Sometimes, I can’t believe I’m a mother.

I can’t believe that I can actually make food out of supermarket ingredients. Food that people - and by people, I mean family members and certain friends - want to put in their mouths.

I can’t believe I am trusted to take care of two little children, and sometimes even other people’s.

Moi, who used to smoke like a chimney and drink and swear like a sailor.

Moi, who tried to sell my ten-year-old ‘art’ to my younger sister’s seven-year-old friends. By ‘tried to sell’, I mean “give me 20 sen or else”.

It got to a point where some kid’s grandparents complained to the headmistress that someone in school was scamming little kids into giving up their lunch money for paper with blobs of paint on them. My Koo Ma was called in (because my parents worked out of town and weren’t around, thank God) and I was told to cease operations immediately. I made a total of 70 sen, and spent most of it on our canteen junk food. Lovely.

I can’t believe that I can be trusted to drive a car. And a minivan, no less. You see, I didn’t learn to drive until I was 31, when I’d become pregnant with Sky, my second.

And that was only because I had resigned to the fact that Raeven was going to preschool soon. I was content to take cabs and walk the rest of my life, but for the fact that my child had to grow up and get educated.

Hey, I was spared the stress from driving in KL for a long time. That stress changes people. It makes them evil on the road*points at Lokes*. I count myself lucky to have evaded it for so long.

I also can’t believe that I have become the disciplinarian in my house. To think that I was the rebel in my own family, the so-called ‘black sheep’, the troublemaker.

I was the one who chased boys and spent all my mother’s money on ‘boiling telephone porridge’, a Chinese phrase for hogging the phone, talking to boys.

I was the one who went partying past curfew hours and ruined my sister’s social life after because my parents were determined not to let her take after me.

I was the one who did not study - and the fact that I still did well in school made it more infuriating for my folks. Hey, paying attention to the teacher helps!

I was the one who wrote invitations on our school blackboards to a party I was organising. Got my friends (remember that, Jo?) into trouble with the headmistress but totally worthy it ‘coz at the party, which was a success, Edwin Key spoke two words to me! OMG! Swoon!

Anyway, now I am the one who has to make AND enforce the rules at home. The one who has to make Skyler sit in her naughty chair for throwing her toys in a tantrum. The one who has to make Raeven clean up all her toys at the end of the day ‘or else’. The one my children had to watch out for when they got into the candy bucket which I had hidden in the pantry ON TOP of my washing machine.

Gotta love payback. That’s why you don’t mess with that karma.