i didn't realize two years flew by so fast. i miss her so much. i wonder how the past two years have aged her, i wonder how much weight she put on because she loves to eat (rice!) while watching her favorite telenovelas. i wonder if she's recovered from last year's storm, i wonder if she really liked the flowers i sent her on mother's day. i wonder if she really knows how much i love her, i wonder if i would ever be able to make her feel how much.

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earlier that day michael jackson died. so did farah fawcett and ed mcmahon (i didn't know him but he was on the fb updates). so did my officemate's boyfriend who is based in canada, heard they were supposed to marry in a couple of years. so did so many others i don't know. the thought of losing my mom and not being with her crossed my mind and well, drove me to tears. it made me realize how much i miss her. the thought of losing any one of the people i love kept me awake most of the night. death pretty much became me. it might be the hormones. you never know anymore with pills.

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there are things out of our control, time is rarely a friend. okay enough of the attempt to be profound. i guess what i'm saying is that i don't want for things to pass me by and to only do something about it when it's too late. i'm not going to go all "seize the day" and promise myself  that i'll be great, that i'll make the best decisions, that i'll be perfect and shit, because that's just plain impossible, if not stupid. i'm just saying, do what you honestly can, at the time needed, so you won't regret it.

in a little over 4 hours my little sister will be turning 23. ha! 23! i'm pretty sure she'll say yuck to her age (as she does when she hears my age) but god, now that i realize, wow, she'll be 23. not so little anymore, not a baby anymore.

it's not like she ever needed me (or anyone for that matter) to defend her. when we were little she would always beat me up. i'd pull her hair but she'd claw at me with her long nails and i always surrendered. she was always the strong one, the good one, the one you could always depend on. she was more my ate, than me hers.

she's doing great in CA and i can't be anymore happy for her. except that i miss her terribly and i sometimes wander in the other house, hoping to find her in her room. i think everyone here misses her, mainly because she made everyone felt loved.

happy birthday lil sis! ate loves you. we're counting the days till you come over. 

*the snowglobe above was a gift from her. photo taken by jope

this evening while waiting for jope as he works on yet another layout for the LSR (he's making this a career, the official graphic designer of his dept, haha) i googled him. i was on the lookout for students who loved/hate/lovehate his class, or maybe him and the funny thing was, my blog entries from years ago was still in the top 20 links. clicked on it and read through my old blog, sadomasochist, from when we were still starting up to when i left for the states. the rest i guess you can find here.

this afternoon he picked me up from the office and he said he had a surprise for me. he bought me plastic bags from chocolate lovers for my cookies! last saturday i thought i bought nice bags for cookies, but turns out, they were plastic sheets, not bags. stupid, i know.

it's really these little things, these small (but grand, really) gestures that he makes that make me smile, stop and think that god, i really picked the right one, didn't i?

it has been a very long time since i got emotional and dreamy about love and life, usually i'm just so full of rant because of the office or my weight or money or stupid little things that don't really matter. so i thank my jope, my lucky star really because he reminds me of the things that really matter. i look at him and think, wow we've been through so much and we're still alive! (or haven't killed each other!) i never thought that living through life (and marriage) could feel like such an accomplishment. i've sort of been cynical and assumed that we just go through life because we have to, ambitious and materialistic thinking that the only successes that count are the ones that included accolade or money or pats on the back from other people. i never thought that life, on its own, can be a sort of victory. over negativity, over stupid stuff, over stagnancy or mediocrity.

so here, i celebrate my life's little moments, my loved one's small grand gestures, my happiness, and i guess even the bad stuff. it's cheesy i know, but it's almost christmas. and at christmas you tell the truth. and cheesy as it may sound, it's the truth. i'm happy where i am.

ps. my mom called me earlier today to tell me that she misses me. i would have cried right then and there if i wasn't eating with a colleague, by a window table in front of our office building.

it's the little things really, that mean a lot. because they didn't have to do it, but they did.

i echo the song when i say i find it hard to believe that eraserheads really did come together for a reunion concert. harder to believe that i got svip passes.

