Catching Up

It's kind of crazy how time speeds up and just like that, it's already the end of the first half of the year. How did that happen? Just six months ago, I was promising myself a lot of things: to always say yes, to try new things, and to be a little more adventurous in life. And here we are now: there are still things I will say no to, but I'm a little bit braver to do what's not expected.

This morning, I headed to the house of one of my oldest friends to help out her mom with some paper decor. It was a familiar place that my friends and I grew up in. We started out as babies in that place and now everyone is raising their own family, getting married, and flying out of the country. The house felt a little lonely, a lot empty, but still inviting.

I guess everyone has their own thing now. It hasn't been the easiest thing to get together—plans have to be made in advance to accommodate everyone's other concerns: attending weddings, feeding the babies, and doing what adults do I guess. But it's still comforting to know that there are still things that will remain the same. Like our favorite baked spaghetti and chicken lollipop, which tastes like childhood to me. And that even without my girls, somehow I've been able to catch up.

 

I love you, PG!

I still can't believe I watched this. Live. In Ateneo. With my friends. LIVE. Ha ha!

And we obsessed over it for MONTHS. We had a VHS of the show when they aired it. And we memorized "Power of the Dream" and copied the dance to "My Boo." God. So many teenybopper memories.

I watched all 11 parts on YouTube this morning and I swear I still got kilig when Patrick Garcia says, "Crush ko lahat ng babae dito." OMG. So you can imagine the heartbreak I felt when news broke that he got this girl pregnant. Sigh. (But I hear they're not together anymore!)

Rainy days and pan de sal

I kind of miss waiting for the radio announcement of suspension of classes. The closest thing to it was getting an email from HR that we could go home at 5pm today.

One of my favorite memories of rainy days when I was younger is eating breakfast in my parents' room in our old house in Marikina. It was on the "second floor" of the bedroom. In quotation marks because our house was really a bungalow and my parents just had a sort-of loft or attic built in their bedroom. You see, our tiny house on the corner of Oriole and Flamingo always got flooded in whenever it rained. I still remember waking up and seeing my bedroom half-submerged in murky floodwater. I think my tandayan even fell into the water. Yuck. Haha!

Whenever classes got suspended, we'd get carried to the spiral staircase going up to my parents' bedroom and we'd eat pan de sal and peanut butter until the water went down. It still gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling. Hahaha!

Even though I'd love to eat peanut butter pan de sal in my parents' room with my family again, I really wouldn't want to get flooded in. O: Not after a few months ago when I got stuck in traffic for two hours coming from the office and then, coming home to an extremely muddy house. Isn't it ironic? (Don't you think? Haha!) We moved out of Marikina so we wouldn't get flooded in and now, we still get flooded in!