Up in the Clouds

(photo from finelittleday)

I’ve been back from the beach a week now. I’m only able to get my bearings back now, albeit not completely. My head’s still up there, floating listlessly away. Going about my round of sites, I’m thinking the internet is right up my cloudy alley! That’s a lame little insert. I know. Forgive me. I’m not fully back yet. They look so good to eat!

(photos from 101cookbooks)

such pretty clouds!(photo from apartmenttherapy)

Ok. That’s about my procrastination. I’ve a huge presentation tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Feeling Crafty

You all know how I take my Saturdays seriously. So seriously in fact, I’ve given it a complete name: Positive Superlative Saturday.

I was a weekend away from payday. So instead of trying a new recipe, the ingredients of which I still need to buy, I decided to get on with a project I had been planning to do since July. Anyway, I already had my materials.

From the usual white:

to a nice yellow aptly called Sunny Day:

Fact: There is a Spanish proverb, “Hay no Sabado sin sol.” It loosely translates to “there is no Saturday without sun.” My mom told me this about three years ago, when I was worrying my head off on a Saturday because it looked like it was going to rain and I had an outdoor shoot. She said, “Hay no Sabado sin sol.” And since then, I have noticed that it’s true. No matter how grey or glum the weather gets on Saturdays, the sun always manages to say wazzzup. That’s my hand getting all the sunbeams the paint affords.

dripping wet

TADA!!!

I’m reserving the chairs for when my niece arrives in December. We will paint each of them a different color. Top of mind: pink, blue (for my nephew) orange and green. Then we can all roll around and pretend we’re sitting on rainbows.

Next Saturday, I will try that recipe. Yay, I’m excited.

Wish list

1. Become the sort of writer my heroes would want to read.

2. Publish a book

3. Win a writing award

4. Get amazing assignments, both here and abroad

6. Travel to write

7. Travel with my boyfriend

8. Live abroad with my boyfriend

9. Get married

*not that I have a boyfriend.

He Would Have Been 62 Today

well, yesterday, 9-9-10.

I don’t think you ever really get over losing a parent. Today is dad’s birthday. It’s been three months since he passed away. We have reached some semblance of normalcy, our footsteps now echo of moving on. But I can’t say, just yet I’m over it. Because dad’s absence is almost often, and immediately felt.

Take for instance the sudden quiet in laughter, where his smart-aleck comments used to be; the sudden uninterrupted peace I now have  whenever I sit myself in the most coveted part of the bed, which is really, legitimately his; the extra shade of character that not only allow this gang of personalities, farmed together by chance, to stand strong as a family, and to seem as special as the Tenenbaums, but a character that completes them; a cold quiet accompanies me now, where once dad’s chuckle of sarcasm was all was needed to cushion life’s blows.

But as life keeps us busy, and as deadlines keep us busier, his death keeps us the busiest. There is the paper work for one, and the duty to country his death is required to serve. There is suddenly a lifetime’s worth of clutter to clean. And there is the slow accumulation of things: You give yourself a little reward for surviving his death, another because it’s on sale, and yet another, still in the hopes of it filling the void.

But the thing nobody tells the bereft, the thing self-help books leave out, or the stuff well-meaning friends who’ve known such a loss manage to forget, is that along with the fading of this hurt come the fading of dad’s presence. The further you move away from the pain, the farther you move from the time when he was alive.

Sometimes I don’t know if I want to forget. Other times I don’t know if I want to remember. It doesn’t get any easier. But three four months on and I think it’s true what they say: You do get better at it, at handling such loss, at handling such hurt, at handling yourself.

It’s as though his death has left this gaping hole in front of me, a space especially for life to especially pass through, a room especially for love to grow.

FHM Sept 2010

Hey, check out the September 2010 issue of FHM Philippines. I interviewed cover girl Bianca Manalo.

Yup, it’s a double issue with Cesar Montano on the cover of FHM collections on the flip side of Bianca’s cover. It was a most tiring of shoots. We went to subic, waited about 4 hours before finally starting with the shoot that lasted just about 3 hours. She was, well, her legs are amazing. Whatever leg length that was meant for me during creation must have been given to this girl.  She stands a whopping 5’10.

The interview could have been better, I admit, but I was tired and she, more so. If anything, Bianca has a quick mind. And also, she’s funny in a very fiery way. She’s very honest but she held back on a few examples, choosing instead to keep peace rather than courting controversy. Had she zoomed straight and allowed her misgivings to rule, I think she would have proven her point better (and I would have had a juicier story!).

But it all went well. According to this story, Bianca allowed us more candid info about herself during yday’s presson: She gets teary-eyed whenever she hears this song: