Houston has a problem....

It has been a good 7 or 8  years since my last post - forgive me if my English is out of whack and my writing style simplistic. I am no longer living in Germany and no longer a mother to a wonderful boy but TWO.

Husband is the same character that I have moaned about before - frog turned into prince and turned into a toad - kind of thing - but the biggest change has got to be that I am now living (well for the last 4 weeks anyway) in Houston, US of A.

Nope, it was not on my account and neither did we willingly emigrate but rather my hubby was told to come here or.....(mind boggles to think of the alternative) and so we packed up ( such a simple word belying the tears, endless lists, organization, trips to the recycling center, the uprooting of our what was our home and base for the last 10 years - whew!) and here we are - our cat Georgia included.

First few days were good - it was just numbed by jet lag. I forgot for awhile that I am now even further away from Malaysia, in Trump La-La Land and in Ku Klux Klan territory (aka the South) - what could go wrong right?

Plenty as it turns out - all 4 Categories of it. Meet Hurricane Harvey Category 4. The aftermath after he made landfall exactly 7 days ago, is catastrophic to say the least. Words like Hundred Year Flood, Biblical Proportions seem sensational to say but in truth, they don't even begin to describe the destruction and misery that Harvey had unleashed upon us.

Suddenly, Houston is in news everywhere - not so much Rockport or Galveston or Corpus Christ when Harvey was a full brute Category 4 Hurricane but Houston - when Harvey weakened to a Category 4 Tropical Storm and dumped trillions of liters of rain on Houston - causing massive floods.

I thought at the time "Why now? When we have just arrived? Some welcome Houston - thanks"

It is enough for me to have a flash of all of us (Georgia) included making a beeline for the airport and hightailing it back to Dusseldorf. Even better in Germany than USA? That's saying something!

We have been spared from the floods - though the danger was never that far away. Maybe God didn't want to scare us too much and complete disillusion us - but my state of mind is shaky to put it mildly. I seek comfort but don't know what gives me comfort.

Where is it?

...this self worth of mine? Systematically hacked, gnawed away at the foundation one painful slash at a time until it's almost gone...if not gone already?

On some days I feel feisty and am so full of spirit that literally I feel I can move a mountain a pebble at a time and rebuild it again pebble by pebble, at another appropriate location...and still have the strength to admire my handiwork...

on some days, like these last couple of days, I feel trapped and unable to move....mostly because I am too afraid too venture out or to fight because I feel so small, so tiny that the others will surely trample upon me by mistake because I can't be seen or be heard?

I think I fully realize now who I am or how my husband sees me ...I am housekeeper and nanny and oh, when times are desperate, someone to shag.... After the shag, you will be surprised how fast he reverts back to his cold, unfriendly self...

How else to explain it? We had a 6 hour car journey before us. I had already adhered to his very specific packing instructions that I spent the day before indoors whilst he and my son spent the day outside enjoying a beautiful sunny spring day. I had gotten into the car after checking that the house was properly locked and secure and he greets me with "My God! How much garlic have you had?!"

(I had been consuming whole cloves of garlic in a desperate attempt to harness on its antibacterial properties to annihilate my oncoming pneumonia). I was so taken aback with the tone and manner in which he chose to express himself that basically, my breath stinks to high heaven.

I looked at him, this man with the white skin with his huge Ray Ban aviators covering his reptile cold eyes and thought " This is it. This is definitely it. He must really think shit of me to not even attempt to disguise the contempt in his voice, even in front of our son" And so, with my self worth reduced to a heap and with his uncanny way of setting the tone for the holiday that awaited us, we started the holiday.

I thought at the time. " Wow. He must be patting himself on the back for firing such a hurtful salvo that it reduced me to absolute silence" Yup, silence... for the next 6 hours to Zurich. He had the whole time, this smug look on his face that I found myself thinking ho - terrible, mutilating thoughts...toward HIM. Deep down, after the initial violent thoughts , I cried, banged my head on the wall thinking "Stupid, Stupid, stupid! Why do you even stick around this piece of shit?! Why do I let him treat me this way?!"

All these...only because he caught me unaware and I was unprepared for that. But what kind of a life is it having to be always on the defensive and always on the alert? When you love someone and that someone loves you, aren't you suppose to feel secure? How does it go? That you can finally EXHALE...? Here, I am holding my breath in the same way I always do before a dentist is about to administer a jab...because I always think that it will lessen the pain that I expect to follow afterwards....

Bubbling close to the surface

My husband can be a real asshole sometimes. Imagines himself to be God's gift to women. When he prances around with that pout which is supposed to convey an aura of being very, very cool, I think he just looks like lip Botox procedure or similar gone wrong.

When he hardly listens to whatever I say or hardly converses with me, I think how I would love to deck him across that Goddamned face!!

I feel so stuck in this rut - this whole gamut, range, plethora of emotions just whooshing in me, that I just feel like throwing my head back, open my mouth and just scream until I am all screamed out!

How does someone that you used to love turn out to be such an ASS?!!!! It's all about him at the moment - denies me my home trip this summer only for my son and I to sit around watching him leave us to entertain ourselves while he runs, or plays tennis or goes on his endless business trips. And yeah right, I am supposed to sympathize with him that these business trips are hard on him because he "would rather spend time with the family" Each times he says that I can always see that her's about to break into a smile. That's how insincere it sounds...

He is on a get young and stay young mission. The only person I know who would admire himself in the mirror and actually say " I look good don't I?"

