Category Archives: mommy matters

Therapy

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Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I cooked brunch today then I slept again after that. It’s unbelievable that I was still exhausted from yesterday’s trip. Then I woke up a little past noon when I was asked by my daughter to sign a proof of delivery as some industry friends sent me baked lasagna and blueberry cheesecake so I didn’t have to cook a midday meal or even dinner. My daughter, Twin I, and I gardened in the afternoon. I transplanted this flowering plant (I wasn’t able to get its name) and herbs I bought yesterday along CP Garcia Ave on the way home from UP where I bought our vegetables.

Basil and dill in our “dirty kitchen”. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Then we planted some vegetable seeds in new plastic pots that I will transfer to our “dirty kitchen”/laundry area because this area receives so much sunlight all day. The vegetables and herbs will be protected from aphids outside plus we can just pluck leaves from our kitchen “garden” when we cook.

After gardening, I slept again and when I woke up, it was already dark.

Gardening is some kind of therapy for me these days as I still couldn’t go out due to fatigue. Watching something you grow and nurture is also fulfilling, like having my girls with me.

Speaking of nurturing, the stray cats that reside outside our compound have moved inside the compound as our neighbor had also been feeding them and tamed them. We also have been feeding these cats since we moved in here in October 2018–exactly three years ago! Our neighbor had put pet collars around them so people would know someone had already adopted them and think twice about abusing them.

Brushing him with a toothbrush. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

So this white cat has been trying to make himself cute to us while we were gardening this afternoon. He would lie down and go belly up and curl, something that my inside cats would do when they’re begging for some petting. Of course I didn’t pet it with my bare hands so what we did was we got a toothbrush and brushed it so it can have some grooming and belly rubs. It loved all the attention and loving touch. The girls were begging me if they can give the cat a bath, I said no because it’s not yet tame enough and we don’t know what kind of diseases it has. We have to tame it completely before we can do that. The compromise was we brushed on flea powder on it and the cat loved the brushing so much that it begged for a repeat tonight when I was checking out my partially charged fairy lights.

Kittykat waiting for us to play with him. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

When this cat finally becomes tame, I would bring it to PAWS to be neutered, checked, vaccinated and de-wormed. Then we will give it a bath. However, it will still have to live outside because I don’t want to have chaos in my house. We will just make some kind of cat house outside so they will be protected from the elements. I would have to buy wooden crates and I have some fiberglass roofing here that I used for my “dirty kitchen”.

They say a woman who has sworn off marriage and choose to live single the rest of her life would become a crazy cat lady. I guess I’m turning into that now…which is fine by me. Cats are obnoxious animals but when they do give you love, it’s real. They don’t give you bullshit.

Worst place to be

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I don’t have to elaborate how and why. I mean, my household is very careful given that I have unvaccinated children with me and the three of us are asthmatic people and yet we still caught Covid from somewhere we couldn’t trace. My mom’s household is still quarantined because all of them got it. And my sisters rarely go out. I have a lot of my friends who are Covid-positive now. Many of my kids’ teachers are sick now, probably with Covid, and couldn’t hold online classes.

As I said a few months ago, it’s just a matter of time when we will get it.

Then we will have clowns running for president next year

There were too many news about Pacquiao yesterday that I dreamed about him last night. In my dream I was supposed to buy one of his cars and we were supposed to meet in a hotel lobby to do our transaction. However, his car fell from the hotel’s elevated parking space and it was already beyond repair.

That was weird.

It’s probably an omen.

I went out to withdraw some cash from my bank on Tuesday. Feeling too confident, I walked from my apartment to my bank and back. I didn’t realize that was already too taxing for me that I fell asleep that night with my lamp and PC on. Then yesterday I did nothing but sleep the whole day. Lingering Covid fatigue hits me hard. It’s sneaky like that.

So I had to order groceries again from Puregold to be delivered at home and my cat supplies via Viber to my suki vendor from Tiendesitas today. Tomorrow will be meat shopping from Monterey Community Market via Viber again. My problem are fruits and vegetables because the vendor on Facebook who has a stall in Nepa Qmart has duped me. A lot of items were missing and she sold me two small potatoes when I ordered 1/2 kg of those. Either I will brave it tomorrow and drive to UP or let my househelp buy from the nearby Robinsons (and veggies there are sometimes not that fresh, they cannot be stored that long in the fridge).

Now I’m back to buying random shit again online. Bought a new protective case for my phone because my old one was already falling apart.

Photo by CallMeCreation.com

China’s Golden Week starts tomorrow so we will be out of three or four editors. It will be a week-long holiday for them so I guess I have to work twice as much in the coming days.

CCP will again will have a show-to-the-world-we’re-tough ceremonies in Beijing sometime next week.

Meanwhile, I am looking forward to my own birthday holiday towards the end of October. Since I’m still weak, a biking or camping holiday is out of the question. Dining out is also a risky endeavor. I guess I would have to pull the trigger and buy that movie projector and just binge-watch Youtube videos and Netflix on my blank white wall during my vacation.

My girls are begging me to spend the Christmas here in the apartment instead of spending it with their grandma in my hometown. They don’t want to leave the cats.

Let’s see how the world will flow in the coming months.

The audacity of this family

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This is what you call dynasty graft and corruption.

I don’t want to dwell on this today because it’s my day-off and I’m not supposed to stress myself.

Oh Lord, let me have the strength to last the 2022 elections. Or survive the Philippines. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Last night, it’s my other daughter’s turn to cook. Taught her how to make meatballs

She mixed ground pork, salt, pepper, egg, soy sauce, and bread crumbs. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Formed them into balls and rolled onto a floured board. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
And then fried. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Made gravy from an instant mix. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

It’s their dinner. Since I no longer eat heavy dinners, I just had a small sandwich.

Then I continued with sewing masks to give to friends who sent their love when I was sick.

Look at how fine my hand stitches had become. A lot of practice, I can soon emulate the Victorian seamstresses who are rather particular about their hand stitches.

Homely activities

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I feel stronger today, like my old energy is back so I tackled home cooking today. Or rather I taught my daughter, Twin I, how to make omurice and miso soup.

First she cooked leftover rice that was in the fridge overnight with some leftover tocino and leeks. Normally you put dollops of ketchup in the rice but my kids don’t like ketchup. Photo by CallMeCreation.com.
Then I taught her how to make a plain and thin omelette. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
We assembled the rice first then covered it with the omelette and shaped it like this. Topped with slivers of leeks. Photo by CallMeCreation.com.

I also taught her how to make miso soup using soybean paste and kombu or dried kelp. Omurice and and miso soup for brunch today.

Then I felt more energetic than I expected so I tackled my container garden that was already so neglected that it looked like a forest full of detritus and detritus feeders.

First, I tried to save my birds of paradise plant from falling over because it was being pushed down by the neighbor’s trash. Then I’m teaching it to lean the other way. This is already the daughter plant (that grew from a sucker). The mother plant that I bought from my hometown in December died as it was not able to acclimatize in the city. Good thing the daughter survived and is growing another leaf. Tonight I transferred it to a more shady part of the courtyard so the leaves won’t be burned by the noon sun. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Then I tackled the dried leaves that kept falling from the old mango tree and the soil that was dug up by neighborhood stray cats. I took out the neighbor’s trash that they stuffed between their motorbike and my pots. Annoying really, because there was a lot. I pulled out the dead plants that I neglected and some weeds. The big one at the back is a taro plant. I tried pulling it out to check if there’s already taro but that damned thing was stubborn. The bigger plants at the back are fruit trees that I learned to be lanzones, kaimito and rambutan. And they will all go to my cousin who has a garden. I don’t have a place to transfer my fruit trees from my pot. The wire shelving was pulled out from my laundry area and it was just languishing there. It used to hold my pots and pans in the cooking area. Some survivors are my birdseye chilis. I will be sowing some vegetable seeds in the empty pots tomorrow. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Here are some of the surviving birdseye chilis that I quarantined as some of the other surviving siblings are being attacked by some kind of pest, maybe aphids. At the back planted in some old upside down plastic Coke bottles are some Sansivieria bacularis that I started to propagate. The ones in the water are the other bacularis that I separated from the mother plant that will be transferred to other pots when I have the chance to buy potting soil.
These are the mother Sansivieria bacularis. They started as small plants in small Japanese cups that we bought from Quezon City Circle gardens for PHP 35 each in 2018. They were dying indoors probably because of lack of light so I took them out and transferred them to bigger pots. Look at how they have thrived outdoors. I think this unruly mother plant would have to be thinned out and I propagate the daughters.
I planted seeds of ornamental flowers in these recycled mineral water bottles. These are next to my front windows so when they start to flower, I will be looking at my flowers through my window every morning when I have my breakfast.
Since everyone is stuck at home, my neighbors in the apartment compound also started growing plants in pots and plant boxes. Yup, that’s my bike that I haven’t folded yet. I’ll probably clean and oil that tomorrow.
My neighbors also are growing papaya trees, some Malabar spinach (that vine) and moringa tree. They said I can freely gather the leaves if I want to use them for cooking.

