baby rambutan

a bunch of plane tickets fell on my lap! thank you o Great Benevolent Benefactress Matriarch!
we are going away for a little while.

we (not using a royal we), i mean my three kids and i, are going to visit mom, dad, older sister and baby bro, and their families,
in Los Angeles.

i don’t think we’ll be able to do much of any touristy stuff, as our main purpose is to hang out with family and especially Dad/Lolo (Grandpa), and to meet our newest family member, the cutie patootybaby “Neil.”

i have no idea what kind of internet connection i’ll be able to sneak past…but certainly i’ll do my darndest to get it! if not i hope my friends and readers will still continue to visit and maintain my page visit stats and browse through my silly little posts in the archives.

enjoy the hot summer everyone.

i found a tuna salad combination that was just perfect for the sweltering summer day. chickpeas, or garbanzos, tuna, tomatoes, red onions, basil and spinach, which i dressed with my favorite Delia Smith garlic lemon pepper dressing. (scroll way way down if you click this link, the transferred posts from my old babyrambutan.com are all below the fold, somehow.)

when it’s too hot, you don’t have to get out of the kitchen
you just don’t have to turn on the ovenstove !!!

In my not too distant future! Husband and I are daydreaming of the day when we can retire to a comfortable and leisurely retirement, when he won’t have to go to work, when we have successfully launched our kids off into their hopefully happy and fulfilled adulthood.
We are hoping that at that point we will be hale and hearty and still full of the zest for life, and possibly occasionally babysitting our grandkids. We are actually thinking that it may happen in less than ten years, is that too optimistic?!
Wouldn’t that be just grand!
One of our dreams is to look into Motorhomes to explore this great country of ours and have adventures with a portable home with a comfortable–nay!–luxurious!–ride, a bed, a kitchen, a shower…
The great open road beckons to us and we think the ride would be so luxurious in something like THIS. And this one is previously owned.
A brand new one would definitely be the cat’s whiskers though.

i call this my motivator. nothing like a new coffee toy to bounce out of bed for! i wanted to buy this when the coffee maker broke a couple of years ago but it was way too pricey for a little capuccino maker. so when i found one hugely discounted (with a slight smudge on tweety’s forehead) at Marshall’s, bearing TweetyBird’s face no less!, in such bright Swedish-flag colors…i ran away with it.
the original cowprint is very cute too.
it’s a marvel of Italian ingenuity. you fill up the bottom chamber with water, espresso coffee goes on the filter basket, then milk on the yellow bird body, then set on the stove. in about 4 minutes, it’s done.
accuracy in measuring is essential.

it took a while to get the hang of it but now i have, it’s been quite a pleasant thought to get up from under the down comforter (yes, it is cold here. again.summer officially starts tomorrow??) for a hot creamy steamy capuccino or cafe latte/cafe au lait.


i must be the last coffee girl in the world to say, i have never bought one from starbucks.
it’s just so against my coffeephilosophy.
but when i heard that the extreme conservative types wanted this pretty little mermaid banned… why,
i just had to have one. i almost bought it from eBay, but then i got lucky and found one hidden away at a supermarket starbucks stand. since then i’ve discovered that the coffee megachain has revived the logo, albeit the mermaid is slightly more demure, as part of a marketing ploy to pump up slumping sales and over-expansion.
heehee. gotcha. or got-me?

one of my favorite bloggers whom i miss visiting, has this as her latest post. tag, you’re next!

1. How tall are you barefoot?
>> 5’3″ apple shaped

2. Have you ever smoked?
>> once upon a time in my foolish 20’s

3. Do you own a gun?
>>The Smoking Gun

4. Do you hate someone right now?
>>that Fool on the Hill

5. Do you get nervous?
>> it’s in my DNA

6. What do you think of hotdogs?
>>Chicago style please

7. What’s your favorite Christmas song?
>>children’s chorus version of “Must Be Santa”

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
>>cafe au lait

9. Can you do push ups?
>>what the…. are push ups

11.What’s your favorite piece of jewelry?
>>my Lola’s antique gold ring

12. Do you like painkillers?
>> Yes, you name it i’ve tried it

13. What is your secret weapon to lure the opposite sex?
>>my “powers”

14. Do you own a knife?
>> i own a set of very sharp knives

15. Do you have H.I.V?
>> no

16. Name?
>> stella may

17. Name 3 things u wanna do at this exact moment?
>> climb back to bed, eat a (forbidden!)Pinoy breakfast , have another cafe au lait

18. Name the last 3 things you have bought lately:
>> my blouse for kid’s graduation, mussels, DVD of “Da Vinci Code”

19. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink:
>> beer, beer, and beer

20. What time did you wake up today?
>> 6 a.m.

22. Current worry?
>> my Dad’s health (he’s fine now!) money for heating oil, even though it’s not even officially summer

23 Current hate?
>>extremists e.g. Michelle Malkin

24. Favorite place to be?
>> white sand tropical beach

25. Least favorite place to be?
>> being put “on the spot” and “in my place”

26. Where would you like to go?
>> white-sand tropical beach in the Philippines; London, Paris

27. Do you own slippers?
>> several kinds

28. What shirt are you wearing?
>> C. Middle School sweatshirt

30. Favorite color?
>> Black.

31.Would you like to be a pirate?
>> perhaps in a Broadway musical?

