After my wonderful weekend of rest and relaxation, I am once again at peace with the world.

And that’s no small feat. I remember just last week when the slightest small thing would tick me off. Another spot on the carpet. Rae not finishing her meals. Skyler’s incessant whining.

Today, I am suddenly Mother Teresa. I woke up smiling and ready to take on lions. I sang and danced and hugged the girls. Nothing was wrong, and everything was good.

The one thing I used to get really irritated about was Rae’s loitering, especially when we’re about to go out. She loiters down the stairs. She fiddles with her sandals, her mind most likely on some other planet. She stops to explore the garage. Last week, it would’ve made my head boil. But today, I simply ignored it. It’d never occured to me to do that.

That’s my daughter, I’d even rationalised. She loiters.

Lokes though, looked as though he was on the verge of collapse. Had trouble waking up this morning after two days of intensive parenting.

“You look like crap,” I’d told him on the way to work.

He simply grunted behind his Raybans.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, genuinely worried that he might not come home this evening.

“They’re just…so loud,” he mumbled.

I muffled a grin.

Since I was in such good spirits, I even signed up for more Meetups, to make MORE new friends. I find the best way to know a place is through its people, and so, I packed the girls up this morning to meet some “Redmond/Eastside” moms at a park we’d never been to. Meadow Park is a secluded little place tucked in between residences off Redmond/Woodinville Road. Met Julie and Whitney and Lana (?), all moms to newborns and preschool-aged kids, which is perfect for Rae. Talked about nursing and babies and schools.

It was just nice to be meeting people again.

Sometimes, I wonder when I’ll really find someone I can connect with in the US. It’s not easy to ‘make friends’ at this stage in life when you have so many responsibilities and so little time. When I see how easily some of the women I’ve met have become friends with others, I cannot help but feel a tiny pang of jealousy, and I begin to miss my friends back home. I mean, it’s been seven months and last Saturday was my first day off. How conducive can that be for a fledgling social life?

And then I tell myself that it’s only been seven months. Does time matter for real friendships to foster? Perhaps.

Or maybe it’s just that I’m foreign. Like, where on earth is Malaysia anyway? For all they know, I might be come from a long line of barbaric headhunters.

Well, I most certainly am not.