Too many interests, too little time.
We were really revelling the whole of last week because it was the school holidays.
I’m only 75% through Conversation with Friends. Ergo 2 unnecessary online shops. Haha. Just waiting for the parcels now. Harry Potter jammies for Felix, Alexis and I, Skechers sandals for my hooves (Being a UK 2.5 sucks, womens shoes start at UK 3 usually.)
(more…)To stop my incessant online shopping, I’ve decided to pick up a book instead of immediately proceeding to checkout. As a result, I’m now reading Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney.
I saw ads for Rooney’s recently published third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are you and liked the series Normal People, so I chose her debut novel.
The secondary school first love relationship was depicted really well in Normal People. The characters’ vulnerableness was palpable. The actor Paul Mescal is uber likeable. Unfortunately, the plot took a rubbish turn at the end. I regretted recommending the show to others before finishing it.
Yes, Marianne is self-destructive but it didn’t stop her choices from being gross and unrelateable. If I knew where things were heading, I wouldn’t have watched the series at all.
I can also see from the book that Rooney likes her characters who, like her, are gifted in English and attended Trinity College, Dublin. Pretty sure Rooney must have hoildayed in expensive European villas when she was in uni too.
So sad that Michael K Williams was found dead yesterday due to a suspected drug overdose.
I binged the entire series of The Wire in a week with Jason during this lockdown. I hadn’t watched it before and always read that it’s one of the best TV shows of all time. So when I started watching it, it was with some skepticism that it could live up to all the hype and it absolutely did.
I started rewatching the whole series as I was watching it, and listened to hours of podcast discussions about the show with so much pleasure and I’m pretty sure I talked everyone’s ear off about the show.
It really isn’t fair to compare the series to Breaking Bad or Sopranos. Those were focused more on their main characters, what’s going on in their minds, the challenges they faced or overcame. The Wire was mind-blowing in the way it managed to show us the universe its characters were in.
At the end of the series, it felt like we knew the Game and Baltimore City. The series managed to do it with characters that weren’t one dimensional and had arcs that just felt realistic. Even though they had little screen time, the actors managed to make us feel vested in them and stir up our feelings, and Micheal K Williams is obviously one of them. Obama approved, OK?
Can’t imagine I would have loved the show as much without Omar Little whistling “Farmer in the Dell”, the courtroom scene, and his sheer presence or quotes.
“You come at the king, you best not miss.”
Omar Little
Yesterday was a day of mishaps.
Lazada delivered “safety” pet nail clippers that Lok’s ex-owner had recommended to me, and I very excitedly decided to give Loki a manicure. Big. Mistake.
I thought that if I just followed the guide on the nail clipper it wouldn’t be too deep. I should have been thinking of the length of the nails in the first place. So stupid. I also could have watched more instructional videos before doing it. Urgh, I should not have done it. Period.
Loki laid on my lap and gave me his paw in his usual super compliant and docile soft-toy-come-to-life way, but the moment I clipped his nail, he snapped his whole body to attention, and looked at me with a “WTF was that?!” face.
I looked down on his nail and the blood slowly oozed and pooled into a droplet and trickled out. Of course I freaked out immediately and told Jason (who was napping) that Loki was bleeding. Jason promptly started telling me off. He had been saying I should just leave well alone for ages. I started crying.
We took tissue and pressed the nail til it stopped bleeding. Thankfully, it didn’t take very long to stop, but I cried again when I saw blood on the fur around the nail.
After he went for his evening walk, he bled again and left blood prints on the floor, so of course, that set me off again.
I also very elegantly broke the Ikea laptop table we are using as a coffee table.
I binged all 6 episodes of Motel Makeover on Netflix yesterday.
It was an awesome TV cocktail made with shots of Fixer Upper, Instant Hotel, Gilmore Girls and Schitt’s Creek.
Some things were really hard to adjust to, like April and Sarah’s accents, or the term “Junified”, but it did happen. No matter how many times I went all Regina George and mentally went “Stop trying to make “Junify” happen, it’s not going to happen!”.
There was also a lot of Rosé-shipping. Is it just cause it’s wine but pink? Does it actually taste nice to them? Did their clearly suffering contractor Rick’s facial expression simply say it all?
Despite all that, these girls do have Insta-worthy taste and deserve all of their success. Couldn’t help rooting for them and hoping that Covid-19 wouldn’t be their ruin. It is inspiring that they gave up their day jobs and decided to Joanna Gaines/Lorelai it and build über cute motels. Friendship goals also.
I don’t know if I’d be OK with having a husband who wanted completely nothing to do with my own Netflix show though. I understand wanting privacy, but surely Sarah’s husband should have been there for the last minute helping out and stuff. Jason would not be able to escape.
Final lingering thought… does everything really have to be apricot beige?
Yes, it apparently does.
Tales of teen suicides during this neverending pandemic make me grateful that my kids are still young enough to have the resilience that young ‘uns are blessed with. Whilst social media exists to them, it isn’t all encompassing.
Humans are plain cruel. Being forced to live your teen years online while under lockdown must be soul crushing.
Can’t deny that my social media feeds make me feel that I am too fat, not a good enough mom, or generally inadequate really often.
If only I could be like Jason and just enjoy bone or joint cracking ASMR videos.
Instead, I feel I’m constantly seeing what I have yet to achieve, buy or become. I used to feel this way after reading magazines but back then I could mentally compartmentalize it away. The models or celebrities were just remote statistical anomalies who “made it” into magazines. No need to compare.
It is hard to remind myself that everyone is just putting up a façade. Displaying their life highlight reel, just like I am too. Questions like why some people have so much more to highlight etc. creeps in.
If at this age I struggle to deal with this shit, what more angsty teenagers?
The Love Actually vibes from the Ted Lasso Season 2 episode “Carol of the Bells” continued into the latest episode and the introduction of the term rom-communism was just perfection.
I believe in communism… rom-communism, that is… rom-communism is all about believing everything’s gonna work out in the end.
Ted Lasso
I loved the nods to Jerry Maguire, When Harry Met Sally, A Princess Bride, Bridget Jones, and Notting Hill. Some articles online picked up even more rom-com references but I didn’t catch those on first viewing.
You had me at Coach
Roy Kent
When I heard that term, I was immediately, damn, that’s exactly how I’ve been living my life. It has definitely brought about a fair bit of shit raining down on me, but thank goodness I do live this way actually.
There are so many reasons to be negative and cynical (see Malaysian political situation). Without clinging to some rom-communism, the depression would be real.
Even the title of the episode “Rainbow” ties in with my Chinese name “丽虹”.
The last time I blogged was 6 years ago!
There’s far too much to recap to squeeze into just one post. Hopefully, I’ll actually keep up with this hobby again and all the things that happened will find its way into my future posts here, and if it doesn’t, ah well.
I’m blogging again because I signed up for a WordPress course on Udemy and it made me really want to have a fancy website of my own. The dilettante strikes again! I also feel some guilt and regret for not journaling Felix and Alexis growing up. It’d be nice to have somewhere to go to and recall all the funny, sweet and irritating moments apart from my photos.
I knew time would fly by and my memory isn’t the best but I also felt like, I wanted to just live, and documenting would have been nice but most of the time I could barely keep it together and doubt my posts would have been fun to read. Yup, a lot of whining.
Anyway, here’s to the kajillionth time trying.
As always, it’s been ages since my last blog post. So much has happened since.
If only time would slow down for mama, mei mei.
