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On Thursday we received phone calls from our moms urging us to blitz to the nearest Costco to stock up on rice because of the Thai fiasco, and it happened at the worst time as I had just dropped our last two cups of rice into the rice cooker.  Unfortunately due to some special circumstances, I was impeded from my Costco travel plans until Friday, and when I arrived, the rice section had vanished!  No more rice!  What happened?!  By this time, a bead of hot swet began rolling down my forehead.  Could this be it?  Is this the end of our Chinese meals?  Do we need to now opt for Spaghetti, Clam Chowder, PB&J Sandwich, and Spam? 

For dinner, I had to drop by Uwajimaya to get some fish heads (Karen’s favorites), and lo and behold, they had rice!  Well, $19 for 20 lb Thai Jasmine is definitely pricy, but if spending that $19 will bring back the savory Drunken Chicken and Pork Blood with Intestines, then so be it.  So I dropped one into my cart, along with the fish heads, and worked my way to the checkout stand.  The person in front of me saw my bag of rice and decided to get some as well, but his bag was $50 for 50 lbs.  But then his wife, whose innate Asian nature caused her to snoop around behind the piles, discovered a what should be out-of-stock bag of Shirakiku which was $23 for 40 lb!  Now why didn’t I think of checking between and behind the rice bags?  I’ve been witnessing these type of maneuvers with my folks, so it should have been second nature to me.  Have I been so Americanized that when I buy milk, I just pick the first one I see that expires the next day without looking at the date, instead of the last one in the back of the fridge that expires 2 weeks from now?

After I checked out, I decided to do a little treasure hunt of my own, and to my bewilderment, another Shirakiku was found!  I immediately loaded it in my cart, as the envious bystanders looked on, and returned to the checkout stand.  This was a Japanese brand, Calrose, and … no washing required?!  Okay that last part sounds a little fishy, but otherwise this looks legit.  Definitely not made in China.

So the morale of the story is, when the item you wanted is sold out, don’t just hang your head low and walk away.  Dig behind the stack or piles with fervor!  Better yet, comb through the entire store!  You never know if you might find that “last” hidden treasure hiding somewhere.

Karen’s parents have been dropping by a couple times a week.  If you know them, you’d know they pride themselves in the organic garden in their backyard, with varieties such as Spinach, Tomatoes, Baby Bok Choy, Chinese Broccoli, Leek, Pumpkins, etc.  Apparently they have clandestinely been transforming our yard, as we saw the fruit (or vegetable, in this case) of their labor…

It has only been a few days, but some organic vegetables are already starting to grow!  No idea what they are though.  To fathom its significance, lets visit the part of our garden with the old variety we used to grow…

This type of produce tastes bitter, so there is reason to like the new variety better.  Maybe if Karen’s parents drop by a few more times, we can forego grocery shopping for vegetables ever again!

The most hilarious thing happened with us.  Just a few days ago, we called a friend about some private matter, and then our friend asked us about our baby and who our OB was. “Dr. Graham”, we replied.  As soon as our friend heard that name, she began a tirade about how upset she was with the doctor.  She also had Dr. Graham as her OB, and the doctor mentioned during her routine visits that the baby’s head was down.  When the due date approached, Dr. Graham went on vacation, so another OB attended her that week.  To her horror, the OB discovered that baby’s head was actually up, and she needed an immediate C-section.  She couldn’t believe Dr. Graham made such a big mistake!

Coincidentally, our Dr. Graham had also been insisting to us that the head was down, and Dr. Graham also went on vacation this week, two weeks before the due date.  By this time, goosebumps appeared on my arms and drops of swet began to roll down my forehead as I contemplated whether we had made a disastrous decision choosing our OB .  Why hadn’t we spoken to her about Dr. Graham earlier?  With Karen due any day now, we had no choice but to follow through with this dire situation with Dr. Graham.  What have we done?

