Hiyah Nowah,
Life here is getting back to normal. I am exercising everyday. I've abandoned all diets because I can't afford to be so grumpy anymore. Concentrating on exercise has the double benefit of making me feel mentally alert which improves my mood. Neil spilt coffee (mine) over the keyboard so I was out of action for a while which panicked me as writing to you is my stress release.
Mum rang me last Thursday to tell me that Dad had a stroke. She said it is only a minor one. Everything else is fine but his speech is still slurred. He should be coming out of the Mercy Hospital today. Another reason to get a live-in helper, for those emergency dashes home.
After five weeks off, the little mites finally went back to school on Tuesday. There were alot of relieved, happy mothers and children at the bus stop that day. The schools were due to re-open on April 28th but the government changed their minds at the last minute which annoyed everyone. Then this Monday, we were told the schools would open, definitely. Nobody got excited. No point getting your hopes up but spit, spot Monday morning, my three little angels scrubbed raw clean, armed with bottles of hand gel and disinfectant wipes in their bags as instructed, three sets of temperatures taken and recorded in their diaries as instructed, new summer uniforms, lunches lovingly packed and, with renewed hope in the fortitude of man, we embraced the new morning and marched to the lifts.
The first security guard in the reception of our tower block shouted, "Red Rain Warning. No school." We pretended not to hear him and kept walking. We arrived at the bus stop and waited. "Where is everyone else?" said Thomas. We waited and waited. Another security guard passed by and we asked him. He said, "Red Rain warning, no school." "What the hell is red rain?" I asked but he shrugged and walked on. We reluctantly turned back home and I asked the 1st guard what was going on. Apparently, it's a weather warning system they have in HK. I was stunned. Unbelievable. Would this nightmare ever end? If the Virgin Mary herself appeared in front of me just then and told me she was gasping for a cup of tea... "A drop of rain never killed anyone," I muttered to myself as we three clean children and their mammy trudged up to the 7th floor. Of course, it wasn't the kids fault but I still made them do homework as usual.
Last Thursday was a bank holiday. I had to get a present for a birthday party Conor was going to the next day so I decided to go to Toys R'Us in Causeway Bay. Since I had time to spare, I decide to take the quaint and cheap option - it's 2 cents a ride - by taking the tram to Pacific Place where I had arranged to meet Neil and the boys. Boarding the tram I headed for the upper deck. I've heard stories of people incurring serious injuries on board these things so I gripped the hand rail as if my life depended on it. At the top of the stairs, as I transferred my hand from the rail to the back of a seat, the tram suddenly lurched forward and threw me to the bottom of the stairs. I screamed blue fucking murder while praying, 'Jesus, just kill me.' Better to be dead than paralysed. I landed on an elderly Chinese lady standing at the bottom. She broke my fall. Stunned and grateful I thanked her. I don't what she said back but she was not happy. With her still shrieking at me, I sheepishly re-climbed the stairs slowly. As I sat down my right leg burst into stinging pain. I now have some spectacular bruises which the boys are proud of. I wear jeans to cover them but the boys ask me to hoike them up so they can show off to their friends.
For my birthday and to help me with the suffocation of being at home with the kids, Neil booked me into a creative writing workshop in the Foreign Correspondents Club in Lang Kwai Fong. It runs every Saturday morning for the next eight weeks and our teacher is Jane Camens from Australia. At least I think she's Australian, she could be English but lived along time in Sydney. Anyway she lives here now and I'm so grateful. The first class was two weeks ago. For the first exercise, Jane asked us to write for five minutes about ourselves. Write about myself?!? I was off like a rocket. After five minutes I had four foolscap pages filled; the guy next to me had four lines. Not that I'm competitive... We then all had to read out. The first guy waxed lyrical about the beautiful plains on which he was born where the river meanders down between the elm trees to the ocean. I thought, 'Oops, I'm out of my depth here.' The lady next to him wouldn't read out hers because it was too intense and emotional to be heard by strangers. I silently panicked and wondered 'should I slip out quietly now while they're distracted?' I was the last to read and when I finished, Jane cocked her head to one side and said, "You're quite funny." After recess, she gave us the opener, "I remember..." and I went off into a stream of consciousness about my Dad's red Cortina and again I got the verdict, "You are funny." She said it nicely. There are 12 in the class and we're a mix of American, Australian, English and me. One of my classmates said I looked like Kathy Bates out of the movie, Misery.
At the end of that first class, I felt alive and as charged as a crazed elephant. The nerve centres in my brain, dormant since birth, went berserk. As I strolled down to the Star Ferry to catch the bus home, my mind buzzed with images, anecdotes, storylines....on and on.... Dreamily I planned my slow bus ride home, meandering slowly up the mountain to the literary heaven that is our flat, brew a cup of tea, start my homework when I remembered to turn my mobile back on. I had six missed calls from Neil. Smiling fondly, I listened to the voicemails. The 1st message, "Geraldine, the boys have to go to judo, where is their gear?" The 2nd, 3rd, 4th were all of a similar vein and within minutes of each other until he could contain his frustration no longer and roared in the 6th, "Will you turn on your fucking phone, ring me back and tell me where their fucking kits are?" Ooops...
Life here is getting back to normal. I am exercising everyday. I've abandoned all diets because I can't afford to be so grumpy anymore. Concentrating on exercise has the double benefit of making me feel mentally alert which improves my mood. Neil spilt coffee (mine) over the keyboard so I was out of action for a while which panicked me as writing to you is my stress release.
Mum rang me last Thursday to tell me that Dad had a stroke. She said it is only a minor one. Everything else is fine but his speech is still slurred. He should be coming out of the Mercy Hospital today. Another reason to get a live-in helper, for those emergency dashes home.
After five weeks off, the little mites finally went back to school on Tuesday. There were alot of relieved, happy mothers and children at the bus stop that day. The schools were due to re-open on April 28th but the government changed their minds at the last minute which annoyed everyone. Then this Monday, we were told the schools would open, definitely. Nobody got excited. No point getting your hopes up but spit, spot Monday morning, my three little angels scrubbed raw clean, armed with bottles of hand gel and disinfectant wipes in their bags as instructed, three sets of temperatures taken and recorded in their diaries as instructed, new summer uniforms, lunches lovingly packed and, with renewed hope in the fortitude of man, we embraced the new morning and marched to the lifts.
The first security guard in the reception of our tower block shouted, "Red Rain Warning. No school." We pretended not to hear him and kept walking. We arrived at the bus stop and waited. "Where is everyone else?" said Thomas. We waited and waited. Another security guard passed by and we asked him. He said, "Red Rain warning, no school." "What the hell is red rain?" I asked but he shrugged and walked on. We reluctantly turned back home and I asked the 1st guard what was going on. Apparently, it's a weather warning system they have in HK. I was stunned. Unbelievable. Would this nightmare ever end? If the Virgin Mary herself appeared in front of me just then and told me she was gasping for a cup of tea... "A drop of rain never killed anyone," I muttered to myself as we three clean children and their mammy trudged up to the 7th floor. Of course, it wasn't the kids fault but I still made them do homework as usual.
Last Thursday was a bank holiday. I had to get a present for a birthday party Conor was going to the next day so I decided to go to Toys R'Us in Causeway Bay. Since I had time to spare, I decide to take the quaint and cheap option - it's 2 cents a ride - by taking the tram to Pacific Place where I had arranged to meet Neil and the boys. Boarding the tram I headed for the upper deck. I've heard stories of people incurring serious injuries on board these things so I gripped the hand rail as if my life depended on it. At the top of the stairs, as I transferred my hand from the rail to the back of a seat, the tram suddenly lurched forward and threw me to the bottom of the stairs. I screamed blue fucking murder while praying, 'Jesus, just kill me.' Better to be dead than paralysed. I landed on an elderly Chinese lady standing at the bottom. She broke my fall. Stunned and grateful I thanked her. I don't what she said back but she was not happy. With her still shrieking at me, I sheepishly re-climbed the stairs slowly. As I sat down my right leg burst into stinging pain. I now have some spectacular bruises which the boys are proud of. I wear jeans to cover them but the boys ask me to hoike them up so they can show off to their friends.
For my birthday and to help me with the suffocation of being at home with the kids, Neil booked me into a creative writing workshop in the Foreign Correspondents Club in Lang Kwai Fong. It runs every Saturday morning for the next eight weeks and our teacher is Jane Camens from Australia. At least I think she's Australian, she could be English but lived along time in Sydney. Anyway she lives here now and I'm so grateful. The first class was two weeks ago. For the first exercise, Jane asked us to write for five minutes about ourselves. Write about myself?!? I was off like a rocket. After five minutes I had four foolscap pages filled; the guy next to me had four lines. Not that I'm competitive... We then all had to read out. The first guy waxed lyrical about the beautiful plains on which he was born where the river meanders down between the elm trees to the ocean. I thought, 'Oops, I'm out of my depth here.' The lady next to him wouldn't read out hers because it was too intense and emotional to be heard by strangers. I silently panicked and wondered 'should I slip out quietly now while they're distracted?' I was the last to read and when I finished, Jane cocked her head to one side and said, "You're quite funny." After recess, she gave us the opener, "I remember..." and I went off into a stream of consciousness about my Dad's red Cortina and again I got the verdict, "You are funny." She said it nicely. There are 12 in the class and we're a mix of American, Australian, English and me. One of my classmates said I looked like Kathy Bates out of the movie, Misery.
At the end of that first class, I felt alive and as charged as a crazed elephant. The nerve centres in my brain, dormant since birth, went berserk. As I strolled down to the Star Ferry to catch the bus home, my mind buzzed with images, anecdotes, storylines....on and on.... Dreamily I planned my slow bus ride home, meandering slowly up the mountain to the literary heaven that is our flat, brew a cup of tea, start my homework when I remembered to turn my mobile back on. I had six missed calls from Neil. Smiling fondly, I listened to the voicemails. The 1st message, "Geraldine, the boys have to go to judo, where is their gear?" The 2nd, 3rd, 4th were all of a similar vein and within minutes of each other until he could contain his frustration no longer and roared in the 6th, "Will you turn on your fucking phone, ring me back and tell me where their fucking kits are?" Ooops...
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