We’re having an 80’s themed Christmas party. I’m so excited. I’m going to be an 80’s rock star, like the Clash or the Smiths. Or one of the fabulous girls below. I like Joan Jett.
Someday I’m going to go to a place cold enough to wear leather pants.
And New Year’s at Baguio. I get to wear my jackets again. And watch fireworks! Yay!!! 🙂
In their retreat, they were instructed to write a letter to their parents, telling how much they love them. Since our family was awkwardly yet determinedly emotionally inexpressive, this was not an easy task. But it’s mother’s birthday today, so Celina thought the easy way out was through a text greeting.
Celina to her cellphone: Happy birthday Ma! I love you! (her finger hovering for a stretch of moments over the send button)
Dagdagan nyo allowance ko a! hehe
It was a very awkward moment between her and the cellphone. I couldn’t breathe for laughing at this story. And the funniest part is, mother did not even text ‘I love you back’.
We have strange family dynamics.
I’m trying to cut down a 180,000+ word novel to 80,000 to 100,000, and it’s breaking my heart. I try to just tone down the prepositions and delete the unnecessary sentences and shorten paragraphs. But when you have to reduce the entire thing into literally half, you realize that you have to par down entire chapters. CHAPTERS, for crying out loud. It took me two years to write this crap!!
And the sucky thing is that it may all be for nothing. Oh Soul of the World, how you torment me. But fine, I guess the actual torture has far from begun. So. I’m officially sucking it up.
“Before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream.”
There, said the Alchemist. There is the reason why we are fucking stressed and confused all the time and depressed and evil to the world those other darker days. The frickin’ omniscient Soul of the World is making us suffer just so it can be sure that we deserve the things we want.
BBUUUUUUUUUUUTt: Do we even know what we want? Ha. I think that beat the chicken-egg question.
I think I do now. Know, I mean. I’ve made several decisions that I pray I’ll have the courage and perseverance (versus my lazy ass and my ego) to stick to. I’m trying to not be so lazy-daisy anymore. I’ve been that way for nearly a year now, come on. I haveta move my ass.
Look, I know you’re in a retreat and everything, but do you have any idea how sad it is to go shopping–specially for mother–alone? I was singing to Taylor Swift and laughing at private jokes, and I’m not even sure nobody noticed. I looked like a crazy person smirking and humming like an idiot.
Anyway, I managed to find a dress and a sweater that will hopefully fit and she will not hate. And just so you know, there’s a frickin’ line outside of All Flip Flops (like the one I only ever saw in Louis Vuitton in Hong Kong, can you believe it?), so it’s going to be a non-Havs birthday for mother. She’ll deal with it. It will have to wait for Christmas.
P.S. It will be really nice if you’d reply to my texts. Thank you.
Okay, so it was a fun week. I’m trying to hold on to the childlike happiness you feel on birthdays, and that’s not very hard to do. The catch is after people become extra nice to you and sing and give you presents and well wishes, at the end of the day at the chime of the next midnight, you’re just another year older. Which is great, by the way.
Anyway, they say pictures speak a thousand words, so I’m letting them do the talking:
