The one with the temptation

I'm still up and moving in the middle of the night like a burglar except that I'm at home.

Reason:no smoking today (and most likely 'til the end of the week!) because mother dear is here to stay.

I ate like there's no tomorrow when we went out for dinner. After going back and forth, I decided to end my agony and stayed for almost an hour in the bathroom- and ended with a bit of defeat singing, "my life is incompleeeettee, yeah". Nothing beats the old constipation but a stick of cigarette. Almost did the head-shake after spraying Glade everywhere but my not-so-favorite cousin might see that so I just did it in my head.

To avoid the temptation when we got home (because as much as I'd like to--I can't!), I decided to rummage my drawer and to clean up the mess by folding each hanky and finding missing pairs of socks. I also segregated the gazillion clean laundry that were piled so high in three rows, we can barely move in the room. It's been lying there for 2 weeks so I guess they're ecstatic to get out of the plastics alive.

Back to my dilemma-- my not-so-favorite cousin and mother dear are both asleep but I still can't find the nerve to go downstairs and smoke. I thought of that over and over while I was in the bathroom. I can make up some lie that I need to buy something in the store or need to check the mailbox but I kinda lost the nerve because it's silly at my age to act like that.

I'm 25 and I can't tell my parents that I like smoking cigarettes.

Why?

Because I don't have any good or valid reason to do that. Besides, they've been such great parents that they don't deserve to know about it.

As hard as it may seem to understand, I enjoy it. Sometimes you do things without any intention to hurt others or yourself especially if it became a part of your existence. It's like a chewing gum, it looks bad especially when you're in an interview or meeting but it calms you when you're nervous or helps you overcome the boredom somehow. It's the same as smoking to me.

Others may refuse to understand that simple logic but it's really as simple as that. When Chandler stopped smoking in FRIENDS due to his friends' advice, he was freaking out. He felt like he's hyperventilating although he's not. He was acting as if a ticking bomb is inside him and he needed to release it by smoking.

He had my sympathy then and he still has it now. More than ever.

Darn it.

I might need to go out with friends tomorrow to stay sane since my Mom is planning to drag me back home to stay there for more than a week!

The one with the laziness

When I woke up this afternoon around 2PM, I have no clue what I'm going to do for the rest of the day.

This has been happening for the last couple of days. I wake up, go to the bathroom, eat, sleep, watch endless shows on TV (which I've memorized like the four corners of my room), go online to play Fashion Wars over and over again and then read a book and sleep until the next afternoon again.

I'm so restless I can't sleep now.

I've wanted to do this when I had been working my ass for more than 10 hours a day due to overtime. I can't believe I'm doing it now and I am beginning to hate it. I feel like a dog left by her owner at home whose sole purpose in life is to guard the house.

I'll start work again next month but the days seem to be so slow that I want to press fast-forward to get to the day when I can be useful again. I'm starting to talk to myself nowadays, it's becoming a habit that I'd hate to do when I go out.

I can't call this insomnia because the afternoon had been my morning and morning is the evening for me. Gosh, I'm back to the graveyard shift although I'm unemployed. I'm looking forward to text messages from friends who want to go out for coffee and my sister asking me to go to the mall.

How did I get to be so lazy?

The one with my sister's 28th birthday

We went home to celebrate her birthday and her boyfriend tagged along together with her 2 closest friends. It's like Meet The Parents (without Robert De Niro since my Dad's not around) including the rest of the relatives at home who did not bother to hide their curiosity on who's who. The grandmother I've known, who is my mother's aunt, was not able to control herself and asked him if he came with my sister there. If I've been there at that moment, I would've laughed at that. Thank goodness I was busy outside with gossip updates from my dear mother.

To make the long story short, we were able to escape everyone before 6 PM and went back to Manila. We had dinner at this fancy restaurant called Ristorante Pia y Damaso.

They had cool names for the dishes especially the desserts:
~Ibarra's Kiss
~Maria Clara's Velvety White Cheesecake
~Sisa's Dementia
~Brazo ni Dona Vicki

The ambiance and the service are excellent but the food is not something I'd truly recommend to anyone. This experience just proved that dishes with interesting names do not guarantee a delicious meal. Most of the main courses seem unusual which affected our food choices at the time.

For our drinks, we ordered Tubig ni Maria Clara (By the Pitcher), which has cucumber juice, ginger syrup and citrus water, that was well-recommended by the overfriendly waiter. I'm always thirsty so I'm not sure if it tasted good because of that or it really was refreshing as they say.
After the heavenly desserts, we watched the movie Confessions of a Shopaholic. We were laughing from start to end. If anyone badly needs an hour of laughter, I'd definitely advise him or her to watch it.

I loved the part when Rebecca Bloomwood was talking to Luke Brandon in his office for an interview and then she screamed while pointing to the poster of a guy outside when he was about to ask her to speak Finnish.

Unfortunately, the downside of the movie is that the setting was in New York instead of London based from the book. I've read 3 of the Shopaholic books from a good friend of mine. If I hadn't, maybe I would've appreciated it more because I didn't know the original plot of the story.

Contrary to the bad reviews by most newspapers, I enjoyed watching this film. It's rare for me to laugh like a lunatic while watching a movie in a theater so I'm giving it a rating of 8/10. Sometimes people need to crack once in a while. We want to watch without analyzing what the characters are doing or scrutinizing their outfits (although we do that involuntarily)-- what matters is that it had found an emotion within us that was stirred by the story.

Prada and Gucci aside (fake or not), Rebecca's clumsiness reminded us that there's still hope amidst all the economic crises-- even for the silly ones. ☺

The one with the pictures

Memory is the worst enemy. A simple peace sign on a picture, a favorite hobby, the most intricate design printed on a bag or even 2 friends walking on the street can take you to a walk down memory lane in an instant. Funny, it had to happen today when I'm in the middle of making a huge decision for my non-existent career.

After a looong conversation with my former office mates over the phone, I sat on the computer while waiting for another page to load. Right before I was able to reach my destination, I saw her again. How could I possibly miss it when she had flooded almost the entire page with comments to everyone except me? Well, she sent me something else. A bear with a puppy love caption. Is this the only message she can give me after not getting in touch for almost 6 years?

I waited for 5 seconds, 10 then a minute. Do I click on Accept or Ignore? ACCEPT or IGNORE? I think I mentioned it in my head for 5 minutes because I lost track of time staring into space. Finally, I clicked on accept before I change my mind. In my head, I keep hearing "Delete account" and "Delete her on friend's list" but my conscience got the best of me and I simply went ahead and finished what I started. My guts are telling me to logout yet I saw myself clicking on each one of her photos to satisfy my curiosity.

After several albums, I wanted to stop and close the whole IE window. Something told me to keep viewing all of them until I browsed the last picture. I saw her with her family. She was smiling like her usual bubbly mode but she can't fool me.

She had a lot of dreams. She's the type of person who has plans and executes them as she sees fit to ensure that everything goes smoothly or perfectly. I am happy knowing that she grabbed opportunities and succeeded in them. I can see that she seemed content with her life. It's just that there are some dreams that you never dared to broadcast out loud and I can sense that she had one which had not happened the way she planned them.

As much as I'd want to pick the pieces and get back where we left off, it's almost the same as finding separated shredded papers from a garbage bag full of them.

Her pictures said a thousand words but one of them is for sure...I'm no longer part of her life.

The question that I'm asking myself is, do I delete her or do I delete myself in cyberspace again to move on with my life?