the joys of baking

We have been at our home for well over a year, during which time I have not used the oven to bake. I got home from work tonight and discovered much to my delight that the problem had been fixed. Nadim immediately asked to test the oven by baking a cake. Now normally that would be a chocolate cake but since we seemed to have more than we could eat bananas.... A banana cake seemed like a better solution. Big little miss almost seven dislikes banana cake to say the least, it's not that she doesn't like bananas.... She just doesnt like banana cake. So when she discovered banana cake on the menu this evening... She naturally express her displeasure but stuck around to help and chat up a storm.
She watched the mixture go from from creamy liquid to golden brown in the oven. And because she watches way too many cooking competitions on tv, her food critic expressions and comments are never ending. She snorted when I offered her a piece of hot cake, " u know I don't eat banana cake".
No cake is complete without icing or frosting so I started on that under the watchful eye of big little miss almost seven wanna be a food critic. As I added a few drops of lemon to the icing she snorted "yuck lemon what are u doing?"
I dared to ask again if she'd like a piece. A few shrugs and Umms later she identified the exact location and size of the cake she wanted ( don't u know selecting a piece of cake is an exact scientific process?)
As she took a delicate nibble of her selected slice... I asked the feared question " so how is it?".
The response?
Hmm. Umm lemme give u a piece to try
( breaking off a crumb then misdirecting it to her own mouth)
Oh sorry that was for you
Hmmm yumm
( with a mouth stuffed with cake and three thumbs up and a few eyerolls later)
The verdict is given. The much disliked banana cake. Is now a goer!!!! Classic little miss almost seven going all chef on me.

the time had come

I decided this week that I had to start blogging again. I just had to find the time to update my blog, then it dawned on me that with technology these days I could blog from my phone. Which meant I could blog anytime with the help of a handy app on my phone. Another great reason to keep loving my iPhone.
It's been a while. We are still in NZ. Noesheen has started year two this year. It's a bit hard to fathom how fast this child is growing. She is a constant joy in my life. When I decided that it was time to shed some excess, she comment " please don't do that, if u get skinny, I won't know who you are"
I got myself a full time job a year ago come March 1. Vodafone NZ has been good to me thus far.
It's mid summer in NZ and we are loving the warm warm weather. The entire country is still reeling from the most recent Christchurch earthquake though. All these and other event s around the world are testimony and a reminder to get my oil lamp filled and trimmed.
Thats it for now. Lots of catch up to do from my end. Picts and all.

UP DATE time amongst other things

Really quickly....

HAPPY BELATED HALLOWEEN!

We don't celebrate Halloween this side of the world, I know... I can just see all the shocked expressions on your faces. But yes, it's true we DO NOT celebrate the dress-up-and-collect-candy-and-enjoy-pumpkins-day here in the islands.

Noesheen and I are heading back to New Zealand this month, for good...hopefully! Its been rough with our little family scattered across the Pacific like this. Its been a true test of a lot of things for me. While I have missed being in my own home and with my husband, I have enjoyed spending time with my mother and siblings here. I have silently observed so much about my family during the last couple of months, I have learnt so many spiritual lessons and enjoyed the companionship of the sweet spirit that is my child.

So as we prepare to head back to New Zealand I find myself starring up at huge list of things to do. okay maybe not that huge, but it feels like it when you are starring up at it from the bottom of the list...and the items on the list are in large format font...LOL

Speedy and effective hand-overs at work (how I will miss being super busy and in the thick of the advertising industry in Fiji)

Quick Check of my already packed suitcases (I will not miss living out of a suitcase, and even then, I have to re-pack....don't ask how that works)

Noesheen's Concert ( I must say I am more excited for this than my child is....all the costumes are done, thanks to a wonderful grandaunt!)

Smaller nick-nacks (funny how the smaller things to do on my list take up the most time)

Re-take of past farewells (less then a year ago I had to say goodbye to relatives, friends and co-workers....now I have to do it all over again. I feel like the little boy who cried wolf, in that story....which changes my perspective on that little boy, maybe he really thought the wolf had come the first two times...LOL)

Which means you may not hear from me again, until we are back in New Zealand. I can promise you that you won't have to wait for Thanksgiving for that next update.

Now where did it go....

WOW! a whole month since I have last written....Where does the time go?

hmmm maybe it went into the four twilight books I devoured in two and a half weeks. No I think I spent more time discussing the story with my little sister than I did reading. Gosh darn it, those vampires and shape shifters. And that very human teenage girl.