i bet there are hundreds of blogs out there that would give you a better account of the event, i am guilty of being late because parking was hell. i was singing in the car when alapaap started and only got in when they were singing kailan, which was pretty okay with me because that was the song that i really had to hear live.

it was a religious experience for me. not that i think they're gods, maybe demigods and only when they're performing together, haha. but it was very surreal, and after hearing them i felt like everything was right in the world again. it's weird, i know. but their music is really something else. i can't really explain it.

i thought maybe it's just the nostalgia, maybe it's only the memories of me playing my brother's ultraelectromagneticpop tape in my tita's cassette radio after school while eating extra thick maggi. maybe it's just me remembering how i so wanted to be a too doo doo back up singer for with a smile. maybe it's just because huling el bimbo reminds me of how me and my brother danced along with the mtv. it very well maybe, but then after listening to their songs nonstop while revising my mid year reports and with jope in the car, i'd have to give it to them, the songs really stood up for themselves.

while looking for parking and passing by the sea of people trying to get in the concert venue, jope was a bit amazed at the volume of people lining up for eraserheads. i said that well, for some of these people, eraserheads defined their lives. quickly after saying that, my cynic hurried self kind of laughed at how cheesy that reply was.

fastforward to four days later, funny how i find myself listening to hard to believe (from sticker happy) over and over. it's my song of the moment, it's my ode to my present life. funny how a song could turn a new leaf and shoo away my cynic hurried self. i feel brand new, hard to believe, but eraserheads sort of did it for me and so i'm here, back from my blogging hiatus to make sure i document this.

my thanks to jope, who went to the eraserheads concert with me even if he didn't know a single song.

ps. if you want to know how the second set was supposed to go, click here. i don't know the source, but it would have been a fantabulous ending. :)

here's a poor attempt at making pop art with directions from melissaclifton.com. it's not done yet and i never got around to finishing it but it's fine like this, i think.

i so miss her, the post can't wait till i finish. i wish you well bebe.

the man i trust my life with married me with this vow:

while i was waiting for you in starbucks last wednesday, i had a religious experience. my car broke down that day, my cellphone died on me, i was in shabby clothes, i don't have much money with me. all i had was the book of our wedding day program, your high-tech cellphone which i can't figure out how to use, and a cup of tea. i was receiving numerous phone calls from everybody making me "kulit" about things for the wedding and all i can do is to heave a sigh because from where i am, i can do nothing. after months of being OC about the wedding, i was on a stand-still not being able to do anything anymore. everything was now in the hands of fate, of other people, and i simply am being forced to let go.

that wednesday, i was strapped off control and i was reminded of the barest essentials, of what is most valuable - you. because all i have is you. all i want to be is with you. that wednesday was a reminder of how i started with you and where my letting go has taken me - with you, here, now. i have been most happy with you. i found myself because of you. i am me when i'm with you. cathy, you kow everything about me - my dreams, my desires, my idiosyncracies, my frustrations, my weaknesses. i chose to share my most intimate self with you because you love me and you loved me first. thank you.

today, i am commiting myself to share with you all that i have, all that i am, and all that i will be however miniscule that may be. you are my happiness, my pearl of great price, remember? as i declare my love for you in public, know that "forever" is true. my love will never die and even on my last breath, i will utter only your name. i love you, cathy; my promise is forever. my promise is to promise to keep my promise and to work hard to retain and sustain the love i gave to no one else but you that first instance of chat up to the first of July, to almost three years of being together. i love you. allow me to take you to be my wife, my partner, to have and to hold, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, from this day, i will cherish and love you fully, until forever. no death, no tears, i will be with you. forever, cathy, forever is true.

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if i say there were no dry tears in the chapel when he professed his vow, i doubt that anyone would disagree. a year and 49 days after, he still remains true to his promise. there were rough patches, small ones and some big ones that made us want to just up and leave. we've fought, we've cried, we've hurt each other. but we also laugh, we talk, we hug. we may not be "perfect" but i say we're better than that, because we are real.

four years ago, i wrote about him and the state of how our relationship was, when he was still my boyfriend. you can click here if you want to go back in time and read it. funny, i still feel very much the same, only now with more basis, more grounded, more true.

like i said four years ago, i hope you find a love as beautiful as this.

