When will this end?

They have already multiplied, as of the latest story I read. Soon we will be overwhelmed again by Delta and God knows how long the lockdowns will be again. Indonesia and Thailand are overrun now by this variant. Our inoculation rate is low and we have run out of vaccines here in Metro Manila.

I’m tired.

Saturday bento. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I only got out of my room to make bento. Then I slept the day away. I think I’m sick or hormones are out of whack again (hello premenstrual syndrome!) and I’m aching all over. I promised the girls we would be riding our bikes in an hour but I’m sooooo 🤒

Kimchi lying on top my laptop. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

My cats are driving me nuts. They meow like they’re dying if they get shut out of my room. Then they do the zoomies around my small room while I try to sleep. They follow me to the bathroom. They sit or lay on my table when I work. Or underneath my table. On my chair. On my chair’s headrest while I work.

I should buy cat leashes so we can take them for walks so that they can expend more energy instead of zooming all over the apartment.


Today marks the 7th month since I died. Or the old me died.

It is hard.

Climbing out of that dark pit of grief, anger, and self-pity is soul-crushing during a pandemic. You are left with your thoughts for days on end. You can’t see you friends or distract yourself by traveling or just going about your normal business such as working at Makati CBD.

Oh they said, “You’re still young, you can find someone else.”

The thing is I don’t think I can trust someone again. I don’t think I can go all through that pain again.

I have children, you see. No one would love and accept them except for me, as proven by this experience. I don’t want them to experience the kind of rejection that I experienced from J. I didn’t tell them that J didn’t like them that’s why he left, among other issues. He left when they were in my hometown with my mom. When they came back, Tito J was already gone. No goodbye whatsoever. He left like a thief in the night, like a typhoon that passed us by.

Those 7 months were hard. As I said here before, those were the hardest months I had since my dad died. I tried my darned best to keep my head above water because I had two human beings depending on me for survival so I had to survive too. I needed to save myself before I could save others.

I’m better now. I’m a bit proud of myself for not making an ass of myself infront of him during my darkest hours. Of not asking him to change his mind and come back. Of groveling at his feet.

But the grief is there, it never goes away. I just have to be a bigger person so that ball of grief won’t hit my inner walls that often.

Seven months. Back then I didn’t even know how I would survive the month. My only goal then was to survive the day. Take it one day at a time. I couldn’t picture myself in seven months but here I am, frayed but still intact. Still finding my way out, trying to find myself. Still figuring out what’s the best way forward.

But maybe this is the way forward. I don’t know. I mean, I have a general idea of what I want but the details are not clear. I had been with my current company for seven years, the longest I had been with any employer. I am feeling the seven-year itch but I’m not sure if this is the best time to jump given the difficult economic circumstances. But my doors are open and I’m already looking around. If the right opportunity and timing is right, it will land on my lap. As God has always done.

Demolition Twins 2.0

My cats have destroyed my closet because it’s their choice furniture/infrastructure for sharpening their claws. I bought a pint of wood filler to remedy the situation and then I let it dry/rest before I sandpaper it. Then paint.

I had a quick trip to Tiendesitas for a month’s worth of cat supplies and it yielded me this lovely contraption:

Scratching post for PhP 480. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Because scratch pads don’t cut it anymore.

I’m sleeping early tonight as I have an early morning interview at ⌚ 7 am Manila Time/4 pm US Pacific Standard Time. 😢

The world according to my cats

When I’m in my room, they meow to death and they let themselves in to be with mommy. How? I was able to video it recently.

My girls have this bad habit of not closing my bedroom door properly. J called them longtail because of this. So anyway, my cats take advantage of this and are able to push their paws/body against the door to open it.

My househelp told me that when I’m away, my cats wait for me by the window near the front door of the apartment. Sometimes majority of the day they wait for me there. And when I come home, they meow like crazy like I haven’t fed them for a week. Or scolding me for being away too long.

It’s cute. They’re like obnoxious dogs.

I am the only world that they have known. Except maybe for the short time they were with their birth mom cat and that traumatic time in the storm drain. This knowledge keeps me from being away for too long.

I wonder if I can bring them with me when we go camping 🤔

I plan to camp again in Mt. Purro Nature Reserve high up in Sierra Madre that is still part of Antipolo. J and I went there once with the girls to swim. There are cottages but there’s a camping site there and we can hike and go river trekking.

No, can not bring cats.

Retail therapy

Productivity motivator. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I finally pulled the trigger. I bought myself another Lenovo 23.8″ monitor from Lazada, same as the one I bought from Greenhills as a Christmas gift to myself. But it’s cheaper by around PHP 800 I think. I had been stuck in a rut and hadn’t been productive for a week and I fooled myself into thinking that a bigger second monitor will help me unstuck myself. I’m in some kind of funk that I couldn’t fully understand. Maybe I need to take time off from work for a week.