Maybe it went into diving head first into Wuthering Heights and Sense & Sensibility. I have to make a mental note somewhere to remind myself that I cannot just start reading Wuthering Heights after reading a really "normal" book like Twilight. Noooooo....it requires a whole deal of mental preparedness to be greeted on every page with words like "ejaculated". Hang on, let me finish giggling (deep breathe, regaining composure...okay set). Thank goodness somebody got to live happily ever after, the tragedy!! I shake my fists at the injustice! What's the deal with falling in love and not been able to live happily ever after? Isn't the true test of true love in being able to endure it rather than dying for it? sheesh! (Allow me to remind myself that its just a work of fiction not meant to resemble real life.....)

Sense & Sensibility wasn't that bad....it was hilarious! Such a draft for "pride and prejudice", which may be the reason why I liked it. Because I absolutely adore "pride and prejudice".

Next on the agenda on my list of *(available books) to read is "Jane Eyre"....hmmm Yes it would seem I am on a Jane Austen and Bronte mission.

*There are a lot of other books I would like to read....that are just not available for me to read in this country.

I am a little pleased that my recent choice of literature has begun to rebuild my vocabulary list. Not that I will be using the word "sipidity" any time soon. One day when I have more time I want to reread Sense & Sensibility just to count the number of times that word was used.

Perhaps, time sped away with our Fathers Day weekend. It was total surprise to have Nadim visit Father's day weekend (celebrated that first Sunday in September). There I was in the middle of a TV shoot on location, with the rest of the crew and talent, and my husband walks up!! Silly boy! I had to remind him that he better stop giving those kinds of surprises, my poor heart! It already looks like it (my heart that is) will be prone to having clogged arteries with all the stuff I consume on a daily basis. I diviate....it was nice to have Nadim around and to be a real family for a few days. Noesheen LOVED having daddy around!

aah maybe it went into all the new scripts and campaign proposals I have been doing at work. I hardly seem to be getting one script out without the need to start on a whole new one. Its utter madness I tell you, but I love it! So I am grateful that I have a job that keeps me busy and a little crazy.

Or there is a huge chance time went into dealing with the drastic change in my five year old. I am sure there is a button that got switched on (that was supposed to stay off) when she turned five. The "let me do what I want to do not what mom tells me to do" button. Urggghhhhh! (Patience....is a virtue I will be blessed to acquire... when I acquire it)

So there! That's where all my time went... all that and sleeping, because like normal humans I can't function without sleep. Although I must admit a great deal of the-supposed-to-be-revitalising-sleep has been nightmarish and weird, so of course I have spent a bit of my waking hours wondering "where the heck did that come from".

Maybe next time....I will have a better more longer narrative to share.

PS I have enjoyed your updates though!

"My own personal brand of..."

Its not new, no it isn't by a long shot

I had heard of it....often in passing...on others blogs, Facebook, it was like an epidemic...and I was on the outside..watching, listening.

The craze was...unfathomable..at times

My friends spoke about them as if...as if they knew them, you know Forks was a place they had all visited, it was oh....so accessible....so inviting...so tantalizingly...SAFE.

I was ignorant to what existed in Meyer's mind and spilled over into her books...until...

One boring Saturday, our supply of watchable DVDs were running low. You know what I mean about watchable, there are only so many DVDs you can watch over and over and over and over again and it doesn't get boring....mmm, like a good book, with the binding almost gone, the pages yellowed and bent with use...like her copy of Wuthering Heights.. the only other comparison I can make is...like my copy of the BOM

There it was, that particular DVD I had been avoiding staring up at me. "I luuuuvvvv it", my sisters high pitched voice edged on, implying that I would too. After all we share similar tastes in most kinds of things...like literature for instance. And that one small instance was perhaps where our similarities ended, movies were after all a whole other story. So I picked it up, stared at the words calling out to me "Twilight" the words rolled off my tongue

"what the heck" I thought, I could sit through this, it was time to find out what all the fuss was about. Actually technically, what i was doing went against my own personal form of logic.

what logic you ask...simple logic

If there exists a movie that came from a book...don't...never watch the movie....read the book first!

So there I sat, watching the TV screen, wondering what kind of lunacy had driven me to break my one simple logic....

Once....twice...three times maybe even four....was I really??

I should backtrack a little...just so that you know a little bit more about my "secrets", humm I laugh out loud saying that... Do you know what my major was at college? No? any guesses?

