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I need to learn to sit on my hands during meetings!

Somehow, I am now baking 2 dozen mini breakfast quiches for Teacher's Appreciation Day, a few hundred or more Milk Tarts for Expo day on March 20th, I've got to finish my quilt by March 30th so we can auction it at the luncheon. I also offered to donate "dessert coupons" where I'll make a dessert for a family, once a month, for 3 months. That's for the Silent Auction. I have to finish the recipe book so we can sell it at the school bazaar. I have to bake cupcakes, muffins, and regular size cakes for the Soccer World Cup day at school, I need to make some (lots) of beaded items for the school bazaar and I'm helping run an expat garage sale at the end of May for all the families that are leaving. I'm also in charge of the new PTA Store that will be opening at the end of April - yes, it's an actual store, that I need to stock and find volunteers to man. Take out two weeks for our new Zealand vacation. Oh yes, and I'm thinking about opening a restaurant!

Somebody hit me in the head, NOW!

I did have a somewhat productive afternoon though. I managed to get all the recipes that were already typed into Publisher reformatted so that we could fit the Chinese versions on the same page. So, in a way it was pointless work but it had to be done. Now at least all the new recipes I enter will be correctly formatted. And, I even managed to make supper! That alone was a miracle! And look, I'm even finding time to update my blog......

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Yup, I've put the restaurant idea on the back-burner for now. It was fun while it lasted! It seems everyone wants me to make/bake something for them anyway, so I might as well just do something from home and not have the worry of any additional overheads. It's a dream I still have, and hopefully, one day……

Sydney's not feeling well today, bad tummy ache, so she's at home. Normally I would tell her to take something and send her off to school, but there's been a bug going around for a while so I'd rather err on the side of caution. There's no school tomorrow anyway, so she has time to get better and catch up of work. I see a CSI marathon on the cards for today! Maybe I'll get some sewing done too.

Yesterday the yard maintenance people came, from Top Regent. We can actually see the lawn….well, where what little lawn there used to be. With all the leaves rotting away on the grass it's pretty much killed off whatever lawn was there. Now we have dirt and moss. I think they bagged about 10 massive bags of leaves! I'm happy that all the dead tree branches have been hauled off too. They're up in the trees now, on a 25-foot ladder, teetering on the top rung, leaning over spindly branches trimming away up there.

Last night I did some online investigating - nothing too exciting - just looking for additional feet for my sewing machine. I emailed Michael pictures and part numbers and he's found them here in Nanjing already, overnight! How does he do that? So, he's going shopping for me today - for sewing machine bits and pieces! My life would truly suck without Michael and Wang Yi.

Its 9:30pm and Rory's about to go on an hour-long (supposedly) call with Dallas. There's a bunch of teenagers upstairs, playing Xbox so I can't get into my pj's quite yet! That would surely mortify Maxine! So, I figured now would be as good a time as any to update my blog.

The other day I finished sewing the top of my quilt and this morning I sewed the bottom. Then I moved the dining room table over so I could lay everything out on the floor, taped down the backing, stretched out the cotton batting, then the top layer. And then I spent HOURS pinning together all the layers, and baste-stitching around the border to keep everything in place. I can hardly move this evening! I switched between sitting on the floor and scooting around - that worked okay for the edges, to leaning over on my knees until I couldn't stand that anymore, to finally just leaning over with my butt in the air, and blood rushing to my head! I got it done though. Michael got me a quilting foot for my machine so I'm ready to go! Almost. Tomorrow I'll have to go to Golden Bridges to get some really thin paper to copy my top-stitching pattern onto - eighty times. At least then I can tear off the paper when I'm done. I figured that would be the safest and easiest way to do it.

Oh well. Gotta go now - getting chased out the room! Till tomorrow…

Wednesday, 3rd February, 2010

Phooey! I tried machine quilting the top of my quilt and I hate it! It distracted from the pattern so much, even though I'm following the shape of the piece. L I've tried hand-quilting a block and I actually prefer it. So, it looks like I'm going to be hand-quilting all 80 blocks. Now my challenge is transferring the stitching guide to the top - I need a quilting pencil, which you can't find here. I'll ask around sewing group - maybe someone will have one that I can use and then I'll buy them a replacement in New Zealand. Yes, I have been Google-ing fabric stores in New Zealand! Don't tell Rory!

Maxine and Sydney were home today. It was student conferences at school today so they get the day off - really stupid! Anyway, Sydney stayed in her pj's the whole day. Maxine and Ben baked a cake for our neighbor who broke his arm. He fell, skate-boarding, on Saturday and ended up having to go to Hong Kong for surgery. He broke his arm in two places and has 14 screws in it now! For a year! Hong Kong is the closest place to go if you need an operation. Now you know why I won't let Rory buy any power tools!

We're up to 80 recipes for our Hopeful Hearts Cookbook J Still a way to go to reach our goal of 200 recipes and we want to start selling it in April! Chinese New Year takes out a chunk of our time too. It's really slow going….but we'll get there.

Friday, February 5th, 2010

I got an email from my mom yesterday saying that they were hit by a tornado! Looks like they had a couple touchdown in their neighborhood. The two enormous fir trees in their front yard landed on their brick wall around their yard. It sounds like they were lucky in some respect though - no one hurt, and other houses with more structural damage. The timing couldn't have been worse - they were supposed to have an open-house this weekend. After taking years to decide to sell their house, they'd just put it on the market.
We're just thankful that everyone is safe, and wondering where all this strange weather is coming from?

This morning I'm off to school for the Chinese New Year assembly. Apparently it's quite the celebration! I'm hoping to get some good pictures for the web-site. Till later…..