Yeah, I should take a vacation before I would start buying more random shit online again. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Naughty kitty. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

This cat has been climbing my windows via my muslin curtains and then cross the transom to reach the shelf so she can hang out there. Then she reaches for the stuffed toys below with her paws and throws them down to the bed below.

Then the cats get harassed by the kids… The amount of patience these cats have for their two legged siblings ❤️

Kimchi dressed up in my scarf by the kids. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

And then they would mess up my stuff and claim my chair…

That’s my chair! Photo by CallMeCreation.com

And then I wouldn’t have the heart to disturb their sleep…

Ok, I need to file for a vacation leave for next week or the week after that. I can’t go on like this. I would drive to Caliraya Lake and breathe some fresh air.

Slogging through the heat

It’s so freaking hot today and there’s no incentive for me to go out of my airconditioned room.

Rose tea. For my mental health. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

The flower teas I ordered online finally arrived this morning. They’re fragrant and calming to drink even though they needed to be consumed hot. So I started the day with a pot of rose tea and then I had back to back calls. And back to back stories.

Brunch? I no longer remember. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I can’t remember when I had my first meal because I was jumping from one task to another. Half cup of rice, some slivers of bacon, egg and sauteed kangkong. It’s kangkong all the way down because my digestive system needs fiber.

I had lunch at around 3 pm. I can’t remember if I had dinner. Did I? Was too busy messaging people all at the same time that I lost track of who am I talking to about what. Sometimes, I’m in danger of typing in the wrong chatbox about something another person shouldn’t know about. Like the chatboxes of my sources on WhatsApp are dangerously close to each other. This kind of mistake is fatal, which happened to me when I mixed up my brother with J a month ago or so on FB Messenger. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I was surprised that that the day was already gone when I finished uploading my story at past 5 pm. My brain was also shutting down so I gave up any pretense of sending emails and trying to network with people.

This curtain in progress is mine, hooman. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

My obnoxious cat, Sushi, couldn’t care less about her human’s frenetic day. She would sit on anything that I am working on, including this curtain that I’m finishing. She slept on it, crumpling it further.

Tomorrow I have a dentist appointment and parking at my dentist is next to zero. So Grab it is. But just the thought of waiting for my ride is enough to make me wilt. Climate change is real, people. I don’t remember being this hot when I was growing up. I never heard of anyone dying of heatstroke when I was a kid and we were always outside in the grassland with my friends everyday, all summer vacation. I was so brown for playing outside all day. These days, I couldn’t even stand being in my old room in my mom’s house because it was like burning in hell. It didn’t have AC because it has always been cool there. Not anymore. Everyone now convenes in my mom’s side of the house (in her self-contained unit/studio) where she has a 2.5 hp split-type AC. I never bothered to have my old room fitted with AC because I don’t live there anymore. I haven’t even slept in there the last two years.

My cats are now convening in my room because it’s cool here.

Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Weekends are for chores

If you’re a solo parent, weekends are made for chores and the thousand and one things that you should have done during the week but you were too busy to even have lunch on time.

Hotpot. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

So I finally got a few moments to cook and was able to do hotpot with beef strips, fish cake, fish tofu, and the last of the veggies in my fridge. It was so good; I missed having hotpot on weekends.

I went back to my old way of shopping for groceries. When we were in the old house, I used to do a fortnightly big shop at Hi-Top because it takes me at least an hour to finish shopping and it’s so tedious to keep doing this every weekend. Then I just top up in between by shopping for fresh produce at the wet market nearby so I just took the tricycle.

But since we moved to this apartment, I did my shopping weekly because two supermarkets are just walking distance from me. Plus I was feeding an army. Now that J is no longer here, I don’t need to shop for 10 boxes of milk, at least 2 dozens of eggs, etc every week. So now I just started doing one big shop every two weeks and just supplement it by buying fresh veggies from the vendors near UP every week. I want to have a chest freezer so I can stock up on a lot of meat and fish and cut down my trip to the supermarket or meat shop. The small size of my freezer is the reason why I always need to shop frequently. However, my apartment is small and I don’t know where I could fit a 4 cu ft of chest freezer or even a 3 cu ft one.

I realized that my grocery bill is cheaper at Puregold compared to Save More and Robinsons for the same amount of stuff I buy in all three supermarkets. They also carry more brands. The parking area, however, is very limited that I have to go shopping during odd hours.

After shopping tonight, I had the bike of one of my girls fixed because daughter A had her wheel punctured by a nail when they were biking at grandma’s.

At the vulcanizing shop. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Since it’s already GCQ, I think I can bring the girls (this time only one girl since the twin is still at grandma’s) to bike around. We need more exercise and time away from screens.

My other children are back to their obnoxious selves. Their square shaved parts (where they had their surgery) are still hairless, though.

My kittykats. Photo by CallMeCreation.com