little mountain

with beatles playing in the background, my son snoring lightly on our bed and the temperature taking us below zero... that pile of laundry could sure give me some needed warmth. i just have to fold the stuff, anyway.

after a draining saturday night, i'm not sure i want to do anything. how is it that you can pour yourself into these affairs and hope to be charged no matter what, only to end up feeling helplessly low and out?

i've finished snooping into the lives of others via their blogs. something's brewing over in justice's world, so soon after her idyllic honeymoon. i feel for the woman. talk about beleaguered!

if i could climb every mountain and search every byway, i would be a much better homemaker and disciplined student. in every aspect. back in the mists of my memory is a blind masseuse who sees into people's souls with her deft fingers. i can still remember her neatly tied hair and soft voice telling me about how her baby was killed while she was cooking. she did not see her older child push the infant to its death. (duh, bulag nga diba? ay anovayan svelte...) and how her womanising husband left her when he found out, and not without blaming her first for their child's death. in her last massages was a deep and scalding sadness that lingered on my limbs long after the oils had settled into my skin.

it's one of those unmoving sundays. if i stepped out into this sub-zero weather, the mind will freeze over. how the sun doth mock us in these times. if i moved forward into the next days, will something new happen in this life? or will it be this same dread with the tiny claws that cling to the recesses of my molars?

but if i can just scale this mountain of laundry, maybe, just maybe, things will look up.

mix-up

this is strange. i do not characteristically blog what i'm about to blog in this space; on the other hand, i just put up a rather.... "night-y" entry in jumba day. so things are pretty much screwed up today.

but i've ignored these pages for more than 2 weeks. actually, not. i put in an entry 3 days ago but it stayed for all of 2 hours before i made it private and published it in another (more private and personal) space. still internet, of course, but with very high restrictions on access.

i feel winter more acutely now. it wasn't this cold last month, and compared to last year, this month's (feb) cold beats last year's cold. or maybe i didn't notice because i was just burrowing in the flat last year, being newly-arrived and all that. not used to the latitudes, looking ugly, skin drying up, hair shedding like crazy... the entire gamut.

anyhow, i just came from a book sale and i had fun. not total mental fun because i avoided the literature section completely. instead, i concentrated on the kiddie section and the music/film section. i got some titles of calvin & hobbes (in memory of ronald, may he rest in peace), i myself mine by george harrison (interested mainly in his notes about song creation and chord progression), some musicology genre books (jazz, blues, and celtic), and art "kunst" books that seemed frightfully cheap for a museum-looking book. but i went crazy over the activity books for mikka, the multi-media approach incorporated in them (with hand puppets and stickers and crayons and little pouches and pop ups), plus cheap toys for his little fingers and ever expanding mind. i'm sure he'll love the train set we got him (wooden pieces for the track plus wooden trains too) and the bob the builder kit. totally hawt, man! can't wait til april to give the stuff to mikka. he'll be thrilled!

but what am i babbling about? that was pure recreation. i stayed home from dutch class for the third time this week. i have 6 hours of work to catch up on next week!!!

went to hanau last weekend. i didn't get to see much of the outdoors saturday, when the party of cheH's S took place, hoping to do it on sunday morning before we caught the train back to belgium. but as luck would have it, i twisted my ankle on the giant slide!!! so with my foot aching like hell the following morning, i could only watch mournfully as husband and son donned their winter coats and went traipsing in the snow with U, cheH's husband. it was a riot. i met ruth, anP, cheH, jing, thess, elaine, and justice. we spent more time sitting around cheH's dining room table, yakking off our heads, than on our feet. we were feeling each other out, measuring, weighing... and boy, in our unguarded moments, pigging out on the yummy spread before us!!! maybe that would be the star of the show, or the starS, i might say. check this out: thai salad (piping hot and spicy, the way it should be), barbecue with sate sauce, paksiw na isda with aubergines (ano raw? talong lang yon), embotido, lumpia (both nights!!), lots and lots of wine (red and white) and german pale pilsen beer (only 4.5%, a far cry from our now-normal beer of 8.5%). the scene stealer? thess' killer dessert!!! fit for fancy dining and the works.

this will be cut short. the memory of all those delectable delights is making my tummy churn. signing off to raid the cupboards... end.

gifted

when i was in 8th grade, the fashionable shoes were topsiders and penny loafers. pro keds were everywhere; for me, the more used they were, the better they were. i took pains to break in my espadrilles. there were also the requisite argyles that said, i'm cool just cool.

i've only a little over a hour left to this birthday of mine. no friends of old to knock on our gate and drink the night away, or text messages coming in every minute, enticing me to max out my post-paid bills, no isaw pulutan, no raucous jokes, no oohing over the forever-great weather this time of year.

today it was all espadrilles and keds. like slip-on cotton in the innermost room. patches of sun even came out and kissed my back, to which my man remarked, "look, god's embracing you." it was a nice walk home feeling his arm holding me close against his side, that insinuating hand sliding over my buttocks, contented and secretive smiles lingering in the air. i've found the time to wear out my cross trainers and outdoor shoes. they almost look like the sperry's i had for more than 8 years, which i gave up only because they were passe. what will i outgrow when i go back home in 2008? we'll see.

1115 pm. 45 minutes left. thank you, lord. this life's been fab thus far. easy and comfy. just the way i like it.