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Today Rory had an office party with all of his staff. He was dreading it because of the "very" traditional Chinese food that was to be served. Here is the email I got from Rory telling me about it...
"The restaurant is Hubei Cusine....
Many of the famous dishes are prepared from two or more raw materials, giving prominence to the major ingredient while attaching importance to the auxiliary materials. For example, stewed turtle is a dish of turtle and pig's spine, sauted three slivers consists of shredded pork tenderloin, shredded chicken and shredded pig's stomach, and dragon and phoenix marriage is a mixture of eel and chicken. The names of the dishes indicate that Hubei dishes are prepared from more than one ingredient.
Hubei food is famous for its freshwater fish dishes since almost every fish available in Hubei can be prepared into different dishes. There are all-fish, bream, Mandarin fish, eel, turtle, giant salamander, crab, shrimp, clam, water chestnut, lotus root, wild duck, and preserved - duck - egg dinners. Among the dishes, steamed bream without soy sauce, turtle with wax gourd, instant - boiled fish with tangerine pulp, and braised chicken with chestnuts are all well - known.
I'm screwed!"

He actually enjoyed himself it seems.....it started at 11am, and I texted him at 12:30pm - he was already drunk! By 2:30pm he was singing karaoke to Achy-Breaky Heart - the only English song on the karaoke list! They left one guy at the restaurant, passed out on the table! And, a lady passed out in one of the taxi's on the way to the karaoke club! And yes, this is a company party! It's the "Chinese Way"!

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

We woke up this morning to thundering and lightening - the first time we've seen or heard either in China! Quite a difference to Singapore's daily storms. It was a bit risky for the kids to be walking in so Rory's taken them to school on the way to work. I'm waiting for the lightening to stop before I get in the shower. With my luck, if I don't get struck by lightening the power will trip and I'll be stuck in the shower in the dark - creeeepy!

Yesterday I baked some mini breakfast quiches for the Teachers Appreciation Brunch. There were plates and plates of muffins, loaves, cookies, bars, sausages, and bowls of fruit and all of if was gone! Not a crumb left! My friend, Wendy, and I were upstairs hall monitors during the brunch and got to harass sullen-looking teenagers, chasing them outside. Considering more than half of them are a foot or so taller than us I think we did pretty well! It's pretty intimidating seeing a crowd of huge kids come barreling towards you when that bell rings! We were hoping to be able to nosh on some leftovers after the teachers were done - not likely! So, after fulfilling our hall-monitor duties a bunch of us went to Skyways bakery for a sandwich lunch - not quite cake and muffins, but the company was good J

I've lost my transfer pencil for my quilt. It's a special white pencil that you use on fabric to outline or trace a pattern. I was working with it on the dining room table the whole of Sunday, but later that afternoon I came to use it and couldn't find it anywhere! What's the deal with that? We've looked under chairs, under rugs, inside couches, in the rubbish bins, under tables, inside the vacuum cleaner! I cleaned up my desk, the magazine basket, even my pile of recipe books looking for it, but still no pencil. Unfortunately, I can't use just any pencil, especially with the fabric being black. So, I'll have to wait till I get to New Zealand and buy another one, for me, plus another one to replace the one I lost! I still just can't believe it vanished off the face of the earth like that - so FRUSTRATING!

Sydney is in the school talent show this evening, doing a skit with a bunch of her friends. We've been warned NOT to attend! She won't even let us ride in the car and go to the restaurant across the road from the school - fearing that we'll sneak in during the show! Of course we would - isn't that what parents do?

Maxine's boyfriend, Ben, has gone to Canada for a few weeks, so I get to see my teenager again! She actually sat on the sofa with me yesterday while she did her homework and I sewed. We even spoke more than 10 words to each other….I'd forgotten that it is indeed possible to hold a rational and intelligent conversation with a teenager.

Michael informed Rory yesterday that fog and possibly snow is in the forecast from tomorrow, so we've decided to drive to Shanghai Thursday evening to avoid risking a highway closure on Friday morning. The last thing I want is to start my vacation off with stress. We'd never get a train ticket anyway, with it being Chinese New Year the next day.

Well, the lightening has stopped and the rain slowed, and it's a little lighter outside now…I think I can risk a shower, before Wang Yi arrives! Got some scary hair going on this morning!

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

This morning we had a meeting at the school about subject choices for 8th and 9th graders. Normally 9th graders would not be involved but they changed the course layout a little, more so in the arts, so it opened up more choices for Maxine's grade. There's Computer Technology, Design Technology and now Media Technology, which is what she'll do. She'll still take Chemistry, only because of the way the courses are structured, she'd have to do French as the other option. I think Chinese will be tough enough - I don't think she needs French on top of that.

It's still raining this morning - we've had days of rain now, with little break. The roads on the way to school were flooded this morning. I felt sorry for the people walking - there's no sidewalks and the cars would just come roaring by, soaking them in muddy water.

I had another almost sleepless night last night. Got to sleep about 11:30, tossed and turned all night and then wide awake at about 3:00am. I came downstairs to read and dozed off at some point. It's 10am now, and I feel like I need to go back to bed for a couple of hours, but I have to pack and make food for Buster.

Looks like Nanjing is in for a big snow storm! Michael informed me this morning that BIG snow is comin from the north - biggest in 50 years! He said it could be like the snow we had two years ago in Nanjing - covering cars! we had planned on driving to Shanghai tomorrow evening in case we hit fog and the highway got closed on Friday morning, cuasing us to miss our flight. Now we're looking at leaving tomorrow morning or at the latest lunchtime, so we're sure to get there and Michael can get back. Last time it snowed like this the highway was closed for a week!