Cheapskate Mum

Less Is More

2007-12-12T19:56:00.000+08:00

The dust has settled in thick layers everywhere, and we can no longer justify the endless hours spent searching for missing items. So with the kids out of the way, (no – they were not the missing items we were searching for!!), we started our spring tidying with a vengeance.

Lest you think that we subject the kids to this state of madness daily, let me assure you that things had to get worse before they got better. So this is when things were at their worst.

BEFORE

Living Room

Entrance Hallway

Children's Play Area

Photos were strewn everywhere, the result of a long overdue (it’s been 2 years since we moved here) attempt to put up some family mug shots. Drawers and cupboards were turned out, in the vain hope of disposing of some of the contents. Christmas music was played to spread some cheer and drown out the sound of my disgruntled muttering at Hubby’s hoarding tendencies, the extent of which will be written up in another post.

After a good two weeks of consistent, after-work tidying, the end still seemed no closer in sight. In near panic at the thought that the kids would be back soon, we actually welcomed the flood-induced cancellation of our Taman Negara trip as this bought us more time to complete the tidying. I never thought I’d see the day when I’d willingly pass up a holiday to Taman Negara to clean house. Aargh! I am slowly but surely turning into a domesticated old woman. Anyway, 5 garbage bagfuls of rubbish later, here are the results of our blood, sweat and tears…

AFTER

Living Room

Entrance Hallway

Children's Play Area

Allow me to share with you some insights gained from this experience of spring tidying

1) Avoid it at all costs. Can be achieved by zealously throwing out all junk mail and clutter, preferably at point of entry. Unfortunately, Hubby finds credit card and supermarket mailers scintillating reading while sitting on the throne, and vetoed my idea for the placement of a dustbin at the front door for junk disposal. Sigh! File or put away everything else instantly, and get the kids to do the same. They’re slightly easier to train than husbands.

2) Institute an in-out policy. For every new item that comes into the house, at least one old item (preferably larger in size) has to leave in order to make space. This is not wastage, but wise resource management. Sell off your pre-loved items via websites such as http://www.lelong.com.my/ or http://www.ebay.com.my/, and let someone else experience the joy the item gave you. Better yet, give them away. NOTE: The only exception to this rule is children – they’re the only ones who get to stay!

3) If it must be done, do it when the kids are not around. That way, when you’re ready to call it a day, you can just drop everything and know that curious little hands will not come and move things around or break a treasured family heirloom (which you kinda forgot you even had until your momentary excavation unearthed it. Now, where did I put it again?).

4) Have a sense of humour about the whole exercise. A wise woman once told me that when she was confronted with the decision of whether to have a clean house and lose her husband, or keep her husband (and the clutter he generated), she chose the latter. As a result, my parents’ home always looks lived-in and homey (so long as you don’t open the cupboards or enter the store room) and I have a good model of marriage to follow.

They Love Us, They Love Us Not, They Love Us…

2007-12-06T16:34:00.000+08:00

From the time the kids flew off to Grandma’s, an eerie stillness descended on our home. Three glorious weeks of blessed peace, the luxury of curling up with a good book and knowing I could actually finish it without interruption.

They say you never really know how much you miss something until it’s no longer around. In six years, I’d never been away from them for longer than a weekend – and I had no idea I’d miss them this badly. Gone were the spontaneous hugs, slobbery kisses and endless chatter. Heck, I was even beginning to miss the screaming, squealing, squabbling and whining. Obviously, the sudden ‘overdose’ of peace and quiet was driving me a little crazy.

I thought about them almost every spare minute, and resisted the urge to call them several times a day. It would be nice to say that they missed us as much as we missed them, but Hubby and I were soon painfully aware that we were no match for the combined force of 16 cousins and 21 days of unbridled play. Son was reluctant to abandon playtime to speak to us, and only did so to launch into a string of complaints about his sister and various other offending cousins. Daughter was a little more responsive, and passionately declared her love for us … and for the 3 pairs of new shoes her aunts bought her.

Is this what the Empty Nest syndrome feels like? I guess we should be happy that the kids are secure enough to be away from us for so long. After all, the goal of parenting is to raise kids who are happy, secure and independent, right? We should grab this chance to take that holiday to Taman Negara, the one we’d put on hold for a few years due to the un-kid-friendly nature of the wild and untamed outdoors.

All that remains is to quell the rising bout of kid-sickness welling up inside me. “The kids are happy, secure and independent. And I look forward to our holiday in Taman Negara.” Repeat 1,000 times. Or maybe we’re lousy parents, and they can’t wait to get away from us? “We’re good parents and our kids are happy, secure and independent. We’re good parents and our kids are happy, secure and independent.” Repeat 1,000 times.

Intruder Alert

2007-11-28T19:22:00.000+08:00

I gate-crashed a funeral yesterday. Well, at least that's what it felt like.

What led to this strange turn of events, you ask? Contrary to popular belief, I did not hire myself out as a professional mourner (Chinese funerals sometimes engage the services of professional mourners to lend a suitably dolorous air to the proceedings).

Funerals are sad occasions in their own right. Yet this one was particularly heart-wrenching, even for a stranger like myself. The deceased was a widow who lived on her own. Concerned friends discovered that she had died… alone at home in her own bed.

Her 2 grown children were noticeably absent from the funeral. The few relatives who showed up seemed distant, both in blood ties and in demeanour. In fact, those most affected seemed to be her friends who lived nearby, the motley crew who formed her real 'family' during her last days on earth.