Fine Arts...because I loved the aesthetics, the why, the how, understanding not just the context of the mind that created, but the vision of those who experienced it...I wanted to become a historian, an art historian...maybe even a curator..to work in a museum was...no still would be a dream come true.

And Humanities...Anthropology to be exact, why? It fueled my former desire, the whys? the hows? The myths and legends, old and new that influences us. In my mind there is nothing greater then understanding a situation...not after its over but while you are in it...confused?? imagine the state of my mind...LOL

So what did these two things do to me?? It made me analytical of any literature,movie,story I came across...my college mates and I would compare, contrast, analyze.....just thinking about it makes me all warm and fuzzie...LOL

For instance in an effort to increase my "Hindi speaking skills" one summer I watched over 10 tapes of the dramatized epic poem MAHABHARATA with a close friend, I still needed the subtitles, my Hindi only improved....like a millimetre but that one summer of videos became topics of discussion the entire semester...and the one after that, a paper for a final, actually two papers now that I think of it...

Pride and prejudice was next in tow, almost everything that passed by my hands or eyes became a portal to understanding something else, some faint comparison, some contrast backed up by the logic of the greatest minds.....

Can you then imagine what happened when I watched "Twilight", it was like an eruption, my mind wired by this new tale, drew lines up and down the dialog, making connections, underlining, words popped out, others got circled. It was like after six years of hibernating, the embers of light were ignited in my mind....now as I write...it was like light falling on tiny little diamonds casting rainbows on everything it touched.

I felt like ....like I would self-combust, I needed to ....let it all out

My modem is not so slow you know, its fast, well moderately fast, atleast I never need to grab a snack while starting up the computer...modern age, don't you just LOVE it?

My friends a.k.a the discussion panel, are now only an email away....our discussions would go as fast as we could type and hit that SEND button....I spilled they listened okay read...they shared...I re-analyzed, it was like the old days..almost.

"No No" my friend's words coxed, "you have to read it....you just have to"

She had a copy of the first book, that she would pass along to her sister who taught my sister biology in Highschool. Connections....don't you just LOVE it?

But there was a wait, til the book arrived, I didn't get to see it until my little sister got to devour it...in a way it was her little gift for being the middle man, the messenger.

Then it was my turn, page after page, word after word, onyx to topaz the story unravelled. I have a vivid imagination I tell you, so vivid....I don't watch scary movies...don't snicker its true, one of my many mysteries my husband cannot fathom.

All too soon it ended...can you imagine how wired my mind was...is....it was my own personal brand of intrigue....under whose spell I can never grow old. And I don't mind it a bit. So a warm....VINAKA (thank you) is in order to the author...for dusting off the cobwebs in my mind and ...short fusing the circuits ....LOL...I have to say it "can you see my crooked little smile?" LOL

The Yellow Spotted Pink Dino

Have you ever seen one?

On the Flintstones perhaps?

Where do little girl people (and little boy people for that matter) come up with this kind of stuff?

Dreams....the lingering bedtime stories that Mum makes up twists and turns, swirls and swishes around the days events and the subconscious to come up with....Yellow Spotted Pink Dinosaurs?

What ever it may have been....that Yellow Spotted Pink Dinosaur kept me awake all night Tuesday night. Was it really that, or the hot sticky evening that make sleep go up in smoke? Maybe it was the five year old (sleeping) next to me, tossing and turning, pulling and kicking, mourning and groaning, another good nights sleep goes down the drain.

There goes Jars of Clay and Sixpence None the Richer at 3.30am "with every breathe" its my turn to groan, now who set the alarm for time in the morning? Have I lost my mind as well as sleep?

I look over at Miss Five, looks like she is still at Hogwarts playing Quidditch or wait looks like she is riding a dragon. I wrap my morning glory yellow sulu tighter around my waist, slap an invisible mosquito on my shin, "okay Yellow Spotted Pink Dinosaur, here I come"

The morning dragged on as I cut, adjusted, shaped, prepared frosting and frosted the cake. I have enough cake, but do I really want to put the legs on? I decide against it, attributing that decision to "morning-i-tis", you know that sickness that affects the "I'm not a morning person" people.

To my left the sun rose over the Suva Harbour...mmmm pretty pink. On my right the streets got busy, buses rambling by and in the house, all in quiet slumber. Except for Mom, who waddles into the kitchen in her hot pink long flowing night-dress to check on me. She grunts something about "the kids can take sausage, we buy lunch" , stands at the sink to watch the Suva Harbour for a min then disappears into her room again.

