Happy 2014!

A new year has just begun. After  all the excitement of the holidays, the world seems to be quieter. The child in me wants the days to go fast and for Christmas to hurry back. But the 'old' woman in me wants the days to go slow so as to slow down my ageing process and that of all the people I love.

When I was a little girl I couldn't wait to be a grownup. I wished that time would fly so I could start wearing makeup and wear grownup clothes and fall in love.  But I guess when you reach this age, you'd wish you were young again, playing pretend with your sister, and your parents were still strong and life was just school and home.

When you reach this age, you'd wish that time would stop for a while and wait til your ready
to grow old, til you're ready for all the ones you love to age as well.

Oh well, it's just sad that I can't just hold on to the days and slow them down a bit. But the more rational me says that there are things I can logically wish and pray for and things I can resolve to do to make this year so much better.

I wish and pray....

...that the world will be safe from all kinds of natural calamities.
...that there will be no more attacks on human life.
...that all my loved ones will be safe from all kinds of diseases, and accidents.
...that all my loved ones will be safe from all kinds of bad things and compromising   situations.
...that the world will be a safer place for children.
...that I could go out and not be afraid.
...that the people of the world would work together to slow down global warming.
...that my loved ones and I will enjoy good health.
...that my parents and in-laws would still be strong enough to enjoy this year's holidays
...that I'd get a well-deserved raise this year
...that I'd be a better mom, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, friend and teacher.
...that we'd find a way to pay the downpayment for a house and lot.
...that my son would have more good friends, good grades and would have more opportunities to share his talents.
...that my son and I would be closer and would have more bonding time.
...that our upcoming trip would be a safe one.
...that I could enjoy the Pahiyas with my Bunny bed and my son this May.
...that I could have more opportunities to use my new camera.
...that I could have more money to finance my travels.

And so I resolve to...
...spend more time with my son.
...be more patient and understanding to my son.
...be so much kinder to my parents.
...be a dutiful, understanding and loving wife.
...cook more.
...spend time with my sis.
...save more.
...spend wisely.
...organize my things.
...follow schedules.
...meet deadlines.
...take better pictures.
...go back to school.
...pray more.
...listen more.
...make more people happy.
...visit the aged and the imprisoned.
...perform on stage.
...prepare better lessons.
...be more tolerant of others.
...exercise and lose at least ten pounds
...teach my nephew how to properly kiss me.  He kisses me several times whenever we are together but he     also ends up biting me every time.

Look at these pics....

sweetly kisses me

then comes the big bite!

Have a safe, happy and wonderful 2014!

     

Time, don't be too much in a hurry!

This photo does not have anything to do with today's post but I'm posting it for lack of something better.

I must admit I have been delinquent with my blogging these past few months.  Honestly, it's not only with blogging I've been delinquent at, but also with taking pictures.  I don't know why or how it happened.  It's  just that  suddenly I don't look for "things" to capture anymore.

We are currently planning two trips out of the country.  I have told you how excited I was about the Hongkong trip.  It's our first family trip outside the country.  Everyone is going this time so that makes it exciting.  I was thinking of the trip earlier today, I got all excited about it again and then suddenly, I felt sad.
I wanted the months to hurry but I realized I shouldn't want them to hurry.   The days are passing by so fast as it is.  My parents are getting older and older. My husband and I are ageing so fast, Toots is growing up so fast and too soon.  I am afraid of all these changes and of all the changes that they would eventually bring.

I want to keep my parents with me.  I want Ruel and me to stay young and strong enough to work for our family.  I miss my little boy.  I miss his innocence and his joyful chatter.  I miss his sweetness.  I realize that I spent too much time with other things when I should have spent time savoring each moment I had with him when he was little.  Today I look at him and I try to see the chubby little boy I used to know and I cannot find him.  He has changed so much, not just in terms of his baby fat but also in  other aspects of his personality.   I don't want the months to pass by so quickly. I still want to enjoy Toots while he is still young. Soon, he will be in college, graduate, have a career, fall in love, get married and I won't be able to see him as often as I do today. And that scares me.

When I was younger I never felt like this.  I think this feeling is one proof I am indeed getting older.  It's true what they say, "Time is our greatest enemy."

Some Thoughts Before I Go to Slumberland

There are several thoughts I'd like to share with you before I go to sleep tonight.

The medical procedure I had was a success  and it's now time to have a baby!  I am so excited!  I have been taking some medications to help the lining of my uterus and also to help improve the quality of my eggs.  I also downloaded an app on my phone called My Days.  It's like a tracker of a woman's cycle.  It tells you when your fertility is high and when you will ovulate.  I think it could come in very handy.  Just looking at the color codes of the days excites me.  I think deliberately planning a baby is a fascinating task!  I have to understand all these changes that occur in my body every month....things I have never tried to understand in full since the time I studied them in my science subjects.  

