We didn't have the combined CG for Mother's Day this year. We have been doing it for may four or five years running and I guess the men ran out of steam. Our CG had our own pot bless dinner instead. I fried chicken! Aun helped me to season the meat before we left for work in the morning and I went home early to fry them. They were saying "Cindy fried the chicken" a tad too often that I wondered why, but trust me, the chicken was good.

After the dinner (which was really a feast because everyone brought so much food and we all had to sample each other's food for fear the cook might ask, "So did you like my ..... dish?" and we cannot answer satisfactorily) we adjourned for singing and games. The men were more enthusiastic than the children, as usual. They wanted to pray for us but I noticed the children or rather youths had disappeared by then, to their own gathering outside. You can always tell that our men love their wives in our CG by how more enthusiastic they are. Looking at them I wish someone would tell them gently, it's Mother's Day, not Wife's day, and the most meaningful gifts, prayers, cards or words come from our children, not you dearest husbands.

The newspapers carried stories of how some mothers have carried their love outside the walls of their own homes by running homes for disabled and abandoned children and raised their own families alongside their extended family. I truly feel selfish and nondescript when all my efforts and love have only been channeled towards my own tiny family, period. I need to do more.

We went to Tronoh to have a meal with Diane. Uncle David and Auntie Nancy bought my dream house at Meru Valley. Large. An enormous back garden. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the space. The free space was probably the size of my entire house. I was incredulous. How I wish. There is even a stream that runs behind the house, bubbling water over rocks and pebbles... fishes swimming in the water and an expanse of a golf course on the other side. Only one million ringgit. Which is really a steal compared to Penang prices. Sigh.

Diane on the private footpath behind their house. The stream runs beside the path.










Oh, I finally did my hair... my Mother's Day present for Aun. I look a million years younger methinks.