My baby at 16 weeks. Expected due date: 26 May 2012.

Now you know why I haven’t been blogging as often and as regularly as I used to :)

The first four months have been very trying on me health-wise — I’ve been very frail and fragile, feeling too weak and nauseous all the time (think: all-day sickness instead of morning sickness), as though ready to faint at the drop of a hat. It took me a while to figure out what foods to avoid so as to avoid hurling*** — sweet foods, sour foods, all foods containing dairy products, and chocolate. Yup, yup! You read that right: chocolate. You can just imagine how tragic it has been for a chocoholic like me to have chocolate actually taste SOUR for 18 excruciating weeks!

Thankfully, all that is almost over now. Chocolate now tastes like chocolate again but I still eat it very sparingly because the sugar content still makes me feel quite queasy. My energy levels are also slowly going up again although I still cannot stand any longer than five minutes at the most. And I no longer dread brushing my teeth, a very simple act that used to induce THE worst hurling sessions ever.

The baby is 19 weeks and 1 day today and is expected to make his/her grand entrance on the 26th of May, 2012. Naturally, OnlyGirl is praying for a girl this time. Even the boys are rooting for her, especially the twins — “Kasihan Kakak, dia takde kawan” (Pity Big Sister, she doesn’t have a friend).

As for me, it means an unexpected round of shopping for maternity clothes and baby stuff as I’ve given away everything already. And you guessed it right — with the coming of the baby, there will be more sleepless nights in KL again for me…

***From UrbanDictionary.com: hurl – to forcefully throw up

Image from Shoot First, Eat Later

In Malaysia, nothing quite sets the office gossip mill running than a female employee — especially someone who just got married recently — who is sighted with a small packet of  dried orange peel everywhere she goes. You see, Malaysians have always associated dried orange peel and other sour food stuff with pregnancy in pretty much the same way that Filipinos associate green mangoes with bagoong alamang with early pregnancy.

In the Philippines, this concept is known as lihî in Tagalog (which Malays would pronounce as [li-hik]) and pangalâ in Cebuano (pronounced in Malay as [pa-nga-lak]). In Malaysia, a pregnant woman who goes through the same thing is said to be mengidam. It’s that inexplicable temporary craving that pregnant women get, usually applying to very specific — and sometimes, weird — food items.

The funny thing about lihî is how old folks in the Philippines would warn women to eat certain foods and avoid others. For instance, they’d encourage pregnant women to eat singkamas (water chestnuts) so that the baby would turn out fair and to avoid duhat so that the baby will not end up dark-skinned. (Note how Filipinos, like most Asians, are obsessed about fairness of skin!)

In my pregnancies, I’ve only had food cravings with MyEldest (Slurpee in the first trimester, double cheeseburgers in the last trimester — I know, I know, very unhealthy!) and the twins (pineapples with soy sauce and chili, as well as mee hoon tomyam).

Paglilihi, however, is not only limited to food cravings. It can also mean a temporary obsession with a person (or persons) during the entire duration of the pregnancy or a certain portion thereof. The choice of such person(s) is something which is not necessarily logical and can even be embarrassing in retrospect. You just find yourself drawn to that person…then after the baby’s born, you lose all interest in them.

I have to confess that I actually went through this with all of my pregnancies. I now cringe at some of those ‘choices’ which were not really choices per se because I didn’t really have any choice in the matter in much the same way that some pregnant women would crave for the strangest food combinations like pickles with cheese or pizza with eggplants. So please be gentle and not make fun of me as I share this secret with you here :P

To start off, when I was pregnant with my MyEldest, it was the time when Ricky Martin re-emerged in the music scene to sing ‘Cup of Life’ for the 1998 World Cup and having been a fan of the Puerto Rican group Menudo (of which he was a part of) in my teenage years, I was pleasantly surprised to see how he changed from a scrawny high-pitched kid to what he was in 1998. (Of course, that was waaaaay before he came out of the closet!) And so ‘pinaglihian ko siya’, as they say in Tagalog. When I got pregnant with OnlyGirl, I got obsessed with Brendan Fraser in the first trimester then switched allegiance to Ronan Keating towards the end. With RoundBoy, I was so enamoured with the Irish group Westlife. Then, finally, with the twins, it was the operatic pop vocal group Il Divo that got my full attention.

