humour, Life Lessons Learned Natasha Chiam humour, Life Lessons Learned Natasha Chiam

learning to love forty

I have been forty years old for 12 days now. It's growing on me. Slowly.

And so when I saw this in my Facebook feed today I immediately clicked on it.

Check out what the ever so wise Andy had to say about us gals.

I particularly like this one...

"A woman over forty knows herself well enough to be assured in who she is, what she is, what she wants and from whom. Few women past the age of forty give a hoot what you might think about her or what she’s doing."

I think I love him.

And just because I can, you can expect some 'Imma gonna get my forty freak-on!' posts coming very shortly.

Cheers my young grasshoppers!

Natasha~

 

 

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I am kinda PISSED...

What the Freakin' Firetruck is wrong with Hollywood?? Is there not an original idea floating around anywhere in La La Land these days!!

I just heard that Ridley Scott is planning to revisit and remake the world of "Blade Runner". 

This is the icing on the shit cake that includes the overly cheesy Kenny Ortega announcing (and then shamelessly plugging away on So You Think You Can Dance) the remake of "Dirty Dancing".

What is wrong with these people? Why can they just leave the classics alone and let them BE CLASSICS! Especially the classics that they made in the first place!

Blade Runner and Dirty Dancing are two of my favourite movies of all time. The mere thought of someone other than Patrick Swayze playing Johnny is unfathomable to me. And can someone please explain to me who on earth they can get to embody the anguish and yearned-for human existence and memory that was Rutger Hauer's portrayal of the replicant Roy Batty?

And while I am ranting about this, can any of you comic book geeks out there please explain to me why all the super hero movies need to be "re-booted" every few years? The Hulk, Spiderman, Superman and now even Batman? And these are just the so-called 'good ones'....

Maybe I am just a purist. I like things to stay the way they were originally made. I want new generations to appreciate what came before them and see the value and talent and awesomeness that was. I want my kids to watch Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and Back to the Future when they are old enough and know how cool they are in their originality. I want them to appreciate original art and a good movie....

...or a completely cheesy one too!!

Damn it people, NOBODY puts Baby in a corner!

And by "Baby" I mean Jennifer Grey, before the nose job!!

N~

 

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Summer Blog Challenge posts for August 22, 2011

 

 

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Dear Family: Please leave me alone....

....is how I felt this weekend.

Oh, I know, I am a terrible wife, mother, person, blah, blah, blah!

But it has just been one of those weeks.

You know how it is. Everything keeps piling up and up and up. The laundry, the paperwork, the housework, the phone calls and appointments you don't have time to make, the meetings you have to postpone, the house you are trying to build.

Everything in my life felt like it just hit the pooper this week! And I was done. DONE, done!

First of all I get the whole intervention chat LAST weekend. Then we hit some MAJOR snafus and delays with the building of our new house (more on that in a later post). My two-year old fell down the stairs a week and a half ago and just started walking again this past Thursday (I love babywearing people and didn't mind carrying her around, but the whole drama queen thing going along with it was getting on my last nerves). Professionally I feel like I have hit a crossroads and I need to make some decisions, but I don't feel that I have the time to devote to doing that, which leaves me feeling very frustrated and at a stand-still.

And then to top it all off, on Saturday, on our way to IKEA, Natural Urban Dad does his usual passenger seat driver schtick, which mostly involves telling me how to drive, where to drive, when a fucking light turns green and grabbing the god-damn dashboard every time I apply the brakes and I tell you, I just HAD IT!

We of course proceeded to have  the most dumb-ass fight a discussion in the car and parking lot and I instigated the 'DO NOT FUCKING TALK TO ME WHILE I AM DRIVING' rule! And then we continued on with our day and into the evening and night, my family completely oblivious to my frustrations and need for solitude. (Granted I never said anything and they can't read my mind, but still!)

Today, I was very excited. I got to go to work! Which meant a whole FOUR hours away from the lot of them. It was great! I was at the Urban Infant Magazine Red Carpet Launch Party and I was in my element, teaching and showing families how to babywear and use baby carriers, and this always puts me in a good place.

