One hit wonder

Shrek has a penchance for repeating what he knows best.

His most reliable and oft go-to recipe is as follows

Take any red meat : rabbit, lamb, sheep, goat or capri etc

Brown the meat

Deglace with red wine

add chopped onions, carrots and laurier together with some beef stock

Let it simmer away til the meat is tenderised.

There you have it voilà Shrek's most proud concoction!

Male shopper

What predictable results happen when one sends a clueless male to go shopping ? He invariably buys at least one if not several items that are not on the list and worst of all will buy the WRONG thing.

I specified this morning for Shrek to buy 'fromage frais' the equivalent of cream cheese. He came back with 0% cream cheese. Cream cheese with 0% fat is an anomaly, if you remove the fat content you have to rid off the cream, simple logic ?

He could not find frozen spinach leaves so he bought minced spinach which I must stress and emphasise I hate because it is simply hacher to zero texture and taste. It was not entirely his fault as the frozen spinach leaves I had requested was nowhere to be found in the freezer section.

The conclusion to be drawn is that if you want the shopping done properly do it yourself. Shrek has proved time and again that he will buy the wrong thing or succumb to whims and impulse buying.

Shrek's misery

We have had a long drawn out and painfully excruciating history with bed wetting by the two boys in our family : i.e. Petit Suisse and now Baby Taz.

I remember waking up almost every morning for days on end with a bed soaked in pipi when Petit Suisse was in the process of being nappy-free at night. Mind you he was quite a late bloomer re his potty training: he only managed to be nappy-free during daytime when he was almost four which had us all a little bit worried because apparently there is pressure for kids who are about to embark on kindergarden to be propre. He was nearing the beginning of the school year before he finally kicked his nappies to the curb but not without un besoin pour les nuits. Anyway we had a wrenching and highly frustrating time back then. It was beyond my comprehension how he could urinate so much when he apparently had no liquid intake at night and had (or so I thought) emptied his bladder.

Now is no different : except the big difference being Baby Taz has a bad habit of drinking a minimum of one bottle of water before he can lull himself to sleep. He insists on drinking the water before he will succumb to some shut-eye. He has a tendency to urinate and thereby soaking and soiling the bedsheets, mattress protector and the mattress itself. Shrek as our designated household launderer is pained by such an endless amount of soiled and dirty laundry : bedsheets, mattress protector, blankets, sleeping bags and constant flow of clothes.

I feel his pain and I make it a point of taking Baby Taz to do a wee in the middle of the night and changing him two times and yet he still manages to wet the bed !!!

Frustration lingering and continuing.

I do hope that this saga will end before his fourth birthday. Baby Taz you can be so bothersome, exasperating and a vexing pest in so many ways but we still love you nonetheless, we just wished you'd grow up a bit more and become more responsible and less troublesome.

Action plus reaction

My faute majeure = lack of anticipation

Shrek's faute majeure = his reaction when confronted with my lack of anticipation

The combination of the above equation is explosive to say the least.

I had FAILED to inform Shrek 15 minutes before the ludothèque's (toy library) closing time. I had failed to get in contact with him in due time to allow him time to get to our agreed pick-up point. I had failed to prevoir and foresee that I needed change on me in case. I had also FAILED in telephoning Shrek at the most inappropriate time i.e. when he was backing out of our garage and his mobile was in his trousers pocket. In short I failed and fell short today. So the only thing left for me to do was to apologise which I did profusely but this is crucial as Shrek continued to berate, grate and faire la gueule as he only he can. I put up with all of that for about 15 minutes before I turned the table on Shrek and we had a screaming contest to see who would come out on top.

Lesson for me : anticipate, anticipate and anticipate some more, it has been drilled and droned into my brain !

Lesson for Shrek is of no less importance : DO not unnerve people by grating and nagging until they break.

Hopefully this painful episode served as a good lesson of what to avoid for Shrek and I.

Shrek realised he went overboard and apologised immediately.I accepted his apology and hope that we can avoid and bypass similar cases being repeated.

