For half the schoolyear, Twin I pestered me about dyeing her hair if she gets the highest honor by the end of their 7th Grade. I was noncommittal. I didn’t think I would have to make that decision.

Nope, I was wrong. She is very persistent. She wore me down everyday with this: MOMMY, CAN I DYE MY HAIR WHEN I GET TOP HONORS? (repeat 10x)

The twins will each receive gold medals tomorrow for getting averages of above 97% (Twin A = 97+, Twin I~ 99). I didn’t have to push them to do their homeworks and to study hard—they did them on their own volition. They were making their own reviewers. They worked hard on their projects. They did it on their own with hardly any prodding from me because they know how important it is to me that they pass UP.

So now I fulfilled my end of the bargain. I brought them to the salon.

They were pretty happy with the outcome. They are excited to attend the recognition rites tomorrow so they can show off their hair to their friends.

By the time they come back to school in August, their hair would have grown and we can chop off the colored bits.

I wasn’t in the mood to cook after our time in the salon (2.5 hrs) so I just recycled leftovers to make bibimbap. The noodles there are  bulgogi-flavored Korean dry instant noodles. I didn’t have enough veggies and ran out of ban chan so I just fried mushrooms to add to lettuce.

Maybe we can have lunch in one of the destination restaurants several towns from us after the ceremonies.

After two months of dilly-dallying, I finally booked our trip to Bohol next month. I could have done Palawan but I was so disappointed with the coral bleaching in Batangas that I wanted to see Balicasag before the coral reefs there become bleached too. I saw a post in the freedivers group I’m a part of about Tubataha reef suffering from coral bleaching as well. That’s the Mecca for all divers out there in this part of the world and now it’s dying.

I need to go to Apo reef and Moalboal before everything disappears…

The rising sea water temperatures are killing the corals that are very sensitive to environmental changes. The rising temperatures are also causing stronger typhoons. When I was growing up, Category 5 typhoons are unheard of. It seems normal now to have one or two in a year…

Will probably do Palawan in December. 🤔

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Hello allergies! My forest is in bloom and I’m so dead. Good thing my doctor gave me prescription for a nasal spray for rhinitis. Look at those flowers just flying all over us. 🤧

I didn’t do much today; was too lazy to exercise because I woke up past 6 am and my body clock is still out of whack. I discovered I need to take melatonin to have a restful sleep. If I really want to have at least 6 hrs straight of sleep, I must take an antihistamine, like 25mg of diphenhydramine to knock me out. I also had to block out my window so I won’t have sunlight passing through so I could fix my circadian rhythm.

Ok, so if I wake up at 6 am again, I would have to put on my running shoes and walk all over the campus.

I have cut out sugar from my diet so I just have to push myself further and do this. I CAN DO THIS!

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Before everything else, my friend was happy to report that Ninja (now known as Brownie) feels at home now with her. She stopped hissing and has now claimed the bed as hers.

I hope she would be very happy in her new home, considering that she had a great kittenhood here.

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I was a school bus driver yesterday, Independence Day holiday.

My kids and their friends wanted to watch Inside Out at the theaters and the SM that was easiest to get to is two towns away from here. I prepared well so I brought my art kit and checked if the SM branch had a spa.

I just ended up spending 3k on a day spa package to while away the time and it turns out my kids and their friends didn’t even get to watch the movie. 😵‍💫 They said they couldn’t buy tickets, every showing was full.

It’s really a bad idea to go to a mall on a public holiday. But what can I do? They’re teenagers!

I told my friends that this will be my life in the next five years, ferrying my teenagers and friends to hangout places because they still can’t drive. My house is already a half-way home for the friends, just like how my parents’ house had been when we were growing up.

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I took it easy today, just wrote one story and that’s it. I don’t have to be a hero and be gung-ho about everything. There comes a point in a journalist’s life that she will question her passion and purpose. As shown by this website, which collects the reflections of journalists who left the industry, no journalist is happy. No it’s not an exageration.

Moiz Syed (The Intercept, ProPublica): When you work in journalism… you make a bargain with yourself. You take a pay cut in return for feeling good about the work you’re doing. … I think many of us ask ourselves whether this burden has become too heavy.” (Part of the OpenNews Exit Interview series)

Anonymous (Justine Reix for Vice speaks to four former journalists in France): “One day, I realised I wasn’t happy, and I didn’t know any journalists who were happy.”

Vanessa Ogle (local reporter in New York): “I couldn’t make my student loan payments. I held up the soles of my beat-up shoes by putting hair ties around them, though the unsecured edges still flapped when I walked. At one point, I was eligible for Medicaid.”

We’re a bunch of masochists. We all know at one point we need to get out of this industry because it drains the life out of us.

Nicole MacAdam (The Ottawa Citizen): “I had the overwhelming sense that if I stayed on that path, I’d never be able to prioritize the parts of my life that made it worth living.”

This is a mammogram machine a.k.a. squisher. I never thought that a mammogram could be this painful—dang it’s painful. Have I already mentioned it’s painful? Oh yes, I did. 😵‍💫

This machine squishes you so hard that you can only hold your breath while the technician takes a picture of your squished boobs. You can’t complain because you would only prolong your agony because the technician needs to take a photo of each breast twice (2D). Ruin the moment you have to go through it again.