Our friend then went on to mention that the reason she chose the doctor was because the doctor was female.  Wait.  Female?  Karen and I looked at each other before rolling on the ground laughing because our Dr. Graham is actually male.  Needless to say, we both breathed a sigh of relief as we once again look upon the arrival date with optimism.

Now if only we can make it past April 1st for that arrival date…

Recall my mentioning of Cherry Blossom as an imagery for the arrival of Spring in my last blog?  I love their appearance, especially when one exists outside my front yard, coloring the block for one lone week of the whole year before it sheds itself of all petals and hibernates until the following Spring.  Unfortunately this year it shed more than just the petals, as it was struck by the unannounced arrival of the snow…

Unfortunately the branches was unable to withstand the weight of both the blossoms and the snow.  Oh and how I used to love seeing everything covered in snow, until now.

Just when I thought Winter has left town and Spring made its grand entrance with the blooming cherry blossoms, we get this…

Karen and I had a comforting discussion in December about how we were glad that we would have to drive in the snow during labor because of the baby being due in April.  It appears that we spoke too soon!

On Wednesday, Karen noticed that Fuzzy’s hind legs seemed to lack the usual strength.  We hoped that it was just morning weakness, but by the afternoon Fuzzy kept sleeping and breathing hard.  Normally, when we call his name, he would wake up with a mean demeanor, pat down our hand repeatedly with his small paws, which was really comfortable by the way until he switch to the biting maneuver, which was less comfortable.  By night time, Fuzzy would not leave his house.  We de-roofed the house and fed him water, then picked him up, and he just laid there, void of energy.  He had no appetite, not even when his favorite sunflower seed was hand peeled and personally fed to his mouth.  Something was definitely wrong.

By Thursday afternoon, Fuzzy didn’t even have energy for water, so Karen drove Fuzzy to the vet, the Bellevue Center of Veterinary Medicine.  Unfortunately, that was when we met doctor Death, who squeezed him all over and slapped him down, when he started shaking.  Doctor death was not done.  He picked him up again and strangled him, which was when Fuzzy perished at his evil hand.  Needless to say, the place would not receive our recommendation to anyone other than those interested in paying for Euthanasia, without the mercy part.

So we bid farewell to our beloved little pet, who had been with us for 1 yr 8 mo.

We will miss you, Fuzzy!

The Chinese water torture, as I have heard it, consists of dropping a single drop of water between your eye-brow in a set interval. Even though the drop is tiny, but done at a regular interval and at a sensitive part of the body, the results can be mind-wrecking. Unfortunately I seemed to have discovered a similar torture device in my bedroom, where the incessant nocturnal floor popping sounds are driving me bananas. Every night, when the heating vent turns on, a space under the carpet, or perhaps in between dry walls, begins to pop at a regular interval. During the day the decibels may be overcome by ambient noise, but at night, the pop becomes the beating of the drums, the firing of a smoking gun, or the explosion of TNT. This is especially apparent when my brain activities have shut-down halfway and I’m halfway down the road to dreamland when I get rudely yanked by an invisible string, back into the very bed I was so comfortably lying dormant, only to be given back my complete consciousness.

This evil disturbance must end.

It’s a new two-story home with a nice grand lookout area at the top of the structure, with lots of square footage!  Oh, by the way, we’re talking about a new home for Fuzzy, our dwarf hamster, in case you were conned into reading this blog thinking Karen and I made some additional investment in real estate.  Let’s recall where Fuzzy lived for the past 10 months…

Aside from sleeping and eating, his only other activities were running in the perpetual spin wheel and wiping the window with his paws, armed with overgrown toe nails.  We decided that with half the space of the aquarium taken up by Fuzzy’s household items, it lacked the space for him to explore and run around, so we decided to upgrade his home and provide additional physical activities for his feeble mind.  When we returned from Petco, we assembled his new home…

Good news and bad news.  The good news is that the new luxury home had an oversized bedroom with vaulted ceiling on the first floor, a dining room on the second, and a view terrace at the top.  The bad news?  Fuzzy didn’t know how to climb the tubes to get from first floor to second floor.  He would consistently climb about a third of the way, get freaked out, and turn around.  As a rodent, he’s got the innate ability to crawl into tight spaces, right?  I guess not after living in an aquarium for 10 months.