Mea culpa, mea culpa...

Cooking frenzy

Cha lua slices and lion's heads

Lion's heads/têtes de lions ready to be steamed

Xiu mai

San Choy Bao with minced pork and juliened zucchini, bamboo shoots

I am grateful for Shrek's magnificiently efficient mincing skills. He minced via a meat grinder 4 kilos of pork which made way for a very happy me. I then used up four kilos in various recipes thus yielding 2 kilos of cha lua and cha quê', 1 kilo of xiu mai and finally 1 kilo of lion's heads.

Shrek's fardeau

Shrek has one or to be more exact two household tasks that he does on a regular and semi-regular/infrequent basis : that of inputting the washing machine with dirty clothes and hanging washed clothes on the line and dumping them on the floor to be folded/put away by ôsin(Vietnamese for servant) and secondly on a monthly, sometime two-monthly basis iron his own work clothes consisting of his pharmacie blouses, a couple of pairs of trousers/slacks and up to ten shirts or more when the mood strikes him which as of late has not struck much.

He is supposed to do these two tasks diligently without resorting to snide remarks and making comments such as :

This sucks !

There are endless mountains of laundry to be done, I am fed up of doing this, maybe we should split the task up as in you (i.e. moi Princesse Fiona) do your own laundry and ironing of your clothes (which I hardly ever let him do unless he insists and only in small albeit negligible quantity like one or two shirts) and I will take care of mine.

The nerve !!!!!!!!!!!!

It is especially infuriating and frustrating to hear him drone on and on about how he has such an insurmountable task. I hope he is having a stab at humour so I humour him but if he was being serious I am sure I can split the tasks up and other things too, so there !

He can be énervent comme ça ... need I go on ?

Mister Catalyseur

A very costly lesson was learned today by our family.

Heavy crystal glasses + unstable and fragile wooden planche = accident waiting to happen and disastrous colossal consequential breakage free falling and shattering into a million glass shards with the ability to injure membranes and limbs.

We were getting ready to eat and the raclette warmers had to be cleared from the table. Its place was in the vitrine which was burgeoning with precious crystal glasses and carafes and porcelain plates. The fragility of the vitrine was weighed down with such poids lourd and when Shrek opened the glass door with a thud it was like lightning had struck and all the crystals came crashing down. I saw the cocooned, prized and treasured babies' downfall and had a slight pique as some 500 Francs worth of cherished glassware had fallen to pieces but I immediately came to my senses and realised that what is 500 Francs worth of material stuff when more importantly we were left unharmed.

I do however shed a little tear for my beloved crystals and glassware. Even little Baby Taz knew of my distress and came to give me a much needed hug. He can be sensitive and has a heightened sense of when tenderness and hugs are needed. He also comforted me by saying 'It's going to be alright mummy.'

I do lament the fact that the glasses and porcelain had endured and survived transportation from Sydney Australia: a mere two continents away, numerous moves and va-et-vient and shake-ups and our rambunctious kids and countless clinks and dinks and yet within a second of Shrek's steely force it all came tumbling down to an abrupt end. Gravity has no mercy and the higher the fall and the heavier the object the more merciless, disgraceful, damaging and severe the fall to the point of no return or saving grace.

Lesson learnt as I will not be weighing my vitrine down with any more heavy and cumbersome objects. The vitrine is purely and solely reserved for decorative objects of light stature and should not be burdened with heavyweights.

It was defitnitely not Shrek's night as soon after Baby Taz spilled his dinner on himself and Shrek later spilled red wine on our sofa which luckily for us is dark brown in colour which means that it goes unnoticed.

I was supposedly the clumsy klutz but after tonight's epic episode Shrek is definitely the more accident prone one in our relationship. Take that Shrekkie ;)

This reminds me of the time he left a bottle of bubbly in the freezer and totally forgot about having left it there resulting in an explosion which luckily left us unharmed.

We start anew tomorrow.

Lil Miss N's 6th birthday !