2. more money doesn't necessarily mean more problems.

3. if it's not yours, it's not yours. you have no right over it, no matter how much you think you deserve it.

4. it can buy you temporary happiness. (but isn't happiness really just temporary?)

5. it can't buy you dignity, just forced respect. i've met people who had money since birth and supposedly were brought up with the finest things in life, but still act like sons of bitches and wield their supposed powers to "lower life forms."

6. it can ruin relationships.

7. what you get isn't always commensurate with what you think you deserve, as with most things in life.

8. money is power. how much power it has over you is your decision though.

over dinner last friday at my cousin's birthday party, my brother's girlfriend mentioned that my brother might go the US for a week because my mom asked him to sign papers. it was news to me because i didn't know there was anything like that planned but i told her that my mom just probably misses my brother . she agreed and then further said that during one of their chats, my mom mentioned that my kuya and my little sister were her favorites.

now i don't know the context when it was said, but after hearing that i felt like i was in time space warp for a few minutes. did i really just hear that from her? it was weird -- the who, the what, the how of it. i shrugged it off though and proceeded with the light chit chat in our table. i couldn't get it off my mind though. it was a mix of jealousy, of sadness, of disappointment and just plain missing my mother.

out of her five children, i am the one she spent the least time with. most of my siblings lived with her after graduation from college and while i followed suit, i went back here in the philippines after three months. i got married the following year. i only spent three months with her, half of which i was down with depression. when i went back, i sorely missed her. it was the first time in my life when i felt like someone had my back, who would be with me through everything. yung parang kahit anong mangyari may kakampi ka sa mundo. that was when i understood what having a mother meant and i regret not being able to tell her that because i was too busy working on my life. i regret not having spent more time with her, regret crying in my bedroom rather than be with her while i was there. there's too many things, and i can't do much about it now.

i was sad because i know we are not as close as i would want us to be, and while we are already strenghtening our communication lines over email, a hug still trumps a hundred emails. i was never a believer of long distance relationships because things really get lost between the miles. i love you doesn't sound as meaningful over the phone as a a tight hug on a bad day.

i wasn't jealous because i wanted to be a favorite but because i knew what she meant when she said favorite. it's not loving one more than the other or favoring one over the other.

of all her kids, i am most like my mom. sensitive, impulsive, touchy and a feeler more than a thinker. i understand what she is because i am her kid version. i miss her, that's all. and sometimes i wonder if she knows how much i love her.

over the weekend i caught meet joe black in hbo twice, so i'll borrow from the movie:

Bill Parrish
I haven't been the father
to you that, uh...

Allison
That you've been to Susan?

Bill Parrish
I wasn't going to say that.

Allison
But that's what you were thinking. And that's okay. Because I know that you love me. I mean, it's not like it is with her. Whenever she walks into the room, your eyes light up. She always gets a smile from you, as opposed to me. When I walk in, this look comes over your face, like, "What does she want now?"

But you've never let either of us want for anything. Oh, God. More than that, Daddy, more than that. I've felt loved, and that's all that matters. So, never mind favorites. You're allowed to have one. The point is, you've been mine.

past two weeks have been though, had to fill in vacant spots in my team, do reports and before i sleep i have to make sure i sent hotdogs for my sister's tj booth. it's cool, i feel fulfilled, i feel important, but i'm so damn tired.

our mbos and titles have changed, we're now business, not brand, managers. so more numbers, more strategic thinking, more stuff that are beyond my comfort level. i don't know what i'm doing som times and that stresses me. plus the fact that i don't know if this is really the career path i want to take. hay. how do you ever know for sure where you want to go or what you want to do?

so yeah, i allude to the song and say for now, i guess this is okay. i don't exactly jump for joy each time i enter the office, but i like what i do. i don't know where i'll be in five, ten years, i'm not the type who'll plan. will i know and be who i should be by then? i don't know.

everything in life is only for now.