Is it? No? It is? Finally, its done!!! Whoo-hoo!

Noesheen wakes up and peers at the Yellow Spotted Pink Dinosaur resting on the dining table, a slow sleepy smile spreads on her face. You know that smile, each child has it, and only Moms understand it. The one that says, "That's the one", that smile that makes getting up before the birds and the sun worth it, that smile that makes you regret your moment of "morning-i-tis" weakness that made you leave the legs off.

So off she went to school with her Yellow Spotted Pink Dinosaur cake, thank goodness that episode is over.

Oh wait...my nephew turns two on the 24th of this month, guess what his mom wants to do for his birthday? Well you are half right, A BIG BLUE Dinosaur!!!!!! hmm I hear its a distant cousin of the yellow Spotted Pink Dinosaur.

Here are glimpses of the Yellow Spotted Pink Dinosaur, Noesheen tells me it rested in peace much to the joy of the Twinkle Stars Preschoolers.

Hopefully, I get a good nights sleep before I meet the BIG BLUE DINOSAUR....wouldn't want to leave his legs off now would I? Atleast it doesn't have any spots yet...well with about 10 days left...it may grow stripes..

Fevers, birthdays and butterflies

On the 9th of August, Noesheen turned five, but that isn't where my story begins. It begins earlier, in-fact a few months earlier, where sitting on my lap as I combed her shoulder length hair Noesheen chatted about everything under the sun in her usual manner, then came the "Muuuummm?"

My well-trained mother ears are knows that tone, the way my title gets dragged out longer than is needed, a request was sure to follow. So I answered, "Yes Sheen".

Just incase I missed the subtle message the first time, she checked again, "Muuuummmmm?" Patience has its virtues you know.

"Yes Sheeeenn".

" I want two cakes for my birthday, a butterfly cake at home and a dinosaur cake for school and the dinosaur has to be a pink dinosaur. Muuummmmm, you can make it?"

"Of course", why not right, after-all after one Sponge-bob Squarepants episode last year, I am a pro at these kind of theme cakes, NOT!

So almost every other day after that day, Noesheen never forgot about the two cakes she was going to have for her birthday.

But this was going to be a damper of all birthdays so far I suppose, since it was going to be the second birthday daddy would miss and her first birthday where she would be sick (hopefully the last as well)

Friday night, we have been counting down the days to the 9th. The icing sugar in bags brought home from the store, the food colours checked and checked again, the eggs bought in trays, the design of the butterfly and the dinosaur cakes carefully etched and re-etched in my minds eye....SHOWTIME?

Apparently not, because that's when things got heated up, literally. Noesheen goes down with a fever, that won't break. There is nothing more tormenting then when my child is ill. There goes the sweet tickle of medicine down her throat, still nothing, not a sign of a sweat bead forming on her body.....this means sleepless nights for both of us.

Saturday....I could see how she fought to be "I am better mum", but her eyes gave it away...there goes more medicine...still nothing...Saturday night comes. Noesheen spends her evening curled up on the sofa under blankets watching George swing through the trees..."watch out for that..." while I bake. Still no sign of the fever breaking....instead we get a lot of throwing up and more medicine.

9th of August...the birthday girl is fast asleep, the fever has subsided for a while. Church?? well only if we could go in our pre-school tee-shirt, I don't think the Lord would mind. So off we go to church and sit through sacrament meeting once again covered in blankets listening to the speaker talk about a kind and loving heavenly father who gives us more than we can imagine. I look at my daughter curled in my arms and say a little prayer. And slowly her eyes pick up its former spark, I smile knowingly..."there comes the sunshine" There is an old Indian saying, "Bhagwan ke ghar mein derr hoti hai undherr nahi" rough translation "In God's house there may be delay but never darkness"

Her grand-aunt has a gift for her after church, a brand new pink umbrella! Prefect gift for an umbrella fetish just turned five-year-old little girl, and so she finds the strength to walk along the streets of Berry Road holding her precious umbrella shielding her self from the beautiful Suva sunshine.

At home she manages a morsel of fried chicken and grandma mashed potatoes and sausages..."my cake???"

Well I have told the story so far, let the link tell you the rest

here you will find pictures of her special turn five day

Oh and that fever....it broke...finally. Is all well? I have hope, we will see. The Dinosaur cake you ask? well I will finish that story tomorrow....or the next day..