Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air, tomorrow keeps turning around.

As I was saying, Christmas, dude. Wow. I’m nodding thoughtfully at my laptop, while gazing nonchalantly at the mess I made in the kitchen. Now I’m punching my palm with my fist. I don’t know why. Now I’m biting my fingernail. What am I doing?

Christmas was fun as always, but on the days leading up to it, I went about 20% too crazy for my physical and emotional health. Like, on Christmas Eve, I shouldn’t have spent hours in the kitchen baking banana bread, bailey’s cheesecake, chocolate peanut butter cookies, oatmeal cookies and such. I know, right? For hours, I could have been lounging in front of the TV, yelling at the baby, but nope, I chose to spend this special day in the kitchen. I’m biting my fingernail again.

Christmas, though. It has brought on this ridiculous frenzy of baking. I was worried that my sister would not be experiencing the heartstopping joy of christmas morning as remembered in my childhood. But my fears were unwarranted. Just the idea of being able to rip the wrapper of presents was enough to send her into an unstoppable rampage.It was then my mom stepped in and stopped her from eating my baked goods. “Sugar high,” she intoned. I privately agreed, and made a mental note to wrap each and every lego block next year.

As I am sure you are aware, Christmas, besides being Jesus’s birthday, is also my mom’s birthday. A bunch of people swarmed over, whom I joyously dumped my cookies on. One thing would have made this day perfect though. I wanted to teach the baby to play mahjong, but nooo, something about the wrong values of gambling, and anyway they were too busy teaching me.

Bah.

Anyway, I swallowed my bitter disappointment and enjoyed myself. And now it’s two days later and I haven’t stopped baking. I can barely crawl across the room without wanting to curl up and hibernate for a day. I don’t know if it’s the baking and the many glasses of bailey’s, or the high-pitched screams of my sister as she rips into our letters and christmas cards. Or both! Probably both.

And the silent night will shatter from the sounds inside my mind, for I'm one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind.

So I have made a rough draft of my New Year’s Resolutions in my head. And I have finally taken it upon myself to learn to drive properly. The last time I tried driving was on the CTE, and I started to hyperventilate. The magnitude of my panic was so great that it caused all the cars to lift into the air. So we were all in the air with no control over the direction or speed of our vehicles and we hurtled skyward and began smashing into each other repeatedly. As we left the Earth’s atmosphere, I heard the faint screams of “Why, Rachel, Why! Why couldn’t you have taken the bus?!” The Straits Times interviewed my parents, and declared a grueling condemnation on the worst daughter the world has ever known. In the meantime, the hole in the atmosphere expanded uncontrollably and threw the world into chaos. God gave up on us and decided to create a better universe, one without bad drivers. He offered me one last chance to apologize and make things right, but before I could say anything, my teeth turned to liquid and dripped to the back of my throat because I had forgotten to floss the night before. We were all destroyed. All because I could not drive properly.

I tricked you! What! That didn’t actually happen! Yuletide Fools’!! (That’s right, Jesus loved a good prank.) I can’t actually drive yet, but hopefully I would have time to take the test in Aussie where it’s cheaper and more lenient. I've been thinking about it for sometime now and I guess I miss it there. Quite a bit. Do you ever wonder if you'll just be an average person who will never have a chance to witness something extraordinary.

Now I’m off to wrap the two billion presents while getting drunk on Bailey’s. I predict my gifts will get more sloppy as the night wears on. Finally, I would just tape my sister to a box and lurch up to bed.



P.S. Merry Christmas, guys. It's been a long year.

Finding all my previous motives growing increasingly unclear, I travelled far and I burnt all the bridges I believed as soon as I hit land.

My mom is freaking insane. She has developed this delusional notion that my dad and I like water chestnut drinks. Which is fine, because they taste okay. But under the half-baked idea that we are madly in love with that drink, she buys it for us in bulk. Like a carton of it every week. So just now, when I was marketing with her, I suggested that maybe it’s time we moved on to a new drink, not that water chestnut isn’t great, but it’s too much of the same thing. She seemed to understand what I was talking about, and then, with my back turned, she goes and buys a box of grass jelly drink. It’s sweet when you think about it, but it’s actually worrying, when you really think about it.

Posting is positively tiring, my friends. Which is why I’ve been putting it off the last month. Every time I feel the mild inclination to blog, a voice from the tiny guy who works in a dark, understaffed cubby hole in my mind says “I’m sure noone wants to hear about your complaints about the weather, how much you miss doing laundry or how great it feels to wear shorts again.” But I’m feeling ebullient today, hence the posting. Ebullient. It’s a fun word. Reminds me of pudding. I’m hungry.

I love how uncharacterically clean my room here is. When I was by myself, my room was so messy, that it actually crossed my mind, that sooner or later, I may be the cause of the earth spinning off its axis. It was like living in squalor, only worse. And I had this irrational fear that my neighbours are secretly undercover reporters, who are looking in through the crack in the curtains. Maybe I should have wondered about their impeccable suits and the hidden cameras in their leather briefcases earlier. Then, one day, the doorbell rings. And the authorities come to take me away because of endangering the earth. Along with some girls from secondary school , who wanted to see what a dirty loser I had become. Anyway.

Grace is now demanding cartoons that are “yellow”. Like the Simpsons or Spongebob. “I want yellow,” she tells me. All the time. I enjoy cartoons as much as the next person, but how about letting me watch something in another colour for once. Are you imagining me sitting on the couch with the baby, with a can of grass jelly and watching the Simpsons, with the colour of yellow burned into my eyes? Because that’s the way it is. But I digress. The kid wants the yellow, and it involves unrelenting repetition of the aforementioned phrase till her voice is burned into my ears. But it’s gotten better lately, mostly because I will yell LALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU LAAA when she asks. That’s right, I know what I’m doing.

But seriously. My Grandpa had an operation in Johor last week. It was only for his cataract, but it was a few days after his birthday (he’s 88). The horrid part was when my dad told me it would probably be his last birthday. I don’t know why he had to say that. I don’t know why I’m saying this.
Anyhoo, I just thought I would share it. It had to come out. And now that it’s here, I feel a little better. In conclusion, I'm now off to watch Pushing Daisies (it's splendiferous!) So: Happy Week Before Christmas! Do you get the urge to shop for school supplies right around this time too?