I don’t know if I can handle this anymore.

Praying that the mass found is benign.

Nothing else matters now.

I finally got these from the framer this evening. They looked like real paintings 🤣

Perfect! I finally achieved my dream of having an art gallery for a house. Part of my dream is to have a library but of course, due to space constraints, I can’t have a library. Well, I do have spacious book shelves in the living area. But I know that does not count.

I can still put two small frames above the Chinese street scene but I’m reserving that for future prints that I may be able to get from the central bank. I would love to have an Amorsolo or Manansala print. I just messaged the head of corporate affairs of the central bank and sent him these photos. I said that I’m looking for more prints from their online store but they’re not available. *hint hint* I know what I usually get as souvenirs from BSP are limited editions and are not available to the general public. So maybe they still have excess…??? Hopefully, I can ask my friend, M, if they still have extra prints of other national artists. 😊

Before I start working tomorrow, I decided to go to another town for a bit of a break. I brought my girls to Victoria (20 minute drive south) to have a late lunch. Just for a change in scenery.

Food was ok, they have big servings at The Aviary and my kids were happy.

We were supposed to drive to Paete but Twin A wasn’t feeling well. Her stomach has been bloated for quite some time and tomorrow I will request her pediatrician for a referral to a gastroenterologist because I suspect her rapid weight loss has something to do with that. She has been complaining about tummy aches but we were just addressing them with antacids.

I got her thyroid result yesterday and her TSH is out of range–several units higher than the maximum. But her T3 and T4 are ok, which puts her in the category of subclinical hypothyroidism. But that doesn’t explain her weight loss because hypo means she has to gain weight. I would know tomorrow what the doctor would recommend. I need to find what’s causing her rapid weight loss—the way how my daughter looks now is so alarming.

I will be attending a press conference while waiting for our turn at the clinic because lines at the OPD pediatric wing in tertiary hospitals are normally long. Visiting the pediatrician is a day-long affair (oh the horrors of waiting at the MAB of St. Luke’s QC!) when we still had to regularly visit the girls’ pediatric pulmonologist. When the girls were slightly older and no longer needed constant monitoring from the pulmonologist, we shifted to visiting the polyclinic near our apartment and all I had to do was take the tricycle. The waiting time is less than an hour to a maximum of an hour. The lab and radiology are also at arm’s length so it was very convenient.

Now I’m back to visiting OPDs of tertiary hospitals 😩 and back to long queues.

Speaking of which, I haven’t had my breast scans…

Oh God, let this be just a case of tape worms and not some kind of serious gastrointestinal illness or an autoimmune disease. I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with this 🥴

A friend and I (we used to cover the stock market together before she became a lawyer) were chatting a few days ago about the impending market crash as predicted by Michael Burry. He was the astute trader who predicted the crash of 2008 and became famous after he was featured in the book and movie, The Big Short.

Actually, naysayers said he is wrong but I believe his prediction since we are still on the inverted yield curve and it is persistent. Investors are still pessimistic about the economy, with the sticky elevated inflation and cost of money still high. How whacked is that the 2-year US Treasury bond carry a higher yield than a 10-year bond just 10 days ago??? Corporates are reluctant to borrow now (I just written about it a few weeks ago), startups cannot raise funds, hence, the lay-offs and stalled expansion plans. VCs and PEs are having a tough time raising funds and exiting their portfolios as well.

“I’ll ready my money,” I told this friend. “It’s how I also made money after the Lehman crash.”

She said she is also readying her money but instead of speculative buying, she will be buying for dividends. She stopped forex trading for a while because her toddler demands more attention now and she can’t be on the screen all the time.

Last week, I bought a few ETF shares for less than PHP 100 apiece. This is the first time I bought ETFs below 100—this is how fucked up the equities market is. This prompted me to contact my bank’s treasury department so I can top up my UITF. I know it will be tracking lower towards the end of the year but you cannot catch a falling knife so might as well do cost-averaging for the time being.

Now I’m thinking about using my legal fund to go all in once the market crashes but…I dunno. I need to pay my lawyer, right? But I need to break my contract with my first lawyer because filing my case in QC is no longer feasible and my legal fees would climb if I insist on doing it in QC. Plus it’s impractical.

Anyway, let’s see when and how deep is the crash. Good thing I’m done with the house expenses and I’m no longer renting. The fear of being homeless if I lose my job due to recession or whatnot no longer hovers above my head.

I haven’t gone anywhere. It’s sad. We haven’t gone on a short road trip because I always end up exhausted; the constant cooking and cleaning gets to me. Yes, my house is small and we’re only three people but still, the effort involved in cooking and wash up is the same. And I constantly need to clean and keep everything neat because, as I said, the house is small. It can easily become cluttered and it will drive me nuts.

I somehow need to learn how to be wiser about my housekeeping. I cannot be constantly cleaning all the time. The girls have their chores but still the bulk of the cleaning falls on me. Maybe I should just order food instead of cooking at home? Well, that’s what I plan to do anyway with my girls’ school lunches. I will jack up their weekly allowances so they can buy lunch in their cafeteria. If the food is not good, then I will just have delivered daily by a caterer referred to me by my high school friend. It has been delivering lunches to high schools around here when kids had face-to-face school days.

I already contacted the school bus and and the girls will be fetched at 6:30 am because classes start at 7:30 am, so that means I have to be up at 5:30 am to prepare breakfast—quick ones like white rice, whatever I had prepared the night before, and miso soup or veggie side dish. Or I will have an abundance of bread like pan de sal or monay and stock up on cheese, jams, and UHT/sterilized milk. I think the latter option is more doable.

