Leah’s Cafe

Our house here has three bathrooms, but no bathtub. The new house we are going to live has one thousand and one bathroom, but has a bathtub in the small bathroom. The big boy took a picture of the bathtub and he thinks I am going to like it.

Who doesn’t like to soak in a bubble bath after a hard day work? However, when people get older and are not as flexible anymore, getting in and out of the traditional kind of bathtub can be dangerous.

That’s why they have this kind of walkin tub at some of the retirement communities. You can walk in and out of the tub, and some model will have a seat to sit on. You don’t have to be afraid of not able to get up or slip when trying to get out! So, getting old is not an excuse not to take a bath! :-)

A few people asked where I am right now. Yes, I am still here, not yet move to Illinois. There are so many obstacles and delays. Seven weeks ago, it was the surgery to remove ovarian cysts, then spent 2-3 weeks going through all sort of tests due to the cancer scare and at the same time dealing with the pain after the surgery. Though doctor said it should be alright to travel after 4-6 weeks, still suffer from pain in the abdomen area. It takes much longer to recuperate than the doctor said it would!!

However, that also means I am not in a hurry to move and have all the time in the world to wait upon the big procrastinator to act. Can you imagine if air ticket has been purchased and he is taking his own sweet time to find a place for us to live? The delays actually save me from stress and put more lines that cannot be erased with the best wrinkle cream. It’s a blessing in disguise, indeed.

The big boy had delayed the plan to move out from his present place a couple of times. Since the landlord’s daughter is coming back, he has to move by the end of the May. After looking at more than a dozen places, he finally mailed me some pictures of places that he had looked at.

This is a house that he likes. At first glance it looks like it’s facing the T-junction (see the traffic lights), it’s the kind of bad Feng Shui that Chinese people don’t like, isn’t it? No picture of the inside, just a picture taken outside the house, does he expect me to decide to live here base on this picture?

I can’t live with that kind of un-assuring decision making process. So I looked up the street views on Google map, from the 360 degree view, can see the house is actually not directly facing the T-junction (though bad Feng Shui or not does not really matters very much to us as Christians). The traffic lights there are for the crossing. I was also able to cruise the neighborhood and check out the houses around the neighborhood on Google map. It looks like a nice neighborhood! As a visual person, no amount of descriptions on the phone can replace the thousands words that a picture speaks! When is he going to learn this?

He also mailed a picture of the garage. That’s the most important feature we look for in a house?! Who is going to live in the garage? Not me.

Will this end the house hunting? I don’t know, he hasn’t put down a deposit for this place. As usual, taking his sweet time to take photographs of the inside so he can show me, he says tomorrow. Tomorrow, if it ever comes…. :-)

It’s SOLD.

After my sister in law helped me to forward the “Car for sale” ads to her colleagues, a few people rang and viewed the car. One of them took up the offer, I gladly got rid of it.

The buyer is an expatriate from India and he is not familiar with the name transfer procedures. I accompanied him to the government departments to deal with it yesterday. The transaction completed in about one and half hours, faster than I expected, the wait for Puspakom checking was about 30 minutes and the name transfer was quick too. Maybe this government servants really bucked up a little bit after 8th March, eh?

My parents have lived in two different houses in their 40 years of marriage, they cannot imagine how on earth people like me moves around like a nomad. I just realized that this is the fifth time I am moving in the last ten years. That gives an average of one move every two years, it’s quite a nomadic lifestyle, isn’t it?

In fact, many of the boxes haven’t been unpacked since the last two moves. They are so many things we need to sort out or throw away, but we get so overwhelmed and paralyzed by the sheer thought of going through this junks, we just don’t do anything with them!

Many of the things are not useful nor valuable, but they hold certain sentimental values i.e the two boxes of cards and letters from a dear friend who was studying in a different university. It’s amazing that we were able to write to each other faithfully for 4-5 years, these letters are good chronicles of our student lives. Nevertheless, it’s time to throw away the bouquet of silk flowers and the small trinkets as they have accumulated to much dust. Time to give away all the soft toys and small little gifts from ex boy friends to niece and nephew and whoever wants them. :-)

Got up 6.30 a.m and start meddling on this computer, thought better get some work out of the way as this is going to be a busy morning running errands. I need to drop by the oncologist, Dr Nonis’s office to pick up the pathologist’s report. I am a bit nervous about the outcome.

Then, I am going to our house to sort and pack up some boxes that the part time cleaners already helped to move to one of the bedrooms that we are going to use to store our stuffs. We plan to rent out the house for as long as we are away in IL. May be we will return to live here one day when we are older, right now our plan is to keep the house and not selling it yet.

I am also going to help dad pick up his computer that sent for repair on the way home. His desktop was fried during a thunder storm, the mother board, sound card and video card have to be replaced. Good thing they are still under warranty! The last thing is to pick up my second sister who is at the car workshop. She is sending her car for painting work and leave it there until tomorrow.

The surgery and the subsequent cancer scare had kept me away from blogging and making money online for the last few weeks. The lack of writing paid posts in the last four weeks means the lack of income this month.

When I finally have time to sit down in front of the computer, two of the blogs that still have pageranks were down for one whole week because of the pending transfer of domains. Quite mad with the previous registrar who didn’t want to approve the transfer despite me sending them several emails. But it did get transferred automatically after seven days! But, so many opps expired and grabbed because of that! #$%^&

Then, granny G came smacking again. It’s like leaking roofs on a raining day, life is tough, boy!

With this medical bills that burnt a big hole in my pocket, good thing I have multiple blogs and multiple streams of income. The other day, I overheard my sister’s friend asking her whether I am unemployed at home now as the business is sold and I am still stuck here not moving to IL yet. When she saw me sitting in front of the computer and claimed to be working, she thought I was doing stocks trading or futures trading online. No way, if you know any futures broker, you will know how stressful it’s when the market goes up and down. I just got out of a frying pan, do you think I am jumping into the fire?

The CT scan procedure itself only took about 10 minutes, but the preparation and waiting time was quite long. We were there at 4.30 p.m but only completed the procedure and left the place at almost 7.30 p.m.

There were some magazines scattering around the waiting room, don’t know whether they were Denver magazine or not as I didn’t read any of them. Usually I would just read whatever I could get on hands on while waiting for doctors. But, my friend LC was there to accompany me, so we talked and caught up with one another while waiting for my turn.

Wanted to get out the house in the morning, but too many assignments to finish, dragged until after lunch only managed to leave the house. Didn’t purchase the bus ticket beforehand, luckily they were plenty of seats available. In fact, seats are usually not filled up during the weekdays and weekends that are not public holidays.

The two hours bus trip was a good time to catch up with lack of sleep in the last few days!