Perhaps in relation to such belief, Malays would not allow pregnant women to watch horror films or sci-fi flicks, lest the baby end up looking grotesque. This actually happened to me when I was pregnant with MyEldest. We were watching an episode of Star Trek when suddenly my husband told me to turn away because one of the aliens looked especially ugly. I really found it funny, knowing how my husband normally shuns superstitions and old wives’ tales.

But you know what? Despite my paglilihî with all those artistes, contrary to the myth, my children look nothing like them — MyEldest resembles me the most, while his siblings all take after their father. None of them ended up with aquiline noses or Caucasian looks. So the old wives’ tale about lihî and how it affects the appearance of your child? Myth busted!

Thank you, God, for the gift of life.

Too bad I'm not too fond of fondant. Design-wise, I would have loved a cake like this ;) Image from Leapula's Flickr page.

Twin1 greeted me with these words the moment I reached home yesterday. He was smiling his usual cheeky grin so, for a moment, I thought he was just pulling my leg, especially when he added, “Don’t go anywhere farther than the airport!”

But later that evening, when he barged into my room wailing “Mama, jangan pergi Jakarta!” once again, it just broke my heart. I braced myself, knowing that I had a lot of convincing to do.

I couldn’t blame him for being upset; I’ve been traveling way more than usual for the past month — to Dubai and Oman on the last week of September, followed by a short jaunt in Jakarta the following week, then to Shanghai last week, and now, yet another trip to Jakarta.

But how do you explain adult concepts like ‘work’ and ‘commitment’ to a 5-year old? The easiest thing would have been to say “All right, I won’t go” just so he’d stop crying. But then I knew that I’d still have to fly anyway and that just might only make things worse for me in the end.

So I sat down and took him in my arms. I looked at him in the eye and told him as gently but as firmly as I could, “Abang (Big Brother), Mama has work to do in Jakarta. Mama does not want to go but Mama has to go.”

As expected, that made the wailing rise to a crescendo. But I persisted. “But next week, I promise I won’t go anywhere. I will be home the whole week next week.”

The tears just continued falling. “Jangan pergi Jakartaaaaaaaa….”

At my wits’ end, I held him tighter and decided to go with the truth.

“Abang, Mama has work to do in Jakarta and Mama has to go tomorrow. Would you rather have me lie to you and say I’m not going but go anyway?”

Tears streaming down his face, he shook his head.

“But can you come home Wednesday?” he sobbed. Ahh…finally! A glimmer of hope.

“My plane ticket is for Thursday but I will try to come back Wednesday.”

At this point, his younger twin piped in, “Because sometimes there is no aeroplane, right, Mama?”

And just like magic, Twin1 stopped crying altogether and switched back to his usual exuberant self, asking me to read the two of them a bedtime story.

This morning, when I dropped them off at school, I hugged each twin tightly one by one. After Twin2 skipped away to his class, Twin1 lingered behind for just one more hug. I embraced him fiercely and reminded him that I’m off to Jakarta today, would try to be back Wednesday but if I can’t make it, will be home by Thursday. Beaming, he turned to me and whispered in Tagalog, “Mahal na mahal kita!” (I love you very much!)

Moral of the story:

1. Children are capable of understanding more than you think they can.

2. The truth really does set you free.

3. But the guilt that a working mother has to deal with? It never gets any easier.

Ultrasound image of the twins at 12 weeks old. The fetuses are marked with the numbers ’1′ and ’2′.

1. Same Old, Same Old. For most of the time when I was pregnant with the twins, I felt pretty much the same way as I did in my previous pregnancies. I also had ‘morning sickness’ except that the waves of nausea would attack me when dusk sets in, or as the Malays say “bila dah nak Maghrib“. In comparison, with MyEldest, it was ‘all-day sickness’; with OnlyGirl and RoundBoy, I was blissfully free of it. Whereas I depended on Slurpee to combat the nausea with MyEldest, with my twin pregnancy, I was hooked on mee hoon tomyam — rice noodles swimming in a spicy-sweet-sour Thai broth.