Tomorrow I will be composting some rotten guyabano fruits and cantaloupe that I wasn’t able to eat. I will gather the seeds first and let’s see if I can grow them. My squash died during the non-stop monsoon rains in July and August. Also some neighborhood stray cats started digging into my pots. Next time I will make some trellises so my squash would have somewhere to crawl or attach to.

Later tonight I will be ordering 20 meters of solar-powered fairy lights from Lazada that I will twirl around the mango tree then hang across the container garden towards my apartment’s overhang and hang it loosely there. It would be very pretty every night so my girls and I can sit outside while we grill or just hang out since the heavy rains have already stopped. Plus Christmas is coming soon. I will be ordering more curtain fairy lights to hang against my curtains in my living room window.

Self-love. I’m almost there.

When introversion is an advantage

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It’s a good thing I love my room or else I would have gone stir crazy by now. This is my 11th/12th day of isolation and all I have with me are my cats for company. I miss hugging my girls but I have to be careful just in case what they had initially was not Covid (but I seriously doubt that was not Covid because I got it from them). So being an introvert is an advantage during these times of isolation and hunkering down in place because we have logged 23,000+ new cases today again. I could amuse myself and live in this 10 (or 15?) sqm room and not feel resentful. Having 400+Mbps of internet is also a God-send during these trying times.

My kitties. They’re just happy being with me in the same room. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

We survived the weeks by ordering food via Grab and ordering groceries through the Puregold app. I love Puregold! They assign you a personal shopper and they call you when they don’t have stocks of the items you wanted and they call you again when the orders are ready for payment and delivery. It was so seamless. Now I just have to figure out how to buy fresh vegetables and fruits via this vendor on Facebook whose store is in Nepa Q Mart. I also need to figure out how to have the Monterey Community Market to deliver to me.

I learned that Southstar Drug delivers the next day, which is much better than Mercury Drug–my orders from that store never came.

I am also so thankful that we didn’t live in a condo. I would have gone bonkers with all that confinement if we spent the pandemic in a condo. Here in this apartment complex at least we have a small courtyard in front of our front door where we could sun ourselves if we wanted to.

Once I get out of Covid isolation and get better, I will fix my container garden and add plastic vegetable pots in our kitchen/cooking area that gets great natural light. I will tack them on the walls. Or have some in hanging planters.

Meanwhile, my kids are now regularly doing chores since one househelp left my household because she got pregnant and went to live with her boyfriend. Twin I can now cook simple stuff like instant noodles and fried egg. She and Twin A now regularly wash dishes and clean up after themselves. Twin A used to be very messy and her spot was a pigsty. When we transferred her computer desk under the stairs to be nearer to her sister, she cleaned up and matured a bit. In a blink of an eye they would be teenagers soon.

I’m thankful that it’s just the four of us right now (my girls and I and one househelp). Covid is manageable this way.

The long wait

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So I got tested today (thank you, Zennya, for being prompt and the most affordable home service testing in the market). The result will be sent to me within 24 hrs and then… Kaboom. The nurse who did the checklist with me said I had ticked off all of the symptoms (and that moment I had a slight fever) so it’s like 90% I am positive for Covid.

If I am positive, the lab will inform my barangay and the barangay health officials will check my household. They will see if the kids and my househelp would need to be tested (they should). Considering that the symptoms started with my kids but they recovered.

I would have to be taken away to a government isolation facility for 14 days! If I could convince them that there’s nobody else left to be isolated from since they had been sick already, then maybe I can stay home??? I need to work.

I asked my cousin to drop by and teach my househelp how to withdraw money from the ATM. I gave her my prepaid ATM/debit card so in case I’m carted away by the LGU, they have money for basic necessities. Problem is some decision-making in this household still rests on me. I wonder how they will manage while I’m away.

Covid is tough for single parents. If the parent gets sick, who will look after the children? That’s why daily wage workers don’t want to get tested because as long as they’re not registered as Covid positive, they can still continue working. It’s much harder for single parents because when they’re taken away by the LGU to an isolation facility, who will feed the children?

Such is the plight of the poor with this type of government that doesn’t give a single fuck to such matters.