I survived eventhough Murphy's Law dictated that when under stress almost everything that can go wrong will and so it is that I was under intense stress today in getting ready for and organising Lil Miss N's 6th birthday. I had thought that I had it all under control but alas I was so far from the truth.
The day began with my massive spring cleaning sweep. I was determined to get the house sparking and spotless (or as spotless as I can possibly get it given the circumstances in this case four pairs of grubby hands/paws and four like minded rambunctious and mischievious underlings). I forged ahead and ploughed/plowed/soldiered my way through and as Murphy's Law has it all four were geared to get in my way and to slow me down at every turn.

I finally completed the sprucing up of the whole apartment but in the process lost my patience and nerve.

Next came the obligatory cake making and baking. Petit Suisse, Lil Miss N and Baby Ben surrounded me and made it almost impossible for me to access the workbench as they were so eager, enthusiastic little helpers who in their eagerness to help crowded me and were haphazardly putting and mixing ingredients much to my dismay but the cake was made and it turned out delicious if I do say so myself.

The decorations were left minimalist because I had run out of time so it did not look all that festive but that was forgiveable.

Games of Twister, Monza and 'Burg Ritter' were played intermittently with 'party bombs' to save the day and then it was 'gâteau d'anniversaire time and candle blowing time'. I had some leftover cake batter so decided to make a second cake albeit thinner and less consequential. Shrek having blocked ears took out the thin round cake instead of the heart-shaped one I had intended. That in the end did not matter too much as the candles were blown, cake was cut and shared amongst Lil Miss N's friends and she opened her presents : Hello Kitty pencil case with accessories, a kit to create her own bnnn me pocket money.

Her friends all left with a bonbonière each complete with little toys and surprises. A good time was had by all eventhough I felt that I could have been much more organised and the party games should have deroulés more smoothly had I not been collée dessus by a little superglue albeit the little party stopper.
Lil Miss N was stoked and visibly happy and all the hard work paid off.

Shrek then attended a work Christmas function. He drank a little too much and the hard liqueurs made their appearance when he returned.

He came home and assured me that he was fine but as Murphy's Law would have it I was prepared...good thing I was prepared given last year's episode.

Anyway Shrek's favourite expression of all time is 'goulot d'étranglement' which means bottleneck or (throttle) and true to form he puked into our household's goulot d'étranglement aka the bathroom sink which was already slightly blocked for quite some time rendering it unfit for use and hopelessly out of order until it has been unblocked by the plumber.


He had a massive hangover is an understatement... I need not get into the gory and peu appetisant details of this episodic vomissement.

He did redeem himself by vaccuuming and taking out the garbage : tasks which he has not performed/executed for a considerable period of time.

My love affair with Murphy's Laws are still going strong !

Shrek struck again !

The lure of a dirt cheap breakfast of 1 Swiss Frank for a hearty feed consisting of one croissant, 1 roll, 1 portion of jam, 1 portion of butter, 1 serving of cheese and one pot of yoghurt topped off with an all you can drink: refillable cup of coffee/tea/hot chocolate proved too irresistible to some even. Henceforth it was no surprise that this morning sans douche or preparation we rushed off at Shrek's insistence and urging to IKEA for our fill of the grubby brekkies .

There were all the usual suspects and us being some of them. I noticed all the regulars...and some new faces. I made a comment about the fact that these people like us were all gourmand and all profiting from the generosity of Ikea which was just masked as an appel of a cheap meal. Shrek had not begun to eat and obviously had not drank his morning coffee yet because following my annoying remarks (because I can be annoying like that) he chucked a spastic* and went off... espousing to anyone within surrounding earshot that 'Yes indeed people who come to Ikea on a Saturday morning for the cheap brekkie are all gluttons, stingy and etc and etc and they are cheap asses but that was not his concern.' His voice grew louder and irritation intensely heightening his pitch. It was clear to all that he was not a happy chappy** and that I had dared to raise his ire.