I went to have my mammogram yesterday after lunch but I should have done this on my 40th birthday but we were at the height of Covid that time. Two years later, I still couldn’t do it because of Covid restrictions in 2021 and I was all over the place in 2022—travelling, building my house, etc. Last year was rough because I was in the process of moving house while at the same time I had to travel a lot. Twin A also got sick. I couldn’t time my menstrual cycle while I was so busy. Mammograms have to be done one or two weeks after the first mens. Before and after menstrual period the breasts are very tender, which would amplify the pain when they’re squished.

Good thing that this is only done once a year after turning 40. 🥲

The technician did her routine interview and asked why did my attending doctor ask for this procedure. I said I don’t want surprises so better get screened every year.

I then remembered my college friend, C, who didn’t know he had leukemia and died five days after diagnosis.

Yes, I don’t like surprises. It’s also not fair to my children if I didn’t take care of myself.

I still have to wait for the radiologist to come back from her break for the breast ultrasound. 😩

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I drove to BGC today to help our Manila reporter since there were a lot of people whom we needed to interview and they’re all going in different directions.

It was nice being back again in circulation.

After work, I went to Mitsukoshi to check out the newly opened Nitori store.

The kitchen stuff were pretty good. I was tempted to buy a kettle but we have an electric kettle… 🤔

I skipped the stationery section because I knew I would buy more fountain pen stuff 😜

Ah should sleep now.

I think the colorless version is much better, I don’t know why. 🤔 Maybe because everything has bled? The paper

The paper quality is not good for watercoloring since it absorbs too much water.

Anyway, this is just for practicing so it doesn’t have to be exhibit-level.

Meanwhile, my surgeon said what I have is lipoma and not osteoma. If this is osteoma, then he will not touch it because it’s bone, unless I want to go through the complicated process of chiseling my bone to flatten it (sounds horrible).

Good thing is it’s just lipoma = fat. My surgeon will just do an open incision over the lipoma and simply remove the fat. The other method is to do the incision along my hairline and lift the skin off the muscles and suck out the fat cells—or something like that. I didn’t hear the rest of the explanation because I was already cringing at the thought of going through that complicated process. I’m less vain now that I’m almost 45 years old and little scar on my forehead will not lessen my value as a person so I’m opting for the direct incision. I don’t want to complicate things.

This is the same thing when I opted for my gall bladder removal. My then surgeon asked if I want laparoscopy so that won’t have a huge scar on my upper abdomen. I said nope, cut me up, Doc, because complicated methods would just cause more trouble. Well, good choice because when the surgeon opened me up, the gall stones were already blocking my bile duct so he would end up directly cutting me up open anyway. I saved my insurance company money and saved me a ton of problems post-operation.

So yes, I will just go for the direct incision over my lipoma. It will just involve local anesthesia and will be done as outpatient. However, it would have to be done at the OR because it will be bloody, he said.

He warned me though that there will be a scar. I said it’s fine. I have lived with my chicken pox scar on my forehead for 40 years (I scratched a chicken pox lump because it was itchy when I was 4 years old) and it didn’t give me self-esteem issues. Then he checked that chicken pox scar and he said, ah, we can smoothen that out with fillers!

There you go. 😁

I would have to go back to him in two weeks. Right now we’re draining my ear of the fluid that got stuck after my diving trip. Covid (or rather the colds that came with it) caused inflamation or closed off the canal that would have helped drain the fluid. So he just gave me medicine to loosen thick mucus for two weeks before we begin prepping for my lipoma surgery.

I’m already Covid-. Yey! I was too eager to go out of the house. I drove to the next town yesterday to claim my Oppo watch. Since the one I bought from Lazada was a lemon, Oppo replaced it without so much of a fuss.

But before we left, I had to rush one editing job. While we were at this shopping center, I had to pick up another editing job via my mobile phone.

And I bit the bullet and edited the story on my mobile phone.

It was f*cking hard! The screen and onscreen keypads were too small but I made it work. I used to write stories on my Blackberry on the fly. But it was easier then because I had a full Qwerty keypads.

I was editing the story while waiting for our dinner.

We waited until the thunderstorm  passed because I knew the traffic would be epic. Maybe traffic would have eased after an hour.

Woooh, boy. How wrong I was.

What should have been just a 25-min drive one way turned into a 2-hr special bonanza.

Le sigh.

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Now waiting at the ENT/head/neck/facial and reconstructive surgeon’s office to finally have this lump on my forehead checked and eventually removed. A lot of people are bothered by it but I was not. I only now thought of having it removed because, what if it’s not benign as the previous doctors who have checked this said?

The wait is long and I don’t want to drain my phone’s battery quickly so I just practiced perspective sketching.

I also need to practice drawing hands. I hate drawing hands; they’re hard! Apparently, it’s not only me who’s having problem with hands. I read that the way to detect AI art is to check whether the hands were right/don’t look weird. AI doesn’t know how to do hands. 🤔

So now I’m practicing drawing my own hands, drawing hands. 😜

I want to visit an art gallery or museum. Should I go to Manila on Tues? It’s a holiday on Wednesday so let’s see where the wind will take me.

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