In the next hour or so I would be busy adjusting this pink dress that arrived this noon. I overestimated my size so I cinched it at the waist and adjusted the hem to make it shorter or I would look like a sack of potato.

All because I’m rebelling against this government. My mom just warned me not to make myself viral on the internet by having myself photographed with any of the Marcoses.

The typhoon is waaaay up north and wouldn’t even touch land but its presence is very much felt here in the south. Look how strong the winds blowing here are and it started last night and continued throughout the day until this very moment.

Sushi was so scared last night during the torrential rain and violent winds but she couldn’t seek comfort with me since my brother’s entire family was having dinner with us. The cats didn’t venture out to the stairs today and were just content with watching the trees swaying.

Today was just bedweather and I struggled with productivity. I just wanted to sleep and be indolent. I just edited two stories, did an interview with my trainee and—that’s it.

I hope it starts clearing by tomorrow because on Friday I would be driving to Manila at lunch, check in a hotel with my kids and older sister, then off I go to the central bank. Why bring the kids? Because we will be shopping for school stuff on Saturday. It will save me the energy as I don’t have to drive back and forth. Why with my sister? Because she wanted to go shopping as well and she didn’t want to drive.

Always the driver. 😑

So anyway, my protest dress still hasn’t arrived yet so I may have to go with plan B—little black dress. How boring.

How cool is this? Megadeth’s drummer, Dirk Verbeuren, writing his own drum version of The Killer’s Mr. Brightside. The original drums had this frantic pace, which made the song sound like the singer was also in that state of mind. Dirk’s version took the song into another direction, like it’s more…it’s like a diesel engine—it’s a slow burn.

And as a sessionist, you gotta learn a song really quick and I love the way Dirk was methodical about it. And I can’t help thinking about the sessionists some artists have had like Alanis Morisette, who had Flea on bass and Dave Navarro for the guitars. These two had taken You Oughta Know to another level as they were just provided with Alanis’ vocals—it was basically a blank canvas. I wonder how long did it take them to study and create the sound. Because you know, each artist’s way of playing an instrument and how he/she interprets a song takes the song to a different plane. Just like this Mr. Brightside with Dirk.

I miss football but there is nothing in this universe that would bring me back to the field. My earthly body is already breaking down. But I miss it terribly.

We played against the FIFA Women’s World Cup host New Zealand this afternoon and we won. During the post-game interview, the captain of the Kiwi team said the Filipinas (they used to go with the monicker Malditas) may have wanted winning more badly than they did that’s why we won.

There’s this some kind of online criticism about having team members who do not even look native Filipinas. Well, the Filipino diaspora has benefited our teams—we have sourced players from all over the globe, those who are willing to go back to their parent’s motherland (normally it’s their mom who is Filipino) and play for us. Regretfully, the football program for women in this country is woefully lacking. It’s not a priority sport. It’s not like basketball or volleyball; every barangay in this country has a crude basketball or volleyball court. We have homegrown basketball or volleyball players, those who have been playing from grade school until they make it to the national team. For a country populated with short people, it’s surprising that Gilas Pilipinas ranks high in the FIBA World Cup. Plus we’re hosting the FIBA Basketball World Cup this year and the games are starting next month.

We’re also hosting the now the Premier Volleyball League.

But I digress. So when I was a varsity player, we didn’t have teams to play against in the SCUAA and STRAA because state colleges and universities just don’t have or don’t have enough women footballers. It’s only during special tournaments or the Palarong Pambansa that we get to have real opponents. 😑 So the national players most of the time had come from my uni, Ateneo or UST and from abroad—before we started qualifying for the AFC Women’s Asia Cup and now the FIFA World Cup. Now, the national team is predominantly comprised of women who have grown up and trained outside the Philippines. I can see it in their play—there is lack of cohesion or the teamwork is not organic. They are dependent on individual skills and not on playing off one another’s strength to have teamwork. Not like Spain when they won the World Cup, there was no superstar like Lionel Messi to carry the torch for them. It’s just pure team work.

