Category Archives: personal

Letting go

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My cats are fond of laying on things I am working on, like my daily diary because I’m scheduling my life in the next 3 months. Photo by CalleMeCreation.

I sent J yesterday the last batch of his stuff he left behind. I saw on Grab it was delivered but there was no word from him, no thanks, no acknowledgment. Nothing.

I was miffed. Like what did I do wrong to this person to earn this kind of treatment??? I was just being nice!

But then a friend reminded me, this is not about me. “It’s not you. Nothing is wrong with you,” K said.

Then I reminded myself, yeah, he has a problem. He could not be nice to me, until the end. He’s not really a nice person 😔

I just had to vent out to my friend and then move on. I slept on it. I’m ok now. As I told K, I am loved by my family and friends and a lot of people appreciate me. They sent their help and love to me when I was really sick with Covid. Then that means nothing is wrong with me as a person.

My girls kept on making me cards, sending their love. Reminding me of the most important thing in this world: my children.

Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Choose people who choose you.

That’s the lesson I learned from this experience with J. I should love myself as much as I loved him. If I had more self-confidence and self-love, and didn’t think that I had to do more and become a doormat to earn his love, I wouldn’t have gone through the ugly last six months of our relationship that crushed my self-esteem.

I think I have finally let him go, in the truest sense. Like whatever he does that is not connected to me will no longer affect me. He no longer has the power to hurt me. I have taken that power back.

Happiness is a choice. I choose to be happy. I will love myself more and enjoy my life as I ought to.

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.

I lost weight

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I now have somewhat sunken cheeks or my cheekbones became more prominent and my face more pointed. I did not weigh myself because it’s too exhausting to excavate my weighing scale under my bed. Not being able to eat well for two weeks will do that to you.

I call it the Covid weight-loss program.

But then–kapoof! I celebrated today with food because I was able to publish again today and edit three stories. It got out of hand though…

No meat. Vegetable salad, pinangat (taro leaves in coconut milk and chilis), noodles and a bit of omurice. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

To celebrate the fact that I can already taste some food, I wanted something spicy and so I had pinangat that some Bicolano friends of mine sent me when I was in the middle of my Covid-induced sleep marathon. I ate a lot tonight so I have to refrain from doing that if I want to keep my current post-Covid weight.

I am now used to not having breakfast and only a shot of Berocca to start my day. I should keep my Covid appetite.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll try some crunches, if I am not going to chase my breath. But fixing my dinner tonight took a lot of effort on my part and it kind of left me breathless so let’s see.

49 years and they’re still lying

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The Marcoses have showered money again on all those social media trolls trying to revise history–Facebook and Twitter are sooo full of them right now. The Marcoses are also hiring actors and “influencers” to propagate their lies, especially that Bong-bong Marcos is running for president next year.

In service of the Filipino people, I am making available this book by Primitivo Mijares, a book which caused him to disappear (and his body was never found) and cost him his son’s life. I bought a hard copy for my mom on Amazon several Christmases ago. This book was not made available locally for a long time.

Conjugal-Dictatorship-by-Primitivo-MijaresDownload

Today is the 49th year of remembrance when Ferdinand Marcos, one of the world’s greatest crooks, imposed martial law in the Philippines.

September 21, 1972. #MarcosNotAHero #MarcosMagnanakaw #NeverForget

I’m supposed to write something today and/or tweet on Twitter but I got so stressed with all the trolls that I abandoned the idea and focused on taking care of myself instead. Maybe next week. I need to get better because, as one of the people who got imprisoned during martial law told me via private message last week, we need to fight another day.

So today is my last day of confinement in my room. I don’t think I have the strength to go out and withdraw cash so I will have my househelp do that for me. In any case, all my transactions these days are online so cash is not a top priority right now. I finally was able to order meat from Monterey Community Market and have it delivered here. The transaction was seamless as well. I have yet to order vegetables via Facebook Messenger. Some friends have sent me food packs and groceries with fruits. One sent her love all the way from Singapore.

Sushi is as tired as I am. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

My cats never fail to visit me and keep me company everyday. They love scratches behind the ears and underneath their chins.

Kimchi in her odd sleeping position again on their cat bunk bed. Photo taken by the girls’ ate.

I edit two stories a day–the maximum I allow myself to do these days. Doing more would make my brain bleed. I still feel dizzy at times and have some random headaches. I need to sleep by lunch or early afternoon. I don’t know how long I will be like this. It seems like my biking to and from UP to buy vegetables is a lifetime ago.

Long haul COVID symptoms

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24/7 live streaming of lo-fi music. Photo by CallMeCreation

To make my confinement a little bearable, I’ve been live streaming 24/7 lo-fi music either via Youtube or Spotify. I hope my Edifier speaker won’t conk out on me for abusing it.

I’ve been arguing with my sisters and mom regarding my Covid symptoms. They insisted that I should consult other doctors because of my lingering symptoms. To make them stop nagging me, I booked another teleconsult, which I doubt would help.

Number 1) I had Sinovac for vaccine (and my mom had it too) because we were the first batch of people to be vaccinated (people with comorbidities and senior citizens) so that’s why my symptoms were worse than my sisters’ (they had J&J) as they only had one day of fever and just loss of sense of smell and taste. Sinovac is known to be less effective for other variants of Covid compared to the initial variant when it first appeared in China. So my cousin who had Covid last year before the vaccinations began said in our chat group that it took her four months to completely recover. She had fatigue and often had to chase her breath when exerting effort, which I suffer from these days especially when disinfecting the bathroom. I no longer have fever and cough, only fatigue and random headaches, which my cousin said are normal long-haul symptoms. And also hair loss. Lots of it.

Number 2) I am also taking other medicines for my other illnesses, specifically for my PCOS, which may or may not have contributed to my heavy menstruation, which is an anecdotal but documented symptoms of some female Covid patients or those who received the vaccine. Not enough research is done on this so what can the doctors do? Prescribe more medicines when they don’t even know why are some patients are heavy bleeders and some aren’t? The most that they can do (which I read) is to recommend to the patient to supplement with iron. They cannot over-medicate me so that is that.

Number 3) People do not have uniform responses to Covid as it depends on how their bodies responded to the vaccine, the kind of variant that hit them, and other pre-existing conditions. When I had my initial dose of Sinovac, my body responded like I already had Covid: I had allergies and flu-like symptoms for 48 hours. So I guess it is not surprising that I have lingering symptoms now.

I am just thankful that that vaccine I had, albeit less effective than what others had, kept me from being rushed to the hospital. Otherwise I would have been dead by now because of lack of beds here in Metro Manila or intubated in an ICU. Because I have a chronic respiratory disease (asthma).

I also read that those fully vaccinated who became breakthrough Covid cases would have better chances of withstanding other future variants (Mu) that may come given that they have more antibodies now.

So to keep my sisters and my mom from panicking, I cited all these things.

I am fine and just thankful to be alive.