And it was just what I needed. Just enough time for me to have that was about me, and also just enough time for me to miss them just a little bit. Plus there where cupcakes, amazing, little tasty cupcakes from Whimsical Cake Studio!

The laundry still needs doing (hello, I was not here for most of the day), I still have a to-do list that is as long as my hairy lower leg (yes, yes, an appointment for some waxing is on that list!), the house issues are not completely resolved and I still have some big decisions to make about my career.

But whatever, tomorrow is another day and I will attack all of the above with renewed gusto!

Because today, I got a little break from my family and my life and you know what? THAT is not a bad thing to want or to get.

Sincerely and slightly more sane now than I was yesterday,

Natasha~

 

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Scrubber Sponges, Chinese Philosophy and my husband...

We sort of have an unwritten rule in our house, no writing about Natural Urban Dada. I am a blogger, yes, and I am very open about my feelings and my life here, but he has veto power about anything that crosses that unwritten "line in the sand" and is about him. Today however, he has given me carte blanche to blog about him! (It may not be exactly what he had in mind).

This was our conversation last night as I was cleaning up and washing dishes after dinner.

"What are you doing? Why do you wash away all the soap you just put on the scrubber? Wha....You just did it again!"

"Whatever, the dishes get cleaned don't they?", I said glibly.

"But, you aren't doing it right. You're wasting too much soap and water. I can't believe you call yourself green!"

"I just do it differently than you."

"No, you do it wrong. Put the soap on the sponge part and let it run through to the scrub side. I need a blog, then maybe I can educate more people like you about how to do things properly."

At this point I put the soap on the sponge as he has instructed me and say (with not a hint of sarcasm, I swear), "You mean like this honey?"

"Yes, that is better. I'll just stand here and watch for a bit and make sure you are doing it right."

And so I humor him and do it 'the right way' while he is watching. He eventually walks away  shaking his head and muttering something about "it just makes sense, I don't understand..."

Here is the thing. My husband and I have very different ways of doing things. Pretty much ALL things. I mean fundamentally we have the same values and morals and all that, but we are pretty much exact opposites on the surface.

I am loud and extroverted. He is not.

I cry at the drop of a dime. He never cries (not once in the 11 years I have known him or according to him, not since Spock uttered those classic words to Kirk in Wrath of Khan "I have been and always shall be your friend.")

I like to pile my clothes on the chair in the corner of our room. He puts his away right away.

I cook and make a mess and THEN clean up when I am finished. He likes to clean as he goes.

I never go to the bathroom with the door closed. He never goes with it open. EVER.

I would go happily pack up the kids and the dog and go on a two week camping trip through the Rockies. He would happily book a hotel with running water, toilets and little to no risk of ants in his bed.

I need to be able to have a fight and get out my emotions and let it go. He needs to figure out what his feelings are, go away and assess for a while and then discuss. (This is very frustrating BTW!!)

Maybe part of the reason we are so different has to do with our upbringing. Him by a very typical Chinese Tiger Mom, and me by more of a "Single with 4 kids trying to keep a roof over our heads" Mom. Both ways seem to have had good results. He is a very driven man, who works hard to provide for his family and knows how to clean a toilet (score!). And I am a very strong-willed woman, who has learned a lot the hard way and knows that I could do it all by myself if I had to, but am so, so grateful that I do not!

I am not sure why or how we work, but we do. We complement each other and we balance each other out. And it seems to be working well. We have managed to stay together for 11 years, we still laugh at each others jokes and maybe sometimes just at each other and we are very much in love.

Wikipedia describes Yin and Yang as this:

Yin yang are complementary opposites that interact within a greater whole, as part of a dynamic system. Everything has both yin and yang aspects, but either of these aspects may manifest more strongly in particular objects and situations, and may ebb or flow over time.

So as the water was flowing over the dishes, and we were having the silly discussion about my scrubber-sponge technique, it was all good. Because tomorrow, or maybe the next day my Yin will manifest more strongly and ebb all over his neat-freak Yang butt!

 

Natasha~

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