It Isn’t About The Mooncakes. Or Even The Lanterns.

Kings was gone all weekend til about 5.30pm Sunday when he arrived home from the airport and came over to pick us up with the dog at nearby Cyberport. Y’know, I kinda held it together even when I didn’t really, but I gotta admit at least half the time I really hate bringing the two kids out on my own on a Sunday. But well there are activities where other “single mums” bring their kids and they are awesome. Like this one at Cyberport below –

The tires were a little big and kept slipping off but Rockstar had a lot of fun with this one (yes the girl is much older and he got totally bowled over once, but he was very, very proud of his dodging!)…

So anyway when Kings finally lands and texts “Let’s go up to the Peak anyway” (our family ritual of olde, but it’s way too late for us to do that now because Rockstar only eats prime salmon steak before dark; Sunday dinner is reserved for a HKD 168 cheese crust Pepperoni pizza) I reply,”No, but let’s go buy lanterns and moon cakes.” Cos that’s a regular family thing to do right?

Except when I break this to Rockstar, the lanterns are fine but, “Do I have to eat moon cake? I don’t even eat that much cake.” So then we just got the lanterns.

(During which  Rockstar had a brief fling with a slinky, before rightly observing we don’t have stairs.) 

(Yes, I’m wearing leather sweatpants. And that’s a Rock n Roll skull-in-gilt-frame tee. Yes Rockstar is deliberately looking away because we asked him to smile for the camera.)

(And then despite all the protestations of choosing a traditional lantern “with the real candles,” he goes with an furry red Angry Bird. Little Miss on the other hand loved the traditional paper rabbit and after going up and down the street settled on….. the same traditional paper rabbit I could easily have gotten at Park n Shop. Albeit for HKD 59. We got it here for HKD 30. Last of the big spenders.

And, this year……. Drrum roll please……

Yes, JD came with! I wanted to let her out of the car, Kings said no, fortunately we went with no because at least several shop owners had cats. JD hates cats. Not as in Gonna Make Me A Cat-hide Rug For The Fireplace, more like Get Me Away From The Embodiment Of Sheer Evil. She uh, met some mean stray cats as a puppy. Our pastor once mentioned how they train baby elephants by tethering them to trees and when they grow up the elephants don’t think “It’s a tree. I’m an elephant. <walks away>” so Yeah, Childhood Matters. Show JD a cat and she might show you a border collie climbing a tree. (Come to think of it, I know at least several dogs offhand who are scared of cats. It’s a myth you always need to protect the cats.)

And yeah we drove up and down these few shops so JD could see us while we lantern-shopped. And somehow we still ended up with the Park n Shop Rabbit and the Angry Bird – tradition lantern shopping MAJOR FAIL.

And then Little Miss discovered…….

Grubs/Mushrooms/Interesting Green Shapes To Peel Off And Fling About! (No, not really, but there was an arch-backed kitten we had to keep her away from)…

And then…

This was the only picture I managed to take as they were clearing up the offerings outside – there were actually two paper cars for burning there, often the place where they sell the lanterns (and where lotsa “foreign locals” come to lantern shop) also boasts chinese medicinal shops (Rockstar had a grave moment when he noticed dried seahorses in one because I think he had a reader from school last year about conservation and not buying dried seahorses) and the shops that sell joss sticks and other paper offerings. It’s the paper offerings that also fascinate me each year – one year I saw LV handbags, this year for the first time I realized that in the cars are…… chauffeurs. Well I don’t know what else to say about that, just Wow There Are Even Chauffeurs In Those Cars….

And that……. was Sunday.