My favorite flower

 

Hi there, my beautiful Natty!  How are you doin' today, Honey?  Are you having a great time?  Please take care of your health.  We all of us can't say the right thing all of the time, so it's better most of the time not to say anything at all.  I love you!

Today we wrap up "I don't need Valentine's Day to love you because I love you everyday" month with my favorite flower: the iris.  My favorite color is white, but my favorite flower is the iris.  It reminds me of spring in the mountains, and the blessing of lost innocent love.  The past is fun to remember, but I don't want to have to relive it.  Love is better as it is now.

Fruit

 

Hi Natty!  How are you feeling today?  I hope you are healthy and confident.  Those are jackfruit flowers up there, a male and female.  A "nangka" type jackfruit that I had been watching ripened today.  I harvested it in almost perfect time, only a few measly ants got to it before me!  I gave half the fruit to my mother.  The sweetness of this fruit is perfect, not bland nor overbearing.  It would probably make a good smoothie, but I wanted to eat it with glutinous rice and salted fish.  I went to Embun's restaurant to get the rice, but she had sold out.  It took me half the morning to process (isolate the flesh) my half of the fruit, while it took my mother less than 15 minutes in the evening.  My mother is a pro on local foods.  I love you, Mom!  I think you would like this fruit too, Natty.

Our life

 

Hi Natty!  How are you feeling today?  I hope you are keeping calm, and keeping safe.  Today I scrolled down to the bottom of your Instagram.  It was a light peruse, I didn't scrutinize anything.  It's been an interesting adult life for you huh?  How glamorous.  I want you to know that I long with all my heart to be with you always, and share our life together.  I think I came in contact with you about 3 pages from the bottom.  While I remember clearly how I found you, I have no idea how you became aware of me.  Perhaps someday you will tell me, if you feel like it.  I have never deleted or did a major rewrite of any posts in this blog, all I ever did was to correct data, typos, and grammatical errors.  All the bungling I did while trying to secure a wife is plainly told here in this blog for anybody who doesn't have anything better to do but study it.  I'm not an angel.

People go on about famous last words, but Muslims have a definite set of last words they must utter before dying.  It's called the "syahadah", the English being "I bear witness that there is no deity worthy of worship but Allah, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah."  The devil tasks himself to distract the dying Muslim from saying or being aware of these words, primarily by means of hallucination.  It is generally thought that one's life flashes before him before he dies, but I believe that the emotional hallucination is a more definite sign of death.  Extreme nostalgia.  The heart gives value and truth to what the mind comes up with.  One can be an old man gasping on his deathbed, but to him he is in his twenties and fondly sharing a drink and conversation with his buddies.  Something like that.  Whatever it is, it never crosses his mind to say the "syahadah" before dying.

Oh Daddy

 

Oh Natty, your last post made my chest and left arm hurt.  What really hurts is that even though I don't know what your Dad said to you, he's most likely right.  Don't worry, my love.  Everything is going to work out well for us inshaAllah.  Please trust me.  Please hang on to us, be patient, and pray.  I love you.  Thank you for your love.

We may have different perspectives on our same situation.

You:

Me:

Cat flower

 

Hi Natty!  How are you, Honey?  Are you coping well?  Yeah people can be trying, but you are my better half.  You're a sociologist.  Please take care of your health and safety, and have fun with your situation.  You're on top of the world!

I took Lookie to the vet this morning because she has been having problems peeing.  Lookie has never left the house before let alone go to the vet, so I was quite concerned about that.  The journey is a long one on motorcycle, so I lined the sides of the carrier so she couldn't see out.  She would have to travel between my legs on the motorcycle, and I was afraid that she would panic.  When we started off, she ripped off one of the newspapers lining the sides, then spent the journey just being quiet and looking out the window.  What a sweetheart!  We went to a different vet this time, the one at the Department of Animal Control.  The vet did a great job, and Lookie is all dried up now down there.  She was so awesomely sweet and calm, I almost think she enjoyed going to the vet.  No... that has to be impossible... all pets hate the vet...

Bread or dough?