Shrek is punctuated with what I call idiosyncratic and dictatorial tendencies.
Shrek does not digest stress or give off steam at work and as a result I sometime suffer as a consequence of his outbursts which are totally uncalled for... He does have this tendency to let out steam after my 'annoying remarks or habits' and claiming that 'my behaviour' induces him to break out the 'ogre temper' and 'hell hath no fury like that of an ogre's wrath' !!!!!!!

He did apologise afterwards after I made it clear that I wasn't going to be a doormat and continue taking that shit anymore !


Built up frustrations and pent up anger needs to escape through some sort of therapeutic sessions or perhaps Shrek should start a blog of his own because the way I see it my blog was borne out of my frustrations as a stay at home mum and now it's an outlet and vent for me which is a healthy way of getting my stress level under control...




* Aussie slang for going ballistic
** slang for a cheerful and content fellow

Mise au point

I bought Shrek a cadeau : a Garmin GPS navigation system approximately three months ago. I bought it primarily for him but it was also en guise un cadeau for me : La Paix.

Let me clarify Shrek goes ballistic in the car when I (hopeless as a map reader and co-pilot that I am) get us lost without fail. I wanted to eradicate my pain and eliminate this unwanted recurrence by gifting him with the GPS and what I thought would be La Paix for me...Alas Shrek has some major idiosyncrasies that I do not and cannot even begin to fathom and he has refused to put the GPS into use. It is as we speak sitting prettily in its box and emballage original unable to function the way it was destined for. Shrek prefers me to learn how to read a map properly and would gladly gift me with the poisonous gift of 'A crashcourse in map reading and comprehension for dummies'.

He did indeed go spastic when I got us lost on our way to the water theme park.

I have made it clear that I do not condone inadmissive behaviour from him and thus have declared a sanction. Shrek needs to learn quickly that his bullying is not working !

There I said my piece and now I leave it up to the borné master to start some work on himself.

Borné personalisé is Shrek's first name.

Labour of love

Why I named these photos labour of love you may ask ?
It took a hell of an effort to transport the beloved chandelier from where it came to our home in one piece and then a mighty effort to drill a hole in the ceiling powerful enough to withold the weight and defy gravity, painfully putting all the pieces together pendeloque par pendeloque and finally suspending the whole structure to the hook.

It is indeed my pièce de resistance.

Week 18/52

An ogre with finesse

A man of action and few words and more importantly who has a keen eye for attention which can be attributed to feminine traits

Week 9/52

Shrek's culinary attempt

It is rare that Shrek has the time to whip up something. Understandably so because he spends his free time mostly catching up on sleep.
He cooked Penne Bolognaise with a fennel twist (shaved fennels were added to the sauce). It was quite tasty and a good departure from his usual offerings. I have to savour whatever he manages as it is far and few between.




These boots are made for walking !

My kids are especially creative and imaginative. They decided this Sunday as it was too cold and windy and blustery to go out to have some fun with what we have on hand. I have an abundance of shoes. I am a self-confessed and unashamed shoe-a-ho-lic. Needless to say I own more pairs of shoes, boots etc... than I can wear. I mostly wear flats for practicality when dealing with the kids by myself. I reserve heels and uncomfortably giddy stilettoes for when Shrek is on hand to assist me with our rugrats. In short they held a fashion show with catwalk heels and boots from mummy's collection. It was an astounding success. I am stoked they found such good use for my massive footwear collection.

Murphy's laws cont'ed

No matter the number of reuseable paper shopping bags in our possession : at home or in the car, Shrek will invariably have the need to buy yet another one because of one of the following reasons forgetfulness. The numerous bags sit idly and await their chance to become useful but we always leave them at home or in the boot of our car.

Needless to say our burgeoning collection of useless paper bags never end.

Early or late, your call

When running late for the bus, it will leave early. When you are early for the bus or any event, others will arrive late and so will the bus. One cannot be on time on the dot as you are either late or early. Being on time is a Swiss myth.

Shrek is especially uptight about being on time.

He is always saying to me : One minute late is too late.

or

You must leave on time to be on time.

