Good Saturday morning and hello December! Welcome to a weekend of #weekendcoffeeshare. What are you standing at the door for? Come on in and have a cup of steamy hot coffee, tea, cocoa, or whatever with me.
First of all, I’d like to apologize for not joining you last week. Honestly, the week was a blur, even now it still is a blur. All I can remember is getting super duper excited for Thanksgiving, the 5-day long weekend, finally getting a stand-mixer for my kitchen, and going to Bear Lake.
Maybe the reason for the blurriness was from the lack of rest. You would think not having to go to work means I get to sleep longer hours.
Wrong!
Not when one living with someone (like my mother) who makes phone calls to China at 5 in the morning and shouts to the point everyone within a mile can hear, that is if they can understand Chinese.
*sigh*
In other news, I successfully made bread last week though it took me longer than expected because my mom chose to give me the angry glare and a lecture criticizing my bread-making technique. That is the main reason of why I don’t like baking or cooking when she’s around. She criticizes everything and won’t eat anything anyone has touched with his/her hand. Sorry but you must knead bread dough by hand.
If we were having coffee, I would apologize to my readers for barely keeping up the blog this week. It has been a hectic week at work. When you work for an international company, taking one day off means double the workload. So imagine taking 5 days off from work. I played catch-up for three days as online orders and physical mail consistently poured in.
Then when I get home, I run on the treadmill until hopefully my body starts burning off some of my internal fat. After dinner, I retreat to my room, almost-feverishly trying to salvage as many of long-exposure photos as I can with Adobe Lightroom. As the result, by the time I finally got the chance to read some of your blogs, I’m yawning like crazy.
I will try to slow down in doing photo-processing next week but no guarantees. Here are a few of my favorites I managed to fix with Lightroom. The problem with the original photo are that it’s far too over-exposed and the white balance is off.
If we were having coffee or whatever hot beverage of your desire, I would tell you thank you for dropping by and I will once again try my hardest to come back in 6 or 7 days.
This is Another Story 
my week was a bur too but I blame the meds. LOL 🙂
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Those can do it to you. Hope you recover soon.
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Hi YingLan. I found the blessing in how your mother is with your baking. Since she won’t eat it herself (foolish) there is more fresh baked goods for you to enjoy. Maybe not a big blessing, but fresh baked can almost never be a bad thing.
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I know, right? It’s ridiculous how she won’t eat anything that’s not made by her. That’s why she doesn’t go out to eat much. Each time I mention a restaurant I like near where we work, she’ll make that smirk of disgust. And I absolutely agree, fresh baked goods is never a bad thing, unless something went terribly wrong during the process of making it.
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So sorry about the intrusions on your cooking. I used to love making bread, but I did use an electric bread maker that did the heavy work. I made a lot of gluten-free loaves and muffins and such. Cooking has been fun for me. (My mother wouldn’t let me use her kitchen when I lived at home, so I wended my own weird way through learning.) Interesting to see the different exposure times and the differences among the photographs. Thank you!
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It’s the same thing for me too except my mom won’t let me use my own kitchen and each time I use it, she gives me that ugly stare like I’ve done something wrong.
The dough hook on my stand-mixer does all the work for me now but oddly, I miss kneading the dough by hand.
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Thanks for coffee. Hope next week calms down a bit for you.
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Thank you. I am hoping so.
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Your photographs are amazing. You could make note cards and sell them on Etsy, Yinglan. Then you could make some extra cash and buy a set of Beats from Apple so you don’t have to listen to your mother yelling. ( ( :0) heehee)
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Thank you. 🙂
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Glad you found time for a coffee. It sure is a busy time of the year.
Great photographs. I love the way you captured the water and the reflections beneath the surface.
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Thank you. It sure is a busy time as everyone is rushing to get everything done before the year ends. Glad you like the photos. 🙂
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Hope you have a better week – and get more sleep 🙂
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I sure hope so. 🙂 Have a great week to you up ahead. 🙂
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Your photos are beautiful! I totally understand your frustration with middle of the night noise. My son is a bit of a night owl and often comes in at 2am. He then makes himself food, not realizing how loud he is being!! Hope you manage to get some extra rest this week!
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Thank you. I think I would probably live through someone prowling around in the fridge than someone talking loudly in the middle of the night.
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Hi Yinglan,
Sometimes you really need to switch off those criticizing voices and make your own path. When I detoured to Elizabeth Bay on Friday, I could hear my mother’s warnings and lectures the whole time and perhaps that’s what made me even more determined to get over there and escape. That even when she doesn’t live under the same roof, she can be quite controlling and demoralizing although she’d be quite shocking to here that./ She is acting out of love and concern, prevention and not wanting me to fall apart, which is a justifiable concern on her part given my health status. Each and everyone of us is an individuasl and we need to make our own way, even though I’m a huge believer in family and community but no one else can walk in your shoes for you and live your life.
Best wishes,
Rowena
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