We were at a garage sale this morning. A nice American man by the name of Kurt was moving and selling off most of his things dirt cheap. We met the Soul Doctor there, and we were supposed to help her pick out some things for her new place. As usual, my wife ended up buying half the things on sale and a few things that were not (at first). We got some more kitchen utensils, three folding chairs and one slightly broken rocking chair. We neither needed nor had space for a rocking chair but my wife liked it, so I knew logic wasn’t going to come into play. My wife loves old stuff. I call them junk. She calls them antiques. I say they’re old, but she says they have history. I don’t care much about items with other people’s history. It’s not my dad or uncle who used the old coffee shop stools we bought or my grandpa who sat in this rocking chair, so to me, everything she buys is just all old, cracked, dusty but otherwise ordinary. My wife, however, totally buys into this faux family history stuff. She once scolded an antique seller for wiping off the dust off a table before delivering it to our place.
Getting things into the car was a challenge as we had with us our visiting cousin, our baby, our baby car seat and our huge toe-crusher stroller. My wife was determined that everything would fit if she could just get everyone to cram into the back seat. I’m normally a pretty sensible guy but I’ve seen my wife pack in two wooden chairs with armrests plus a coffee table into the back seat of our compact sedan, which was something I never thought I’d see in this lifetime. So I reserved judgement until we’ve given her plan at least a good try.
No matter how we rotated the rocking chair, though, it seemed to always have one dimension that was an inch too wide or one armrest jutting out too far. After twenty minutes of huffing and puffing, even my wife’s optimism was starting to flag, so we gave up and left the rocking chair there until we’ve gone home and emptied the car.
Later that afternoon, when everyone had settled down at home, I emptied our car, took out the stroller, removed the baby seat, and headed out to pick up that rocking chair. I drove through two tolls. It was a hot afternoon even by KL standards. I was sweating in places that shouldn’t be sweating, but I was patient and obliging at least for the earlier part of my mission.
Patrick and Min were there when I arrived. We exchanged hellos and goodbyes and then I picked up the rocking chair. Patrick said, “You sure your car can fit ah?” I thought, “Well, it almost fit before and I had 3 passengers, a car seat, and a big stroller, plus other assorted junk then,” so I said as much. I declined all offers for help and headed back to the car with a rocking chair over my head.
The first thing I discovered was that the boot of the car was useless. No matter which way I rotated it, I couldn’t get more than a third of the rocking chair in there. The backseats were hopeless as well as the doors couldn’t open wide enough to even let in half a rocking chair. The only hope left was the front passenger seat and we had already tried that earlier. I was starting to have a bad feeling about the whole affair, but since I'd driven all across town for this thing, I was prepared to give it another try. I pushed the seat as far back as it would go and inclined the back rest all the way down. Then I tried loading the rocking chair. I tried sliding it in gently at first, wiggling it wherever it met a resisting piece of car upholstery. Failing that, I resorted to shoving and banging. I tried getting it in upside down, right side up, sideways on its side, sideways on its back, sideways on its front. I tried pushing the drivers seat all the way back, with the back rest fully inclined as well. How was I planning to drive the car home? I had no idea, but I was really fixed on getting the arm chair loaded. I don’t remember pushing anything as hard as I pushed that rocking chair. I remembered wondering at one point if the roof of the car was going to get dented from my efforts. I even tried putting the car into first gear and putting down the hand brake, thinking that it would make a difference but it didn’t. If the chair had been two inches smaller in any, just any, of its three dimensions, I’m sure I could have gotten it in.
As I came back up the driveway with the rocking chair over my head, I heard Patrick saying calmly to the others, “The rocking chair is back.”
I told Kurt I’d leave it there and we’d figure something out over the next two days. It was a long drive home, so I had time to bring my anger to a nice simmer before seeing my wife.
I told her I was done having anything to do with that rocking chair. I decided I would not move it, fix it, store it nor sit on it. So you could say my wife finally bought something I have a little history with.
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Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote about trying to decide whether or not to let my son climb. On one hand, I can really see us having lots of fun together. But on the other hand, I don’t think I will ever get comfortable with the idea of hanging my son on a rope sixty meters off the ground. Being a new parent has kept me busy enough, so I stopped climbing, postponed the decision and stopped worrying about it.
Lately, my back has been aching to the point where it really interfered with my life. By about dinner time each night, I didn’t want to do anything but lie down. I went to see a chiropractor and an orthopedic doctor. Both of them diagnosed me as spending too much time sitting down and not getting enough exercise. Apparently, it’s a very common problem among people my age (late thirties). I was handed a piece of paper off the orthopedic doctor’s shelf, which basically described about ten exercises I could do. I took a look at the exercises and figured they basically targeted the same muscles used in climbing. I’m not much good with exercise regiments or anything involving discipline, so last week, I decided it was just easier if I started visiting the climbing gym again.
