a day in the life

message sent
uncomfortable silence
reminder sent
a brief

catatonic
fuse burning
clock ticking
darkness

panic mode
control regained
floating
supplication

lost.

random rundown

with xtian gone for the holidays and kim (tano's pet, a black hybrid askal hehe) out of the house (well, quarantined, sortaf), we have become more leaner at home. three is still a company after all.
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i woke up one morning with the christmas tree moved from the corner to center, dividing the sala and the dining area. but one thing remains, no wrapped boxes stocked at the foot of the tree. recession is still very much in effect.
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if plans won't miscarry, labs will be staying overnight at home on the 23rd and 29th (haha, pinamalita ba?) anong okasyon? (kailangan ba may okasyon? haha)
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i will updating this blog not as often as i used to. reason? xtian tugged the lappy along with him. dami daw papers gagawin during the break. it will some time then before i could start off with project 'worksheet' for labs.
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the guards at the village have been extra 'friendly' with me. your guess is good as mine hahaha.
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tmel is inviting us to spend christmas day with them. my cousins in sta. ana are also asking us to join them and my bestfriend's family are hoping we could also come. chances are we'll just be staying at home. :)

pudding redux

like what i have said in one of my previous posts, i love to experiment in the kitchen especially if there is someone who will clean up the mess after i turn the place into a virtual disaster zone hehe. and last week i had one of those 'einstein moments' minus the earth-shaking revelation but the pudding turned out to be a revelation in itself. what with the stone-hard edges, courtesy of baking it in a microwave oven, that posed as real challenge to any well-rooted molars.

again, this  morning, after checking the ref and found some days old bread still untouched, i thought of redeeming myself by reverting back to my original pudding recipe, the one that has been tried and tested. and since labs gave me a two thumbs up for it, i'm sharing here the recipe for the best pudding ever hehehe. it's easy even a ten-year old kid can prepare it, it's not that costly and it's something that the whole family, young and old alike, would love.

preparation time: 20 mins
baking time: 45 mins

ingredients:

8 slices of day-old bread
3 eggs
3/4 cup sugar (or 1 cup if your taste buds wants an extra sweet 'kick')
2 cups evap milk
2 tbsp butter/margarine (melted)
1/2 cup raisen (or pineapple or mashed banana)
1 tsp vanilla (or pineapple/banana essence depending on which 'flavor' you'd go for)
1 tsp powdered cinnamon (mc cormicks please hehe)
 
pre-heat the oven to 160.

in a bowl, if you are masipag you may want to shred the bread but in my case i layer the bread in four and cut it into small squares with a knife hehe (faster that way, tamad e).

in another bowl, beat the eggs and add: milk, raisen, vanilla, melted butter and cinnamon. mix..mix...mix. pour the mixture into the 'cut' bread and mix. allow to stand for 5 mins until the liquid mixture is absorbed by the bread.

arrange it in the baking pan/dish (whichever you fancy hehe). bake for 45 mins or until such time the top of the pudding looks fluffy and turns brownish in color.

for a more fancy presentation, before serving, you may top the pudding with whipped cream (there's a ready-to-use available in the supermarket but quite expensive - at least for my standard hehe) sprinkled with cinnamon.

OR...

if you'd like a more sophisticated way of doing it (pang pa-impress hehe), serve the pudding hot and top it with vanilla flavored ice-cream. then you have pudding ala-mode! hehe

put your creativity into good use, guys. the variations are endless basta ba kaya mong pangatawanan at kainin kung di ma take kainin ng iba dahil sa kaartihan mo. hehehe.

singleville revisited

a close friend have the following questions in his mind (we're that close, i can almost read his mind haha) about the way his relationship is going...

how do you spell 'love'
= b-u-s-y

how do you say 'i-care'
= get-well-soon overload in a TEXT message
= "sorry, busy sa work..."
question and answer portion:
1. which is easier: calling or texting? (presupposing 'load' is not an issue?)
2. if you are 'busy' and you really wanted to get your message accross faster would you rather:
   a. compose a text message explaning your predicament (ka-bisihan)?
   b. pick up the mobile phone and call? (again, 'load' is not an issue here)

how do you make amends for charges of insensitivity?
= silence
= more silence

how do you keep a '(c)ommitment'
- "il col u after i get to the ofce...lowbat lang"
= tentenen...one hour...lalaran...two hours...
text msg: ...naging busy pagdating...i'll be out by 6 see you at d****s
(oops, don't judge the person by the cover, after all he's not a book...he did call anyway... ONLY after sensing that the text message will not merit a reply...sad to say the lineS have been switched off already)

being a close friend to him i would rather keep the answers to myself for fear that i might sound biased to him. i know that he's sensible enough to weigh things out. just one thing i keep reminding him, and it's about the lesson that i learned from my past relationships (and boy, how i learned it the 'painful' way) and that is: to love EQUITABLY.