As I sat through the funeral Mass, I found myself wondering:
What must she have felt as she breathed her last, alone…with no one to hold her hand or pray for her?
Why were her children not at the funeral? What do they feel now, knowing that their mother has died?

Most of all I wondered… I wondered what this lady's story was. What kind of a person was she? What was her youth like? What were her hopes and dreams, her fears and struggles? What was her story?

For the truth is that each and every one of us has a story. At some point, she would have laughed, wept, loved and been loved - much like I now laugh, weep and love. Yesterday, this stranger's life story intersected mine. This elderly widow, whose existence I wasn't even aware of before yesterday, quietly barged into my life and shook it up with nagging thoughts that refuse to go away.

At first, I felt like I was intruding into the private pain of a stranger's family. Later, I realised that the intruder was not me, but her. For it was she who had actually intruded and lodged herself into the no-entry zones of my life, robbing me of my peace - reminding me of my mortality, reminding me of my parents' advancing age, chastising me for not calling them more often.

In some weird way, I feel like I've been given a peek into a sacred moment of a stranger's life. And it has left me humbled.

Naming my Blog

2007-11-27T09:30:00.000+08:00

A major hurdle in the journey was giving the blog a name. I had a rough idea of what I wanted (and what I didn’t want), but not much of a clue beyond that.

I knew that I didn’t want my name in it – to protect the identities of the people I write about, (and also myself from defamation lawsuits) and also because I wanted to attract a readership beyond those who know me. (Then again, those who know me might not want to read about me. So not inserting my name might actually make them want to read).

I wanted to communicate with other wives and mothers, so I knew that the name would contain the word ‘mum’.

I wanted something that reflected me. So I consulted the people who know and love me best, a Family Friend and my Hubby (the kids were not around to be consulted). These were some of their suggestions:

www.blurandclumsy.blogspot.com
www.theycallmeblur.blogspot.com

(Note to non-Malaysian/non-Singaporean readers: the word ‘blur’ here means confused/ befuddled/bumbling)

Okay, so I’m something of a bumbling klutz. Let’s just say that the catalogue of my accidents, falls and misadventures would provide plenty of fodder for future posts. Obviously, Hubby (the number 1 victim of my misadventures) thinks so too, since he was the one who offered the first name! (The second was enthusiastically offered by the friend. Between the 2 of them, they seemed to be having a lot of fun with the naming exercise, affording me a rare glimpse into what male bonding is all about – in this instance, having a good laugh at the expense of someone else). Anyway, Hubby redeemed himself somewhat with his next suggestion:

www.BYE.blogspot.com – BYE is an acronym for Blur Yet Effective. Personally, I felt this might be a little prophetic – with a cryptic name like that, I might as well be saying goodbye to any hopes of success for my blog. So that suggestion was scrapped as well. Incidentally, I ditched the first two listed above as I didn’t want to attract overseas readers with eyesight problems, and risk them feeling even worse about their eyesight as they searched in vain for information about eye ailments.

Other suggestions:

www.twistedmum.blogspot.com – This I vetoed on the grounds that I didn’t want to attract weirdos and perverts.

www.2kidsandamum.blogspot.com – This was an attractive proposition, but a bit limiting cos I’m not entirely sure my childbearing days are over. Also, it didn’t make any mention of Hubby, and I guess he does play a role in my being a mum :-)

www.theycallmemum.blogspot.com – Yet another one I seriously considered, cos since my oldest child could talk (a feat accomplished about 5 years ago), I’ve gone for days at a time thinking my name was MUM. Now that they’re older, my name has expanded from plain old MUM to ‘Mum-look-at-koko’ or ‘Mum-look-at-meimei’ (koko = Cantonese for older brother, meimei = Mandarin for younger sister), usually uttered at very high decibels.

After much agonising (on my part) and laughter (on the part of those who purportedly know and love me best), I settled on cheapskatemum. You’ll know why once you’ve read what I wrote under the ‘About Me’ section.

So You Want to Start a Blog

2007-11-26T08:00:00.000+08:00

I have a highly developed ability to procrastinate, surpassed only by a penchant for biting sarcasm and a fear of modern technology. All came together to form an almost insurmountable wall, resulting in a one year incubation period between the germination of an idea and actual execution. Here’s an inside look into that one-year journey:-

Once I overcame procrastination and started seriously thinking about it, I was overwhelmed by the amount of technical know-how I thought was needed… not to mention the fear of giving free rein to my sharp tongue (or rather, fingers) to vent out frustrations/grievances about people, places, incidents etc. All this was enough to induce another bout of procrastination, and before I knew it, weeks had turned into months. My friends’ encouragement turned into solemn pronouncements that my blog would never get off the ground (they meant it, but I thought they were engaging in a spot of reverse psychology – not that that worked either). To counter my barrage of excuses, a friend created a blog for me… it lies neglected in the cyber-grave where all stillborn blogs rest.

So, you might say that http://www.cheapskatemum.blogspot.com/ is something of an achievement for me :-)

I have been doing some research on how to maintain a successful blog. One of the rules is to keep posts to a reasonable length. Since I’m prone to verbal diarrhoea (can’t you tell?), this is a real challenge. However, riding the wave of newfound passion and momentum, I’ve resolved to control my meandering thoughts and stem the flow of verbiage. I shall stop here and return tomorrow with a detailed account about the agonies of christening my blog.