Somebody once told me that being poor or not having enough money for your needs at one point in time is actually a good training for better days to come. I guess that is actually true, for some people at least (maybe not for some nouveau rich I’m seeing here who’d raise their eyebrows at you because you’re still wearing your old tattered shirt on weekend mornings.) [Bakit ba, eh favorite kong pambahay gula-gulanit na damit eh!]

For instance, I never had much luck in the love department anyway; therefore the lack of one at the moment isn’t going to make me sulk for the rest of my adult life. Really? Yeah, REALLY.

Though I’ve been practically dumped by a boyfriend who probably thought that I was no good for the taking, I would always be mayabang of the fact that I crawled gumapang thru the most difficult years of single motherhood when I had not enough money to pay the rent on time.

So I am not going to throw a fit right now at the fact that the US$ is less than 50 PhP and that the electricity up to this time has not been restored in my small dot of the globe.

In that course of time – from being dumped to losing a father- that cliché of ‘looking at the other side of the coin’ or ‘everything happens for a good reason’ and some other famous lines to the same effect – I thought those were just LINES. Reality bites and it bites you hard. Right in the ass. So I had to hang onto the clichés like a lifeline. He he.

[enter instrumental music]

Like the butterfly has to stay inside the dark cocoon, you just got to snap out of it all on a thought that things just had to get better. You (I) had to make it better. Otherwise, that beautiful, colorful butterfly’s ain’t gonna fly. Baby, it ain’t gonnna fly. ;-)

Well I’m done vindicating myself. Who am I trying to convince anyway? Maybe myself?! Ha ha! Back with my good old lines: I am a work in progress. I don’t (easily) forget. Forgiveness is a BIG word.

BUT believe it or not: I am at peace and I snore myself to sleep soundly each and every night. No more sleepless nights and crying myself to sleep. Nah, no more of that crap. (The previous sentence sounded like a broken love song!) LOL!

These days I just can’t sleep when I’ve so much blogging thoughts swimming in my head:

  • like how I’d insert a personal touch (be creative) into the research news or medical findings that I’ve been reading so much about in the course of my blogging life.
  • Or when the internet is down again and I haven’t published my daily minimum.
  • Or when I’m incessantly, silently praying that there’d be no more big typhoons to come at least until the house is semi-finished.
  • Or that PLDT WeRoam accepts my “certificates of employment” (yes Jayvee :-D they’re now coming in the mail). I long for this service package (my current feasible option) so I can work at home and put a stop to Raine’s protests (internet and electricity at home are included in Raine’s prayers as well).

These thoughts occupy my sleepless nights as I manually fan Raine to sleep. But I am not going to complain about that damn electricity again (the thought is enough to give me the seizure anyway) so I’ll just enumerate my happy times of late as a consequence of not having electricity. (Did I say (write) the world e-l-e-c-t-r-i-c-i-t-y again??!)

  1. More story and singing time with Raine and my nephew Glenn. Currently, everyone in the family is crazy (dreaming) about (just talking of) going to Hongkong Disneyland and singing the High School Musical soundtracks (esp. start of something new and breaking free, our favorites.)
  2. I am rebonding with my mother. I guess I was particularly closer to my father. My recollection of long talks (at home) until the wee hours of the morning was always with him. Now I’m doing the same thing with my mother eventhough she has this nasty habit of falling asleep on me in the middle of a conversation. So there’s goes the reason why I love talking to my father late in the night: we both got built-in energizer batteries.
  3. Brushing my teeth under the moonlight while watching over the kids shrieking their throats out at play. Believe me it’s equally romantic! For some reason the full moon here is bigger and brighter. Well, maybe because I just didn’t notice or it has been a long time since I last watched the full moon rise up.
  4. Playing with Raine under the heavy rain and taking a bath too. (Actually I have a photo of me and Raine na naliligo sa ulan. But I’m not going to post that online…on second thoughts…maybe. For 2000$. Ha ha ha!)
  5. The smell of burning dried leaves and twigs. The aroma always reminded me of home anywhere I go.
  6. Raine learning to eat fish and more rice is a big amazement. I never thought I’d see that day, like learning to pee on his own. Hooray! (though Raine still has to be on disposable pull-ups at bedtime)
  7. I’m still not doing the laundry. And the dishes too. He he. Though I ‘m washing Raine’s bum from time to time.
  8. Uninterruptible internet connection. Enough said. :-P
  9. Writing this post on paper beside the soothy kerosene lamp, while the thunderstorm just subsided, everybody else is asleep and quiet and I am groping in the dark for drinking water. (I have to remind myself though to extra –carefully pick my nose when I take a bath in the morning because it is really gross if I do that while hitting the keyboard.) Just imagine if I have electricity and internet at home? I’d probably be blogging the night away until my thin eyelids are too heavy to stay open. So I guess I’d better go to bed before Raine spreads out diagonally on the bed (he has become too heavy for me to lift!). At least I’d be blogging in my sleep. That’s a lot better than counting brown-speckled sheeps that I haven’t had the opportunity to personally see running over rolling green hills. Yes, I still have that photo. Miraculously saved from the typhoon. That photo of the blue-eyed, skinny sheep farmer wearing rubber boots and leather trousers. But then that was another story. Maybe some other thunder-stormy night. ;-)
  10. Waking up to find out that I made it to Basang Panaginip’s Top Pinoy Probloggers. I didn’t understand the “numbers and acronyms” either, so read more here: Top Pinoy Problogger Explained – to be enlightened. WOW. Thank you. Thank you very much. (mala-Belle of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast).

I ain’t rich either not yet. Nangungutang pa rin ako at addict pa rin sa instant coffee. He he. At lest now, there’s no land-lady who’ll threaten to throw us out the streets. ;-)