2. Risky Business. After the initial euphoria of finding out at 6 weeks that I was carrying twins, reality finally started sinking in. My gynaecologist/obstetrician Dr Z wasted no time in informing me that she would be monitoring me a lot more than usual. Apparently, multiple pregnancies — i.e. pregnancies where more than one baby is involved — are considered high-risk pregnancies. There was the risk of conjoined twins a.k.a. Siamese twins had they shared a common sac; luckily they had separate sacs despite being identical twins. There was the risk of one twin hogging all or most of the blood flow from the placenta, a possibility that was ruled out after several checkups, one of which involved a detailed scan. There’s also the risk of preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, placental abruption, the babies not gaining enough weight, and pre-term labour.  At some point, I made the decision to stop reading about all the things that could go wrong because there were just far too many possibilities!

3. The Beached Whale That Kept Getting Bigger. I’ve always had big babies and the twins were no exception. And this development gave me such a big headache in the wardrobe department. Way back then, there weren’t many boutiques specializing in maternity clothes that were fashionable enough to be worn for work. In addition to the limited selection, sizing was another pressing issue — I had to buy bigger and bigger clothes every few weeks during the second and third trimester. I started with size M and worked my way to XL, perhaps even XXL.

I had the foresight to take two photos of me with my tummy in profile — one at 24 weeks and another one at 35 weeks — and it’s only now that I can see just how ginormous my belly was. By the time I was 7 months pregnant, my belly already resembled that of a full-term pregnancy; just imagine how big it was at 35 weeks! I felt like a beached whale and probably looked like one.

My twins were huge by twin standards, by the way: at birth, Twin1 was 3.15 kg; Twin2 weighed 2.85kg. Their shared placenta weighed 1kg. That meant a total of 7 kg in my belly, not taking into account yet the weight and space taken up by extra water and blood circulating in my system!

4. Discomfort. Owing to the enormity of my belly, getting out of bed was a major challenge by the third trimester. I had to be helped out of bed towards the end of my pregnancy. I had to sleep on my side and I needed innumerable pillows in order to find some semblance of comfort. Leg cramps came and went as they did in my other pregnancies. Let’s not even start talking about the back pain!

5. What Belly Button? I’ve always taken pride that I had very minimal and hardly noticeable stretch marks with my first three pregnancies. All this ended with the twins: my belly was so distended that my belly button was stretched out flat; the skin of my entire belly was stretched so taut until tiny red ‘crack’ lines appeared. My skin itched like hell and no cream in the world could give me comfort and to my despair, Dr Z, who never minced words, told me point-blank, “The only cure is for you to give birth.” Post-twin pregnancy, suffice to say that I’d make an excellent candidate for a tummy tuck, if a free one ever came my way.

6. The Nerve! Somehow the twins’ position literally affected my nerves, resulting in numbness in my fingertips for many, many months. Dr Z told me I should consider myself lucky; she said that one of her patients (who also had twins) had temporary partial facial paralysis. Again, Dr Z gave me the very reassuring line: “The only cure is for you to give birth.” The numbness lasted a couple of months after giving birth, by the way.

7. Early Birds. It turns out that multiples like to make their entrance early. Dr Z and I expected preterm labour…but never quite expected the first signs to show up as early as 24 weeks. By the 24th week of my pregnancy, I started having contractions. Strong ones. Real ones. Not Braxton Hicks, no sirree. Dr Z gave me medicine to take daily to prevent such contractions and gave me strict instructions to have complete bed rest. So from 24 weeks, I took time off from work and stayed at home, resting most of the time, pining for the outside world and the freedom of driving myself, small liberties that were deemed impossible by my condition. But such patience paid off because I managed to carry the twins up to 36 weeks, quite a feat for a multiple pregnancy.

In summary, it’s not easy to be pregnant with twins. And that’s an understatement. So now you can understand why, when people would gush about how “nice” it must be to have twins, I’d always reply that I’d never wish a twin pregnancy for anyone, knowing fully well the dangers, risks and difficulties that it involves.