So we placed the luring sunflower seed at the top of the tube and left the house for a Labor Day weekend family gathering.  When we returned, the sunflower seed sat untouched, and Fuzzy was still ceaselessly working out on the spin-wheel without food or water.  From time to time, he laid still on the floor with puppy eyes.  What did this mean?  Could our little white Fuzzy be athletically challenged?  Is he unable to accomplish simple feats that his peers have been excelling at for years?

We decided to wait for him to make a desperate attempt at finding water by running through the tube, but it never happened.  Since we didn’t want to wake up the next morning with a dead rodent in the cage, we decided it was time for some tough love.  While Fuzzy never made it up the tube, he did occasionally enter the tube to explore, and it was during one of these moments that I stuck my palm out and sealed the entrance to the tube.  He immediately noticed something was wrong, turned around, tried to squeeze his nose through the gaps of my finger but to no avail.  He also attempted clawing his way back to the house, but that too was futile.  Finally after some struggle, he realized that there was no way back, so he built up his courage and started clawing his way up.  He slipped a few times along the way, but he was determined to reach the other end of the tunnel.  Eventually, he made it to the top, where he found himself some water, some food, and a huge sunflower seed, his favorite.  While Karen and I were busy watching TV, he even managed to squeeze up to the lookout point and enjoy the piece of peanut we accidentally left in there.  Throughout the night, he proudly exercised his newfound ability by continually climbing and descending between the first and second floor, and occasionally up the lookout point.  It was certainly a relief to know we haven’t been raising a wimp all this time.

Now I could have played the role of a human escalator and shuttled Fuzzy back and forth between the levels with my hand, but then he would never feel challenged to climb the tube and would be missing out on enjoying his new habitat to its fullest.  It struck me that very often, we’re like Fuzzy.  We’re so comfortable with where we are and we become complacent and don’t realize our potential.  At that moment, God may block or take away what we’re so used to.  While we may be upset, fearful, or be afraid of uncertainty, as long as we trust in God and know He wants the best for us, we can press on facing the unknown.  In the end, we’ll accomplish what He knows we’re capable of all along, and open up possibilities that we didn’t even know existed.

Now if only Fuzzy can learn how to use a toilet…

In the past month, some flying fiends decided to take refuge in a corner of our roof above the fireplace with no access from the inside.  Fearful of the foul discharges that could transform my siding into a mural, the thought of staging a siege by denying access to their entrance and devoiding them of nourishment had crossed my mind, but my compassionate side suggested otherwise.  Thus we coinhabited with the unwelcomed guests.

Yesterday, a tapping sound and flapping of wings echoed through the acoustics of fireplace.  The mother must have submerged into the abyss of the fireplace fixture.  Without access to the space, I had no choice by to lay still watching TV while she was destined to rot in the confines of the wall gap for all eternity.

All that changed today at noon, however, when she bumped her way through the labyrinth of drywall and 2x4s and made her way to the exit and into our family room.

After arming myself with anti-bacterial device in the form of baseball gloves, we began a 15-minute game of tag going from the family room to the guest room to the living room.  Each time she was able to elude my dragon claws and glide away.  Finally, as the bird jetted its way out of the guest room, Karen executed the spiderman web maneuver and enveloped the rascal with a piece of towel.

So I carried the towel, along with the bird, to the world that she knew before the inadvertant self-captivity, and exposed her to the ray of sunshine she’s yearned to see.  As quickly as she entered, she wisped away with the waves of the wind.  She left no words of gratitude, just some excreta for us to clean up.