A time once travelled

I feel whole again.

Hey blog, after a week in silence, the walls are filled with laughter again. The mess, the toys scattered everywhere, little accidents, sudden gasps of pain as I would walked limping after stepping on some tiny soldiers, dinosaurs and plastic cars. Oh, I did miss all that.

Saturday Night.
Before I inserted the key in the keyhole, I paused for a moment pressing my left ear on the door. Listening. Expecting little giggles, the ones that engulf my heart with so much warm and ecstasy. Nothing. Silence. I stooped down, hesitating, checking the gap of the door at the bottom. The light is on. I smiled excitedly and opened the door.
I saw him sitting on the sofa, having dinner at our coffee table. “Hellooooo, my little David! Wow, look who is here! Welcome back!”
He threw his head backward, arching his tiny back, spraying some pasta off his mouth, and laughing. The happy laugh. The kind of laugh that betrays oh-I’m-so-happy-to-see-you. It was more than I expected. I turned around to close the door, and I heard papa came, “hello mamou!”
I threw my arms around his neck and gave him a huge smack on the lips. It helped with two-inch hills to hold him like that. At least I reached up to his eyes. He was hesitant, kind of surprise. He held my shoulders in place, few inches from his face, “wow did you miss me?”
 ”Kiss me again” I answered. He smiled a wicked smile and we kissed, long, hard and wet. The kind of kiss known only to lovers.
After a forever, he pulled my face back gently but purposely, I heard a suppressed giggle coming from his chest, his naughty smiles reaching up deep into his eyes now filled with fire. “You behave girl, your son is just a few feet away!” I untangled my fingers off his hair, gave him one quick kiss and said “I missed you papa!”

After I put on my happy clothes (jogging pants and loose t-shirt), I sat next to David eating while watching Tom and Jerry. “Oh I see, you found the gift I bought for you”. He laughed again. I notice that he runs out of words when he is happy and excited. I gave him a big hug and kissed the top of his head. “You eat and we’ll talk later. I got so many questions for you!”
He perked his head on papa’s direction who was standing few feet away from us. He leaned to me, and whispered “You know mama, I ski better than papa. He fell many times, but I fell only once!” Then threw out a big laugh. He was making fun of his own father! Papa stormed in, “whaaa,I heard that, you are lying!” “What a crook this one!”
I felt my heart did a somersault! Ah, it’s good to hear their catfight again!

“So sweetheart, did you miss me? Because boy, how I missed you two!”
“C’est quoi miss me mama?” (What is miss me mama?)
I smiled. Now back to familiar questioning….
“Hmm, miss me means, hmmm, let’s see… (I was drumming my brain for the right answer, how can I explain it to a five-years old)
“Well, see baby filou here (his favourite toy, the one he never sleeps without). It’s like you went to
Chamonix
and you left baby filou here in Paris. You go to bed and you found out he is not there. That’s when you missed baby filou….  Or missed me.
He shrugged his shoulders off casually and said “but I didn’t forget baby filou, he was with me in Chamonix. I didn’t miss him.”
“Yes you are right, but I was not there. You must missed me…”
He looked at me intently, like I was some kind of lunatic and said “Bah, not really, I was skiing all day!”
I laughed out loud in my head. “Why are you smiling mama?”
“Well, I’m happy to know that you didn’t really miss me. That means you really had a great time skiing!”
Then he went into his litany of what happened during the one-week break.

After a while, he grabbed my hand and planted there a million kisses. I laughed a happy laugh. Warmth engulfing my soul.
“Mama, will you hold me tight tonight when I go to bed. And don’t leave me until I’m sleeping!”
I looked at him adoringly and said, “of course I will hold you tight, just like always!”
(In my head, I heard: yeah, like you didn’t miss me at all little coquin!)

 

Dear Blog.
I meant to sleep early the other night, around 10 pm, to give justice to the dark-hallow shadows beneath my eyes. I watched Dracula, after watching Wuthering Heights. Didn’t realize it was Wuthering Heights really, I bought the DVD on amazon France, it was called Les Hauts de Hurlevent. Ralph Fiennes. The English Patient guy. More beautiful than Brad Pitt when he plays Vampire.

So after that I watched Dracula, Anthony Hopkins, one of my faves!…turned the TV off half-way. I got scared. My imaginations have the tendency to scare the shit out of my own self. I’m alone. You see. Father and son gone skiing on some snowy mountains called Chamonix. They’ll be back next weekend. I’m alone. The silence in the apartment is so freaking loud, it’s almost deafening! And watching Draku is not such a good idea. But the women. Gosh, they are HOT!

Anyway, I checked amazon.fr again, see what is interesting. According to my budget….
I have to see the Notebook… slept at quarter to 2. Got carried putting on some stuff on amazon’s wish list. For future expenditures!

