to the rescue

i love it when a friend says the right thing at the right time and washes all your guilt away.

thanks, F! oh, the secrets we share! i love it and i love you! ü

tv debut

came out on tv this morning.

actually, it's not a first. i once appeared on a tv commercial for breeze detergent with ate vi... all of 2 seconds (babad!). hahaha. wala lang ü

from the mouth of a babe

thursday afternoons and nights, i become a surrogate mom to my nephew miguel. that's the night my sis stays out late for some spiritual energizing (i.e., her prayer meeting).

i have spent most of my life in the company of children. that's why i became a pre-school teacher. but the beauty of being a teacher, as i always explain to those who ask, is that there's always the prospect (sometimes, the excitement!) of sending them home. it's a 3-hour play day, work is. such is not the case when the child lives in your home.

i don't get much work done once i get home. miguel's always around wanting to type something (funny how it happens whenever you're on the computer), wants you to fold something, borrow your "stuff", brush his teeth, read him a book, write him a book, make an art attack, find cardboard... get the idea? motherhood IS an on-call job, and i'm just the ninang!

don't get me wrong; i love miguel to death - as i do my other 30+ godchildren. sucker that i am, i let him get away with his "demands" then try to steal away when he's busy. tonight (last night) was not any different.

migueli and i were on his bed. i was trying to put him to sleep; he was trying anything but sleep. as is his routine when he is with me, i reminded him to say his evening prayers. and off we go...

dear jesus,

thank you for today. thank you for all i have and for the world.

please don't make it rain tomorrow because i'm going to school.

please protect my mom. please make her come home safe. make her car drive very, very fast, but don't make it bump anything. make her come home in one piece and safe... not even a booboo.

please bless my family and, and, and my house, and my household.

i love you, jesus. amen.

"not even a booboo." how can anyone resist that? that is one blessed mother, my sister is, who came home about an hour later, sans any booboos.

goonight, migueli! sleep tight. your prayers have come true.

good old abe

inspired and amused. at least i'm not a macedonian dwarf! hahaha!

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guilt-free

i got up bright and early this morning to plant a tree. our school was chosen by "magandang umaga, bayan" to be part of their tree-planting activity at the la mesa watershed as part of their month-long anniversary celebration. the idea of appearing on television is always an attractive come-on to kids (especially their parents). so off we went, 18 kids, teachers and stage parents.

planting a tree is not too difficult, if you paid attention to the briefing well.

1. find stick marker by dug hole
2. remove plastic bag from seedling base
3. place seedling into hole, leaf side up
4. replace soil into hole, making sure not to go beyond the seedling's "soil level" - there's a scientific explanation to this
5. lightly pack replaced soil with your foot
6. place torn plastic bag on stick marker or get fined P500 and dig out seedling again

nothing to it! together with the staff of m.u.b., we were able to plant a total of 400 trees today. that's practically a mini-forest! i've always considered myself a closet environmentalist, so this activity totally appeals to me. today was a "feel good" day. i look forward to doing it again... and again... and again.

let's see... i have about 4 adopted trees to my name at the la mesa watershed. they say that it takes 10 trees to clean the pollution emitted by 1 car. with all the trees we planted today, i can drive my car in peace for now.

my parallel universe

created a parallel blog (this is it, by the way) for the mere mortals whose PCs couldn't access URLs with underscores. duh. it's the same old, same old anyway. you would think that geniuses (or geeks?) who wrote such computer programs could give us some leeway, but NOOOOOOOOOO!

to their credit, at least they invented the cut and paste.

panic sort of set in this morning when my cousin said that there was a blog with the same name, except that the other one used a period instead of an underscore. maybe there IS a parallel universe.

missing dad all over again

today is dad's 4th death anniversary. he would have been 69.

if there's one person i REAAAAAAAAAAALLY miss, it would be him. he was GREAT. he was my idol. he was my friend. excuse me while i sob.

the day he died is still so vivid to me. i remember EVERYTHING. there weren't blogs then but i did write about it for my genogram for a subject in UP three years ago. so today, i brave the world as i "publish" a small portion of it, as my professor recommended then.

