I have no motivation to get out of bed. I love mornings in my bedroom.

Umm, but it’s laundry day today. My cleaning lady will pick up the laundry and do her thing downstairs. I needed to open the door for her.

Then I realized that we don’t use the couches because it’s full of cat hair. I changed the covers and et voila! It’s already Christmas in this tiny house.

Sana masaya ka na, nakuha mo na ang gusto mo. Gustong-gusto ko na magdusa ka pero, wala eh, pinalad ka. Kahit kulang-kulang ka.

Gusto ko sana ipaghiganti ako ng tadhana, kaso hindi ako pinagpala. Gusto ko sana maramdaman mo kahit kalahati ng sakit na naranasan ko, pero meron talagang mga tao na pinagpapala at kakampi ng langit. Meron namang mga tao na laging kasama ng pighati. Ako yun.

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It has been sending me signals that its life is about to end. Two weeks ago, it wasn’t powering up after sleep or shut down. I opened it up to check if the power supply got fried or the battery is already bloated. Then like its temperamental original owner, it would choose to power up and function normally when it decides to play nice. So this laptop and I were playing some kind of game and it would choose to not cooperate during an important moment.

Because of this, I never turned off this laptop and have Spotify play sleep music in the background.

But after we came back from Manila yesterday, the laptop wouldn’t power up again even though the indicator light is showing signs of life. I brought it to the PC repair shop to check if it still can be resurrected.

Then it powered up again, like it’s telling the repair guy I am a liar and it’s working fine. I got charged PhP 1,300 for some thing that he replaced that I didn’t really remember. I have a strong feeling I was scammed. When I got home, it wouldn’t work. Brought it back, the guy said the charger is shot. I went to another PC shop to buy a universal charger, but when we tried, it wouldn’t work. The guy said, it’s beyond power supply.

UPDATE: See? The bastard is working smoothly again. What’s his deal?!

I then asked for a quote for a mini PC tower based on the components I chose from another shop. Ryzen 7 5700G, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, Gigabyte mobo (should be Wifi 6), etc…and oh, a mini-ITX casing.

This would be around PHP 36,700, without Win 11 yet. It could be 3k cheaper if I changed Ryzen 7 to Ryzen 5. I don’t play pc games that much so Ryzen 5 will do. I just needed something that is fast enough and can support all the progams I am running all at the same time, all the time. I guess it would be 10k more expensive with the OS installed.

My dilemma is this is almost as expensive as a Lenovo E16, which is already powered by Ryzen 5 7530U and I get to have a third screen of about 16″.

UPDATE: The Cool Master mini ITX case has its own 850w power supply, so that will shave 7k from my total cost. And if I go with Ryzen 5, I have 10k worth of savings, which could go to Win 11!

But it hurts my brain right now that I need to fork a huge amount when I’m still not done with my daughter’s illness.

I could use my underpowered but more portable Lenovo in the meantime…but it irritates me because it’s slower and it doesn’t have an ethernet port so video calls aren’t as snappy because I rely on wifi for connectivity. And that is meant only for working on the go, not as a desktop replacement.

I can’t spend for my wants, not until I am sure we won’t be needing chemotherapy/we are cleared by our oncologist.

Meanwhile, I bought additional RAM sticks for my girls and installed them because sometimes their PCs become laggy (Chrome is such a power hog).

I ended up cooking dinner late because I upgraded my girls’ RAM and cleaned the inside for better airflow. What’s the quickest to cook? This 👇

I have to think deeply about this PC issue. If only the Acer would stick around for a bit longer, then I wouldn’t feel guilty about spending on my wants because at the back of my mind I need to reserve my money for Twin A’s medical expenses.

It was a hectic day as I was chasing the schedules of the doctors involved in the MRI. I had to wake up at 4 am to give my patient her anti-TB meds because she can’t have anything, except water, past 5 am. Good thing she didn’t eat because our MRI schedule was moved to 12 noon instead of 1 pm. 🤦🏻‍♀️And with Metro Manila traffic, it’s hard to have last-minute changes like that. Good thing we already checked out before 10 am and when they messaged, we were on our way to PGH.

To make matters complicated, both my girls were attending online classes so moving them was a bit cumbersome. What’s worse is that they kept on fighting with each other.

Twin I was at Starbucks in Robinsons Manila attending online class and later on was joined by her dad to do his duty and watch over his daughter. He didn’t volunteer to contribute financially, that’s probably the reason why… 😶 Oh well, as I’ve said before, I have very low expectations and better keep it that way.

Stupid me. I forgot to get the MRI plates so I have to go back 🫠. The reading can be emailed to me but the plates are too high res and can’t be emailed.

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I miss sketching. I miss watercoloring. I have no mojo to do these.

Maybe I need to go on a road trip.

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I have a dinner date with my besties in the industry. They’re from rival newswires, all editors and one govt official who is an ex-reporter. Since Twin A’s MRI is scheduled at noon tomorrow, might as well stay overnight in the city. I brought Twin I along.

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These days I can only write in the afternoon or at night. 👀 I don’t know why. I started writing I finished an analysis piece tonight in one sitting. It’s devastating in a way because it keeps me from being productive. Maybe this is my body’s way of saying it needs to shut down.

My cats are like the most spoilt cats I know. I envy them sometimes because they have no cares in the world.

Meanwhile, this short video on Instagram somehow describes me.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Aanchal Gehi | Trauma-Informed Music Therapy (@the.offbeat.therapist)

My kids’ school suspended face-to-face classes for the entire week. I thought it was because of the vog (as Taal Volcano is acting up again), but my sister said (whose son also goes to the same school but is still in elementary) it’s because many students are down with acute respiratory tract infection (ARTI). It’s the same thing that hit my twins a few weeks ago that eventually led to asthma.

This is what our pediatricians told us: since the beginning of the school year—the first time they have been holding face-to-face classes everyday—a lot of children have become sick. It seems like there is an epidemic of rhinovirus and flu and hospitals are filling up with pediatric cases of ARTI. When we were confined in our first hospital, the entire wing was filled up with patients under the care of my older sister’s best friend (who was our attending pediatrician at that time). She told us that it was hard to get rooms for kids in most hospitals in our province. It was same thing with PGH, I was told.

Immunity debt, that’s what they call it. While this theory is still being debated, I do believe the confinement of children at home for two years kept them away from common colds and flu. My kids normally had asthma every quarter or every two months when they had regular school before the pandemic. During the homeschool/online school of the past two years, however, they rarely or never had asthma attacks. I don’t know if this is the reason why Twin A became susceptible to MTB infection. It’s something I have to ask our IDS, when she is already ok.

Well, this works out well for us since FMAB Radiology insisted that our MRI schedule is on Thursday (instead of the 4th week of Oct). That means Twin A doesn’t have to miss too many classes. She can still go online before she gets sedated for the procedure at 1 pm.

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This is to remind myself that I can buy myself pretty flowers and nurture them so the beauty will linger. I don’t have to wait for anyone to buy these for me.

I need some kind of serotonin boost these days after living on adrenalin alone the past two months. I swear, the only things that kept me going during the weeks I had been intensively taking care of Twin A were adrenalin (how I functioned with hardly any sleep is still a wonder) and prayers.

Now that things have quieted down, my body is screaming for some kind of rest, like honest-to-goodness rest, and serotonin. I feel like my body is giving out. I’m so tired but I needed to function still.

And to think I was battling Covid as well when Twin A had it. Only adrenalin kept me going even though my body was almost giving in to the symptoms (I had flu-like symptoms and didn’t tell the doctors I was feeling feverish for two days). I couldn’t afford to be bogged down by illness at that time—it was the height of Twin A’s illness. She was vomiting everything, had constant high fever, she was barely eating, had debilitating headaches, weakness, abdominal pains and a host of other symptoms. I had to be strong for her so she would also be in good spirits.

I am not a super woman. Now my body is saying that it’s payback time. It wants to shut down.