I knew I was really out of shape so I tried to take it easy. It was quite difficult to judge what I could or couldn’t do. The good news is that I still remembered how to do it. My balance was more than a bit off, and my muscles were weak from two years of sloth, but I knew, generally, which hand went where, and what to do with my feet. I was getting quite comfortable with the moves when I came into this one part where I needed to swing my body in a slow controlled way to reach a far hold. Even though my mind remembered the move, it forgot that it accomplished it with a younger, fitter body two years ago. It was at this point that my body decided to send it a friendly reminder in the form of a cramp all up one side of my torso, which put an end to the climbing nonsense for that day.
Today, I went to the climbing gym again. I haven’t done anything special to keep fit or get better at climbing since the last visit. I haven’t been watching my diet. I haven’t done any stretching. I haven’t done any exercise apart from the casual bicycle ride with my wife and son. Surprisingly, everything felt much easier this week. I think my balance is slowly returning to me. As always, the fingers are the weak point, so I try not to work them too hard. I thought that since I’m starting almost from scratch, I’d do it right this time and build finger and upper body strength as slowly as possible, so that my feet have time to learn to balance properly. Strength comes eventually, but bad habits are hard to break.
The climbing session passed almost without any drama this time. My fingers were getting too tired so I decided to just climb the slab (a wall that leans away from you, which is easy on the hands, but you still need to use your feet and legs). My wife and son came into the gym about that time. I took a short break to give the boy some attention and show him around the place and then went back to finishing up on the slab. It was then that my boy made the decision that he was going to be a climber after all.
Video 1
Video 2
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The world must seem like such a warped place for a toddler. My boy has been trying to follow, with varying degrees of success, some 'rules' we first thought were pretty simple. If I put myself in his shoes, this is probably what he makes of the whole situation.
The Rule For Throwing Things
“I’m encouraged to throw and kick my ball around the house, but otherwise, I’m not supposed to throw things. Not all balls are for throwing, as well. That orange fruit thing is a no-no if my dad’s reaction is anything to go by. Oh wait, if I pick something off the floor and it’s something that fits in my mouth, I’m supposed to throw that away immediately too.”
The Rules For Hitting
“I’m not supposed to hit people and animals, although my dad encourages me to hit mosquitoes. I gather it’s a good fun thing to bang on toy drums, and if one is not available, a restaurant table is also good, except sometimes when there are other people at the table.”
The Rules for Drinking
“My daddy and mommy has been trying to get me to drink water from a cup, but they don’t like it one bit when I drink out of the toilet brush holder.”
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I did it. I finished up the Japan pages almost 3 years after the trip.
Check them out.
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My wife’s been wanting to eat this fish ball noodle in KL for some time now so this morning, we were on a mission to have that for breakfast. I got up at 7am to clear out the morning chores while the wife was still in bed. The noodle stall is about half an hour away from our house when there’s no traffic but we had to make it through rush hour traffic, which makes it about a two-hour round trip.
After cleaning up the kitchen (which I neglected to do last night), and throwing out the rubbish, I was feeling my backache a little earlier than usual this morning and it made me feel very uncomfortable and even short of breath, so I laid down for five minutes. My wife got worried that we were falling behind the fish ball noodle schedule, so she responded by asking if I was angry at her. I could barely talk but after a few short minutes, I felt much better so we were still on track for our mission.
We changed the boy, and got dressed and ready to get out the door but since he was skipping breakfast for a couple of hours, I thought I should at least give him a few sips of water. Since I was taking time to do that, my wife took the opportunity to feed him some bread. It became a bit of a contest because we both had our own beliefs regarding his needs in the morning. I always feel he needs to drink while my wife feels he needs to eat. After a few minutes, he was choking on a mixture of water and soggy bread, so I got the blame for feeding him too much water. Anyway, we were getting in danger of “no more fish ball noodles,” so we had to hurry.
We all packed into the car. It was the usual multiple trip effort – load the baby in the car seat, come back and get the rest of the stuff (laundry, work bag), and then finally, go back and lock the house door. Since I was taking so long, my wife had time to complain about how late we were and warn of the danger of “no more fish ball noodles”. She also insisted it hadn’t been necessary for me to feed him water because she was going to feed him in the car anyway. I know (and I think my wife knows deep in her heart) that he doesn’t drink from his sippy cup. We’ve not managed to get him to drink from his sippy cup or any sippy cups since birth and not from a lack of trying, so I don’t think I was too skeptical about our chances with it this morning. My wife tried anyway. I felt smug and asked her how much she managed to get in. She said he didn’t want to drink because I’d already fed him water. My fault again.
Out of nowhere, the subject of our nanny was brought up. I’d asked her last night if she thought we needed to rehire the nanny because I thought it would give her some free time for her other interests. Now she’s saying that I really hurt her for suggesting it. So, officially this subject is taboo now, along with the subject of her weight, her health, her milk supply and anything remotely related to anything else that might possibly be related to something that could maybe raise the faintest shadow of a doubt in anybody’s mind about her abilities as a mother.
In short, it is always my fault.
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