Greetings! Welcome to #WeekendCoffeeShare, thank you for meeting me on this Saturday morning. If you don’t mind, I’d like to sit for a moment and marvel at the lush green growth of the garden.

Let’s talk potato harvest!

Here is the first potato harvest of the season. Things to note about this harvest: it’s my first time planting potatoes, it was grown in a 10-gallon grow bag, and it was grown from 2 plants. The total yield was 2-pounds, 12.7-ounces or about 1.25 kg for the metric folks.

Mom wanted me to use water to clean the skin of the potatoes. I can’t do that! These are what is called “new” potatoes, meaning it has not been cured. Its skin can be rubbed off easily. Besides, what kind of crazy person washes potatoes prior to storage? No, you wash and clean the potato when you decide to eat it, not put it somewhere to be cured.

Immediately, she went into a rampage. She won’t eat the potatoes, she told me. She thinks it will make her sick, just as my garden is causing her health to deteriorate. Honestly, I don’t see her health deteriorating.

Can we agree that I live with a crazy person who’s constantly thinking I’m trying to kill her? She often asks how I would feel if she died and if I would try to save her even if she has to be hooked up to a machine. What kind of person think of stuff like that?

On Thursday morning, while mom was at the office, I went out and shopped in the garden. I pulled 2 carrots, some kale and arugula, and shelling peas and snow peas. I left the peas for a later use and made a quick veggie soup with the carrots and leafy greens. It was so delicious with noodles and a poached egg. It was definitely one of best meals I’ve had in a while.

Garden-fresh vegetables always make things taste better, not to mention it feels good to get to cook for myself.

Last night, mom and I attended our work’s annual summer party. I was hoping to go alone since she had to help her sister with work stuff, alas, she made it home on time. All the way there, I was nervous as heck. She was backseat driving – the whole time – and when she’s not instructing me how to drive or why I suddenly changed lanes, she’s complaining about this and that.

I don’t understand why she wanted to go in the first place. She kept telling me to go there, eat, and go home, meaning “NO socializing allowed.”

When we arrived, there was only a few people at the site, most of them were helpers, helping to cook the meat. Rather than socializing and mingling, she chose to sit and look at her phone. Has she become a phone addict?

My co-workers soon arrived and as soon as they saw me, we began conversing. It was nice to talk to someone in English as opposed to exchange shouting matches in Chinese as it feels like it’s all mom and I do these days.

After dinner, I opted for a walk alone, exploring the park as I didn’t get to explore it when we came last year. I even played a few carnival games and had fun despite being very bad at it. When I returned to find mom not sitting in the same spot I left her, I panicked. Where could she had gone? I kept searching and searching, turning 360-degree to make sure I scanned every corner of the park.

I finally found her mingling with her own co-workers. At the same time, my co-worker found me and we began talking while waiting for Bingo to begin. I honestly didn’t want to leave after about 2-dozen games of Bingo, even though I didn’t win. I was having fun but mom was grumpy again, walking at a pace that took me running to keep up.

The moment we got back in the car was the moment she started interrogating. “What did you and your co-worker talk about? Why was your conversation so long? I told you to leave early, now it’s late.”

I wanted so much to scream in that moment but held my tongue. I wanted to tell her, “I never get to talk to this co-worker, she’s on the third floor, I’m on the 9th. This party is only once a year, come on!”

I will end by saying I recently learned the word, “codependency” from watching a movie. I will admit that I am absolutely suffering from that and that I should’ve spoken up but couldn’t. I froze. *sigh

#weekendcoffeeshare is hosted by Natalie of Natalie the Explorer. I appreciate you stopping by. Until next we chat. 🙂