Being married for 4 and a half years hardly makes me an authority on relationships but I consider it an achievement that we’ve survived 2 kids and not stabbed each other in the eye, even though there have been times when some severe stabbing seemed imminent.

Now and then, I have people ask me how we’ve managed to not do that – the stabbing, that is. The simple answer is to keep all sharp objects out of reach during epic showdowns.

Of course, there are other steps involved, which I will get to in a minute because we all know how important it is to keep our eyes intact.

You see, over the years, we’ve worked out an arrangement on how to deal with conflict in a mature and efficient manner. Although we’ve only been married for 4 years, we were together as a couple for 6 years prior to that so technically, we’ve had a decade of opportunities to lose either one or both eyes. Like I said, major achievement.

1. Have a conflict management plan. 

I know life almost never goes according to plan but it’s still good to have one nonetheless. Our plan has been fine-tuned over an entire decade and it involves clearly communicating how we feel about our disagreements. I do it with a series of telepathic eyeball rolls and strategically-timed audible sighs.

At which point the husband is supposed to respond accordingly with sincere and heartfelt apologies explaining how he takes responsibility for the particular situation. This plan works exactly 6.38% of the time.

2. Have a backup conflict management plan.

In situations when the original plan doesn’t work because the husband says “I’m crazy and unreasonable”, the backup plan kicks in. This is where I throw in several dramatic expressions of angst like forehead-grabbing and much louder sighs. Occasionally, actual words are used to explain how I’ve been in labor for 27 hours and gone through a c-section to birth his children so I get immunity from any blame for the next 250 years.

3. No name calling.

We call each other a variety of endearing names like retard and psychopath during peace time but during arguments, we have a rule about no name calling. Even though he feels like I’ve been a raving lunatic on PMS, he doesn’t say it because that falls under the category of personal attacks. Instead, we focus on issues and feelings so there’s less chance of making it personal.

4. No storming off. 

I know certain relationship gurus advocate a cooling off period so both parties can calm down a bit. If that’s required, it must be agreed upon in a civil manner with a specified time frame. Meaning that we’ll stop and say “Ok time out. I can’t talk to you right now, let’s pick this up after an hour.” That usually gives me 60 minutes to go off and sharpen my axe before re-engaging in battle.

In any case, it can’t be one party storming off and hibernating for 3 days.

5. Always go to sleep on the same bed even when we’re mad. 

No matter how bad things get, we don’t allow sleeping on the sofa or the guest room or a hotel because being that’s a sign of commitment that we want to work things out. Sometimes, I build a fortress using a whole bunch of pillows and mark my half of the bed with a “KEEP OUT” sign but nobody gets chased out to the dog house. Ever.

If you have any other relationship tips to share, take it to the comments! 

What I’m going to say next falls squarely in the category of too much information so if you’re weirdish about this sort of thing or happen to be my kids, you can STOP READING NOW and go see some pictures of cute puppies instead.

You’ve probably heard people say that the sexytime game changes the moment you have kids but they don’t say exactly how it changes or what to do about it. They make generic statements like “kids are the opposite of aphrodisiacs” and laugh uncomfortably, which just makes you feel even more uncomfortable for them. It doesn’t help the cause when you look at frazzled couples holding a screaming baby and snapping away at each other.

When you’re baby-free and having smokin’ hot action, you tell yourself that you’re the exception to the rule. You’re all “baby or no baby, momma’s bringing her A game”. In your head, you think you can sneak in a quickie during their naps or do the long snuggles when they’re nicely tucked into bed at 7.30.

And that sound you hear is the present me totally mocking the pre-baby me right now.

The moment the kids came along, it was like my libido hastily bought a one-way ticket to Siberia and has been sending me postcards ever since. Where we used to do the whole spontaneous clothes ripping routine to boom-chica-wow-wow music, now we have discussions on penciling in whoopie nights to screaming kids in the background that go something like this.

Me: How about Friday? Friday looks good, TGIF wooo!

Kel: We’ve got that thing on Friday, we’ll be way too tired by the time we get back. Saturday?

Me: Nah-uh. We’re playing Manchester City at 11. Unless we do it before the match.

Kel: Can’t. My match is before your match.

Me: Ok, Sunday afternoon 2.30 when the kids are asleep.

Kel: Cool.

Then along comes Sunday afternoon and one of the kids will refuse to nap or I’ll fall asleep for 3 hours while trying to get the kids to nap.

It’s not that parents can’t have great sex. It just takes a lot more effort and advanced planning, while dealing with exhaustion, postpartum depression, leaky boobs, cramps, fussy babies and a whole lot of tension. Seeing how we’ve been conditioned to think that the best sex happens in the heat of the moment, it’s no wonder that people don’t think much of postpartum sex.

Ok, so then the question is how to keep the magic going when it seems like sex is the furthest thing on your mind. Ah, let me refer you to my handy little list of awesome tips.

1. Plan to be spontaneous

That’s not an oxymoron. Babies don’t afford you much luxury for spontaneity, unless you count their spontaneous screaming and vomiting the moment you start start removing articles of clothing. You want to be spontaneous? Plan for date night, get a babysitter, put on those garters and go do something fun then see where the night takes you.

2. Dress up just for kicks

Here’s one for all the stay home moms. When you’re at home running after babies all day, you don’t care that you look like Susan Boyle on a bad day, or that your milk-stained tee hasn’t been changed since you can’t even remember how long ago. Put on some makeup and find a reason to get out a little just to mix it up a bit.

3. Spend quality alone time without the kids

Parent mode is like preparing for battle – not at all conducive for the sexytime. It’s only when we get some time off from the kids that we get to feel like kids again, which means we’re more likely to do fun stuff.

4. Do the grand gestures

The problem with a routine is that you end up doing the same thing the same way because if it ain’t broke, why fix it right? Wrong. Girls still like the scented candles and rose petals even if it means the kids are likely to set the house on fire. Play the lingerie-treasure-hunt-dress-up game. Don’t know what that is? Never mind, make up your own game.

5. Manage the expectations

This is perhaps the most important part. Most of the time, the sex doesn’t happen and when it does, it doesn’t happen the way you want it to. You put on your wonder woman costume and the kids decide to have a bad dream. That’s when you got to roll with the punches and find some other way to make the magic happen, capisce?

This is going to be long, I just got back from KL after 3 days. While everyone else was out doing their Chinese New Year rounds, we drove 4 hours out to KL for a getaway (without the kids yay!)

For 3 days, I had the husband all to myself, feeling all young and in love like we did before the kids came along and our days revolved around baby food and nappy changes. You know what I mean right, when the kids are around, we go into parent survival mode and there’s little time for long walks and long snuggles.

Speaking of our lovely neighboring country, most people don’t know that I spent 21 years of my life as a Malaysian citizen, 6 years actually living there and every single day after that being thankful that I didn’t have to grow up there. It’s nice to go back for a spot of shopping every couple of years but I can’t imagine what my life would be like if my parents didn’t move us all to Singapore when I was 7.

Anyway, this time, we stayed at the Mandarin Oriental (courtesy of a couple of friends), the best hotel in KL according to Tripadvisor. The hotel was gorgeous, the service impeccable and the location nothing less than spectacular. It was literally a 2-minute walk to the KLCC shopping mall.

Now for the best moments hall of fame:

1. Taking a bus to Peel Road for lunch

This was particularly memorable because a. we went back to the same gem of a roadside stall that my daddy used to bring us to all the time when we were growing up and b. the bus ride there was a throwback to the 80s.

2. Swimming in the infinity pool overlooking KLCC at night

We had a brilliant view of the city skyline and got to gaze at the stars in the night sky as we took a leisurely swim.

3. NOT going for a sleazy massage

One of the things I really wanted to do was to go for a massage and we saw a couple of massage places along the streets of Bukit Bintang with aggressive touters. They ambushed us with posters that looked something like this as we walked past.

But mostly what I saw was this.

Not technically on the menu but you could also choose special packages with chlamydia, kaposi’s sarcoma or warts. Thanks but no thanks.

4. Made friends with a Hungarian couple on the train

It was serendipitious that we were all waiting for a shuttle bus back to town from Ikea that never came so we decided to share a cab to the train station and take the train back together. We traded stories and email addresses the whole way back. Now we have friends if we ever decide to go to Budapest.

5. Dinner at Bubba Gump

We last had dinner at Bubba Gump 4 years ago at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf. I have been dreaming of the shrimpin’ dippin’ broth since then. There was no way we were going to be in KL and pass on that lovely shrimp goodness.

Less than awesome moments hall of fame:

1. Shopping at Chinatown

It was totally hardcore. You could get everything from replica watches to sexy panties at ridiculous prices. Only thing was you had to bargain with the gangster stall owners who looked like they were going to stab you if you bargained too low or worse, bargained and then changed your mind. Seriously, don’t do it.

2. Watching a carjacker in action

We were on the way to Chinatown when we saw this guy use a long metal device to pick the lock in less than 5 seconds. We were too shocked to react and also, we didn’t want to get shot for trying to be a hero. Not in a deserted alleyway.

3. Driving in the wrong direction for an hour.

So we were all packed and ready to drive home and I was all “trust me, I know the way, we just got to follow the signs and we’ll be home in no time.” I drove for an hour in the opposite direction and almost reached the Batu Caves before getting directions from a gas station. Not one of my finer moments.

4. Got stopped by the cops for speeding.

I’m developing a habit of getting pulled over for speeding on holiday. Allegedly, I was going 95km/h on a stretch which was supposedly 80km/h. In my defense, there were no signs to state the change in speed limit and I’m not entirely sure I was in fact over the speed limit.

Scumbag bloodsucking lazy buggers. I should have packed a vial of STDs for them.

5. Getting stuck in a jam for 351 kilometers.

Apparently, the entire population of Malaysia (and Singapore) was heading south on the Malaysian highway yesterday. Driving 351km is ok when you’re going at 110km/h. When you’re doing 20km/h, the experience is exquisitely excruciating. I almost peed in my pants several times.

Except maybe a teleporter. A teleporter would be even better, like Nightcrawler. Have I mentioned that I occasionally have dreams that involve me fighting villains or running away from villains or getting shot by villains. In typical dreams, getting shot is the point you wake up but mine go on and I’m all “crap, I got shot again” but I have to fight to stay alive because I’m afraid that if I die in the dream world, I also die in real life.

But this post is not really about my weird dreams, though I have many. Just 2 nights ago, I dreamt I was trying to escape from a zombie apocalypse, which was both horrifying and incredible at the same time (just a tip: don’t take the MRT when zombies attack, unless you want to get cornered and eaten).

No, this is supposed to be about my need to acquire stealth abilities.

For the last few months, we’ve had to stay with baby girl till she falls asleep every night. Her daytime naps are great, I can just tuck her in and leave the room but at night, we’ve got to pat her till she falls asleep. Only then are we allowed to tiptoe out of the room.

At first, I thought she was sensitive to sound because she seemed to stir at the faintest creak and rustle. But then I realized that she wasn’t at all concerned with sounds like sneezing or throat-clearing. I could have the mother of all sneezes and she doesn’t even flinch. It’s only certain sounds that will make her sit up with a look of “I caught tou sneaking out, mom. You’re busted!” Sounds like footsteps, the creak from the floor boards, the door opening and closing.

I’m fairly certain that at 16 months, her advanced cognitive abilities have been trained to filter out sounds that indicate I’m still around, and to pick up on the sounds that suggest I’m leaving.

Like I said, the only way for me not make a sound is to be a ninja or Nightcrawler. Evidently, I’m avoiding the obvious solution of training her to sleep on her own at night because I’d much rather spend all that time learning to be a ninja. Of course, I had to have a word with the husband first.

me: You think I could be a ninja?

Husband: You would be the worst ninja in the world. You’re like the opposite of a ninja.

me: There’s no such thing as the opposite of a ninja, don’t be ridiculous.

Husband: Oh, if you were a ninja, you’d wake up every single person in the village, injure all the good guys with your shurikens and knock yourself out with the nunchucks before the bad guys got you. That’s pretty much the opposite of a ninja.

me: You mean the ninja stars? Trust me, I know how to hold a ninja star. I’ve read the tutorial.

Husband: That’s it. You don’t get to be a ninja anymore.

That was the theme of my wedding. Yes, I’m the kind of pretentious douche that has a theme for her wedding. Well, it was more like a catchphrase that epitomized our entire relationship. Which we stole from Climie Fisher.

3 and a half years into the marriage, I’m only starting to realize how true that actually is. I figured I should write about love after marriage because people don’t really talk it. According to Hollywood, the thrill is in the chase and getting married is like the happily every after, the end of the story. *fade to black, roll credits* But everyone who has every been married will tell you that that’s completely ridiculous. Everything changes once you get married.

Cliched as it is, it’s far easier to date someone than to marry them. First of all, there’s the uncertainty, which is fun and exciting. She loves me, she hates me, she’s crazy about me,  I’m sure she thinks I’m a moron. Then there’s the public declarations of love, what I call the grand gestures. You get up on a chair and tell the whole school how much you love her, you blow a whole week’s allowance on a hundred red roses, you stay up all night writing his name on your journal and circling it with little hearts. When you’re dating, you can be the best version of you because you get to go home and take off all that makeup and not have them see you looking like Leticia.

After the wedding, there’s just no room to be the original version of you (the one that’s occasionally crabby for no reason, the one that leaves dishes in the sink, the one that’s insecure and snappy) without losing the magic. For the first time, you look at the other person and go “OMG did you just do that??!!”.

And the monotony sets in. You have the same routine everyday for 10 years. It’s impossible to do the grand gestures everyday, so you eventually stop doing it because they’re supposed to know how you feel about them anyway. You stand up on a table to declare your love once and it’s romantic. Twice and it’s still kind of sweet. Anything more than three times and you’re like “Ok already, I get the picture.” You blow your entire month’s salary on jewelry and you get blasted for being impractical.

So it’s down to the little things. The things that you do everyday but don’t get the overflow of appreciation for. You wake up early every morning to feed the kids. You let him listen to his favorite track on the CD even though you’ve heard it 25,000 times and are not entirely fond of it in the first place. You pick up the laundry and do the dishes so her hands don’t get all calloused. You clear the hairball in the drain. You give the other person space to act up when they’ve had a bad day. Even though it’s gross and tiring and you don’t always get a “thanks honey, you’re awesome”.

With kids, it gets even tougher because after all that effort it takes to care for a tiny human, you don’t have a lot left over for the big human. Or to shower or pee, for that matter. Date night is the 3 hours you get after you put the kids at grandma’s and rush out for a movie and a quick bite once every couple of weeks. That’s not a lot of time to stare into each other’s eyes and whisper sweet nothings. Whoopee night is the 30 minutes you get after date night to…ok too much information.

Being married with kids isn’t always sweet and romantic, so I can see why Hollywood doesn’t really talk about it. It’s often tiring, monotonous, unglamorous and you get to irritate the hell out of each other. But in return, you get to know that they really do mean it when they say they love you because for them to stick around through all of it, they’ve got to love you an awful lot.

Alright now.

It’s Daphne’s birthday today.

Those of you that know me personally you know how I feel about being overtly mushy, particularly in front of people we know. I’m not one to blow kisses at her from a distance or call her sweety-pie names like muffin, cupcake, chee-cheong-fun and other saccharine sweet delicacies. We have this agreement that started from our NTU days that we won’t make the people around us feel uncomfortable, simply for practical reasons – we didn’t want to be ostracized and left without group partners for all our assignments. Just imagine doing a project in a group of four and two of them spend half their time cavorting with one another. Urgh.

