Getting the order right

One of the greatest takeaways from my parents' lifelong romance was to set priorities in the proper order: God first, then spouse, after the spouse the kids, and then everything else.  No doubt they had a unique perspective, having been in love with each other since Dad was five and Mom was three. 

Legion are my memories where the three boys were with Mom and Dad going to fancy restaurants, taking long coastal drives, spending the day at far away beach cities, shopping for antiques, fishing, spending a Saturday at an auction house, hanging out at their workplace (they always worked together), and going with them wherever they wanted to go.

Few are my memories of going to the party of a classmate, me or my brothers causing one of our sporting events to swallow an entire weekend, or doing some other kid-centered activity. 

My parents were intentional that having kids wasn't going to stop them from doing the things they did before they had kids. Their object was to bring the kids into their marriage, not allow the kids to drown their marriage in a sea of tasks for the children. For this reason, our kid activities were pretty limited. 

This idea probably sounds foreign to many people. It seems the pervasive thinking in the Western world is that the lives of parents generally revolve around their children. Beginning each Monday, day in and day out, parents run themselves ragged tearing around from practice to recital to dance class to art school to theater to band until they fall into a heap on Sunday night, only to start again the next morning. So, what happens after that final Sunday, when you've dropped off your baby girl at the college of her choice and you walk away, hand in hand with your spouse, no longer knowing the hand you hold? One way to fight that scenario is to make serious efforts to make your husband or wife a priority in your life. 

From here.

A bit of an eye-opener. Especially for Singapore, what with fifty million extra curricular activities now being the norm for the average kid.  

Poems: qlrs

The Day You Told Me You Were Tired of Things That Break

Ask me what material I'd use to make
a human being and I'd answer:
glass. Ask me what shape
I'd mould it into and I'd reply

a cup – the ones that have felt the light
press of lips on their collarbones, or
the gentle caress of fingers easing
the soapbuds off their backs after
every meal. The ones that brim
with liquid light in a room gone
quiet after the candles are lit.
Ask me if I'm scared of the
thought of them breaking,
and I'd ask you to imagine
how easy it would be to
neglect the one thing
you thought was
shatterproof.

By Mary Jean Chan

From qlrs vol 12 no 1. 

This latest installment from qlrs is especially good I think. I liked this poem best - interesting but not gimmicky. 

Paperman

There has been a lot of unhappiness in the air lately. This is a little bit of cute in the middle of that. Happy Friday!

1 January 2013 - Meatballs

The meatball making frenzy all started when I was shopping for dinner ingredients one evening in December and I picked up a package of frozen Italian meatballs thinking it would go well with my main dish for the night. But then when I flipped it over and looked at the ingredients list, my heart sank. It started with ground meat, parmesan, herbs - ok fine - then descended into a list of chemicals with unpronounceable and un-spell-able names. I put it back. And I thought to myself: I can do better.

So on the first day of the year, Mr Grey cleaned house (yay!) and I made meatballs. It was sort of a mash up of this recipe and this one. I'm actually kind of blown away by the scent of nutmeg - it somehow brought out the flavour of the meat in an wonderfully savoury way - can't believe I've never cooked with it before. We ate some of the meatballs for dinner then froze the rest in meal sized batches. I went to sleep on 1 Jan 2013 feeling satisfied; the house was clean and I had meatballs in the freezer.

You know something? It was a great way to start the year - like making a gift for my future self and I plan to do more of this make ahead stuff from now on. We ate the meatballs with pasta after having a squash lesson earlier this week, Mr Grey ate them with other leftovers one night when I got home late. We ate another carton of the meatballs last night with cacio e pepe and curried carrots (both recipes can be found on this blog) and only spent 20-ish minutes in the kitchen. The cacio e pepe and carrots were made from scratch but the meatballs? We just popped them into the microwave for 4 minutes and that was it.  

Oh 2013, I think you will be the best year yet. I have my own kitchen and so many recipes to try! :)

P.S There's an alternative cacio e pepe recipe on ChubbyHubby's blog - it looks beautifully easy and there's only one pot to wash up.

2012: through the wardrobe

2012 has been a very very good year. It started busy, what with two large work things in January and February then moved into hyper busy, with a Big Work Thing coming in the month before the wedding. Because of that, because of work, there was very little time to put in personal touches for the wedding. Time - or the lack thereof - was the reason Mr Grey and I pared the wedding down to its bare bones while still trying to incorporate the Chinese tradition of the tea ceremony and the reception and have a church ceremony on top of it all.

I only just told a couple of friends last night, just how much I loved the way Mr Grey and I arranged our wedding. It was over a weekend - with the church and traditional chinese ceremony on Saturday, then a lunch reception on Sunday. I told my friends how much I loved having dinners alone with Mr Grey - just sort of absorbing the events of the day and talking. But I left out my favourite part.

My favourite part of the whole wedding weekend was when the reception and ceremonies were all done and Mr Grey and I had a quiet dinner then took the rented car out for a drive - the first drive of our married lives.

We drove through NUS, around the west side of the island, along winding roads, up a hill then down another hill.... held hands in the car and talked. There was no planned route, nowhere we had to get to. It was just us and the night and the road ahead and for half an hour, that was all there was to the universe. No one else existed.

It's hard to explain how or why the drive felt so unreal and beautiful....but

Perhaps, just perhaps, that drive is like the first magical quarter of an hour through the wardrobe - when it dawns that this is Somewhere Else, that this is a different world, with trees and snow and a light.

Then you step out, all wondering amazement and of course, the faun appears and life is utterly and irrevocably changed.

So maybe, just maybe - in the new year, in this new life Somewhere Else, there will be Spring and talking cats and bears and Lions and witches too.

Happy new year to all :)

O Holy Night

Blessed Christmas to all and sundry.

Veni veni Emmanuel

"I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth."