Friday, March 23, 2007

Another MasterCard Moment

Simple carbs + sugar+ coffee + sunny morning = two hours of cardio undone.

On a whim, Luigi and I drove to Bonifacio High St. at The Fort for coffee and Krispy Kreme donuts.

Ahhh...the splendor of an impending heart disease and diabetes, all for a measly P200. We ordered one donut each, and coyly asked the guy behind the counter if they gave any more free donuts.

To which he replied, Yes.

So four donuts, two each. Soft and warm, paired with coffee (very good coffee, I should say) and the day's newspaper.

Under an umbrella on a breezy, summer morning. PRICELESS!


Friday, March 16, 2007

Jackie Bird

A few days ago while Yaya was clearing the ceiling of dust and cobwebs, a tiny baby bird fell to the floor. She surmised it must have fallen from the ceiling. It had one bad leg. LP scooped it up right away and had Yaya set it on a basket cushioned with an old potholder.




(It looks dead, but it's not. Pardon the grainy pic, I left my Cybershot in the office and had to make do with my camera phone.)

That evening, LP showed it to me and announced that she was going to call her (or him, can't really be sure) Jackie. Call it maternal instinct, but she knew how to take care of that bird. Quite easy, actually. Since it couldn't fly, it just stayed there in the basket. And even if we laid it down on a level surface, it couldn't walk very far either because of its bad leg.

Feeding Jackie was easy, two or three grains of (moistened) rice and that was it. Once she starts chirping, that's when you start feeding her. (It was fun to see her open her mouth so widely for her next grain of rice.) Oh, so low-maintenance.

Last night, though, LP met us at the gate with Jackie in her hand. "Mommy, Jackie's dead," she said.

"Are you sure?" I asked, because it still looked alive to me.

"Yeah, Mom, she stopped eating already and her eyes are closed," she replied, stroking Jackie's head.

"OK, Sweetie, let's bury her and say a few prayers for her," I told her. I went to the flower box and dug up a small hole for Jackie. LP says one Our Father and then whispers her own improv prayer.

Though she didn't look terribly upset, she started asking questions about where Jackie will be going, and that she felt responsible for her death because she had fed the bird cracker crumbs instead of rice moistened with water. I told her Jackie's on her way to heaven, to which she replied tearfully, "But she's going to have such a hard time getting there because she doesn't know how to fly! She has no mommy to teach her how to fly! What if her mommy gets mad at me for letting her die?!?!"

By this time she's really crying. Not bawling, just really upset-over-death crying. I realize this is the first time she cried over a pet. (Her pet dogs don't like her too much, she's not exactly gentle and affectionate towards them. Quite violent, actually, which deserves another post.)

So I explained to her that Jackie won't have to fly all the way to heaven because God will scoop her up himself, and that Jackie's mom wouldn't be angry at all because LP had become Jackie's second mommy and that Jackie had been well taken care of and fed for.

LP cried some more and asked some more philosophical questions that I knew she would just have to ponder on by herself. And my beef stroganoff was getting cold. So I had her sit on my lap while she was sobbing away.

Monday, March 12, 2007

You know it's summer when...

...kids have so much idle time on their hands, it shows on their feet.



Imagine how much concentration it took to suppress the tickling sensation to bring such masterpiece to finish.

I can imagine her right hand drawing on the sole of her left foot. But her right hand drawing on the sole of her RIGHT foot? I must've given birth to a contortionist.

Congratulations!

Saturday morning, LP had her farewell program for Kindergarten 2. (AKA, graduation.)

Ain't she sweet? I guess LP (Little Preschooler) won't be such a fitting callsign anymore.



And a buffet lunch at SeƱor Alba's to celebrate the occasion.




Mwah! Love you, Sweetie!

Friday, March 09, 2007

Breakfast, Ilonggo vs. French

Check this out:

Breakfast at Bacolod Chicken Inasal: one HUGE cup of fried rice, adobo flakes, fried egg and a cup of molo soup (not much meat in it, though, but plenty of molo strips.) All for P89. Throw in bottomless brewed coffee at P35. Morning paper (PDI and Philstar), priceless.


There was so much food on my plate, I couldn't finish the damn thing.

Quite a break from my usual breakfast fare at Delifrance. (I don't pay. Andolini does. Freeloader here.) Breakfast trays start at P160 (bread and omelet, no drinks), and can go for as much as P220. The most expensive tray, Deluxe, has two sausages, two slices of ham, a strip of bacon, scrambled eggs, a croissant or ciabatta, butter, jelly, orange juice (they say it's fresh, I say it's fresh from the bottle, at any rate it's better than all-sugar Tang), a cup of coffee and a flower in a small glass.

Sorry, no pic. (Shoot me, been eating there practically everyday and I never took a pic.) Pretty to look at, yes. Filling, too. But goddamned expensive. Again, I don't pay. I don't hear Andolini complaining, but I have to at least volunteer a less expensive place to chow, right?

And at BCI, we don't have to put up with missing sections of the PDI like we do in Delifrance.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

One-TV Household

A few weeks back, our Panasonic 24-inch which has been entertaining the family and guests in the living room for ten years already, grew silent. Picture was ok, though. This was the second time we had to take it to the repair shop, the first was a few months before when the ON switch wouldn't stay put. (It kept on popping back out, which made it turn back off.)

Two weeks later, the repairman gave up. "You might want to take this to Panasonic's service center," he said. So we did. On a Sunday. Jeez, of course it was closed. It didn't help that I'm only able to run such errands on weekends, and the past Saturdays have been booked solid for me. (Single mom here, see.)

So for over a month already, the two Yayas, LP and I have been subsisting on one TV, which used to sit in the master's bedroom.

Yeah, no TV in my room. Imagine that.

Exactly. Imagine having no TV in the bedroom. LP and I have been able to spend more quality time together. Talking, exchanging stories, reading, drawing...name it. I get home in the evenings, slump on the bed, reach for the remote, and find a book and a precocious six-year-old with a wobbly tooth instead. More time for tickle fights, hug fights, and kissing fights. More time for Roald Dahl, Judy Blume, and Captain Underpants.

My guess is that new DVD player will be gathering dust for a few more months, or until my folks come back home from the giant sandbox, whichever comes first.