JESUS LOVES PEBBLES: Babysitting

On 18 October 2008, just as Da and I were on our way to Emicakes to collect the durian cake for FIL's birthday party, my mother called me. My mother, my brother and my brother's girlfriend had made a last-minute decision to go to Muar, Malaysia for the weekend. As such, the job of babysitting my brother's "son" fell on Da and me.

My brother's "son" is none other than the most handsome jack russell terrier ("Boy-Boy") in the world that you see in the photograph below. He has a real name (complete with the same surname as the rest of us, of course). However, his nicknames are numerous, eg. "Boy-Boy", "Darling", "Baby", etc. My favourite nickname for him is "Boy-Boy".

After FIL's birthday party, Da sent me to my mother's place to play with Boy-Boy while he went home to watch the Manchester United football match (which started at 12.30 pm). My mother does not subscribe to cable television. As we left FIL's party late, by the time Da sent me to my mother's place and he rushed home to watch the match, he had already missed the first half of the match. However, not to worry - there were no goals in the first half and the Red Devils scored 4 goals in the second half to win the match. Yippee!

As I was tired, Boy-Boy and I fell asleep while waiting for Da. By the time the match was over and Da made his way to my mother's place, it was past 3 am. I didn't even hear the car. However, Boy-Boy suddenly got up and rushed downstairs to the living room sliding door and looked out. True enough, Da had parked our car in my mother's car porch and was in the process of locking the car. What a sharp hearing Boy-Boy has!

The next morning, we all slept late, including Boy-Boy. How late? Well, we got up around 1 pm. Goodness me! I have never slept so late in my life. I got up groggily and decided to prepare a simple lunch. I rummaged through my mother's refrigerator and voila! Lunch was served! We had otah-otah (direct from the freezer and frozen on HIGH for 4 1/2 minutes).

I also beat 2 eggs in a bowl together with salt, pepper, etc. The omelette was microwaved on HIGH for 1 1/2 minutes.

The food was accompanied by multi-grain sliced bread, a cup of home-made yin-yang (ie. I mixed coffee and tea) and a cup of tea.

A most relaxing sunday indeed! When we had finished eating, we barely had enough time to wash up and rush to church. The sermon by the Pastor (http://jesuslovespebbles.blogspot.com/2008/10/there-is-shaking-in-this-world.html) was very powerful and I enjoyed it tremendously.

After church, we went to the gym. Feeling a little lethargic, we were only able to do brisk walking on the treadmill. For a fleeting moment, I considered jogging on the treadmill but I was too tired to do so. While using the treadmill, I was watching a re-run of an old television serial on Channel 8. In that show, one of the actresses was frying maggi noodles with ingredients. It was the Chinese version of "maggi mee goreng". An idea came to me to fry instant noodles, Chinese-style for dinner.

How time flies! Evening came too soon. I called my other brother to ask whether he and his wife wanted to join us for dinner (I intended to cook a simple dinner at my mother's place). However, he informed me that his wife was at work. (I hope that you did not have to stay too late at work, girl....)

Da and I did bought some groceries from Carrefour and we made our way to my mother's place. When we arrived, Boy-Boy was sitting near the living room sliding door, looking out. The poor dear! I do not know how long he had been sitting in that position. After the usual hugs and kisses (for Boy-Boy, that is), I rolled up my sleeves and started preparing dinner. I decided to fry the ingredients for the instant noddles first and scoop out some of the fried ingredients to be mixed with Boy-Boy's steamed white rice.

Our dear Boy-Boy would probably disagree with me but vegetables are good for health, so his dinner had plenty of vegetables, as you can see from the photograph below:-

Boy-Boy has his own dinner plate and cup. If you look carefully, you can see some of his dinner on the floor. This is because he is quite a fussy eater and he has a tendency to "rummage" through his dinner to make sure that there is no "yucky food" inside, such as peas. If he comes across any ingredient that he dislikes, he will spit it out. That rascal!

As for Da and me, I added uncooked instant noodles to the ingredients and mixed the noodles thoroughly to create fried instant noodles.

Our dinner went well with a small bottle of Wyndham Estate Rose Shiraz.

After dinner, Boy-Boy was ready to play! He has toys in just about every room in the house.

While I was using my mother's computer last night, Da decided to "take 40 winks". Initially, Boy-Boy was happily playing in the room. However, later he got tired and he snuggled next to Da and took a nap as well.