Gimme A Break

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that one of my favorite gripes is about our hot weather. I’m always complaining about not getting enough rain.

But lately I love how moody our weather has become, and I’m not even a fan of moody weather. But this moody is different. The alternating hours of sun and rain that we’ve been getting means we get at least some reprieve from the overbearing sun.

Before the rains came, I’d taken to wearing gloves, a hat and sunglasses every time I step out of my house!! And it’s never even been my childhood ambition to be a bag lady when I grew up.

• 5 ways to shun the sun
• freaky storms
• rain at last!
• no sun
• rain spell

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I do so love long weekends. The kids and I were out first thing this morning, the kind of morning that just refuses to get rushed.

And so ambled over to the bookstore and to window-shop at the mall, and then on to an early lunch.

This being a holiday weekend, the grocery store has lots of promotions. While I love promotions, it does get rather frustrating trying to push a shopping cart through the crowds.

I didn’t manage to shop as much as I wanted to. The kids were getting impatient because it was so crowded and the checkout lines were ridiculously long.

Tonight we’re planning to go out and watch the fireworks. I’m not sure where they’re at but not to worry, my kids are on top of it !

• yay for retail therapy
• mirage
• lines, lines, lines
• happy new year
• why you should shop on weekdays if you can

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The rains are here. I guess my rain dance worked . It’s still blazing hot from mid-morning to noon time, but at least we have cold (as in brrr!) nights and early mornings.

I’m guessing the unprecedented cold has to do with global warming. I mean, it’s usually cool when it rains but never quite cool enough to be cold.

But these few nights have been ‘brrrr’ cold, as in me needing a blanket even without the air-conditioning on. What’s up with that?

• a bit of rain
• the rains are here
• whacko
• fresh and green outside
• 5 ways to shun the sun

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Well, praise our TV repairman. He finally got our TV fixed and we’re able to watch the Olympics. Yes, we missed the first, what, ten, twelve days of it and now our TV’s back working. Aargh!

Never mind, the consolation is that we still get to watch the closing ceremony which won’t be as spectacular as the opening, I’m sure, but at least it’s better than nothing.

The kids have been glued to the TV ever since it came back. Swimming is their favorite event but that’s over now. I guess they just have to pick a new favorite.

• eleven golds and counting
• not getting to watch the Olympics sucks
• a day in the life of a mom
• I got a tan, ugh!
• mirage

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Can you believe I actually dragged myself to watch two kiddy movies last weekend? We got free tickets to Wall-E and Star Wars, the Clone Wars.

We couldn’t give the tickets away and we didn’t want them to go to waste. So we went. Of course, the hot dogs and popcorn are always a good reason to go to any movie, free or otherwise.

• switching to movies at home
• movie freaks
• popcorn monsters
• much ado about movies
• quite da Iron Man

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I was at the temple this morning and was just driving my car out the driveway of an adjacent parking lot when a lady turned into the driveway. So I stopped and let her in first.

All the spots to the left of the driveway were empty. Naturally I thought she’d turn left. But no, she swung her car to the right of the driveway straight at me.

I backed up a little thinking she wanted to pass. But no, she reversed and came alongside me, then reverse all the way to the back of the empty spots.

All this time, she had a killer look on her face, like the whole world had wronged her and she was out to get the first person she saw. It was unbelievable how angry this woman was!!

I just sat there and looked at her, waiting patiently for her to finish throwing her car left and right. I didn’t dare move in case any sudden movements might make her decide to crash her car into mine!!

Yikes, clearly she’s someone that no car insurance company would want to take her up on. Who knows what someone with her bitterness would do next!!

• before her trip
• square steering wheel
• neighbors, friends and moving
• selfish new neighbor
• Cinderella’s stepmother

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After last week’s near miss with a school van, I almost collided with a car that was turning out of a gas station when I went to pick up my son from college Friday.

The lady driver never even so much as turned her head in my direction as I was turning the corner on the same road she was trying to get on.

Gosh, I tell you, I’ve really almost had enough of these drivers with bad attitudes. I’m careful to a T as a driver since I always have kids in my car with me. Safety is a big thing for me.

From young, my kids have been in Britax car seats and later in booster seats. So they’ve been trained from birth that the first thing they do is put on their seat belts even though the law here does not require back passengers to be strapped in.

That’s Mom’s law they have to obey!

Through the years, driving has gotten more stressful for me because of the increasingly bad attitude of drivers. People turn without looking out for oncoming traffic. They run red lights.

They cut into your lanes without signaling. Gosh, I could write a book half a foot thick about the lousy drivers I encounter on the roads every day!!

• sheer stupidity, bad attitude
• my top 5 driving peeves
• stupid, in a word
• what he must’ve thought
• the stress of driving

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The other day, I stopped to watch the Olympics men’s swimming event and was impressed by how Michael Phelps managed to ace it in such easy-going strokes.

Today I read he’s the “winningest” (does such a word even exist?) Olympic athlete winning his 11th gold medal, five of which are in the five Olympics events he’s competed in so far.

Apparently he’s pretty nonchalant about his historical wins too. Wow, what a guy. And of course, I’m constantly amazed at how competition swimmers glide so effortlessly across the water. That one gets me every time!

• constant traveler
• friendly tips from a workout fanatic
• runaround parenting
• glimpses of doggie year
• soda is the culprit

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I picked up my daughter from school and we were driving down a straight road when, from out of nowhere, a school van comes speeding out a side street heading directly for us.

I was blasting my horn but the bus driver just kept coming at us. We both screeched to a stop and he would’ve smashed into my car dead center if he’d come one foot closer!

The stupid driver just raised his hand as some sort of apology and sped off again at the same speed that he’d been coming at us. His van was packed full of school kids and I’m sure none of them seatbelts on! I saw him again yesterday racing past the same spot at breakneck speed.

• stupid, in a word
• island vacation (2) – cruisin’ along
• fight or flee, that is the question
• hectic
• logistics brainwave

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We’re missing the best of the Olympics because our TV is down. Yesterday we noticed they were screening the Oympics at the mall so we joined the small group of people who had stopped to watch.

But we gave up after a while because it’s quite tiring tilting our heads up to look at the screen. My poor kids! They were so wanting to watch but we have to wait till our TV gets back from the repairman’s.

• we’re back in busines
• eleven golds and counting
• why I don’t watch movies with subtitles
• sweet weather
• organizing blues

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