Double Happiness

X’mas 2006 was the 7th X’mas I spent with Tim, and a very significant one because it would be the last X’mas that we spent just as a couple. Come X’mas 2007, it will be a much more crowded affair with Mummy, Daddy, Bro, Sis and the 3 Cats. It so happened that my usual gang of friends were all tied up with their own celebrations and Tim and I ended up having X’mas just the two of us.

We decided to have a raclette dinner. It’s a winter French dish using a special raclette machine which Tim’s parents had bought in France as a gift for us. Basically this machine has two layers of heating device – the upper layer is a hot plate upon which you fry your salami, bacon, ham or any other meat and the bottom layer is used to melt cheese which you spread over your potatoes and/or meat. Yummy! Here’s our X’mas Spread –

We had gone shopping for the ingredients on 23 Dec at Carrefour and gosh, we spent about S$70 on this raclett dinner alone! We could have opted for a romantic dinner at some fancy restaurant instead with this money… However, it seems that we had grossly overestimated how much it takes to fill our bellies (big as they are). The amount we bought was sufficient for 2 dinners for each of us! For the record, the right amount per person should be 2-3 potatoes, 100-150g raclette cheese, 30-50g of salami (not too thin), 1-2 slices of ham, 2-4 slices of bacon. C’est tout!

Here’s a picture of us at the dinner table – it is upon looking at this picture that I realized, to my aghast, how much weight around the face I have put on! I look just like my overweight teenage self at age 18. Arghhhh….! No wonder my husband called me Hamtaro the other night… (“My lado, do you think that pregnant women look like hamsters?”) I guess I’m not one of those lucky mummies who is “all belly”. For me it’s All Big, Everywhere.

Today is the New Year and what better way to start the year than to commence work on a few of the New Year Resolutions on my list? Today I’m joining the cyber world of blogs! Actually, ‘to start a blog’ is not quite exactly on my New Year Resolution list but if it works out the way I planned, this should help to check off two of them, namely 1) to Get Off that Lazy Butt of Mine and 2) to Make Meaning out of day-to-day life so there’s Something to Reflect on later.

After much pooh-poohing at what I personally felt to be a narcissistic form of mass communication (my colleague Debbie can bear witness to my tirade against blogs), I have to swallow what I said and admit the brilliance of such a communication device. Afterall, what more meaningful than to note down your occasional thoughts (for future reference… Alzheimer hits the best of us, as does Absentmindedness) and to share them (with close friends whom you don’t touch base with often enough and your future acquaintances, like your children, who are not yet part of your life)?

So here I am, with assistance from my live-in IT Support aka Tim my Husband, starting on this journey of documentation. If this works out, I am on my way to being a slightly less lazy person who bothers to reflect on life, record them down and share them with those who matter.