Today I was a soldier! The parents-in-law left the day before yesterday and yesterday I had to recover after two weeks of being social and active. Which left this day to do the last minute shopping I wanted to do before John's birthday.
I started slow and had a late lunch at the hawker centre. To prevent myself from going back up I had my food there. Chicken and rice, ten dumplings and lime juice. It was a lot, it was good and it was satisfying. Felt like one of those grown up things to do - have lunch by yourself and enjoying it. I also had decided to try out the sandals Annika left me so this was the first time I actually walk around without socks (except in my flip flops but I can not walk around in them a full day).
After an hour - I consciously slowed down my normal high-speed eating by reading articles - I walked to the MRT, washed my hands in the bathroom and felt like I was forty. Took the MRT to Buona Vista, switched and continued on to Jurong East. I was there with Annika a week ago. This time I knew the quickest way to IMM and walked into the hospital. Although I followed signs and found myself lost because no sign told me where to go. Within two seconds a nice European grey-haired lady in a nurse uniform comes up to me and asks if she can be of any assistance. I explained my confusion and she escorts me for several minutes to a bridge leading over the street to IMM.
Inside I immediately realised that I walked right in onto the second floor (did not even know about it last time). Since I knew the stores I wanted to visit downstairs I took my time walking around the second floor. Mostly furniture stores, one big book store but they did not sell any good grift wrap so I left. Strange thing here, it seems that one only buys a single piece of paper for a gift and not a roll as I have several of in Sweden. On the second store I found a large Japanese everything store, very Japanese. I did not buy anything. They sold Halloween-things but I can not feel the Halloween approaching. Where are the orange leaves? The cold winds? The darker and darker evenings? It is always summer here, how can Halloween thrive?
When I was done buying gifts inside this mall I had already spent almost two hours there. My feet did not like the sandals and had started giving me painful but survivable chafing on both big toes and both small toes. Never the less, when I was on the train again, I resisted getting of at Buona which would take me home and continued on to Queenstown. Long time readers might remember this station to be the first station at which we officially lived the first month in Singapore. This is also the station closest to IKEA.
I only had a few things to buy at IKEA but just walking back and forth took twenty minutes. I tried to be as fast as I could, buying grift wrap, tape, string and be out of there; but it took almost an hour to go from the station and get back to it. By that time I had tears in my eyes from my now very severely hurt feet. I had a large blister on one big toe, a cracked one on the other, open wounds on the small toes with dark dirt in them and both tendons were bleeding.
I went barefoot from the station to home, feeling like I walked on clouds. At home I had about two hours to wrap the presents before John would be home. I put my feet in cold water, everything hurt even more, and it took a surprising twenty minutes to wrap a single gift. I sped up, only doing the papers first and then I saw that John would be leaving work soon. I messaged him asking where he was but he was going to be late. I had plenty of time to fix the strings, the cards and clean up after myself. No stress.
When he came home I sat crying in the sofa. Just a few minutes earlier I had hit the malleolus very hard in the sharp edge of the table. Put on some ice and held it high. I quickly went through all the injuries and he started laughing. I started crying for real. So many things hurt and all I wanted to do was give him his gifts so that all this pain was worth it!