32. Last time you had an alcoholic drink?
>> er ahem last night

33. What songs do you sing in the shower?
>> Diva songs

34. What did you fear was going to get you at night as a child?
>> Dracula; and the Floating Hand that choked kids who didn’t sleep (according to one mean yaya/nanny)

35.What’s in your pocket/s right now?
>> hankie and a shopping list

36. Last thing that made you laugh?
>>my #2son talking while playing harmonica (robotic speech daw) and my fez with the fake plastic sunglasses

37. Last thing that made you cry?
>>Arnel Pineda’s story on youtube

38. Worst injury you’ve ever had?
>>natural childbirth complications, daughter was tough!

39. Who is your loudest friend?
>>someone in MNL hehehe

42.Who is your most silent friend?
>>the One who was taken away so young

43.Last movie watched?
>>“L’Auberge Espagnole,” on Independent Film Channel, again, because Audrey Tautou’s in it,

44. What is your favorite book?
>> currently, “Five Quarters of the Orange” by Joanne Harris

45.What is your favorite chocolate
>> anychocolate is my favorite chocolate

47. What song do/did you want played at your wedding?
>> wish: “Ikaw” only if Regine will sing it

48. What were you doing 12 AM last night?
>>sleeping!!!

49. What was the First thing you did today?

>>pat the cat

50. What was the last thing you did the day before yesterday?
>>watched the late night news…

pretty boring ‘ba?

today turned out to be a bit of a bizarre kind of day.
i went to get new glasses, something we’re entitled to, and something due last year which i skipped . i think i was in denial. the bifocals were too much, and they made me dizzy.
i had reverted back to an old pair of single sight lenses but it wasn’t comfortable either, even if they were fine for driving. i had to either lift them up or down to read food or medicine labels and even while working on the PC.
so off i went to have the eye exam. anyway, i’ve always liked picking out a new frame that hopefully makes me look more like an “after” than a before. (when will i ever be an after, i wonder….)

but the optical assistant or whatever she’s called, was hurrying me to decide from the bargain assortment that’s covered by the insurance.
and my eyes were stinging from the eye drops used to dilate my pupils for the diabetic eye exam–which would take effect after 20 minutes.
“sigh”.
i ended up with a rush rush kind of choice, and nixing the elegant Calvin Klein frames that were double the price of the bargain ones.
and after all was said and done…..i looked like this.

boo!
the photo that could have launched a thousand car crashes from other drivers seeing my fez…
and that elicited the loudest guffaws from the kids and husby…
i drove home feeling super anxious and photophobic and wearing fake sunglasses to protect me from the white-hot glare of the sun and had to cancel all my plans for the afternoon. i even had to yelp help! to husband to pick up the kids….it just didn’t feel safe to drive. the belladonna effect* lasted for more than five hours. i couldn’t watch tv or bloghop.
and, even with the very positive outcome from my overly earnest optometrist (i have to stop myself giggling everytime i see him, he’s so darn eager! he reminds me of a Jim Carrey caricature or a Saturday Night Live spoof character)…
i just don’t know if i want to do “wide eyed dilated pupils” every year….

*…and the name Belladonna is said to record an old superstition that at certain times it takes the form of an enchantress of exceeding loveliness, whom it is dangerous to look upon, though a more generally accepted view is that the name was bestowed on it because its juice was used by the Italian ladies to give their eyes greater brilliancy, the smallest quantity having the effect of dilating the pupils of the eye.

here’s another soothing Seawind song worth listening to for the goshdarn unexpected bumps on the road.

May and June are typically very busy months for my family, with end of school activities, birthdays, our anniversary, and a graduation here and there.
in the midst of all our celebrating,
we suddenly had a reason to mourn.

yesterday our beloved kitty cat Murphy died in her sleep early in the morning and was buried at dusk.
it was very difficult for us to say goodbye to such a beautiful green eyed and mellow cat, whom i shanghaied from her mommycat, as a tiny little feral kitten in the backyard of our old apartment, sixteen years ago.

she had been in a slow decline over the past six months or so and no matter how much i prepared my family for what could not be avoided,
it is still very sad. my little boy summed it up, today after he visited her grave and threw old rose petals all over the top: “at least she died peacefully.” i thought i had my emotions all under control but i can’t think of her without crying, and we all cry together when one of us starts.

she’s so noticeably, irrevocably, sadly, gone.

time didn’t go so fast
everything seemed cut and dried, black and white
you looked out at the world
with the eyes of a child

and he was still Cat Stevens?

There have been many instances of security breaches resulting in identity theft here in the state of Massachusetts, ranging from credit card user fraud to massive hacking of personal information from computers at workplaces and even at the grocery stores.
I found out that Massachusetts ranks 23rd in the country in terms of the number of the complaints of identity theft.
It is therefore comforting to know that there is a lifelock out there.
They back up their services with a million dollar guarantee that your personal information will be rendered useless to identity thieves.
Recently the AAA Pioneer Valley based in Western Massachusetts signed on and now offer the option for this service as an added layer of protection to the safety of their card-holding members.

And now, job-seeking residents of or nearby Tempe, AZ can have the chance to apply for jobs at Lifelock. How lucky to work for a company whose motto is “do what you should, not what you can,”
It seems to be a throwback of the most positive kind to the Golden Age of customer service.