oxymoron policy

in most hospitals smoking is taboo, hands must be scrupulously washed and if you have a fever or cough you can’t gain entrance. in order to prevent the spreading of germs, there are no cloth towels, paper towels are used. no peanut butter is served with toast in the cafeteria.

yet perfume is still allowed in hospitals.

this my friends, is today’s oxymoron.

considering the number of people who are allergic to manufactured scent, why on earth is it allowed in an environment meant to preserve health?

i am not officially allergic to perfume, but i am fully capable of giving three high powered sneezes when passed by an overzealously perfume sprayed person. even if i am not contagious at the time, i can’t imagine that my germs HELP anyone who has a weakened immunity.

why the overzealous make themselves that way still confounds me. since they generally are not bad people, and don’t fall into any particular demographic, i conclude that they must have dull nasal senses. they simply don’t know the strength of their scent.

interestingly, the DIOR scents, like POISON, seem to be the repeated offending smells. so is it a matter of dior being naturally overpowering, or that the people drawn to this scent also are tied to poor nasal recognition? there’s a thesis waiting to happen.

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another oxymoron: cures that increase the problem.

foundation guaranteed to cover acne which clogs up the pores and causes more, hair products for people with greasy hair. with greasy hair you don’t need a plethora of styling lotions, glosses, and special gels. you need to leave their hair alone. yet our greedy manufacturers for the most part, are playing up on the insecurities and desire for a quick cure.

my own hair is very fine and thick. and have i mentioned that i have no body whatsoever? and i have spent a pretty penny on products that guarantee to give LIFT to my hair. well, let me tell you, my farrah flip, mary lou retton cut, body perm, rachel do, and current no fringe pre-shoulder bob have never gotten body out of these products. they do get that charming one centimetre up in the air, the rest flopping look, which i don’t recommend to a lot of people.

oh, now for the important stuff….

sela has learned to wave.

carys and sela have said ma ma. never while looking at me. all three say dadadadadadadada with alarming frequency.

my grandfather died over the weekend. even though he had been ill for a while, it was still a surprise.

i mentioned my grandfather before, in an earlier blog.

it is easier to think of my grandfather dead than to think of him in pain. or doing what he didn’t want to do, being where he didn’t want to be.

i’m not going to share too much about my grandad, but here are some brief memories:

1) he fought in the second world war. he was a banker, not an army man, but he fought. for as long as canada was in the war, my grandad was "over there". he even came home with shrapnel lodged in his cheekbone above his teeth that remained for the rest of his life. he was with the troops that liberated holland, and returned, 50 years later, to be wrapped in love and thanks.

2) after retiring, he taught ESL free of charge at a local community centre to recent immigrants to vancouver.

3) he loved animals, opera and sport. went to see the movie "as good as it gets" not because of jack nicholson, but because of the brussels griffin dog. ("by far the best actor").

4) when he was 80 years old, he sped me to the vancouver airport after I read my plane ticket incorrectly, in order that i wouldn’t miss my flight and have to pay for another flight i couldn’t afford. i made the flight.

my gran is doing as well as can be expected. how can you be so calm after losing the person you have loved for the past 50 years? i have only loved and known magnificent for eight – i cannot imagine the magnitude of losing the hand i had held for over half a century.

a few years ago, when travelling from san francisco to hong kong via vancouver, mc was staying at my grandparents house. (they loved him so much they gave him keys to their house after his first visit!) he brought out the video camera, and taped them talking about relatives, their love story and lives, recollections they had of their past. they gently argued back and forth over genealogy, dates, and other such events they had shared together as the stories came tumbling forth, to be captured, heard and remembered by the next generations.

it’s no state secret (or SAR secret in hong kong’s case) that children are extremely adorable when sleeping. between the triumverate’s 6.45 bedtime and my bedtime, i usually check on them three or four times. smooth covers, push arms out between slats, remove plush toys if i think they are too close to mouths. that sort of thing. sebastian (who goes down at 7.30pm), will require re-adjusting; that boy slides around a bed like john travolta on the dance floor.

