Last Thurs - Sun

Had a good catch-up session with Wen last Thur. A simple dinner + a pint of beer @ MG's... the 1-for-1 offer was too good to resist ;) At the same time, hubby met up with the sis of his ex, M. They get along very well.. just that they haven't been in contact for the past years.

Hubby came & fetched me around 10pm & we sent M home. It's actually the 2nd time I met her (the 1st was when we bumped into her, & her mum, at Wisma's Forever21 more than a year ago). Have heard quite a bit of good comments about M & finally get to chat with her.. A pretty & friendly gal indeed.

Did nothing special on Fri night.. dinner at Braddell.. had my fav Hokkien mee.

Sat - rushed to SSDC once we opened our eyes in the morning. That's the earliest session I've ever taken - 8.35am. Had prata as brunch @ Sun Plaza.. quite good. Then we went home to get started with our spring cleaning. Only managed to clear 50% as we gotta bring Tubby for review with the surgeon @ 5.30pm in Balestier. Btw, we didn't know he's a famous vet until C told us. No wonder it's so costly. We've ZERO knowledge on veterinarian/veterinary. Frankly.. if we were to know beforehand, we wouldn't have brought him there, perhaps. Up to date, we've spent 2k on him. Sigh...
After settling Tubby at home, off to Sembawang Shopping Centre for a zappy pizza dinner & returned home. Washed our MBR toilet & by the time we're done (& showered), it's past 12am. Gosh.

Sun.. after sending mum to church, we had a very local breakfast at the rochor market. Also went to level 2 to "shop" for partial of our reunion lunch ingredients.. I intended to buy some CNY titbits too but decided to get them from Chinatown as I wish to make a short visit to the CNY street bazaar. Then hubby had a haircut before heading home to finish off the remaining chores. Top the chart (of toughest household chores) gotta be toilet washing, which we'd done the previous night, phew! The runner-up is hanging the 8 sets of ceiling-to-floor curtain. And the ceiling is not low. So I can imagine da-jie's headache as she said her ceiling is 3.3m high! Ha!
Looking at our place after all the hard work.. it feels great.

Runs like a tap

The damages incurred last month was a continuation of those in Dec, in fact I can safely say it's reached a new height. Just Tubby alone is 1.5k... Then 3 birthday celebrations in a row - 14/1 my bro, 19/1 FIL, 23/1 BIL (hubby's bro). Plus Melbourne trip.. yes talking about that, we're back to square 1. Mum is super afraid of cold.. so Seoul is out. OK.. will keep our newly purchased winter wear for some other time. For CNY - on clothes & the household, hongbao $$ ...

Speaking of birthdays... Ben, my bro-in-law (hubby's bro) turned 21 last month. To celebrate his birthday, we'd hi-tea @ Goodwood Park on 20jan. He looks much better now after 4 months of NS. Ha! Birthday dinner of father-in-law's on 19jan @ Bishan Golf Driving Range where he'd 2 tables.

Photographer : ME!

Hubby & I shopped a lot & bought quite a few items as well. And I'm (we?) still buying. Just sent our curtains for dry-cleaning on Tue. Our house looks so raw now... what a big difference a set of curtain can make! Haven't even started getting the goodies... still looking around for real yummy ones. Have some ideas to beautify our place after next weekend's spring cleaning but again, means spending.

Hospital visits

The title pretty sums up what had swamped us for the last 1 week. No, not to human hospital (a big relief, optimistically) but to animals' hospital. Our poor Tubby-boy had stones in his bladder which triggered a string of problems.. one after another.

Last week (Mon night) we discovered that he vomitted once we returned from work. So we took half-day leave on Tue & brought him to the vet. We didn't expect him to be admitted immediately as an emergency procedure needed to be performed on him. He then stayed there for a few days under observation.. til the surgeon told us the only solution was to do an operation. It's a real big struggle for us whether to save him. We've never expected he's such serious problems at his young age. Eventually we decided to go ahead with the ops on Mon (this week). Brought him home last night, after exactly a week's hospitalisation... with a total of $1.5k spent. And the sad part is.. he's not totally cured.

He's such a very sweet boy & had charmed everyone in the hospital. The 1st 2 days he's totally zonked out due to the sedation & pain. 3rd day onwards, when he saw us, he'd meow till he knew there's no chance for him to be freed from the tubes, the e-collar & the long bandage on his leg. He'd then sulk by closing his eyes & ignoring us no matter how we called him. Only when we went hiding that he'd open his big eyes to look for us.

I was rather depressed last week. Was thinking why again around this time? Last year we went through a traumatic period having to deal with daddy's condition. Of course the intensity can't be compared at all. And the year before last.. to cope with the hardest blow we ever had when the bomb of daddy's health dropped onto us. Unable to have a happy CNY preps for 3 years, straight in a row... doesn't help at all when hubby & I like CNY.


Next 2 weeks will be a trying one for us & him... we'll have to see how everything goes. 辛苦你了老公, you've been doing all the dirty jobs.. even more now. Muakz.

Creation

Alright since I'm better today, shall tell ya what I'd accomplished last weekend... of course with the ever great help & support from hubby dearest.

Spent our Fri night @ Ikea. Got what I needed & some other stuff for us... ended up spending a couple of hundreds again.

Sat morning, brought Tubby to the vet in Serangoon Gardens & had breakfast @ Coffee Bean. Been so many years since my last visit. Being there also gave us reminiscence of our short holiday in HCMC. Similar alfresco breakfast @ Highlands Coffee... mmm.....

Breakfast time!

Rented some movies from VideoEzy before moving off to Bras Basah Complex to get all needed materials. Our last stop was back to the vet to fetch our Tubby-boy. Our meowmeow was already up by then.