The Filipinas’ goal keeper was also meeeehhhh 🤦🏻‍♀️ so many goalie mortal sins that she has committed.

But I hope whatever the outcome of Sunday’s game against Norway, there will be more little Filipinas who would be interested to play this sport.

Yesterday was Marcos Jr’s second state of the nation address (SONA). I used to cover this SONA every July when I was still with local news. Thankfully, I didn’t have to do that for the last decade or else I would lose my shit every time I cover Duterte and Marcos Jr. This clip below shows the great irony of our time:

On Friday, I will be going to a government event and I plan to wear a pink (color of opposition) dress as protest. I just ordered from Uniqlo this afternoon so hopefully it would arrive before I leave for Manila on the 28th.

This is me, I love sunsets. I can’t explain it but the beauty of life and the universe can be encapsulated by a single sunset.

I started the day with mommy duties then moved on to manager chores, editing duties, and pursuing my own stories as a journalist. At the end of the day, I went outside to clear my head and breathe in fresh air because it was a bit stuffy inside. The rain stopped at last.

I had tea while I watched Kimchi explore the stairs again. Flowers do elevate the look of a home. I love them but they don’t love me as I started sneezing again. I don’t care; they’re pretty and they make me happy.

I decided to cook adobo after watching two horrible adobo cooking demonstrations by Rachel Ray and Geoffrey Zakarian of Food Network. Uncle Roger roasted them good.

I started cooking at 8 am by bringing the chicken-pork adobo concoction to a roiling boil and then had the sauce reduced to nothing for two hours on low fire.

I chose not to use the Instant Pot because the magic is in the sauce reduction and you can’t do that on a pressure cooker. Slow cooking on top of the stove is key. 👌 Every now and then I had to adjust the taste by adding soy sauce, vinegar, a bit (teeny bit) of sugar to neutralize the sourness, and water.

While going back and forth the kitchen and my room for two hours, I realized that human traffic is impeded by the dining table position. I then tried a new orientation to see if this works better.

I think I will change the entire living area into one big dining area with a six or eight-seater table (there’s a convertible table in Ikea) since the TV/couch area is seldom used by my kids and I feed more than three people every week. But let’s see once school starts and they start bringing friends over to hang in our house, they might start using the TV area for Netflix watching. Because that’s what happened when we were in high school—everyone was coming over because of our proximity to everything.

The beauty of living in the province is that you have a larger pool of plants and vendors to choose from. Plants are cheaper, too.

So yesterday we went to the other town south of where we were, which isn’t that far, about 10 mins from our house (yep, no traffic jams). My sister wanted to buy all bougainvillea because they’re maintenance-free (almost). I went for roses, edible herbs for my window sills, yellow bell, and a flowering plant I couldn’t name.

We had to make two trips because my car could only carry half of what we wanted to buy.

I fixed (transferred to my staircase, pathways) my purchases under the rain. When we were children, we used to play under the rain. This is my adult version now. 😂

This plantita then went to the weekend market this morning for food and my shampoo bar and conditioner…

Went to show my cousin where to buy fresh milk and white cheese (similar to a fresh mozarella). Shelf life is only 2-3 hrs so she needed to leave ASAP for QC so these won’t go bad.

The Philippines Women’s National Football team will be playing this afternoon at the FIFA Women’s World Cup. The Malditas aka the women’s national team, made it to World Cup after their win at the AFC Women’s Asian Cup earlier this year.

Unfortunately, our ass is getting whooped by Switzerland right now.

Once upon a time, I wanted to join the national team although I knew I was not that good as a fielder and as a goal keeper. But I loved the game so much that just one game with the national team would have been a dream come true.

Now, I couldn’t even think about running half the football field at the speed and agility I had before. 😂

Meanwhile, I finally managed to force Kimchi to wear the body leash. She refused to move, like she was saying, over my dead body!