 

Hi Natty!  Are you excited?  It must be that darn crazy carousel again.  Well it must be fun, so please enjoy the ride.  How is your health, though?  Please take care of your health.  With the public life I've learned to use only one bathroom.  Don't use public or other people's restrooms.  If you are traveling, then use the bathroom in your hotel room exclusively.  There is definitely some hardware and even apps out there that can detect hidden cameras but then again, there is no such thing as privacy.  Wanting to use the restroom all the time is a nervous habit and can be dangerous, so please try to stick to only one bathroom: your own.

I spent a busy morning in the kitchen.  First, I had to make a batch of cat food.  The mackerel was juvenile (small) but it was on sale, so I bought a couple of kilos at the night market.  I discovered that juvenile mackerel is best for making cat food because the cats eat the whole fish, bones and all.  All I had to do was stir it well.  Then before I made my lunch of noodles in soup, I made a batch of dough and some curry pup stuffing.  Later I realized that I had bought a loaf of sliced bread last night.  Oh no!  Both need to be used up before they go bad!  In the end, I had takeout noodles for dinner.

Almost fruit season

 

Hi beautiful Natty!  How's life as a glamorous supermodel?  I hope you're having fun wherever you are.  Please show us some snapshots of your food!  I'm sure the world would love to see that, me included.  I didn't prepare anything too complex today.  For lunch, I had ramen.  I love ramen!  I guess you could call my ramen complex.  I've stopped using those seasoning packets that you would normally find inside packets of ramen.  Instead, I buy ramen by the 10 pack, without any seasoning packets.  A saving of 50%!  Plus, the latest batch of miso is really good.  Mix that in with a seaweed broth, and you're ready to go.  Today I added some fish jerky flakes (I had to use the stuff up or throw it away).  It hurts my tummy, but I washed it down twice in the sink before putting it in the soup.  The Japanese would use bonito flakes for their broth, but we don't have that here.  Instead there is a wide variety of salted fish, which I plan to use for broth once I get rid of this fish jerky stuff.

Mango flowers aren't suitable for bouquets, and they are seldom as pretty as the snapshot above.  But they are a labor of love, for sure.  Looks like this year's fruit season will peak right at the beginning of Ramadan inshaAllah.  There is always some early fruit and some late stragglers, but I intend to keep an eye on them all.  This year it looks like cashews, horseradish beans, 3 types of mangoes and some bananas should all ripen at the same time.  I don't know what to do with the horseradish beans.  The only thing I can think of is a sushi condiment, and there's far too many of them to do that.  I'll give it all away to the locals, and they make curry out of them.  I don't think I would have time to experiment with the stuff.  Well, maybe once.  Watch out, tummy!  I'm going to make sweet mango pickles this year inshaAllah.  Those things will last a long time, and maybe I can make them as good as cucumber pickles.  I finished making one harvesting pole with a wire mesh catch this evening, I'm going to make another pole specially for harvesting the horseradish beans.

The chicken and egg theory

Hi Natty!  How's it going with you today?  I hope you are well and having lots of fun.  I've been admiring your feet, Honey.  You look like you have strong feet.  So much stronger than my feet, which are oversized and not in a good way.  You're going to have to slow down to keep up with me whenever we walk together.

Since today is Sunday, I had takeout rice for lunch because I spent the morning cleaning my mother's bedroom.  I would rather have my own cooking, because Allah gave some knowledge of cooking and I can prepare what I want to eat as long as I can afford the ingredients.  I decided on chicken tenders and fries for dinner.  Dammit, I don't have any breadcrumbs!  I didn't want to go out and buy breadcrumbs, so I thought I would just coat them in a savory flour.  Which got my thinking, with chicken tenders you coat the chicken with flour then dunk them in egg then roll them in breadcrumbs, right?  But isn't egg chicken, and chicken egg?  Why bother with giving the chicken a coat of flour?  So I didn't, and the savory flour still stuck to the chicken dunked in egg without the coat of flour.  But it wasn't good enough.  Dammit, I needed breadcrumbs!

Here are some more nice snapshots from the How does your avatar look today ? thread: