Not AGAIN!!

Last night.10.45pm.

We were all in our room with the door closed, Ray was already asleep. Suddenly we heard the house alarm go off, but thinking that my Mom was downstairs, she should be able to fix it. However, the alarm persisted and I began to realise that this sounded different from the usual "forced entry" alarm.

So I opened my bedroom door and was hit straight in the face with a cloud of smoke and a terrible charred smell. Previous experiences (yep, this wasn't the first and it probably wouldn't be the last) told me immediately what had happened. Mom must have left something cooking on the stove, gone into her room and totally forgotten about it.

So we rushed downstairs, I to my Mom's room to knock, only to find that SHE WAS OUT. I could feel the lava boiling up inside me. HL had turned off the fire by this time, so we went to open all the doors and windows. It was rice porridge, and only a little in the big pot, so what did she have to go and heat it up for? And even left the house without turning it off!

Thankfully, the house is equipped with a smoke alarm, as we cannot smell or hear anything once we are in our room.

Good Old-Fashioned Pancakes Recipe

Taken from Allrecipes.com, with some minor adjustments. I make these in the form of mini-pancakes because Ray likes them that way. Also great for bringing to school potlucks with some knobs of butter on top.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp white sugar
1 1/4 cups milk
1 egg
3 tbsp butter melted
1/2 tsp vanilla

Method
Sift flour, baking powder and salt and sugar into a large bowl. For fluffier pancakes, sift twice.
Make a well in the centre and pour in the rest of the ingredients. Mix till smooth.
Heat a nonstick frying pan ovver medium high heat. Pour approximately 1/4 cup of batter onto the pan per pancake. Brown on both sides and serve hot.

Memories of my Mama

I can hear her calling my name in her own special way...
I remember the way she doted on my kids (just as she used to dote on me when I was a kid) and was always asking after them...
How she asked me everytime she saw me whether I had enough money to spend...
Her expression as she sat on her chair, blankly staring into space...
The lighting up of her face when she turned to look at the kids playing around her...
The way she grinned at my jokes or when I teased her...

The grief still remains, if I allow myself to sink into it. Perhaps in time, it will fade away into a more bearable sadness, and then perhaps a tender memory. But the memory will always be with me.