After getting all the stuff & settling Tubby back home, went to Sembawang Shopping Centre for our early dinner @ the thai restaurant we'd been wanting to try out. It's a big disappointment & we're puzzled why the crowd every night (not only weekends). Perhaps it's the air-con environment with coffeeshop prices being the main attraction? Lucky we didn't gather the whole family to dine in there otherwise we'd hear music.

Then the whole evening was dedicated to my project 44 constructing my very own accessories cabinet! It looked simple but when I got my hands into doin it, it wasn't the case. Lotsa measuring & cutting works had to be done & hubby helped to fine-tune the finished product.

On Sun, other than doing the routine in the morning, the whole afternoon & evening was spent on gathering & sorting out all my accessories. Throughout the years I bought & bought.. it didn't help when I've moved a few times... my accessories were almost everywhere without a proper storage place. Not good at all. Every morning I'm in such a rush that I've no time to dig into the drawers & various jewellery boxes. And I keep wasting money by stocking up but not utilising them. So delighted now that I've all pieces displayed for easy selection.

Maybe I worked too much over the weekend & hence got myself sick.

Voilà

On the left: Earrings

Middle & on the right: Necklaces

1st tier: hairclips & brooches

2nd tier: hubby's rings (in jewellery box) & a glass of miscellaneous hairpins

3rd tier: rings & earstuds.. a few belong to hubby

Tubby, 2 weeks ago

Tubby-boy

Are you wondering why there aren't many pictures of Tubby so far? 1stly, I'm not a good photographer... confirmed that during our last trip to France. Then, our dear kitten makes it even mooooooore difficult for us to take pix of him. And certainly not with the digital camera. U know... usually after you press the button, it'll take about 1 sec to process. As a result, almost all the pix taken were like a smear... because he'd run off again before his image being captured in the camera (in 1 sec!)! Sometimes if we're lucky to have caught him lazing & staying still in front of the camera, he'd close his eyes because of the flash! And I can't get rid of the flash even during daytime as we're indoors. It'd happened so many times that we now give up using the digicam. So for the time being we just have to make-do with the very low resolution pix taken by our hp.

Linda (the petshop supervisor) told us that Paul (her staff) who helped us take care of Tubby when we're away complained to her - "walao eh!! 1st time see a cat so active leh! runs around so much & kicks the sand so hard that half my living room gana!" FYI, he used to be a cat breeder... Ha... When we brought Tubby to his place we asked whether he needed the cover for Tubby's litter tray & he said don't need.

And yes, did we say we've upgraded his home to a 3-storey house, 1.5m high, that comes with a lovely hammock? We only used the 1st cage for a week & changed to the much bigger 1. He sure loves it... so much space for climbing!

our Tubby boy

Let me introduce to you a new addition in our family since last Saturday night - our lil Tubby boy!

Tubby, a 3-month old American Shorthair, is a gift from my beloved honey... hee! From some of my friends' reaction, I think they are wondering why we spent so much on a kitten while we can always pick 1 on the street. Honestly before Sat night, it didn't occur to me too that we'd pay so much for a cat... never thought we'd get a pedigree kitty. So I can totally understand what my friends are thinking. But hey he's a good breed leh...

Not many pet shops sell cats. Was at another shop prior to our purchase & we saw some of the same breed but bigger. Very very cute! However their prices were even much more than what we paid.

When we 1st saw him in the pet shop, we're totally charmed by him. He's so playful, running around in the cage & the next second, pounced on 1 of his fellow kitties, an all-white Ragdoll, & started to help it lick its fur. He's very helpful ya? However when the salesgirl passed lil Tubby to me, he got real frightened & kept shivering.

The night we reached home, he's still seemed very stressed out & scared. He almost meowed for the whole night. Early next morning, we're awaken by his yelling & thus let him out for a while. He's so curious about everything in the house, happily exploring, running... no, not running but dashing in & out between the kitchen & living room, jam-braking when we got in his way, definitely having lotsa fun! But he'd a funny nasal sound which made us worried & were told by the vet that he's having a flu. Poor boy... maybe because we placed his cage in the backyard just below a window & there's no glass panel to the window... just the grill. Moreover our place can be very windy at night. According to the vet, he's so used to indoor environment & also due to stress. But later we observed... his persistant meowing was not so much about stress but more like he wanted to come out & play. He climbed up & down the cage, stretching out his limbs in-between the grills as if calling for help... trying to squeeze his cute face out of the cage.... But cannot... vet said strictly no running around for at least 1 week because of his flu.

Can't really see clearly from this pic as he's really active & most of the pix I'd taken were a blur. These 2 are the better ones. Only took with my mobile phone's camera as I dare not use flashlight yet. Will take more of him when he's more settled! Hehe...

He'd been meowing continuously for 2 days... it's quite a handful especially at night when he sounded extremely loud & sharp. Yesterday when I called mum from work, she said 2 neighbours started complaining to each other about the noise. During our conversation, I could still hear Tubby boy's piercing meow in the background! Oooopz....

Last night we moved him to the backyard's bomb shelter hoping to reduce the noise level but worried that he'd get even more upset for being trapped in a even smaller area. To our surprise, he's tamed the instant we put him inside though occasionally he'd still try to gain our attention when he heard us, but much less aggressive.

Our Tubby mao mi is so fun to play with... just watching his clumsy acts is entertaining enough. Whenever we go near his home, he'll stretch out & try touching us with his paw... very gently & his paws are so soft!

I can imagine if daddy still around, he'd definitely have lotsa fun by playing with him. We're a family of cat lovers & when we're very young, we ever had a few cats on a part-time basis (part-time = not domesticated & never bring them to the vet). Daddy always managed to amuse the cats, including those stray ones, with his self-made toys. But then, if daddy's still around, we'll not be able to keep a pet.