We booked our tickets for Hongkong.  Everyone in our family is going.  My parents, my sister, her husband and their baby Emilio, myself, my son Toots and my Hunny Bed Ruel.   This is our first family trip outside the country and I am brimming with excitement!

I guess you can say that these are happy days.  

However, I just can't bring myself to  just go skipping happily like a six-year-old kid now that something very bad had happened in Bohol and Cebu.   I feel sorry for the people there and I feel terrible and paranoid several times a day because of what happened.  I just tell myself that God will never let that kind of thing happen again.  I pray every day, every night for God to keep us safe and I have to show Him that I have faith in Him.  I have to overcome this negative feelings I have.  They are not from the Holy Spirit.  

"The Lord is my refuge. Whom shall I fear?"

What are your thoughts tonight?

Dear Facebook "friends"

I'm finally linking up with Jenni for her Blogtember blog challenge.  I've been wanting to say something about the posts I see on my Facebook news feed for a while now but I've never had the courage to do so.  Now Jenni has given me this opportunity by asking us to write to our Facebook friends.

Dear Facebook " friends",

I understand that your facebook account is your business and none of mine but I just wanted to let you know that sometimes or most of the time I find your posts  funny, pathetic or just plain irritating.

Don't you think it's pathetic to announce to the world almost every day how miserable you are missing someone who doesn't miss you back? Why don't you just call him and say it to him personally?  And if he doesn't respond positively to that, I think you better move on.

If you're hungry and you're craving for something, why don't you just buy it and satisfy your craving? Why do you have to let everyone know that you're hungry?

And what's this "lungkot much", "gutom much", "excited much" thing that you post on your status? Why do you have to mix Filipino and English? Why not just say, "I'm so sad", "I'm so hungry", "I'm so excited"?

If you and your parents/siblings/nieces/nephews/in-laws  have mutual admiration please don't  talk about it all the time on FB.  You obviously live together or at least have other forms of communication other than facebook.  I think a lot of the things you talk about on facebook are better discussed on your own dinner table or in the living room.  I just can't understand why you need to broadcast all of these things.

Why do you have to post all these selfie pics every day?  I can tolerate a selfie pic on my news feed once in a while but please, don't do it every day.  It makes me think you're vain.

Trust your friends' intelligence a little.  Don't you think we know how to read between the lines?  Just by reading what you have written in your status we'd already have a pretty good idea what you're feeling.  Why do you still have to put "feeling sad", "feeling hungry", "feeling determined" etc. etc. ?

And one last thing, if you cannot totally avoid it, at least lessen the grammar error.

Thinking

It's 6:30  am.  Fort forty-five minutes before the morning assembly and still two hours before my first class.  I thought I could type some thoughts in this blog before I started working.

I'm hating this laptop as I type.  It's getting slower and slower every day.  And now it's giving me a hard time.  I don't know if my laptop is to blame or if it's blogger though.  I can see it saving this draft every five seconds and I can't type when it does that.    There, the students have arrived. So much for the peace and quiet that I was enjoying just some ten minutes ago when I started typing.

My son and I had to drag ourselves out of bed at 5 am today which was forty-five minutes earlier than our usual wake-up time.  His class is at 7 and if we left the house past 6:30, he would have been late again because of the Cubao traffic.  So now we made a promise to ourselves that we would leave the house at 6:00 or the latest at 6:15  so he could arrive on time.  I'm hoping we could do what we promised every day for the rest of the school year.  When I think about it, it's just so hard.  Oh, why is it so nice to just lie in bed in the morning?

I'm giving a short quiz to my sixth graders today and I still have to make the quiz items.  I'll go right to that after I publish this post.  Honestly, I'm still sleepy and would rather sleep.

Every day I think about our upcoming trip to Kuala Lumpur which is on the 28th of November.  It's like a wedding anniversary celebration trip.  It's just that we'd be making sure we're back on the day of the anniversary because we want to hear Mass in the church we were wed in.

I think I have to go back to my doctor tomorrow. It's been more than two weeks since my surgery and I still have pain.  Sometimes it feels like I have  my period and sometimes it's a stabbing, throbbing pain that I can't remember encountering before.  What's sad is that I have just learned there was a special leave available for me to use.  According to the magna carta for women any woman who has to have surgery due to gynecological disorders can avail of a 60-day leave and shall still receive her gross monthly compensation from her employer.  Since I was ignorant of this, I was not able to avail of it.  I went back to work last Friday. Stupid, stupid me!

So, these are my thoughts on this early Wednesday morning.   What are yours?

Love letter to my son

This post is supposedly for yesterday's Blogtember blog challenge prompt over at Story of My Life. I failed to link up last night but here I am now.

