The Jennifer Blogs

Growing up, I remember my friend’s uncle Dennis. Dennis Dennis. First name - Dennis. Last name - Dennis. No kidding. And my high school boyfriend went to school with a girl named Snow White. My mom told us about a girl she knew growing up by the name of Lula Belle Thigpen. That struck us as funny too. But when I took D’Ette to the doctor the other day, I thought to myself, “Now this man literally has a funny name.”

The sign on the door read: Dr. Michael Ha.

I wonder if his parents had considered naming him twice, like Dennis Dennis’s parents did. Then he’d have been Ha Ha. And if he has a son, they could have named him Mini Ha Ha. (A little family joke.)

As you can tell, the magazines at the doctor’s office weren’t that great. I let my mind wander a bit.

The Singaporeans will be celebrating the Moon Festival, or Mid-Autumn Festival, in a couple of weeks. The festival dates back to China’s Zhou Dynasty some three thousand years ago. In Singapore, it’s also called the Lantern Festival or the Mooncake Festival. You see a picture of a mooncake above.

According to WikiPedia, the Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar. (The other is the Chinese Lunar New Year.) It’s the day Chinese families gather together to admire the bright harvest moon and eat moon cakes and pomeloes together. (We’ve already discussed in a previous blog how much I love dem pomeloes!)

To celebrate the Moon Festival like a good little Chinese, you may:
Eat mooncakes outside under the moon
Put pomelo rinds on your head
Carry brightly-lit lanterns
Burn incense to revere the gods
Plan Mid-Autumn trees
Collect and distribute dandelion leaves
Participate in a dragon dance

Since our family is not Chinese we will probably eat mooncakes (cuz who doesn’t love a good cake?), eat pomeloes, put the rinds on Jean-Luc’s head, and maybe get a day off work.

My daughter and I were in the kitchen this morning. She was sweeping the maid's quarters (yes, we really have those just off our kitchen, only we use it for our storage closet) and I was making a protein shake. I'm trying to consume fewer calories, and this seems like a great way to start.

I poured too much protein powder into the blender, so I asked my 12-year-old daughter if she would like a protein shake also since I'd definitely have enough for two. She said she would love one. Then I told her one of the side effects.



Me: "It'll make your boobies grow."

Her: "YA-AY!" (Two syllables, very loud and enthusiastic-like.)



Okay, that's not actually what I said. But you needed to understand her reaction. Picture the reaction I *would* have gotten from a 12-year-old little girl who wants her boobies to grow.

Now imagine that was the response I got when I told her, "It'll give you gas."

Yes. She was excited. About getting gas. Cuz farts are funny.

I was getting ready to place my monthly order for oils, so I asked my husband if he needed anything. He said he needed more lavender. While I knew the answer, I still asked, "Have you been using your Thyme at night?" He said, "No. I've lost a few pounds and I don't think I need it anymore."



See, here's the thing. My husband makes snoring look like an Olympic sport. And, he wins the Gold Medal! (Good job, honey! See you in Beijing!) However, I got him to try using Thyme Oil at night about a year ago. He noticed he slept better. In fact, we both slept better. He slept better because he wasn't snoring. I slept better because he wasn't snoring. He loved how I didn't jab him at night anymore, so less bruising too! (The FDA will not allow me to tell you that Thyme oil keeps you from getting bruised, though.)



Anyway, the first night he used the Thyme oil, no snoring. The second night, no snoring. The third night, no snoring. In fact, he was so quiet on the third night that I woke him up from a sound sleep. He was TICKED. But I wasn't sure he was alive. (True story.) He had never slept so silently before! 



But here we are in Singapore and he's under the assumption he doesn't need the oils because he lost some weight and thinks he's not snoring anymore. 



So I blogged about him last night. Tonight it kind of smells like spaghetti in bed again, so I know he's got the Thyme on his feet. Plus it's very quiet.



Thankyouverymuch!

One of the nice things about living in Singapore is that it's pretty much disaster-proof. There are no typhoons or hurricanes. There are no blizzards or tornadoes. Singapore doesn't have monsoons or tidal waves. And there aren't even earthquakes.



But, just because there are no earthquakes doesn't mean you don't occasionally feel the earth move.



In fact, before we moved here, there were some huge earthquakes moving the ground in Indonesia. My husband was in Singapore on a business trip at the time and said he could feel the hotel swaying. He was high up on something like the 30th floor and everything just sort of tilted one way, then back again. I can only imagine what they felt in Thailand if here in Singapore --a whole other country, for crying out loud-- there were skyscrapers leaning to and fro.



Anyway, he's fast asleep (and snoring so loud I want to beat him with a shoe), and I'm catching up on my blog-reading. The poor guy woke up cuz he thought there was an earthquake. I was laughing so hard at Jen Lancaster's blog about ant killer that I was shaking the bed. But the thing is, it wasn't one of those laugh-out-loud-HAR-HAR-HAR kind of laughs. I was stifling it so as not to wake him up. (Okay, I may have snorted a couple of times, but they were quiet snorts.) Because I worked so hard to stifle the laughter, I ended up shaking the bed twice as hard as if I'd just opened up my gut and busted out the laugh.



No honey, it's not an earthquake. Go back to sleep. And quit snoring.