In some ways it is good to be on time as that would be meeting people's expectations and in professional environments it is an obligation save emergencies. The simple and most important reason for being on time at work is that others who count on you can rest assured that you will arrive on time and hence carry out the days tasks. Customers or clients or patients or business partners all need certainty and predictability when it comes to timeframes but in personal spheres and circles it is important to be flexible and allow for some transgressions because let's face it when it does not involve or revolve around work who wants to go to all lengths to be on the dot ? It takes the fun, spontaneity and enjoyment out of social gatherings.

Thanks to Shrek I have probably improved my timeliness.

Shrek needs to be reminded though that it is only a detail sometime and he needs not be too didactic and inflexible or dictatorial. This same attitude can also extend to other aspects of his personality. Dictatorial pointiness is not desirable. I can attest to that !

Susceptibility to laziness

As human beings we are all and without exception prone to laziness. We are motivated by material gain, survival instincts and desire to attain credibility and relevance.

If left to our own devices and if we could afford to pay someone else or depend on others to support us financially and otherwise we all would.

Life unfortunately is cruel and hence we have to work in order to survive. My philosophy is that we are all born lazy and in order to overcome inertia one has to make an effort. Shrek's inertia and tendency to procrastinate needs lots of nudging and nagging. Shrek would happily sleep, eat and fulfil his pleasure if things were left up to him. He is more than capable of simply lazing around, fortunately I am there to push Shrek and my children into action. Allez hop allez hop.

We have a saying in our household : Get up you lazy lump of lard and hop to it !

High

Shrek is rather addicted to participating in auctions. I have an explanation as to why that is the case.

First of he loves the atmosphere, the ambience and the buzz surrounding auctions. He has his eye on several prizes and he is overcome by an adrenalin rush whenever he scores his prize for a ridiculous price (much similar to my scoring a bargain whenever I go bargain hunting). All of this to put it simply that Shrek is an avid auctioneer who is learning the ropes as he progresses from debutant to a seasoned pass holder. It is not even acquiring the goods or getting a cheap deal, it is simply being there and absorbing and breathing the aroma of all that an auction entails. He is becoming a usual suspect and familiar face amongst the attendees of auctions.

Shrek is an auction enthusiast and I incidentally do stand to profit from some of the gains he makes in the process.

Physics lesson

This simple Physics lesson is reserved for Shrek


Real big boobs are prone to sagging, drooping and pointing South.

FAKE BIG boobs are not prone to what real big boobs have to endure. They are pockets of gravity-defying, men attracting and human made fruits/balloons/bazookas (whatever analogy tickles your fancy) meant to mislead and propagate/perpetuate the myth of the breasts as forever frozen in time and space (upwards).

Shrek is like most typical men a breasts (and to not a lesser extent) and ass man.

What astounds me is the fact Shrek is supposedly a shrew and wise sage that knows most of the Physics principles that govern our existence yet he seems to have this little bit of 'no real breasts' can ever defy the laws of gravity flown right over his head : perhaps deliberately allowing his reverie to rule his judgments.

Shrek's romantic gesture

Shrek has been making a big effort lately. He vaccuumed, wiped the floor and tidied the kitchen to the best of his ability last night. On top of all that he even cooked a wonderful dinner from scratch, i.e. did not provient from a package or ready-made section of the supermarket.

He made rack of lamb accompanied by mash potatoes agrementée by spices and coriander.

We shared the intimate dinner by candlelight with a bottle of red Beaumes des Venise 2001 and ended with Lindt Pralinés Intense Noirs.

This morning I had a bath, mud mask and painted my own finger and toe nails. Shrek cooked eggs Benedict and petits pains and a filling brunch was had by us.

That is a weekend to remember.

Now Shrek can widen his arsenal and learn some more recipes to woo me.

Thank you Shrekkie for all your efforts and gestures !

Rack of lamb

Date lunch chez Lost

Rack of lamb with mashed sweet potatoes and mâche salad.


Château Coudert Saint-Emilion Grand Cru
1998

As can be seen, we are quite enamoured with racks of lamb here chez nous. It is wonderfully fondant and tender that it proves to be too much competition for steak.