Archive | July, 2018

All Packed and Ready

31 Jul

This is it! All 36 Citizens of Gigglesville are finally packed and ready for their mass migration tomorrow. I hope the recipients will treasure and love these Citizens as much as I do. It has been very therapeutic and satisfying for me carving and painting each and every one up.

Goodbye my Citizens, be good, behave and be happy in your new homes!

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Weekend of Champions

30 Jul

I have amazing girlfriends and they inspire me with their grit, mental strength and focus. Over the weekend, three amazing women came out tops in their respective activities, two in golf and one in an ultra-trail race.

Girlfriend #1 defended her Champion title in the Women’s category in her golf club’s Annual Championship, Girlfriend #2 was the Nett Champion amongst men in a golf Invitational tournament while Girlfriend #3 romped to fourth placing in her category in the 100km race. A weekend of champions indeed! Well done, girlfriends, you ladies are simply amazing.

Change of Colors

27 Jul

Out of the blue, I decided to change the colors of two Monuments. I felt the original colors were not contrasting enough. Also the fluorescent green on the smaller Monument was patchy, I didn’t like it.

The new Martha Stewart Granny Smith green color beckoned and lo and behold, I painted it over the fluorescent green. But I couldn’t do the same for the blue on the bigger Monument because there’s green already. So I used Fire Engine red instead.

I like both the Monuments much better now. All they need is just a final gloss varnish for the finishing touch.

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A New Problem

26 Jul

Besides avoiding dairy and caffeine, these days I also avoid onions, eggs and beef if I can help it. Life as a cow (consuming just greens) sometimes can be very bland and boring. So in between meals, I would munch on seeds and nuts because they are supposedly good for me.

Recently, I discovered I can’t eat sunflower seeds! Oh dear. I like sunflower seeds and have been eating them my whole life but of late, these puny seeds make me bloated and a horrible discomfort would ensue. It looks like food listed as good will not necessarily be good for me. Every Endometriosis sufferer is different and it’s a matter of trial and error, or rather eat and suffer, to discover.

I then checked again the symptoms for Endometriosis and sure enough, bloating is right there after the back pains and cramps. So maybe it’s not the sunflower seeds after all. Somehow this bloating was never so pronounced before and was mistaken for something else at the beginning of the year which then led to the discovery of Infectious Colitis.

Still, this bloating issue is a new problem to deal with. I have to monitor and see if this is cyclical. Sigh…

700 Days

24 Jul

This is a crazy milestone and I’m not even sure why I am keeping up with it. Sometimes I can’t even play the game on my iPad Mini because the device has been unstable but I can launch the app just to get this.

For the record, I have kept up with the Daily Bonus for Candy Crush Soda for a span of 700 days; I think it is rather mind boggling, almost two years.

I started out on both the iPad and iPhone but somehow, on the phone, the chain has been broken several times. However on the iPad, it’s still going strong. So for every 100 days, you’d see a post on this crazy number.

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Going Dairy-Free, Part 2

23 Jul

So I tried the Ciao Bella mango sorbet. Hmm… I am not sure if I like it although I appreciate hubby and M2’s thoughtfulness of buying it for me. Ice cream has always been up there on my list of comfort food but not sorbet.

It was a bit weird to spoon frozen fruit puree instead of smooth ice cream. Moreover, it was too sweet for my liking given that I have eliminated sugar almost totally from my diet. Are all dairy-free sorbet this sweet? Maybe I should try another brand and flavor.

Perhaps after this pint is consumed (I’m sure eventually), I may go back to normal dairy ice cream just to appease the urge for something cold, bearing in mind not to be excessive in the portion intake. After all moderation is the key to manage the Endometriosis pain levels.

On one hand, I’d like to be careful with what I eat, then again I’d like to enjoy and savour the choice. Unfortunately, I just can’t relate to this sugar-laden, dairy-free frozen puree.

Unexpected Harvest

20 Jul

It’s obvious I am not a garden person. I hardly visit our garden and you won’t see me outside especially when the weather has been so darn hot. Sheepishly I can’t tell you what we have except all those air plants, potted plants, the frangipani tree, the hedges, more potted plants, several red palm trees and even more potted plants, and of course the habanero chilli.

Two days ago, a couple of habanero chillies fell from the plant. Worried that the rest may follow suit, hubby decided to harvest the remaining six. Now this plant, it’s the original plant that yielded all those lovely mini Christmas-ornament looking habanero chillies I mentioned last month. Because I hardly visit the garden, I got it wrong when I wrote that the new plant has sprouted new chillies when in fact, it’s still the old plant! The ones that failed to grow were additional attempts by hubby. My bad.

We decided to give the unexpected harvest to friends who missed out trying them from the previous batch. Hopefully, they can take the level of the heat. But we suspect these green ones may not be as super hot as the red riped ones. Regardless, I am pretty sure we will hear from our friends once they have savored these hot habanero chillies.

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No Clearance to Migrate

19 Jul

I don’t normally do mass migration for the Citizens of Gigglesville. Every now and then, only one or two would leave with the max being five. The last big migration was back in January when M1 brought nine Citizens and one Friend (Spiny Lumpsucker) of Gigglesville with her back to the US. Thankfully, all passports issued had no problems.

This latest mass migration, a huge one with 36 Citizens, had been very challenging. First, to meet the deadline, all Citizens were carved almost daily. Then they were prepped just about every other night. However, I encountered a major hiccup at the last hurdle.

Sixteen Citizens have no clearance to migrate just yet because the passports issued for them had control issues. The numbers did not tally in other words. The immigration officer must have be sleeping on the job to cause such a boo-boo. The affected Citizens are the orange, red and purple species.

Luckily the next day the problem was resolved and they are ready to join the 20 to migrate. Thank goodness.

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Going Dairy-Free

17 Jul

It is most unfortunate that I have to give up ice cream because dairy is bad for me. I have given up my cheeses (sadly my favorite) and milk but I still do chocolate because temptation is too strong. Occasionally a little morsel of indulgence to appease but not overly to create discomfort.

Hubby and M2 are very aware of my diet change and was thoughtful to buy a dairy-free sorbet for me when they went grocery shopping recently. So nice of them!

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Bedrock Bottom

16 Jul

I have said many times golf is a funny game. I thought I had hit rock bottom several weeks ago with my inability to play despite all these years at it. Then I managed to bounce back soon after and I thought from there on, it can’t get any worse and I should be on the upwards trend but guess what? I was wrong!

There is an even lower level than rock bottom and it’s called bedrock bottom…

Over the weekend, I participated in my club’s Annual Championship, a two-day tournament. And there’s just no words to describe the performance especially on Day One. Put it this way, it was as though I just picked up the game a month ago and bravely played in a crucial tournament that really tested one’s ability and mental capabilities.

Although there was only one OB’ed shot, one obvious shank that resulted in a lost ball, six dunked balls into the ponds, several duffs and mis-hits, these costly mistakes were enough to do me in.

The weather was perfect, the shoes were comfortable, the tennis elbow wasn’t even acting up so there’s really no reason to do all those that I did. Sigh… I am at a loss for words on this.

Thankfully on Day Two, I played better and restored some confidence. Maybe I am not quite ready yet to play competitive golf? After this experience, I hope there won’t be another undiscovered level beyond bedrock bottom to my golfing ability, that’s all I can say!