Promises made, promises kept

There was a time when I knew that Dad felt that we were all against him. He had decided to move out of the house and live with another woman. And although he had asked me once to leave the house with him, I only thought it proper to be with Mom and my siblings.

Dad was checking in and out of the hospital for a while. At one point, we had gotten tired of seeing him there and caring for him. It was as if we always made him well enough so he could leave us again.

But there was this one time when he was home for good that, while in a tight embrace, he sincerely asked me to promise to never leave him. I fulfilled that promise on August 16, 2000, the day he died. It was I who accompanied Daddy to the morgue to “put things in order.”

Alone, with him on a stainless steel gurney, I told him that I had made good my promise to him and bade him goodbye. I saw to the last of the details. I think he would have wanted it that way.

The death of my Dad has been the biggest blow in my life. To this day, I cry tears for his loss. When he died, I not only lost a father but a very, very good friend.

I dreamt about him a few weeks back for two straight nights. He was walking and talking, and hungry too! Just the way I would always like to remember him. It was really great to see him okay. I am very glad to know that he is in a much better place.

relief

chanced upon a national geographic episode tonight where they showed 2 people walking through a bat cave... and LOTS of bat dung.

now i know what guano really looks like and i can heave a big sigh of relief. that must have been plain old mud in sierra cave in tuguegarao. it's just not the same... umm... consistency! whew!

God has ears

so i tell amy in the car about my last blog (august 9) and tonight i get an SMS from her saying that she read in the newspaper that oprah will be on air until 2011. yessssss!

maybe i can still add "get into the oprah show" to my "things i want to do before i die" list.

dear oprah

one of the perks of not needing to be at work until 11:00 a.m. is that i get to watch oprah at 9:00 a.m. each morning. today, they featured "Oprah's favorite things." it's an annual thing she does where she highlights her finds for the year and shares it with the members of the audience... all 300 of them!

today (or at least in today's show), she gave out, among other things that i can remember, samsung cellphones - plus a free 3-month subscription to t-mobile, j lo athletic outfits that retail for more than $400 a set, body care products (keil, i think was the name) worth around $270. there was what she claims as the best hot chocolate in a can (who am i to doubt her?) and fresh croissants - "just like they are in paris" - that she had delivered to each of the audience members' homes (she got their addresses). there were these fuzzy booties that you nuke in the microwave for 20 seconds to warm your toes in winter and place in the freezer to keep your feet cool in the summer, and gloves that you wear with something in them to keep your hands soft and smooth. she also gave each one the perfect white t-shirt. they're made of peruvian cotton (i think) and retail for about $49 a piece - they're so pricey because they get softer with every wash. she also gave out a year's subscription to O magazine to everyone in her studio. all these within the last half of her show! lord knows what else she gave in the first half that i missed! what i would give to be in her show!! i would be happy to be just one of her elves distributing the presents

a friend and i have long "fantasized" to be on the oprah show. not as guests, mind you; just as regular, well-dressed members of the audience. we would start to compose these "dear oprah" letters and think of something significant in our lives that would get her attention and make us "must haves" in chicago. hmmm... i can tell her about how i quit my high-paying job to be a teacher. how courageous! how inspiring! maybe i can lose 100 pounds or something! nah! i'm not asking for much. i'm not asking her to redo the house (though i'd love it if nate did my room) or pay my bills... i'm not even asking for her shoes (although they are delish!). i just want to be in her show... even if she doesn't give me a doggie bag to bring home. i got a us visa :-)

time's a-ticking here! i read somewhere that she would only remain on air until 2006. gosh! that's not much time to write a book for her to turn into a bestseller. maybe my genogram or unpublished children's book can do. hmmm...

so please, if you're reading this and you know oprah, feel free to forward this to her. i'll even take you along on the trip (she knows that i would want that).