I digress.

Remember the great Boyzone song - Love me for a Reason?

Don’t love me for fun girl

Let me be the one girl

Love me for a reason

Let the reason be love

It’s a nice idea but let the reason for love be…love? Nah, it doesn’t make sense even after a sixpack of beer.

There’re always reasons why you are drawn to a person, and I love Daf because of real reasons. Here are five of them. I’m not sure if this post qualifies as too much information but there, you’ve been warned.

1. She’s smoking hot.

I’m not sure what you can use to describe that except one word – NOSEBLEED.

2. She’s darn smart.

You know, I’m no half-wit myself (heh-heh).  So when I say she’s smart, believe me, she’s smart.

We had this competition in church called the Word Power which was basically a competition where you memorise bible verses – SIXTY of them, including punctuations, commas, full stops, the whole works – and recite them without reference. Daf, her sister and I formed a team and we topped the first two preliminary rounds before choking in the finals on a rather careless mistake.

The point here is that anyone who can memorise Habakkuk 3:17-19 practically backwards is no mean intellectual slob for sure. I’m not proselytizing but you might want to check that verse out.

3. She has a radio voice.

You’ve read her blog for sure, but did you know that Daphne was one half of NTU’s internet-radio DJ team called the Mad-Crappers? She actually hosted a public event at Scape Park, IMPROMPTU as well. Got the crowd worked up and all. Which was really impressive. Unfortunately I’m sorry I can’t find any old audio clips of her program. But she has one sexy voice I tell ya.

4. She’s sporty and fiercely competitive.

I know, I know. She doesn’t seem like the sort. But Daf was actually captain of her Anglican High School basketball team during her secondary school days and they were apparently really good.

I once played a pickup game with her against two ah bengs and me being a soccer guy I inevitably misplaced a pass to her.She came up to me real close, right in my face, gave me the most fearsome glare I have ever received in my life and said quietly,

“Are you serious about the game?”

I nodded furiously.

“Then make sure you don’t make another pass like that.”

I was left shivering in my pants and I didn’t misplace another pass for the game, nor for the rest of my life for that matter.  There, I confess it, I’m henpecked like that. We crushed the two ah-bengs and I didn’t make a single basket – true story. When you find someone like that, you just gotta marry her.

5. She loves me right back.

This is where it gets a little cheesy and emo here.

Having been together for almost ten years, we’ve been through some crazy, amazing times. Always crazy and mostly amazing. Even times when we were so broke all we had was a plate of char kway teow (plain) which we bought for 80cents and shared it while having a good laugh about our sorry plight.

But whether it was watching Serendipity for the 12864th time…

kissing in the rain at East Coast Park…

sharing a warm cup of toffee nut latte at Starbucks on a chilly nite…

trying to act young and hip at another Jason Mraz concert…

saying yes to me when I was a mere student with nary a single cent in the world…

Every moment is and will always be close to my heart.  You are the most beautiful and awesome person ever and five is really just a micro-milli-mini-fraction of the reasons why I love you. And thanks for loving me right back.

Ten years seems like an awfully long time but I know it’s just the beginning for us.

Happy birthday, love.

I haven’t done this in a long time. Blogging in my room. Or doing anything in my room that does not involve tiptoeing and breath-holding.

Since baby girl was born, I’ve been banished to the living room to do everything except sleep. And also making the sexytime in absolute silence. Which is like having melted ice-cream – no fun at all.

Kirsten just made the move to Tru’s room today and at this moment, they’re both sound asleep next to each other. There was a bit of adjustment at bedtime because Tru kept talking to her and trying to climb into her cot and all that commotion was a little too much to take so Kirsten started screaming, which led to Tru screaming at her to be quiet. You know the drill.

It took a while to settle them both down but it’s a small price for getting my room back. I can blast the air-conditioning until icicles start to form without worrying that baby girl will die of hypothermia. I can shower in my bathroom again and read a book in bed. It doesn’t take a lot to make me happy and reading in bed is one of them (which is why I’m practically blind but again, small price to pay). Days like these, it feels like we’re back to being newlyweds without the kids. Except that I miss them a lot and I keep sneaking into their room just to hear the faint rhythm of baby breathing.

Speaking of newlyweds, we just attended our first wedding at The Fullerton Hotel. Besides our wedding, that is, because it doesn’t count as attending if you’re the one getting married. Three years and two kids in, we were walking down the same steps to the ballroom where we had our wedding. Complete deja vu. I remember looking at Kelvin all dapper in his tux and thinking that life would finally be perfect. We’d have our perfect kids and perfect holidays and perfect jobs.

If I had known then that this was how my life would be three years down, I might have turned and ran for the hills. Or at least made him go for a vasectomy. Or performed it myself.

Going through that much in the last three years, it’s easy to forget the way you felt when you held hands and said your vows. It’s easy to lose the fuzzy feeling in your stomach when babies are screaming at you all the time. I have a theory that screaming makes you forget practically anything. It’s like repressed memory, except less scientific.

But it was nice to remember. And honestly, even on retrospect, I think I might have done it all over again. Ask me again in five years when I have another two kids.

1. Making the first move

2. Talking through the night because there is just that much to say

3. Holding out for a yes even when it seems like a no

4. Cycling in the rain

5. Kissing in the rain because who really just cycles in the rain

6. Passing soppy love notes in class even though it is that juvenile and embarrassing

7. Sharing the papers in the morning

8. Making them smile

9. Delivering nasi lemak at 2am

10. Sharing the last cup of bubble tea

11. Freshly folded laundry

12. Thinking the same thing at the same time more times than is normal

13. Saying the same thing at the same time more times than is normal

14. Boom-chica-wow-wow

15. Excessively long bubble baths

16. Forgiving even when it hurts

17. Taking out the trash because it’s gross

18. Round-the-clock pest control

19. Saying sorry first all the time

20. Midnight feeds, and I’m not talking about a smackerel of honey for your tummy

21. Bedtime stories that involve a cat, dog, raccoon, hedgehog, hamster and a 4-year-old girl

22. A kickass shoulder massage

23. Cooking dinner together, and then ordering McD’s

24. Walks by the beach even when you get attacked by killer ants

25. Meaning it when you say forever

Happy anniversary, baby!

The first time I celebrated his birthday was on Sept 11, 2001. Technically, it was a day before his birthday. We were preparing for a paper on cultural icons in the 21st Century (thanks Madonna!) and also just received news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre. We had only met a couple of weeks earlier and our entire interaction consisted of a handful of text messages and several conversations over Madonna’s biceps. But I remembered thinking, if the world was coming to an end, I wouldn’t mind spending my last moments sitting beside him.

But the world didn’t come to an end, so at the stroke of midnight, I sent him a text message which read “Happy birthday, have a great time.” That was it. No romantic declarations or fireworks. Then I proceeded to destroy his party by ruining the surprise and I think at the end of it, he thought I was a big dork. Or totally hot. Maybe both. A big hot dork. Ok, that’s just wrong.

8 years later and it seems like everything has changed. The wedding, the kids, the house, the bills, the boring routine of a couple who’s been together like forever. Well, everything except the way I feel whenever I’m with him. The way he makes me laugh. The way he looks at me across a crowded room like I’m the only person he sees. The way he leans over and kisses me in the morning. The way he holds me by the waist when we walk, just because. And most of all, the way he does all the little things like crawl out of bed to feed the baby so I can sleep for another hour.

Some days I wake up and I still can’t believe that I actually managed to marry the man of my dreams. To be fair, I’ve got pretty weird dreams, like the time I dreamt that I was shot in the leg while trying to escape from a bunch of assassins by rappelling down a building without the rope. And after that my knight in shining armor showed up and whisked me off into the sunset, bleeding calf and all. You should know by now that I’m not your typical fairy tale kinda girl, but that’s just how I roll.