i like admiring them in their repose, and silence, and stillness.

the other night, i was doing my second to last rounds, had checked out jasper and carys and was just finishing with sela, when olivia the loud cat followed me in to the nursery. charles and i had locked her out of our room (my eyes were bothering me) and she was delighted to see me. and meowed loudly. and again. and once more.

suddenly, i heard that unmistakable, adorable sound: crumply nappies shifting. a quick look at the cots revealed that sela was awake.

i have mentioned before that sela has her own brand of jetlag: people are her caffeine. i knew if she saw me in her room, she would snap into wakefulness immediately. and be ready to play and loudly indignant when her requests were denied.

i panicked and did the only thing i could think of: i ducked.

i was between sela and carys’ cots. heart beating. panicking. trying to keep my balance and keep olivia silent.

the silence suggested sela was trying to get back to sleep. i smiled, hearing her slurp away on her ever comforting thumb.

however, olivia meowed again, and i heard thuck! as thumb was removed from face. and crumpling, as sela shifted and got herself into a sitting position. i stayed silent, until i saw her hand wrap itself around a cot slat.

i was hidden from her by the bumper, but as olivia continued to wind herself around my legs and try to jump into my lap, i knew i was going to be busted. the situation was so outrageous, i had to look away before i laughed with the incredulousness of my predicament and really got sela excited.

my eyes rested on carys, who is our noisiest sleeper. she has these very gentle snores and just loves resting her head on a pillow as she drifts off to sleep. and something else..she is growing. she looked such a big girl, sleeping on her side and stretching.

my ruminations were interrupted by a squeal. slowly, guiltily i looked up, and i saw one pair of green eyes, staring at me, and even in the semi-dark i could see my daughter had recognised me and was smiling.

at this point, magnificent charles passed by the room and asked what on earth was going on. logically, he thought i had dropped something or was trying to usher olivia out of the room. he wasn’t expecting to hear my synopsis. he laughed, observed sela’s growing anticipation of playtimes, and said,

put sela down, turn and walk away.

i got as far as the laying her down bit, but then she burst into tears.

she’ll stop soon, and wont wake any of the others, predicted magchar.

he was right. it was funny.

i admit to being guilty of occasionally hiding from sebastian when i am trying to finish something savoury that i don’t want to share (!), but i figured i had at least one more year before i was hiding from the triumverate. especially when they’re sleeping!!!

cha-CHING MING!

yesterday was one of my favourite hong kong holiday, ching ming. also known as the grave-sweeping holiday, or spring remembrance, ching ming (clear and bright), is when chinese families show respect to their ancestors by visiting their graves and clearing away weeds, (the chinese believe that too many leaves surrounding the graves disturb the spirit of the ancestors) touch up and repaint the gravestone inscriptions, make offerings of wine and fruit, and burn paper money.

let me explain. apparently the chinese believe that the dead are in a sort of prison. you come in and have no money, and rely on packages from relatives. so, living relatives burn paper money for their ancestors to spend in the afterlife. but it doesn’t stop there. there are intricate paper models of microwaves, boats, jets, fans, heaters, televisions, dvd’s, cigarettes, blackberries, and even i-pod’s that folk are burning for their relatives. i have even seen replica lear jets for sale.

as for the food on the gravestone, no, that’s not a picnic, that food is an offering to the spirits. apparently spirits come in groups of three, as three sets of chopsticks and three Chinese wine cups are also placed above the food, close to the headstone. it is believed that relatives are not eating well in the afterlife, so their favourite dishes are set out to tempt their tastebuds. at the end of the day, the food is cleared away.

family members might also pour wine on the grave or set off firecrackers to scare away evil spirits. the firecrackers also let deceased loved ones know they’re there to pay their respects. folklore has it that unhappy spirits wander the earth on ching ming. It’s considered bad luck to do important business or have an operation on april 5th. stick to hanging out in the cemetery and offering your ancestors food and fake money.