After they leave, I will take a nap then wake up at 8:45 am to work at 9 am.

I took the easy route tonight and we dined on tuna sashimi—sort of. I had to sear the surface of the tuna to take off the fishiness for my girls.

Oh, the travails of mothers—especially single mothers—have to endure daily. It’s exhausting. Just thinking about waking up at 5:30 am every single weekday terrifies me. I miss Ate C, who now has a baby boy to mind now. When she was around, I had the luxury of waking up at 8 am and not worry about what to have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I was so spoiled.

No more late-night/early morning Graham Norton binge-watching.

Hmmm, that photo above shows the emptiness of that wall behind my computer setup. I was wondering whether I should install picture ledges there or hang that woven fabric from Zamboanga and the malong given to me by my university after my commencement exercise keynote address last year.

I just had the Arturo Luz and the Juan Senson prints that I received from the central bank last year framed locally.

Ah, I should have known that view is Angono, Rizal. Just like many Fernando Amorsolo and Carlos “Botong” Francisco paintings.

The location of this scene above is this in real life:

Unlike many women today, I’m not obsessed with taking selfies everyday and posting them on social media (such a security risk, by the way). I am obsessed with looking at sunsets and taking photos of them though. I cannot have enough of it.

I had early attempts of doing watercolors of Laguna Lake and sunsets over it but I’m such a failure at it. Let’s see if I can do it now.

“Why, Mommy, why,” my daughter Twin I asked. Why do you keep on writing? Why do you keep on blogging when no one reads it anyway? Why do you keep on writing on your notebooks? Why?

Because it’s all I know how to do. I’m writing a book about nothing. But believe me, my dear child, when I’m already gone, you will come back to all these things that I wrote because you will miss me. You will hear my voice from these virtual pages. You will download all the contents so you can bring me back.

Of course, she does not understand yet. It will hit them hard when the time comes I’m no longer here.

I almost gave up on blogging during my digital detox, when I was questioning all the things I had been doing.

But why did I come back? I don’t know. My words are like my threads to make a tapestry. It is my art that I create for myself.

It is a long weekend but I may have to take a one-hour call on Monday. But let’s see how we will spend the weekend…Of course, everybody will be going to the provinces and be stuck in traffic. So I guess my girls and I would just go further south just to avoid the Metro Manila crowd that would be descending upon us.

I had a pressure cooker Friday as I started with an early interview as the guy is somewhere in the US (Pacific Standard Time). Then my boss refused to approve my reimbursement for my bookings to HK since the event is yet to happen. I argued that the plane, Airport Express, and everything else I booked are already on my credit card bill. Of course I simply refuse to carry that on my balance because it’s work-related. Our accounting staff said we can invoice as long as it is already on the credit card bill. I don’t understand; I had been doing this for 9 years already. She still wasn’t approving it. I chatted with our accounting staff and asked her if I would still get my reimbursement since I already sent my cc bill; she said, don’t worry, I will still process it. 🥴

I always had trouble with this manager regarding so many things. 🤦🏻‍♀️ When I fly to Seoul, I won’t drop by her office to keep my anxiety down.

Speaking of Seoul, while I was on digital detox, my kids requested this:

And my veggies that we used to wrap the meat are:

And we had leftovers for dinner, so I made this:

And last night I was still fuming about my boss, I needed something that my hands could do to relax me and drive away the tension.

I made pillow cases by hand.

Yes of course, there was a trigger. There is always a trigger. But this time, it’s very much needed. I needed to be triggered so I can get my shit together.

I needed to detach myself from everything that I had been doing. I lost my way. Whatever am I doing with my life in the last few months? I don’t know. I lost focus. Since I finished my house, I didn’t have anything else to expend my energy on. I drifted and obsessed on things I shouldn’t even pay attention to.

What am I trying to prove? Why did I even think that the universe will do me favors?

Schadenfreude.

Someone’s laughing now.

They said that your desk reflects your state of mind. For months I had let my table be messy. I just pushed crap around to give me space to work on, just like when taking down notes.

Then I cleared my desk yesterday.

I hope it will stay that way for a long time.

Other things that kept me grounded in the past few days were my kitties.

These pets remind me of the things that I should be focusing on and be thankful for. It’s not about the past nor the future, but the now. Cats don’t live as long as humans; they live by the day and do not care about the past although they harbor traumas as well (Sushi) and also not worry about the future. All they care about is us, their family. As long as we’re around, they feel everything is ok. They hide from strangers (Sushi) or bite and scratch them because they’re scared or annoyed (Kimchi) but when they’re with just family, they expose their most vulnerable spot because they’re so comfortable and they feel safe. We are everything to them; we are their world.

When I was praying for guidance, a voice told me that I should focus more on my children and not on things that have come to pass and things that are yet to happen or may not happen. When my eyes opened, I saw Twin A for what she is now—losing weight rapidly. She’s so gaunt and weak. Despite the multivitamins and guarding her calorie intake, she has not improved since our last visit to the pediatrician.

Good thing our pedia gave us the order for thyroid tests in advance so I will bring Twin A today to the hospital for this. If she has hyperthyroidism, then it should explain everything. If not, I am stumped by whatever is causing this.

I had to do a huge reset as I was doing things wrongly, doing things for the wrong reasons. Still trying to wrap my head around the reasons. It made me focus on the wrong things, hence, I’m heading into the wrong path.

I have to go through this reset. It’s bumpy, it’s painful, but it’s necessary.