So many things to write about, so little time. Just thought I’d let you all know I’m still alive.

Barely breathing (and hearing!) but hanging on,
Mimi

For all of you, Maher Zain fans, this one’s for you:-

(Click on the above image for a larger version. Sorry the 2nd pic is slightly blurred; it was dark inside the studio and flash photography was not allowed during the show.)

Prior to the show, some lucky fans got to join Maher’s meet-the-fans session in the studio. Most brought CDs for him to autograph; someone brought a t-shirt; a creative guy brought along Maher’s portrait painted on canvas.

Despite his apparent fatigue (I saw him stifle a yawn discreetly), he remained gracious and accommodating to his fans, who all jumped at the chance to have their photo taken with him. Security personnel made sure no one spent too much time with Maher Zain at any given time.

At some point, everyone was told to go into the studio and given instructions to have mobile phones set to silent, not to use flash when taking pictures, etc.

The show’s opening act was a rousing performance from Sheila On 7. It was the first time I’ve ever heard them and they wowed me with their vocals and their showmanship. (I blame my ‘ignorance’ to the fact that the TV at home is stuck between Nickelodeon, Disney Playhouse and Disney Channel 90% of the time; the rest of the time it is tuned to BBC, Al-Jazeera English, Bloomberg TV or CNN :P)

Other acts included Astrid, Terry, Vageton, and HijauDaun. And one more female artiste whose name I didn’t get.

Again, I’ve never heard of any of these artistes (except for Padi) and had to rely on my seatmates to give me the lowdown on each one.

[Lemme sidetrack here a bit and say that this reminds me of a time when I was in a room full of Malaysian artistes and had no idea who was who. Later on, when I shared the pics with my colleagues, everyone was screaming and swooning over the Malaysian silver screen glitterati who were present in that function.]

In between the performances of the Indonesian artistes, Maher performed some songs from his debut album “Alhamdulillah” (Thanks Be To God”), including “Sepanjang Hidup”, the Indonesian version of “For The Rest Of My Life” , the song that he lovingly penned for his wife.

Maher also performed a duet with Fadly, the lead singer from the Indonesian band Padi — the song “InshaAllah” (God-Willing) which was a mixture of English and Bahasa Indonesia. [NB: InshaAllah is originally in English but also has French, Arabic, and Malay versions.]

It was quite an odd sight for me — one minute, the crowd is rocking to the Indonesian bands’ most popular songs; the next minute, they’re singing Islamic songs along with Maher Zain. Even Terry herself briefly sat in the audience after her performance to watch Maher Zain perform, gladly acquiescing to fans who requested to have their pics taken with her inside the studio during commercial breaks.

The finale was Maher’s performance of “Beautiful World”, with the lead singers from Sheila On 7, HijauDaun, Vageton and Padi doing the back-up vocals.

As if it wasn’t awesome enough to get the chance to be a part of the studio audience, what made the night really special was my chance to meet Maher and his entourage after the show at the lobby of the hotel where they stayed in! It was a very brief encounter with the rising star but it was long enough for me to see how humble and soft-spoken Maher is as a person.

And if you are a fan of his on FaceBook, I’ve got some news for you — I’ve seen him type something on a MacBook Air at about the same time an update was posted on his FaceBook page. (Circumstantial evidence that he updates his FaceBook account personally from time to time??)

Here is a photo of Maher Zain with a young fan who came with his family to see him post-concert at his hotel. One of his managers is holding on to Maher’s Macbook while Maher has his photo taken with the young Indonesian fan.

Maher Zain is currently working on his second album and — good news to all my Indonesian readers — he is slated to perform before the end of this year in Jakarta, Surabaya and Bandung.

On The Differences Between Men And Women . . .
by Dave Berry

Let’s say a guy named Roger is attracted to a woman named Elaine. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one evening when they’re driving home, a thought occurs to Elaine, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: ”Do you realize that, as of tonight, we’ve been seeing each other for exactly six months?”

And then there is silence in the car. To Elaine, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: Geez, I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he’s been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I’m trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn’t want, or isn’t sure of.