in ancient china, qingming (as it is called in mandarin) was by no means the only time when sacrifices were made to ancestors. such ceremonies were held very frequently, about every two weeks, not including other important holidays and festivals. the ceremonies got to be so costly and elaborate and time consuming that in 732A.D. (tang dynasty), emperor xuanzong declared that respects would be formally paid at the tombs of ancestors only on the day of qingming in order to reduce the expenses. this is a custom that continues to this date.

paying respect to ancestors is not the selfless act it seems….the chinese believe that remembering your forefathers increases their own chances of luck. apparently the spirits have the power to fulfill wishes, so you need to stay in their good books. 

ching ming is not just a day of remembrance, it is also called spring remembrance, and after visiting the graves, the family often goes out for a picnic (a real one, eating the food that was on the grave in a different location) to enjoy the weather, which is definitely improving.

we live very close to a graveyard and we love watching the reams of people filtering into the graveyard. although i don’t agree with the spirits thing, i do respect and appreciate the concept of remembering ancestors and their lives and sacrifices. we sort of did that in antigua, and even though the people discussed were not my blood relatives, hearing about their lives and how they worked to make them, and the times they lived through was really interesting.

so there you are…one of my favourite hong kong holidays, gone for another year.

yes well, i sort of ran out of time. a public holiday here in hk, and mc and i were out of the house early (visiting jane in hosp, a meeting between mc and the pastor, me taking seb to a local aviary/park) and home late (a bbq for steph)…yay birthday gp!

home late for 6pm bottle which jasper had been crying for since 5pm. girls pretty well behaved, sela managed to flirt with everyone there, and carys did lots of nose crinkling. gave babies bottles, threw them in bed still wearing the clothes they had worn all day long, and just before jasper could hit the sheets he vomitted all over them.

vomitted peach yogurt smells even worse than peach scented room freshner. didn’t think that to be possible.

so now am snuggling down with mc and watching a movie. he’s going tomorrow to bangkok so will have nothing but time to create the love post. it might be usurped if i choose to tell you about the holiday we just had here.

last year toward the end of summer i threw one of the babies in the baby bjorn and went for a walk behind the hospital. this is a nice flat walk and takes about 40 minutes to complete.

my water bottle was drained and i was within 10 minutes of my front door when i saw something out of the corner of my eye.

it was a snake.

i screamed.

the snake either saw or heard me, because we both moved. i jumped up (what good is that?) and back, and the snake zoomed straight ahead.

the jury is still out on whether the snake was smart or stupid.

stupid – the snake zoomed ahead, across the path and fell down a cliff.

smart – the snake knew i wouldn’t follow it

however, now that the snake was definitely no longer a threat to me, i was interested in its outcome. i walked over to the barrier, and watched the snake bash its way down the cliff. it was taking a beating. bang up in the air down again and bang, repeat, repeat, repeat. all the time spinning. sometimes its belly would smack, sometimes its back.

eventually, the snake hit some flat ground and stopped its downward decent. ten seconds later it was moving. slithering around, trying to find a hole or the easiest path up to the top again.

it was the coolest thing. im probably not describing it well, because i am not the world’s biggest snake fan, but this was seriously neat. not even mel gibson could have survived this, yet this snake (whom i have renamed timex) took a licking and kept on ticking.

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one of the problems with the written word is its inability to project tone. tone influences how sentences should be taken.

it has recently come to my attention that my blog doesn’t always project my emotion, and that its author, (moi!) is not giving a complete view of my triplet infested life.

you only write about the sad stuff. or the frustrating stuff, people have said to me, and more often, to magnificent.

why?

1) i am not a gushy kind of person. i cant accurately describe the love i have for the babies, (although i am very good at describing the frustration!), and i don’t want to try.

2) my blog wouldn’t be very interesting if i focused on reasons why i love my children, or the loveable things the triumverate and sebastian had done that day. (or i couldn’t make it interesting).