Last night I had a heart-to-heart talk with my eldest nephew as he is struggling mentally and academically. He was dismissed by the university because he wasn’t able to pass even one subject because he wasn’t able to complete requirements/projects—but he regularly comes to class so there’s willingness on his part to make it work.

I think he is clinically depressed with general anxiety and the parents refused to recognize. I had been telling my SIL that I was already seeing the signs and the boy also acknowledges that he needed help but he didn’t know what kind of help he should get. The parents didn’t want medication because of the stigma but clearly talk therapy is not working. He struggled during Covid lockdowns and it all went downhill from there and never recovered. It went to the point that he no longer left his room and seldom took showers. It’s that bad.

I described to him my situation before when I was deep into my depression, what I was feeling, and what I went through. He said that is exactly how he felt and that finally, somebody knows how it is. I told him to tell his counselors about my suggestion regarding undergoing psychiatric therapy with medication. I said at that time, I am aware what I was having (during the episodes of deep depression), I knew I needed help, and I knew what exactly I needed to do, but there’s this helplessness inside that kept me from getting out of bed and be a productive member of the society. I was just at the bottom of the barrel and couldn’t get out of it, couldn’t even do anything because there’s this dark cloud pressing me down. This emptiness was so painful that I needed to numb myself but I didn’t know how so my sleeping pattern was just fucked up.

I talked to him as an artist to an artist so I could reach that inner child within him. He’s good at drawing and he said he couldn’t understand why he could no longer make art. The last one he created was in February 2020, right before the lockdowns.

I told him that in the midst of my gut wrenching pain, I was able to rediscover my art again because I needed to have an outlet for this pain, this heaviness. And this rolled into another drawing, and another drawing. And soon I was rediscovering painting again. I told my nephew, it took me 25 years to get back to it. “You just left it for 3 years, you can come back to it just like I did,” I said. “Art, alongside my therapy, saved my ass. Blogging saved my sanity. You should get back to your art and I’ll help you with the therapy because locking yourself up and not seeing people means you need more than talk therapy. I’ll help pay for it.”

I showed him the pieces that were hung on my walls, each story of what I was feeling at that time I was drawing or painting it. I told him how I felt whenever I finish one piece of art. “It’s a serotonin boost, I tell you. It was me. It was like finding myself,” I told him. “Go find yourself.”

I gave him one hardbound blank page notebook (like Moleskine) for doodles and a thick sketchbook that I hadn’t used since it was bought. He got excited to start again. He said, he never thought about drawing again to use it as outlet instead of sleeping to numb the pain, the hollowness.

“Draw something for me tonight and post it on Instagram. I will follow you and track your progress. Talk to your counselors about medication and going into honest-to-goodness psychiatric therapy. Promise me. I will supply you with all the art materials you want,” I said.

I wanted him to have a sense of accomplishment and have that happiness after finishing an artwork. I hope he finds the will to fight this because it is a lonely battle.

I wish my nephew could draw something like this so he could let it out. I wish he could find himself again.

I hope the university could consider his reapplication because Covid really caused so much mental anguish among students. I heard about the student who hanged himself in their dorm, not far from I live. Even though the pandemic is now behind us, trauma still lingers and unaddressed mental health issues that have sprung from that will overstay and continue to weigh down its victims. It’s difficult.

I have successfully emerged from my therapy but I am still dealing with trauma and I don’t think it goes away that easily. As my doctor said, therapy will help you deal with your trauma better, deal with your triggers without resorting to medication.

The Udders ice cream incident did trigger me but I dealt with it better than I could have expected. I have already schooled myself. But it did get me down for a bit and should acknowledge to myself that I am just human and weak. That I shouldn’t be hard on myself for being vulnerable like that.

My nephew should forgive himself for being just human and we all have our weaknesses. We need to be kind to ourselves.