody can take that away from you. Allow yourself to dream. Allow yourself to hope. Set yourself on the path you want to be on & don't overthink it. This applies to everything in life. Above it all, always do good. Peace.

The Little Things

This post was in my draft box from the 24th Sept 2016. It was from the weekend that we went camping in Yallingup. 

There are many little things in my life that I don't really take much notice of. They're always there, sometimes little nuisances, sometimes little pleasures. Hubs parked the car as usual. I got out to open the door as usual. I was expecting excited faces, whining & scratching at the door, like they always do. Like they've not seen me in ages. Like they can't wait for me to get through the door. I was at the bottom of the stairs but there was nobody. In that split second, I remembered that we've just came home from dropping the dogs at the boarder's.

We had dinner while watching Supernatural as usual. Nobody to attempt sniffing at our food. Nobody fighting over who gets to lie on my lap. No Tonz who will not hesitate to step all over Basil & plant his ass in Basil's face. No whining as they wait for me to get their dinner ready.

Bed time. No Tonz who always beat me racing to the bed. Nobody to burrow into the little crook in the back of my slightly bent knees as I slept on my side. No Basil waking me at least twice in the night when he gets up to scratch himself or gets up to walk about before lying back down.

Too empty. Too quiet. Too unaccustomed not having the boys around. I missed them already & I haven't even left for our camping trip. We're such an integral part of each other's lives that being apart is hard. 

More Time Yet Less Time

I received an email notification last week that Teacher had left a comment on 1 of my previous post. It's only today when I've only got a morning list did I finally have time to log in. I worked super long hours in Sg. Yet somehow, I've always had time for FB. Yes, I commute to work by bus but I spent both trips per day snoozing on the bus becoz sleep was such a rare commodity back then. My work hours are much shorter here. On a busy fortnight, I'll clock an average of 85 hours which is about 10 hours of overtime (since I'm to work a minimum of 75 hours a fortnight). That is like normal hours in Sg, excluding overtime (42 hours week x 2).

These days, I hardly have time for FB. Sure, I'll open up the app on my phone, scroll through the 1st few posts then close it. During breaks in Sg, everybody's just looking at their phones. Nobody's looking at one another, nobody's chatting with one another. Here, we're all chatting among ourselves during break times. Some days are inevitably longer which meant reaching home past 7 pm. I'll take a shower while hubs prepare dinner. We'll sit down to watch Supernatural on Netflix while having dinner (Yeah, bad habit but that's us. We can even eat steamboat while watching Netflix. Lol.) Then it's bedtime.

I have yoga every weekend, usually on a Sat, either at 9 am or 5 pm, depending on my instructor's work shift. Then, we go for Buddhist study every alternate Sat starting at 4 pm. Once a month on Sun morning, we'll go to the SGI center in Osborne Park for a commemorative meeting. The weekend a fortnight ago, I signed myself up for a Tarot reading course which took up both Sat & Sun. The weekend that had just past saw us buying grocery late Sat morning, followed by our fortnightly Buddhist study. Our Buddhist study group got together on Sun at Neil Hawkins Park for a picnic. This particular day I woke up at 6 am (as usual), made bliss balls for the picnic, had yoga at 9 am, got home at 11 am & immediately left with hubs for the picnic. We didn't get home till 4.30 pm & by then I was completely knackered. I took a 2 hour nap, prepared for dinner, followed our evening routine of Supernatural & it was back in bed at 9.30 pm.

I work lesser hours but somehow have less time. Being here has taken my time away from social media & caused me to be more out here in the present. We're back to the way life was before mobile phones & tablets became all the rage. There's more face time rather than Facebook time. It is a very good thing, indeed.