3) i write my blog in a very rushed manner. i am writing to tell about the experience of triplets and a three year old and their magnificent father and possibly ailing cat and the trivia and God that makes up my existence. there are spelling and grammatical errors all over the place. you people with newborns can back me up, it is a rushed existence for those first few months. you’re like that snake, falling down the hill, wishing you would stop falling but hating the bang when you do!

but there is love.

tomorrow i will write about it. and why.

remember the list? friends, ross and rachel, the list…isabella rossellini? of course you do. for ages afterwards, every couple laughingly made the list.

and now, even i, have made the list.

except mine is the SIMO (single income many offspring) version.

instead of listing five attractive celebrities i would like to get involved with, i have created the much more pragmatic version: a list of women magnificent charles should/can marry if i die.

hear me out.

if charles knew he had my approval to marry any of these women, then he would be spared the angst many widowed men face when they are considering remarriage. the women i have so thoughtfully screened have my seal of approval if you will. not only do i think they would make good wives, but they also would make great mothers. even of four children.

and, they would be able to tell my kids stories about me. and would not be entirely uncomfortable when magnificent charles did so, so that my children would not entirely forget me.

while i agree it would be crass for there to be a wedding picture of magnificent and me on display, none of the potentials would be uncomfortable with the pictures being stored. and i think they are all secure enough to not mind there being a small picture of me placed in a not prominent but not in the pantry either area of the home.

depending on his mood, magnificent either gets annoyed or intrigued when i bring out the list.

i cannot believe that you don’t think i wouldn’t be driven crazy by her 25 birds. i hate birds.

…or….

really? her? why do you think we would be a good match?

he isn’t called magnificent for nothing. never once has he been overly enthusiastic about a choice, saying, "i think so too" or anything incredibly stupid like that.

is this controlling? slightly to medium, oh yes. but it is also my way of telling magchar that i would want him to hustle on with his life. i would want him to be happy, and knowing him, these are the women i think would make him happy. not replacement tess’ (these women actually are all very different than me), but good fits for chuck.

i think it would also be helping him out. remember tom hanks in sleepless in seattle? he only had one young child and didn’t have a clue on how to re-enter the dating world. with four kids it gets a leetle more challenging i suspect, and dates might be at romantic events like elementary school fund raisers and rugby tournaments, but with the help of the list, charles would have names of people to call.

controlling and thoughtful. a nice combination.

i am trying not to dwell on the passion part of the relationship, i am more comfortable thinking mary poppins and chaste cheek kisses, but i do know that they would do it. that just upsets me to think about it, so i am not.

do you have a list? have you handpicked your husband’s next wife? what qualities does she have? is she much different to you?

tell me more.

the undignified media spotlight on terri schiavo’s last days has certainly got many of us thinking (quite rightly) on the importance of "getting our affairs in order". that and of course the kind offers from television stations and websites to download living wills from their websites.

for magnificent and i, the biggest concern is guardianship of the kidlets. which i have written about previously, and much to my discredit, have not done anything about since that time.

but last night magchar and i actually sat down and started writing down couples we considered as options.

it was like writing a singles ad, or a job description. WANTED, must have these requirements, salary non negotiable, extremely long hours, generally thankless job unless child wins academy award.

from chats with girlfriends steph, jane and lynsey, i was able to state what some of my prerequisites were.

LOCATION is incredibly important. an excellent guardian couple choice live in new zealand. however, if the triumverate and young sebastain went to live with them, how often would their canadian relatives see them? not often, i am guessing.