They say that a relationship is defined by the moments and the memories (I kinda just made that up, feel free to use it). And we’ve got some pretty kick ass ones. I actually came up with 75, but here are my top 10.

10. The time I crashed my dad’s Mercedes into the back of a pickup truck and the entire bonnet was shortened by half. All I could do was sit by the side of the road and cry. The whole time he just held my hand and told me everything was going to be ok.

9. The time he had to run 15 minutes to my hostel room at 4 am in the morning to catch a lizard because I couldn’t possibly sleep with that monstrosity waiting to attack me.

8. The time he bought my brat of a sister a fugly snowman soft toy for her 12th birthday after she’d called him a “monkey face and a thousand other bad names I will not mention here”.

7. The time he first held my hand while his was sweating so bad it kept slipping off and he had to keep rubbing it on his pants to dry it. True story.

6. The time he wrote me a cheesy poem and claimed he found it off the Internet because I’m the kinda girl who likes poetry and moonlight serenades.

5. The time he spent his last dollar planning a surprise on the Christmas of 2001 and had to take a 3 hour walk home because he couldn’t afford a cab.

4. All the times he would say he’s sorry first even though it’s totally my fault.

3. The time he covered a room with rose petals and wrote me a not-that-cheesy poem and went down on one knee and asked me to marry him.

2. The time he held me close and cried for days when my daddy went to heaven.

1. When he turned to me after we got married and said “I think all my dreams have come true”.

Happy Birthday, baby.

Leg 5: The happiest place in the world

I have to devote a whole post to Disneyland because it is hands down the single happiest place in the world. It’s an insane amount of happy thoughts packed into 85 acres. There’s fairy dust in the air that makes all your troubles disappear and turns kids into tiny little balls of sunshine (even the bratty ones). It’s impossible to feel depressed in Disneyland. Even the Grinch would have turned into Tinkerbell if he had the sense to go there. Only in Disneyland, you could be a kid and no one would judge you.

I originally wanted to get a 5-day pass but the husband threatened to leave me there alone so we compromised and decided to go for 3 days instead. It was 3 days of non-stop action. I dragged his ass out of bed at 5.30 every morning just so that we could be at the gates by 6.30 when the doors opened. And I refused to leave till they chased us out at close to midnight. I’m like a hardcore Disneyland fanatic.

If there’s one bad thing about the place, it’s the crowds, which is legendary. The average waiting time for popular rides like Space Mountain and Indiana Jones was about 2 hours, so you either had to forego the experience or spend up to 12 hours just waiting in line. But not us, because before we left, I spent hours developing a genius of a masterpiece – Daphne’s Disneyland Touring Plan. I had the day divided into 15 minute segments and it required massive amounts of discipline and a lot of running. The folks who walk in Disneyland are the queuers and the smart ones, well, they have to sprint from one end of the park to the other. But the result was that we never spent more than 15 minutes in the queue. Ever.

Seriously, if you’re planning to head down, just drop me a mail and I’ll send it to you. You will be eternally grateful to me, and you can also come clean my house from time to time after that.

Besides checking out the rides, I was also on a mission to collect autographs and photos of all the characters I could find, which is way harder than it sounds. First, there are tons of crazy kids thronging them all the time, and they don’t have a fixed schedule of appearance. So they can just pop up anytime and then suddenly disappear. Since I was way smarter than all the pesky kids, I bribed the staff to give me their schedules for the day so I could beat them all to it. Actually I had to grovel and offer some special services for it, but hey, whatever it takes baby.

But I think it’s karma. After spending 3 days shoving babies out of the way to collect autographs, I actually lost the autograph book, which was far more upsetting for me than when I lost my wedding band in Tahoe. (see, I didn’t even bother to mention it in the Tahoe post, but I did. I lost it up on Adventure Peak) At least I still got the pictures to show for it.

So that’s it. All 3 weeks of our honeymoon. The best 3 weeks of my life. When it was time to drive back to LAX, I was turned to the husband all Arnie style and said “I’ll be back”.