i'm a sucker for affection, i guess we all are and those who are into a relationship. after all, why are we into it for in the first place? i don't demand much but i claim what is rightfully due me. it's the commitment. forging a relationship is a commitment. if i want it to last i have to work on it. i have to renew it in every opportunity i get. complacency is the bane of relationships. being an 'understanding' partner should not be taken as being 'tolerant' to a fault.

at the end of the day, we are still FEELING human beings who are capable of giving back love, longing to be loved, and who gets hurt (with due respect to 'hurt' as something that comes with the package). the question of 'if-you-were-in-my-shoes-what-would-you-feel' is a weak arguement to begin with considering that the other person have done it otherwise because he was not in your shoes. the shoe didn't fit him well in the first place.

sure, diversity is what makes this world an exciting place to live in. there is harmony in diversity if we want to co-exist. letting someone love us the way they know how should not be taken arbitrarily. we also need the person to know how we want to be loved in return. only then we could say that we are happy with the realtionship and that the relationship is worth keeping and fighting for.

otherwise, we are better off staying permanently in the singleville.

bukol

still feeling a bit woozy after waking up at midnight last night watching the spectacles in the sky courtesy of geminid meteor showers, i zombied my way down to mamang's room, with muffin trailing behind me, hoping to catch her still in bed for our mother-son-morning-bonding moment. but to my surprise, i found her already up and sitting still on the edge of her made-up bed, eyes fixed on the floor, looking worried and confused. her eyes were holding back the tears.

she must have misplaced either her eyebrow pencil, lipstick or rosary beads. her morning ritual simply consists of taking a shower right straight up from bed, painting her face like she's brushing a canvas with  watercolor in bold, confident strokes; and she's ready for the day, er, for breakfast. but never cross the path of grumpy woman with constipated lips or anemic eyebrows. she can throw the world at you with every breathing living thing as suspect for pilferage. no exemption at all. muffin included. and she's pretty serious with the charges.

a couple of weeks past...

she wakes one day complaining about her left arm that she could not bring to raise it up fully. midway and she would complain about the pain. our househelp hazzard a guess: over-sleeping on her left arm. tano recounted that she slept the whole afternoon away and woke up by six in the evening peeved. she thought it was already six in the morning and christian and i are still not home yet. "baw a! gin patulog lang ko nila kag naglakat ba!" she lamented (o boy! they did let me sleep and slipped away!)

forward...

muffin was in his usual mischief mood, wiggling and hopping before me who's got mamang in my arms trying to confort her with my face on her back afraid to assault her the more with my 'fresh' from bed breath. "o, ano naman nadula sa imo, abi sugiri ako para pangitaon ko," as if i were cajoling a kid to let me in on a secret. (o, anything you have misplaced, tell me and i'll find it for you.)

she stayed immobile in my arms and after some more persuation began to utter words like a child telling something to her father, "wala may nadula a, indi lang maayo ang pamatyag ko." (nothing's missing, i'm just not feeling well.

she nudged my arms from embracing her to free her left arm. suspending it mid-way, she guided her right arm to her left breast and as if she were gently groping for something outside her duster, her eyes still on the floor, "may naga-bukol sa titi ko, daw tunga sang itlog." (something hard has formed in my breast the size of half an egg.)

i volunteered to feel it. inside the soft flesh of mamang's breat was a lump hard enough to pass like a hard boiled egg. she lifted her head to search my face and when our eyes met, fear was written all over her face, "operahan gid ini," and tears flowed from her eyes and the room was filled with her sobs.

i, too, felt suddenly weak: i feel for mamang. i feel her fears. i feel her confusion. so many things came to my mind like a blast of meteor showers: they light the sky without a warning and die as fast they came leaving me gazing at the same dark sky.

planting a kiss on her head, i embraced mamang tighter this time. i rested my head on her shoulder as if i needed more comfort that she, "i pa-check ta ina sa doctor," was all i could muster to say.

we reamined that way for some time as i watched muffin tracing back his steps out of the room.