Prompt: Write a public love letter to someone in your life. (It doesn't necessarily need to be romantic)

 decided to write to my son since I have been wanting to do this for some time now.


My dear Tootsieroll,

I know you're 14 and you probably don't want me to call you by this name, specially in public (or in this case) on the worldwide web but for me, you are still my baby.

Time has flown by so quickly. I can still remember how it felt to have your little body in my arms, with you looking so sweet, helpless and just simply angelic.  I remember looking at you and thinking that I would stop at nothing just so you'd have a happy life and a bright future.

You were such a happy little baby, you filled our home with your gurgles and giggles.  Just seeing those dimpled smiles was enough to make Mommy forget the time.  As you grew into your toddler years, you continued to be a source of joy, not only to those of us at home but also to everyone you met, through your songs, dances and endless chatter. You were such an affectionate little boy who loved to give me big hugs and kisses.  You would often stop in the middle of play just to give Mommy a hug and a kiss.  Oh how I miss those days!

You could read the alphabet at age 2 and by the time you were three, you were already reading sentences. And yet all we did was to teach you your ABC's!  As you grew older, you continued to amaze me with your quick mind, excellent memory and keen attention to details.   Your teachers said that your stock knowledge and bright insights brought so much more life to class discussions which would otherwise have been so much duller had you not been around. And nobody  was prouder than I when we discovered you weren't only talented in writing and drawing, but you were also talented in music.  You are a gifted violinist who never fails to amaze audiences during recitals. I always hear whispered praises whenever you play during those occasions and it takes all of my self-control not to look around me and proudly say, "That's my son, that's my son!"

Still, as joyful as it is to be your mom, it has also been hard.  I guess motherhood is like that, a balanced blend of joys and pains, of laughter and tears, of victories and defeats.  I guess it's even harder because you are so much like me and along with my interests and positive traits, you also got the ones which I like least. You are stubborn, you insist on having your own way and you try your best to have the last word.  Now I know how it is for my mom and my dad.  I only wish that these traits will be tamed through the years just like I have tamed mine and that you will grow up to be quite a gentleman.

You have changed so much over the years.  You now have mood swings, which, I know for a fact, you didn't get from me.  You never kiss me anymore, you seldom give me a hug and  you don't want me to hold your hand.    You now insist on your own style in terms of clothing, haircut, and even in the way you pose in front of a camera.  Goodness!  Why you like to imitate old folks who used to wear straight faces in front of a camera is something that will forever be beyond me.

My dear Tootsieroll, my Mr. Toots, my big boy Manuel, we have gone through a lot.  I know I have not been the perfect mom....I've been far from it, in fact. But that doesn't mean I love you any less.  I love you more than I can ever express in my words or in my actions.  Sometimes I know I can be hard, I can be harsh. Sometimes, I get frustrated and angry. Sometimes I raise my voice or I shout. Sometimes I give punishments.  I hope you understand why I react the way I do, why I say the words I say, why I do the things I do.  It's all because I love you and I want you to be the best person you can possibly be. You have so much potential within you and I am not saying this because I am your mom. I know so because I've been around kids for years and it's my job to know these things.  I don't want you to put it all to waste. I want you to have the beautiful life God had planned for you.    I just want you to be independent. I want you to grow up to be a productive member of society, and a responsible and loving Christian.  I want you to love people and I want people to love you back.

When you were in my womb, I had so many plans for you.  I expected you to do things I could do and do them better, to do things I was never able to do due to fear and lack of confidence, to like all the things I liked. I wanted you to be the perfect me.  As it turned out, even though you are so much like me, you are,  in so  many ways, so different from me.

You are your own person.  Do everything you can to develop all your talents, capabilities and potentials.   Always challenge your mind.  Have a passion for learning.  Enhance your skills. Practice is the key.  Discover more of yourself.  Be better today than yesterday.  Eat healthy and exercise regularly. Forgive others and forgive yourself.  Don't let the past tie you down. Learn from it then move on.  Pray hard and work hard. Love God more than anyone and anything.  Give respect and always treat others with kindness, empathy and consideration. Love everyone and do not be afraid to show this love. Love yourself, be proud of who you are but be wary of unhealthy pride. Always be humble and remember that everything you have, everything you are comes from God so everything you do should be for His greater glory.  I guess if you do all these, you will be even better than who I wanted you to be when you were in my womb.   You will be the perfect you and that is so much better than the perfect me.

You will always be my baby boy no matter how many years have gone by and how many more will come and pass.  It feels good to know that I will always be the first woman you have loved. At least, that is something no girl, lady or woman can ever take away from me. :)

May the world always be kind to you.   God bless you, my son.   May the good Lord grant us many more happy decades to enjoy each other's company and may He bless you  with a long, happy, and fulfilling life.

                                                                                                                 Love always,
                                                                                                                 Mommy

Here are some pictures of my son taken over the years. They are not chronological though.