And Roger is thinking: Gosh. Six months.

And Elaine is thinking: But, hey, I’m not so sure I want this kind of relationship, either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I’d have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily toward . . . I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?

And Roger is thinking: . . . so that means it was . . . let’s see . . . February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer’s, which means . . . lemme check the odometer . . . Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.

And Elaine is thinking: He’s upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I’m reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed — even before I sensed it — that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that’s it. That’s why he’s so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings. He’s afraid of being rejected.

And Roger is thinking: And I’m gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don’t care what those morons say, it’s still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It’s 87 degrees out, and this thing is shifting like a goddamn garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieves $600.

And Elaine is thinking: He’s angry. And I don’t blame him. I’d be angry, too. God, I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can’t help the way I feel. I’m just not sure.

And Roger is thinking: They’ll probably say it’s only a 90-day warranty. That’s exactly what they’re gonna say, the scumballs.

And Elaine is thinking: Maybe I’m just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I’m sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered, schoolgirl romantic fantasy.

And Roger is thinking: Warranty? They want a warranty? I’ll give them a goddamn warranty. I’ll take their warranty and stick it right up their ….. .

”Roger,” Elaine says aloud.

”What?” says Roger, startled.

”Please don’t torture yourself like this,” she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. ”Maybe I should never have . . Oh God, I feel so . …. .”

(She breaks down, sobbing.)

”What?” says Roger.

”I’m such a fool,” Elaine sobs. ”I mean, I know there’s no knight. I really know that. It’s silly. There’s no knight, and there’s no horse.”

”There’s no horse?” says Roger.

”You think I’m a fool, don’t you?” Elaine says.

”No!” says Roger, glad to finally know the correct answer.

”It’s just that . . . It’s that I . . . I need some time,” Elaine says.

(There is a 15-second pause while Roger, thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one that he thinks might work.)

”Yes,” he says.

(Elaine, deeply moved, touches his hand.)

”Oh, Roger, do you really feel that way?” she says.

”What way?” says Roger.

”That way about time,” says Elaine.

”Oh,” says Roger. ”Yes.”

(Elaine turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse. At last she speaks.)

”Thank you, Roger,” she says.

”Thank you,” says Roger.

Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed, a conflicted, tortured soul, and weeps until dawn, whereas when Roger gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a tennis match between two Czechoslovakians he never heard of. A tiny voice in the far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car, but he is pretty sure there is no way he would ever understand what, and so he figures it’s better if he doesn’t think about it. (This is also Roger’s policy regarding world hunger.)

The next day Elaine will call her closest friend, or perhaps two of them, and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours. In painstaking detail, they will analyze everything she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, expression, and gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible ramification. They will continue to discuss this subject, off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions, but never getting bored with it, either.

Meanwhile, Roger, while playing racquetball one day with a mutual friend of his and Elaine’s, will pause just before serving, frown, and say, ”Norm, did Elaine ever own a horse?”

• The Pioneer Woman Cooks (her New York Times bestselling cookbook);
• Black Heels to Tractor Wheels (her true-life love story); and
• Charlie The Ranch Dog (the children’s book that she wrote about their family’s basset hound)

I’m a fan of hers, you see — this woman who’s been blogging since 2006 as The Pioneer Woman. When I first stumbled upon her blog in 2007 (OMG! It’s been THAT long??), I ended up spending hours browsing through her old posts, laughing at her adventures, drooling over her step-by-step recipes, ogling her Photoshop how-to’s (I can only do basic Photoshop stuff, hence the need for me to get my shots right the first time…at least, I try to), joining her quizzes and contests in the hopes of winning a Le Creuset set or a Nikon D90 (which I never did *sigh*). And you know what? I even emailed her a short fan letter on the 23rd of November, 2007 telling her how I found her site through StumbleUpon’s recommendation on her recipe for cinnamon rolls. I gushed about how I fell in love with her blog, her recipes, and, most of all, her photos (the food, the scenery, the kids). I wrote: “Maybe because I also have kids, love to bake, and love to take photographs (although I’m nowhere as good as you). I guess that’s why I’m now composing this email to a complete stranger halfway round the globe :)”

I’m ashamed to admit that after four years, I’ve yet to make her cinnamon roll recipe for some reason or another but I have made her Orange Muffins, Mac & Cheese, and Crash Hot Potatoes, just to name a few. Which is why I was over the moon when I finally got my hands on my very own copy of her cookbook (*smug grin goes here*).

The Pioneer Woman Cooks

In her cookbook, Ree (that’s her real name) demystifies classics like fried chicken. As she mentions in the recipe’s introduction, even though fried chicken is universally adored, it’s also one of the hardest to cook because you need to get the inside adequately cooked without burning the outside.

The cookbook is written in her trademark chatty style and each recipe is accompanied by photos every step of the way, although the pics are surprisingly a lot smaller than what we normally see on her site.

She features many cowboy-friendly recipes like Braised Beef Brisket…

…and includes snippets about cowboys and life in the country, like this very important article about chaps and chinks and cowboys. Ladies, you simply must read the original article yourself at this link!

But she also squeezes in cowgirl-friendly recipes like Red Velvet Cake *swoon*.

Bear in mind that she cooks for quite a large battalion at the ranch, so it’s safe to halve the recipes if you’re only cooking for a family of 4 or 5.

Only after reading her cookbook do I finally understand why her recipes almost always feature butter. To use her own words, her recipes are not “non-caloric” because cowboys need energy to do their work. Makes me almost wish I’m a cowgirl so that I can eat all the butter- and carbohydrate-laden food that I want. ‘Almost’ being the keyword here. Because I don’t think I’d survive a day with my beautiful leather boots buried in mud and manure.

And what makes my copy of The Pioneer Woman Cooks special is the short message that Ree scrawled on it. There’s no way I could have gotten this under normal circumstances, considering I’m 15,287 kilometers (9,500 miles) from her or any of her book-signing sessions.

Black Heels to Tractor Wheels

If you haven’t been following her blog and just happened to read this book out of nowhere, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s yet another romantic novel — city girl meets cowboy, they fall in love, she moves to the country and goes through one hilarious adventure after another. Except that this is Ree’s own love story written in her own words.

She has previously posted most of the chapters in several installments on her website but the book contains a few more details not included in the internet version and also recounts the first year of her marriage to her Prince Cowboy, Ladd, a.k.a. Marlboro Man. [NB: Cigarette ads are not allowed in Malaysia so the name made no sense whatsoever to OnlyGirl. I had to give her a lengthy explanation about that particular brand of cigarettes and their particular method of advertising.]

The book, naturally, includes Marlboro Man’s marriage proposal (sorry, Ree, I just had to post this page!)…

Her writing is down-to-earth and honest…and she does not hesitate to include self-deprecating snippets like her panic attack on her wedding day — something that involved stuffing Kleenex into her armpits!

But my favourite part of the book would have to be the story of her ‘initiation’, no thanks to her brother-in-law Tim *grin*.

And again, there’s a special handwritten note for me ;)

Charlie The Ranch Dog

What I didn’t expect was this copy of Ree’s latest book, Charlie The Ranch Dog.

The twins were excited to see a book “for them” and wasted no time in reading it themselves.

The book is beautifully illustrated by Diane deGroat.

Having followed her blog for so many years, the book feels so familiar, almost like ‘home’ because Charlie has long been the subject of many blog posts by Ree and the illustrations of the ranch, the cows, the garden beds reflect so accurately the photos that Ree regularly posts on her site. Here’s Ree’s pic with the real-life Charlie.

Oh..and what’s this little surprise at the end of the book? A recipe for Charlie’s (and Ree’s) favourite lasagna recipe!

What can I say? I love you, too, Ree. I love you more than my luggage, to borrow a favourite phrase of yours. (Whatever that really means. Although I do love my luggage considering how often I fly with them hehe.) Thank you for the gift of stories and laughter and food recipes and generous giveaways on your site (never mind that I never won any of them…although I certainly wouldn’t mind receiving a Le Creuset Dutch oven in the mail next time *shameless cackle*).

Lots of love from KL from me and my family,
Mimi