At Home with Dobbs

With the increased popularity of e-cards, snail mail birthday cards seem to have become a thing of the past. I rarely send out snail mail birthday cards any more as e-cards are definitely more convenient. However one of the disadvantages of e-cards is that you cannot keep them as mementos of the day like you would an actual card.

So I hit on the idea of saving the cards in jpg format, and what better way to display them than in a blogpost! If the e-card is animated, just do a print screen of the various “pages”, and save in your image viewer. Here are the cards I received this year.

From my sister:

From my niece (aren’t the cars cute?):

From a friend:

And lastly, my cousin sent me a lovely Dayspring card. The card reads:
The Blessings of Spring
Lovely flowers show us God’s faithfulness…
If God cares so wonderfully for flowers.. won’t He more surely care for you?
~Matthew 6:30

Singing birds tell us of His tender care…
Look at the birds…Your heavenly Father feeds them.
And you are far more valuable to Him than they are.
~Matthew 6:26

Soft rains remind us of His refreshing grace…
I will send down showers in season; there will be showers of blessing.
~Ezekiel 34:26

Sunny days reflect the light He brings…
I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will have the light of life.
~John 8:12

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A mother’s building blocks
are caring eyes,
a listening ear,
an understanding smile,
and hugs that warm the inside.

Happy Mother’s Day!

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I have been taking a trip down memory lane recently as we will be having our 25th year Class Reunion in 2 weeks’ time. We last had a Class Reunion 15 years ago, so it will be good to meet up again after all this time. The organizers have been collecting old photos to show on the night, so I dug out some old photos and posted them up on Facebook as well. It’s amazing to see us looking so young then, and retro to boot!

Spinosum commented that it was amusing to see hubby for once without a PDA but using pen and paper instead. I reminded him that the photo (of us in the lecture hall) was taken nearly 30 years ago — hence there were no PDAs, computers, internet, colour TV and handphones then. However we did not have many distractions either, so it was probably easier for us to concentrate on classes and studying. Really looking forward to our Class Reunion — will post some pics after the event to show you how old we have gotten!

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Continuing with my enforced arm rest, I saw a few more movies over the last few days:
Sense and Sensibility (2008 mini series version) — I liked the casting for this one more than the Ang Lee version. However dragging it out to a 3-hour version made it a tad bit boring in parts.
27 dresses — Sorry Andrea. Gave up after half and hour and FF to the end!
Curse of the Golden Flower — finally got round to watching this one with hubby. Our verdict? Gaudy, melodramatic and gory!! Check out Jimbo’s old post for a much better review
Becoming Jane — found it rather slow and boring as well.
Miss Potter — enjoyed this one very much and was in awe over the lovely Lake District scenery.
Enchanted — corny in parts but hubby and I both found it pretty enchanting

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1. Can’t stick their heads out of Windows ‘95.
2. Fetch command not available on all platforms.
3. Hard to read the monitor with your head cocked to one side.
4. Too difficult to “mark” every website they visit.
5. Can’t help attacking the screen when they hear “You’ve Got Mail.”
6. Involuntary tail wagging is dead giveaway they’re browsing
7. Surfs ww.pethouse.com instead of working.
8. Three words: Carpal Paw Syndrome.
9. ‘Cause dogs ain’t GEEKS! Now, cats, on the other hand …
10. SmellYou-SmellMe still in beta test.
11. SIT and STAY were hard enough, GREP and AWK are out of the question!
12. Annoyed by lack of newsgroup, alt.pictures.master’s.leg.
13. Butt-sniffing more direct and less deceiving than online chat rooms.
14. Too Damn Hard To Type With Paws

Source: Ruling Cats and Dogs

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What do you do when your arm is sore and in a sling, and you are told not to do housework and banned from fluffing? Watch movies of course. There have been quite a number of movies I have been meaning to watch, and I finally got to viewing some of them the last few days.

Emma (1996 TV version with Kate Beckinsale) — pretty enjoyable as I love almost all the Jane Austen movies, except the recent two Mansfield Park movies. Mark Strong as Mr Knightley looked far too old for Emma though!
Away from Her — was surprised to learn this was directed by Sarah Polley as I remember her as Sarah Stanley in the Road to Avonlea. Did not get through more than 20 minutes as I found it so boring.
In Her Shoes — good movie with strong perfomances by the 3 main leads, Toni Collette, Cameron Diaz and Shirley MacClaine who looks really great for her age.
The Jane Austen Book Club — found this pretty boring in parts, but I finished it and liked the last quarter!

As you can see these were all chick flicks, so naturally hubby was not interested. However he did watch the 2nd half of the best of the lot which was The Ultimate Gift. I am not surprised it made the list of Truly Moving Pictures. I would highly recommend the movie if you haven’t seen it before.

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Hubby dragged me to hospital yesterday for an xray and a consult with an orthopaedic surgeon. He re-confirmed the diagnosis of strain to the deltoid insertion (apparently a pretty rare condition seen only once in every 5-10 years!). Unfortunately a steroid injection would not help and there is always a danger of avulsion of the deltoid insertion with one. He suggested regular meds both orally and topically and arm rest, enforced with an arm sling.

Practically I cannot leave the sling on all day as I still have to cook and clean and look after the son, not to mention lift him. Thankfully that causes more strain on the biceps and hamstrings! (I lift him from kneeling position) But I leave it on when I sit in front of the PC, so that I have to surf with my left hand — no easy task I assure you. Naturally I have been banned by hubby from fluffing for a month. Frankly I am not too upset with that as I saw it coming, and I guess this will be a good break from racing for Skippy as well.

Thanks to all for your concern and well wishes! *hugs*

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We had dinner at our cousin’s place on Sunday and as expected, the son made his usual after dinner request spelling “ICE CREAM PIE”. Needless to say he was delighted to get this for dessert!

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It was a really eventful trip we had recently when we went back to my parents’ place. Even before we left, the son already had early morning awakening, probably due to excitement and woke me up at 4 am two mornings in a row. To make matters worse he came down with a bad tummy upset and slept only 3-4 hours for the next two nights. He actually fell asleep during the day while on his wheelchair (first time ever)!

He even fell asleep while playing on his laptop, but only napped for about 10 minutes.

The 3rd night we were so sure he would sleep well and were really really hoping for a good rest as well. Then around 1 am hubby was awoken by the sound of a loud crash, and I was awoken by the sirens from a fire truck. A car had skidded an slammed into a lamp post just outside the house. A crowd quickly gathered to watch the firemen cutting the driver out of his car. I don’t think he was too badly injured as I did not see an ambulance there. This picture shows the damage inflicted (on the lampost)

I was very thankful the son did not wake up during the commotion and he slept till 4 am. After all that severe sleep deprivation, he finally slept 9 hours last night! I finally got a good night’s rest last night (first time in 5 days), but unfortunately seem to have caught his bug. Still, I am thankful that he has recovered and hope to get well soon.

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Jokes aside, (fluff)Shoulder really exists. After cutting down on fluffing the past week, the upper arm pain had begun to subside until they introduced the Easter Egg Hunt. Even though I had a lot of fun, I paid a heavy price for all that clicking when I had a relapse of my (fluff)Shoulder *sigh* I tried some Acutop for it (transdermal NSAIDs) but had to resort to Celebrex this morning. I guess all that lifting of my son does not help in the least as he is around 100 lbs nowdays.

And what do you do when you’re feeling achy and miserable? Reach for some sweet treats of course. Here’s an unusual one from Japan that someone gave hubby. It tastes somewhat like white chocolate with a strong melon flavour. A bit on the sweet side but very yummy indeed, and pretty too don’t you think?

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