My son was born in the pre-digital age so I only posted a couple of baby pictures here.

his first violin

after a music festival

I post this with the hope of my son stumbling upon it soon.  He doesn't read my blog....or at least pretends not to.

Be Our Best

I promised that I would post my editorial for the second issue of the official newsletter of our university's preopening activities.

Here it is....

 Imagine if the rainbow had only one color, if all the birds sang the same song, if flowers had the same color, shape, and scent, if people looked the same, talked and walked in the same manner and were good at the same thing. How boring, how lifeless, how senseless that would be!

 In His wisdom, God gave the rainbow different colors and birds different songs. He made the flowers different in their shade, shape and scent. Most of all, He made each of us unique.

 This uniqueness is evident not only in the way we look, in the timbre of our voice, in the way we move but it can also be seen in the things we are good at, in the things we can do and in the way we do them.

 God gave us different talents, different gifts. “Talents differ. All is well and wisely put,” (Emerson: The Mountain and the Squirrel). Nobody is superior or inferior. We have all been equally blessed. One person’s talent complements that of another. We cannot do the same things in exactly the same manner. We cannot all be teachers, doctors, builders, or artists. We cannot all be leaders. There has to be followers and even then, they have different duties, play different roles. No job is bigger or smaller. In this way, we all need one another. Whether we like it or not, we are all, in a lot of aspects, dependent on one another.

We have reached the conclusion of our preopening activities. We have been reminded of why we are here. We have been told where we are going. We have acknowledged the importance of letting go. In the person of Miss Fatima Soriano, we have seen the grace that complete trust and gratitude can bring.

 Now we return to our duties and responsibilities. As we journey on the path laid out before us, let us not try to be someone else, nor want what someone has. Instead, we should look within us and realize our own worth. Let us be grateful for what we have been given and concentrate on maximizing and enriching whatever they are. Do away with unhealthy competition. Instead of competing with others, we should compete with our own selves and make sure that we are better today than yesterday. That is the way to celebrate our uniqueness and giftedness. That is the way to celebrate God’s generosity.

 The colors of the rainbow make it such a joy to behold. The different songs of the birds give charm to the woods. The flowers, resplendent in hundreds of different shades, varied in shape and fragrance, turn a garden into a sanctuary for the weary soul. Our own individualities, talents and potentials, our own giftedness make the world more interesting. If we do our best to be to be the best we are, we give joy and charm to the world. We make it a beautiful place! -- Ms. Marie Claire M. Fernandez

Travel Light

The past four days had been busy. We had our pre-opening activities in our school. This meant perspective setting and a series of talks and workshops which centered on the theme: Towards New Evangelizing Breakthroughs and Frontiers of Paulinian Education, and on the new strategy that we are going to adopt which is the Blue Ocean.

Every year, all the participants (practically everyone who works in the school whether teachers or not) are given tasks either during the preparation for the activities or during the pre opening activities.  Just like every year, I was again assigned in the documentation committee.  This year, like  last year, I served as the editor for  the official newsletter of the pre-opening activities.

I would like to share with you my editorial for the first issue.  (I'll share the other one tomorrow).  This is for the benefit of those who have already resigned from the university but who still want to know what is going on.

Here is my editorial:

We are just about to embark on another academic year and as we prepare ourselves for the great task that lies ahead, we are reminded of our purpose and calling. We are here to respond to the challenges of a society ridden with problems of corruption, abuse, materialism, greed and apathy. We are reminded that we are here not only to teach the mind, but also to touch the heart. We are here to evangelize and to love. 

We know where we want to go. We are set to sail towards new evangelizing breakthroughs and frontiers of Paulinian education. The ocean is vast and there is so much more to be explored. Together with our students, we want to overcome that which has not yet been overcome, to exceed the limits of our potentials and to explore the great unknown. 

Like most humans, however, we are often enslaved by many things: our attachment to material things and people; negative feelings like envy, anger, bitterness; our hunger for power; our fear of failure and rejection, of losing sight of our comfort zone, of change and all that it brings, our fear of the unknown. These are the ones that paralyze us, that prevent us from being the best we can be, that diminish us to be less than what we truly are. Without even knowing it, we have become our worst enemy. 

Our negative habits, our frustrations and fears may become too heavy and cause the whole ship to sink if we ever leave port at all. The success of our journey lies within us. Whether we reach our destination or not is all up to us. We only have to choose to let go. It will probably be the hardest thing we will ever do in our lifetime but it will certainly be the most liberating and rewarding! 

 It is time to leave the shore and sail forth. It is time to let go of the baggage that we have been carrying around for years. It is time to focus solely on our purpose and our calling. It is time to “let go and let God”.   As we serve our community and society with the passion of dreamers and lovers, let us all remember to travel light.