AGE counts. right now lots of my girlfriends have their parents listed as official guardians to their children. but as shayna pointed out, do our parents really want to have to discipline kids? they deserve these days of spoiling. they worked hard and put in their disciplining days when they parented us. they deserve to kick back and only see the excellence of their grandchildren.  raising kids is exhausting. i can only imagine raising teenagers is more of the same, except with more emphasis on taking yourself right back up those stairs and changing into something not so revealing. (aww dad! i can’t believe you said that! everyone is wearing this! well everyone does not look like you in this, and everyone is not 14 years old!) tiring work. my parents are in their 50’s. is it fair to ask them to put in 20 more years of parenting and to relinquish the joy of grandparenting? same with people whose children are already teens. and you can tell they’ve put in their time and are looking forward to the freedom. is it fair? then again, is both parents dying?

RELIGION. it is important to me that our children are raised in the church. That cuts out some of my best friends (for now! heh heh heh.)

$$$$$ – it is a little known fact that children, are expensive. i wouldn’t want my kids to financially cripple a family. sure, money is the least important in this scenario, but if both parents are having to work two jobs to support their newly acquired family, their medications and doctors, and let’s not even talk about education, is that fair to them and would it affect the quality of the family unit?

how many? – then there is the issue of, how many kids??? most of my friends already have two plus children. if they have two, they’re planning on more. six children is a brady bunch. i’ve read the birth order books, (a great one is WHY FIRST BORNS RULE THE WORLD AND LAST BORNS WANT TO CHANGE IT), and this would be very confusing and tough. it would be difficult enough for the existing children in the house my four were going into to adjust to the concept of brothers and sisters, and wouldnt’ the parents be pulled in how many new directions trying to show love to their children, plus the tentative, painful journey of embracing s, j, s,&c into their world? and then our friends who do not have children, they are planning on starting their own family, and you sort of want to see how much they enjoy parenting before you ask them to take on your own kids.

(having said that, i re-read my own blogs and i am stunned that anyone would ask me to be a guardian to their children. thank you for your faith in me and understanding that you can still be sarcastic and exaggerate and love someone to bits!)

this is incredibly difficult, planning your children’s new parents. because what you want, of course, are the closest people to YOU that you can find, because at the end of the day, the best parents for my children, and mc and myself. i hate having this adoption discussion, but i know i have to do it. because as painful as it is, if mc and i did die, and this matter was unresolved, having my family divided up and slotted into foster care is one million times worse the angst and unhappiness this adoption discussion causes me.

more soon.

the antigua pictures are up.

and so is jasper’s lunch.

i was feeling a little sad today, in fact all weekend i was feeling pretty down. just feeling i wasn’t good enough. and i tried, believe it or not, reaching out to a friend, and it didn’t work. that made me feel even worse!

sitting down with my comfort cuppa, i realised that choosing the babies outfits for the day couldn’t really be considered my accomplishment, so i decided to head back to the computer, where i have been trying to write my book.

the book is a recollection of the triplets conception, gestation, birth and NICU stay. this is tough business. so much of it i don’t remember, so much i wish i could forget. i thought writing was meant to be cathartic!

so, when it got tough a few weeks ago, i sort of stopped writing for a while. i had given myself the goal of 500 words a day. and all i was doing was re-reading the same passages, wondering if that had really happened to me, and if so, where had i been?

so i got about 800 words and some editing done. to paraphrase our friend elton john, "the book is back!"

over the weekend we actually did some fun stuff, in between hospital visits and wiping snotty noses. we had three of sebastian’s friends over on saturday for some egg colouring and lunch (Scrambled eggs, of course!), and sunday magnificent and i hauled out both double strollers and walked the babies to chi fu, a very local shopping complex located near our home. as you might imagine, the babeolas were swamped by curious onlookers, and jasper (surprise!) got a little overwhelmed and started crying. but he’s a blue eyed, blonde (what little hair he has is blonde!!) boy, and boys can do no wrong, so the crowds just thought he was even sweeter.

the next day, we took the babies walking along bowen road. again, lots of interest from joggers, bike riders, bladers and families. believe it or not, the crowds still thought jasper was cute as he vomitted all over the sidewalk, his legs, feet and hands. he has horseshoes coming out of his nappy, this kid.

magnificent will be posting pix soon. he promises.

and delivers.