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!

Strange kinda day

It was a highly productive day with Shrek managing to install Gorm étagères

I had successfully rangée everything in the storeroom so that nothing was lying precariously on the floor but instead had a neat place on the newly installed Gorm shelves.

etc

We had achieved so much in so little time and were ready to give ourselves pats on the back with a celebratory glass of booze. As it turned out we should not have begun the celebrating because soon after Baby Taz and Lil Miss Feisty misbehaved... They dropped and spread a poisonous substance (which Shrek can fill in...) onto our sofa leaving us with no choice but to immediately give them showers to rid off the stuff. We then had to change the sofa cover and wash the soiled cover.

The expression on Lil Miss Feisty's face was priceless as she attempted to hide her guilt by use of a cover up : she hid behind a card pretending to read it to ruse us.

The kids all went AWOL and I had not the opportunity to indulge in a long hot bath because they refused steadfastly to be in bed and get some shut eye.

TOTALLY exhausting.

Shrek was unnerved and his patience was tested.

We should have had a nice relaxing evening to wind down but alas that was not to be as we were stressed beyond our normal (flexible) limits and decided to call it a night.

First cheesecake

I procured my first cheesecake and one which employed 0% fat cream cheese*. I was a bit worried because cream cheese with 0 % fat does not usually bode well for a cake but I was pleasantly surprised. I will however buy full fat cream cheese in the future for a more thoroughly satisfying mouth-feel. The texture with full fat cannot be replicated with zero fat cheese.

I am quite surprised how easy it was to procure a cheesecake, not a lot of effort went into it other than beating eggs with sugar, cream cheese, crème fraîche and mixing, pouring into a suitable cake pan/mould and baking followed by chilling (preferably overnight) . So there you have it steps of cheesecake making in a sentence.

* see the entry for 'Male shopper'

Rant for the day

I caught the tram at a reasonably busy peak time so there were not many seats left but I scored one. I then noticed a middle-aged woman (not quite an elderly) and decided to give her my seat.

I motioned to her :

'Vous voulez vous assoir ? '

Her response was a curt and brusque : 'Wouah' as if what I had done was a matter of course.

She sat down without one single whisper of 'mercy' or even flashing an appreciative smile or any form of/show of appreciation and then had the audacity and nerve to glare at me and gave me dirty looks because Baby Taz had put his feet out impeding the tram sensors when I had expressly told him no.

The self-entitlement of some people leaves me flabbergasted. I gave up my seat for her and I wanted it back. She was an able body and not old enough to be in need of a seat. I regretted soon after my bad decision to waste 'une geste d'urbanité' on an ill-mannered and self-entitled bitch.

Obviously not all Swiss are self-entitled and ill-mannered/rude scums but I somehow run into a lot of them on a frequent basis...must be my magnetic charm that draws the best out of the Swiss

End of rant !

Little rays of sunshine

I might appear to râle every other day re my kids out of control behaviour or their un-disciplined tendencies but I love each and every one of them and they are my little rays of sunshine.

They do exhibit expressions of affection to remind me that it's worthwhile : the sometime ungratifying and unbearing of housework and child-rearing, devaluation of home staying and merde if I was to work in a daycare looking after other peoples kids and yet send my own kids to another daycare it'd be looked upon as if I was a juggling working mum hence regarded with more value and looked up to more only because I held a job peu importe si le boulot est bien payé ou mentally challenging or gratifying.

I feel devalorised by society at large and can only console myself in the small consolation/comfort : that of knowing my kids are well looked after and taken care of.

Little rays of sunshine because at the end of the day no matter how important a position is or how high ranking ones' career may be one will only leave imprints with ones legacy be it scientific discovery or ground breaking policy or children who reflect their upbringing and education and do their parents proud by perpetuating and upholding devisal and trust.

Unruly rascals aka Les petits mioches = Extremely exhausted mum !

It is a rule of thumb or Murphy's Law which dictates that I will already have the propensity to be extremely fatigued when my kids decide to run amuck and be rambunctious little rascals or energised bunnies without the relais of the 'off' button.

They will run me ragged and since my patience level is already at an all low point will ram me into the ground. I of course patienceless will be grumpy and stressed out and the vicious cycle turns round and round until it stops when they finally are in bed and I get some rest to fight yet another day.

Luckily I have discovered a good distraction 'Jardin Robinson' named after Robinson Crusoe which is an adventureland wherein the kids from 6-12 years can feed goats, bunnies and chickens, they can plant veggies, do natural craft projects, play society games and sling ont the flying fox to name just a few of the activities. It is my relais...now how do I convince the animateurs that 2 and 3 year olds are not too young and how do I get them to accept Baby Taz and Miss Feisty so that I could have a breather ?

I am thankful that at the very least Petit Suisse and Lil Miss N adore going to Jardin Robinson and that they are fully exploiting all that this little haven for kids has to offer.

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.

Madame Champione du collection des coupons

I am the proud owner of the title of champion collectioner of coupons : any and all kinds.

I would like to think of these coupons as money-savers but sometime they can be counter-productive and cost me more money in the end because in trying to validate the coupon by spending the requisite minimum amount I buy junk and inutile, futile and useless crap. I do avoid that but sometime I cannot help but succumb mainly because I cannot resist the novelty or cutesy factor or purely decorative objects or because of 'what if' and 'in case'.

I do draw the line though as I tend to buy things that only a cheapskate and stingy radine like me would acquire meaning everything I buy : items of clothing, accessories, shoes, household products and alimentation etc... are all under twenty and mostly in the tens. Shrek on the other hand is a big spender but he does mostly spend to buy me gifts and to that end/effect I am mostly content.

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.

Dental hygiene

Kids being kids will prefer everything sugary and highly corrosive (especially with relation to their teeth enamel) and harmful for their dental form.

Our primordial concern is to maintain healthy teeth and gums and we have failed miserably as parents because the three who have had dental check-ups all have numerous tooth decays. It is inevitable to reduce their sugar intake and to increase drastically the number of brushing at regular intervals. Their level of awareness re dental hygiene is heightened due to the courses given by dental professionals such as dentists and dental nurses at school but unfortunately the translation from heightened awareness to putting that theory into action is lacking.

I drudgingly and painstakingly have to go through the rigmarole of ensuring each and every one of my kids get their teeth brushed properly at a sufficient length each day. I commence by telling and commanding that Petit Suisse brushes his own teeth first whilst Lil Miss N will also brush her teeth. I go on with the task of brushing Baby Taz and Lil Miss Feisty's teeth. I then turn to verify Petit Suisse's brushwork and finally I brush Lil Miss N's teeth. All of the teeth brushing is done not without struggle from the part of Lil Miss N and Lil Miss Feisty but the biggest teeth gnashing is without a doubt Baby Taz as he wriggles and worms his body about in order to prevent me from giving his teeth a good brushing.

The preceding task before bedtime is the dreaded routine of teeth brushing. Enfin bref I detest this particular part of the day when they prepare for bedtime and I have to scream at the top of my lungs in order to get the message across. I revel in the peace and calm when they all go to bed but moreover to sleep and reverie. I do indulge in and enjoy a glass or two of wine or liqueur as a reward for a fully exhausting day.