I have become the soccer mom. 🤦🏻♀️ It’s inevitable, right? Twin I has joined so many things, among them is cheerdance. I have to fetch her at 6 pm from school since the latest that the school bus can wait for students in my daughters’ school is 5-5:30 pm since the bus has to pick up students from other schools.
My clock is determined by my kids’ timetable.
I guess that’s how things are…
A mother’s life is no longer her own
I needed to decompress and relax. So far…I dunno if it’s successful.
I’m just dreading Monday.
I was hankering for eggplant today so I made this eggplant omelette.
I’m just trying to follow my wants and needs to soothe myself.
I have to fix my attitude towards work because I hate my job right now.
I think the dry season has started. I can now sit in my pseudo-balcony to breathe in fresh air. The Department of Science and Technology has declared that the El Niño may peak in April, a month earlier than forecast. So this cold spell may be short-lived. I had been sleeping without AC most of the nights for several weeks now as the cool mountain air with the help of my wall fan for aeration has been sufficient.
I just want to freeze this moment when I can be lazy, seemingly without any worries for tomorrow. Enjoy this momentary peace.
I should be thankful that I still have a job right now that allows me to stay at home for most of the time and provide for all that we need and some extra. I shouldn’t focus on the shit thrown my way last week and the aimlessness that I had felt weeks prior.
Maybe, just maybe, I need to detach my value as a person to my job and just focus on the things I like to do on the side, such as starting my garden and paint more and hone whatever minimal skills I have.
A company sent its belated Christmas gifts to me today and one of those is one big roll of lechon belly. I sliced into three pieces so they would fit in the air fryer I bought before Christmas.
I told myself after I was discharged from the hospital last month that I would no longer eat fatty pork. Oh well, I was tempted tonight.
I don’t need an oven anymore 🤣. I think I can make cupcakes in this air fryer—well in the first place this is essentially a convection oven in a different form. It’s convenient to use in the mornings when I’m still a mombie (mom + zombie) and only half my brain works. I had cooked a perfectly crispy bacon in this by just setting the temp and timer right and just left it while I took a nap. My girls are old enough to feed themselves breakfast.
“It’s like the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad has happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it’ll shine out the clearer. I know now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something. That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”—Samwise Gamgee
JRR Tolkien, The Two Towers
Naivete can be frustrating but you know, Sam may be naive but he sure is a brave, brave Hobbit. The bravest creature that walked Middle-Earth. When the world is so dark and hopeless, he still believed there is goodness in this world. Just like Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that man is inherently good but was just corrupted by anything that is not natural.
This romanticism makes people think that some things are worth fighting for. For Sam, it’s home, be it The Shire or Middle-Earth. For Rousseau, it’s man and all that he represents.
There are moments when I doubt whether some things are worth fighting for anymore. Like this country. No matter what I and other like-minded people do, we are still in deep shit as the majority still opts to remain in mediocrity and shallowness.
I woke up angry and frustrated. I wanted to email the director of that advisory firm about how abominable I was treated by his juniors. The senior is European and the juniors are Southeast Asians. Southeast Asians—or any Asian for that matter—are inherently nasty to one another. We have a silent hierarchy and unfortunately some of us are the “wrong Asians”.
Anyway, my colleagues told me it’s not worth it and just call it a day. Walk away from my desk. Take a hike. Just don’t work.
Another one sent me this article about leaders’ need to tune out off-office hours. She told me that’s one of the reasons why I’m always stressed to the point that it’s debilitating to my health. I don’t tune out, I don’t let go.
So now I just took a break. I did some errands like engine oil change and car wash.
Ah, I was just ordered to take a story to edit. Will just continue ruminating later. I just want this anger to go away.
I just saw a raven in my forest. I’m not sure if it’s a crow or a raven but it’s big and super black so it might be a raven. I’m scared for our adopted cat, which is very pregnant now. I wasn’t able to have her spayed in time because I was too busy.
After she gives birth, her kittens may be exposed to birds of prey and I don’t know how prevalent they are here in my own yard. I know ravens aren’t birds of prey but still…However, I can’t have her inside the house since Kimchi and Sushi have been having fights with her whenever they encounter each other through the glass window by the front door.
I think I would have to buy that outdoor cat house on Lazada to give them some kind of enclosure.
Shall I buy the controller on Lazada? I’m thinking of playing Lord of the Rings Online, a 17-year-old MMORPG that is still running.
Today is a bad day.
I don’t know if I can fully write this down but I had been bullied by this company that is advising the company CEO/management that I interviewed. I don’t know if I can go into details but I feel like I was treated like dirt, like we are a PR firm that they can dictate so they can push their agenda. I asked the compliance team to help me deal with them because protocol says we journos (my role here in this particular case is a journo, not an editor) cannot engage in such situation and better leave that to the compliance editors. We cannot answer back or throw bombs to retaliate because they are our subscribers.
They kept me up until 5 this morning but the bullying on chat didn’t stop until 5 pm today.
I am so pissed and yet so defeated. I hate that they made me feel like I’m very stupid. The way one of their advisors speak to me on WhatsApp is way below the belt, like I am under his payroll. I showed the screencap to some of my colleagues and they said—wow! “They really treat you like shit, don’t they? The problem is we can’t answer back.”
It’s so different in newspapers. We can just say “fuck you!” and the story goes on print.
I am broken today.
What can I do? I would just have to bite a bark of a tree and scream then expect all my negative energy will be gone. But who am I kidding?
For somebody who’s outspoken in person and online, my self-control is tested to its limit to not to bite back. I keep on repeating to myself, “do not bite/fight back, do not bite/fight back, do not bite/fight back, do not bite/fight back…”
I am twisting in my seat now. I don’t know how long I can hold on.
Of course it is inevitable that I would get really sick since I nursed Twin A back to health. She already went back to school yesterday while I suffered from runny nose and headaches. Whatever bug I caught from my daughter is very contagious.
My ill-health, however, is not an excuse for me to not try to have things fixed around the house yesterday. I had our airconditioners cleaned and my washing machine checked. Called up LG service center for parts (main board got wet somehow) and on top of that I had to cook and tidy up. Oh I had to edit a story and publish my own story.
Today I just struggled. I cooked instant noodles for the girls for breakfast (deplorable, I know) but I don’t have it in me this morning. The rest of the day is a battle between finishing a Thailand story (while fishing for info with my sources for another one) and sleeping. I’m feverish. Good thing I can send the girls to my mom’s place for dinner or else I would just give them money to eat dinner at the nearest eatery.
I no longer have Ate C to rely on when I’m indisposed. 😢
I can’t leave my kids to go home on their own because there is no public transport from their school to our house because their campus is on the far-flung end of the university campus. The latest that their school bus can wait for them is 5 pm and my children have joined clubs that required them to stay until 6 pm. 😕 The driver called and said he will wait for them until 6. Whopee!
Supermom to the rescue…😭
I just want to be left alone and sleep. My coughs and cold have spiralled into full-blown asthma.
Sick.
Ded.
Aghhh!
It’s just a matter of time I get hit by Covid again 🫠
Sick.
Ded.
Agghhh.
Grief is love persevering. Grief is love with nowhere to go.
***
Go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
~Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country
I’m just lucky that I get to earn a living practicing my art. I may not be the best but at least I am alive. Painting with my words against different media helps me breathe.