And I think hodoh nak mampus instantly which made me realize that I have a lot of anger brewing up in me.....

question is--what will I do when I huff and I puff and I blow?

Quite a while ago, I was engaged to be married to a damned jerk. He had started out all romantic and atentive - until the Jekyll and Hyde syndrome started to kick in - because he started to be such an ASS. Anyway, whenever I watched a romantic movie, I would be filled with such a sense of longing - because in that hellish relationship that I was currently in at the time, I was not feeling THE LOVE.

Until I met my current hubby - oh how he swept me off my feet and pushed all the right buttons. Because I was so incredibly suffused with lust which later transformed to love.

And now, many years later, when watching a romantic movie - I feel that sense of longing again. For the one who whooshed me off my feet was a temporary illusion - now he takes pride and pleasure to deny any show off affection or love. I read the first chapter of 'Eat, Pray, Love' and all´I can think is "This is all sounds incredibly familiar". How she loved and despised her hubby at the same time. This is how I feel right now.

My God! That's it till the rest of my life? Is it enough? Can I live with someone knowing that he is trying to cure the incurable romantic?

I am thinking...

Is it still there?

8 years ago today, my father passed away. And its amazing how different husbands change once the sole male figure in our otherwise all female family is no longer around.

For one, the husbands lose their respect for you and take liberties and become reckless and careless - who is to reproach them?

Who are you gonna tell little orphan girl? They seem to taunt - your mama? Why do we let them actually?

Papa taught me better - those fighter instincts? They seemed to dissolve when he died. Or maybe got buried momentarily under all that mourning.

Is it still there? In me - somewhere?

Yummy Mummy and Hugh Jackman

It was the most breathtaking dream ever and so vivid. I will write it all as I remember it - so here goes...

I was in a normal looking bar - nothing fancy - when a friend told me that Hugh Jackman was about to arrive at the bar soon I was also having a white sheep on a leash - I remember that now!

I was very excited to meet him - in the dream - it was as if he was a very good friend of mine - and that we have not seen each other fore quite some time. More people came in into the bar and it was getting fairly crowded. Suddenly, I heard from my friend that Hugh had arrived.

He was dressed in a midnite blue shirt, long sleeved and with a suede vest over it as well as matching brown pants and had an Australian hat on. I made my way thru the crowd to him and with a smile on my face - I was delighted. Upon seeing me, he took off his hat and gave me this tremendous smile that seemed to light up his blue, blue, eyes.

I recall also that I was asking myself " Why is it that i am moving towards him and not him towards me? Don't I look too obvious that I like him more than I let on?"

So there we were face to face and we hugged each other. I felt so overwhelmed with happiness and my pent up feelings that I kissed his cheeks several times - was supposed to look like a friendly gesture - when his face changed. He had stopped smiling - and held me by the shoulders and looked me straight into my eyes. His face was full of passion and it was like at that moment that he realized that he loved me too....

Because we kissed - oh how we kissed - passionate, tongues mingling and he pressed me downwards, kissing me passionately that I lost my balance and actually, we both fell crashing to the floor, but our lips still locked.

He looked surprised that we had ended up on the floor. We both scrambled to our feet, I said something like " I did not realize that I was that heavy" and let his pull me up back to my feet.

We continued kissing again - and I remember his smell - so clean and heavanly, at that spot just infront of his ear. I inhaled deeply, remembering the smell.....

like freshly washed cotton sheets - no cologne smell but just nice and fragrant without the need for perfume...

and then i woke up but the smell still lingers on..

what a fantastic dream and kiss that was - until now, my whole body is tingling just thinking about it....

Yummy Mummies go Thai...

First Yummy Mummies meet since the year 2010 rolled in and we were all bundled in one car - the four of us plus a cutie munchkin - headed towards the other side of the Rhine River - a place I had never ventured into. The drive was about 20 minutes and of course, with all ladies abound, we started talking - how we had spent New Year's Eve, how the kids were doing etc, etc - and something funny had occured to me.

We were four non German ladies - real foreigners, not even European - but we were all chatting and conversing in German - can you beat that?!!! We did not realize it because it had become almost second nature.

So to the nay sayers out there who think that we try our damned hardest to not fit in - F**k you! We would not have bothered talking in this language if we were not even remotely interested in blending in.

Anyhoo, our hostess had conjured a nice, hearty soup with goose meat. It had turned out that it was a 5 kg goose (which explains why Germans do away with the 5 kg turkey for Easter as well as for Christmas). It was delicious and I had piled on the garlic and dried chili flakes on my hot steaming bowl and right there and then, it cleared my sinuses.

Thank God for Yummy Mummies - I was starting to feel a bit funky about my life and the things I have achieved as well as the things I have yet to achieve and the amount of time left to do it. What if the list never got around to being completed?

It is no bucket list mind you - its just that I had come across an old friend of mine who went on to accomplish things that I can only dream or imagine about in my wildest dreams. I felt envious - in comparison, my life is so cushioned and so well, dull in comparison.

I keep getting the feeling that surely there must be more to it than what I have done so far? It's not about making more money or having more money - it's asking the dreaded question - am I happy where I am right now? Or so numb with the mundane routine that I don't even realize that I am not happy? Just not feeling one way or the other...

I feel like digging and excavating into myself - with my bare hands, dredging up all the dirt and cobwebs and clogged dirt and screaming " Where are you?! Where are you?! I KNOW that the real you is hidden in here somewhere!"

But who is the real me? Buried too far down it's just best left that way?