i was washing the dishes, jope was cleaning up the dinner table while telling me about how his class went earlier that day.

j: kanina tinanong ko ang mga estudyante ko, tinitignan niyo ba ang mukha ng mga magulang niyo?

c: bakit naman?

j: sabi ko, tignan niyo mabuti ang mukha nila, dumadami na ang linya. tumatanda na sila.

i then tried to remember my mom's face the last i saw her and when i finally was able to draw out her face from my head i had to wipe a tear from my eye, forgetting i was actually holding a soaped up sponge. last time i saw her was during my wedding two years ago, the strongest image i have is of her crying while telling people in our reception the story of how i told her that i was going back to the philippines. she was wiping her tears with a hanky, but all you can really notice was how big her ring bling was. haha.

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.

.

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.

.

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

since i've visited and posted. my online life mainly revolves around multiply and facebook these days, apart from the usual emails and recipe hunting and of course, chizmis blogs like perezhilton. i was actually thinking of blogging in multiply, but i guess i felt what i wanted to say was too private to share, to personal to be reduced to a seeming update of how life has been. and so i typed tabulas.

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 miss my sister. i miss having her around.

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.