Woke up today, squinting my eyes to check the red numbers on our digital clock, 5 meters away. 7 A.M. Closed my eyes back, dragging the quilt up to my ears, listening to the footsteps of our neighbours upstairs and running down in my head the-to-do-list-today. Can it be so boring? Forced my eyelids back to sleep.
When I woke up again, the sunlight told me it was way already late. Got up quickly, googled my eyes to the digiclock. 8:45 am. Hmmmm. That’s something. I never woke up so late… unless when I’m sick. And today. I.am.not.

Spent a good 10 minutes looking for my eyeglasses. I keep on losing them these days! Grrr!
While hunting for the bloody glasses, my brain cells were already doing the marathons. Got to pick up the package in the post office, do sewing on few new pairs of jeans, run the rest of the laundry, God why can I never see the bottom of the basket-for-clothes-to-be-ironed! Have to do the groceries, or I’ll starve this week! Should I go to Tang Freres for my asian cuisine? Not important. This week is a microwave week! Need to get an rdv for my eye check! Need to cut my nails! Blah blah!

I on my pc. As soon as the power is on, the humming started, signs of aging, all the antivirus crap pop up, making the machine slower than phil post. I went to the kitchen to make myself coffee and grab a pain au lait. I went back, the pc is still straggling to open a window. God, I need a new pc!

Checked my emails, finally. Shit! Bad news from unknown people in the Phils. One email after another. Bad news after another. Requesting some files. Okay. This is going to be a promising day!
I on hubby’s pc. I needed to scan some files. His pc is privileged to be attached to a printer/scanner. This is discrimination!
Well, he’s got his pc password protected. I would like to think he’s got some kind of secret.
But I know better.
Little hands do wonder from pc to pc these days. Everything has to be proofed. I tried all that came to mind, nothing works. My hubby doesn’t love me anymore; he doesn’t use my name to protect his screen! Howaboutthat!

I emailed his blackberry to get his magic word. Waited for my phone to ring. Tick-tack-tick-tack. Nothing. Email. Nothing. I let out a big sigh and went rummaging my bag to find my celly. Can’t find it. I picked up the fixed line. Dial my own phone. Busy tone! Land line doesn’t work! Bloody orange! When can they ever fix their stupid livebox to make everything works! I rebooted the shittybox, cut off the internet line. Everything went dead!

Dear Blog, from now on, I shall rebaptize the livebox, DEADbox!

No choice, I went for mobile hunt. Why do women’s bags have so many pockets? And inside THE bag, there are more smaller bags!
Found it. Off. Hmmm, no wonder. I called hubby. Can I have the password please? “Well, I’ve been trying to reach you, your mobile is off, and you know, the land line doesn’t work, you need to reboot it!”

Aha, really!?

His pc is worst than mine. I could have reached London by plane, and his pc would still be trying to open a pop up messenger! We both need new bloody pcs!

Scan. Convert jpeg file to pdf. Scan. Convert jpeg to pdf. Scan. Convert jpeg to pdf.

While waiting, I did some productive stuff on the net. Such as accepting an invitation (note dated one month and two days) from T to join Shelfari. (I thought it was a girl’s name!).

Then I filled some dire documents. Must-return-date already overdue.

Then did a quick grocery list.

By the time I’ve done all that it was already past noon! I rushed to the post office, came back, and took the shopping cart. Spent a good 70 euros. The only food bought were two frozen pizzas, and four microwaveable food for my lunch. Then realized I got nothing to eat for dinner this coming five nights! I rechecked my grocery list. Where the fuck the 70 euros went! Why do they have so many kinds of cleaning-wipes and liquid soaps! Liquid soap for the hands, liquid soap for clothes, liquid soap for the toilet, liquid soap for the dishes, liquid soap for tiled floors! You know, from where I grew up, we used only one. You buy a tide bar. It cleans everything! And like we didn’t die from it!

Anyway, I had a pizza for lunch. Catching up with hubby and David while munching.
By three pm I attacked the bloody basket! Trying to forget the misery of ironing clothes, I put back on Dracula. Watching it on broad daylight is different from watching it at night. It was less scary. Or maybe because I was just so miserable trying to reach the bottom of the basket, I didn’t really notice the whole vampirish thing!

Then I put on Hannibal Lecter, the Red Dragon to finish off my ironing.
Okay. I’m not really into gory stuff these days, blog. It’s still a combo of Ralph Fiennes and Anthony Hopkins, after all. Plus, there’s Edward Norton. It’s like having a good lamb chops and red wine!

So now, it’s like 10:00 pm. Tummy has been asking dinner. I just don’t know what new “single” people eat! Maybe.pizza.again! Well, at least there’s wine to wash it down!

To say that this blog is inactive is perhaps the most understatement of the year! It’s close to dead, me thinks! Sorry for those who had been visiting and get the disappointment.

I do not promise to keep this updated often; I just don’t have the time and energy to do it. And to write … er to actually gather your thoughts, search the write words and arrange them in such a way that letters glue together to make them comprehensible has now become a daunting task. I am drain out of energy. End of working day is like having.a.long.sex.without.getting.the.orgasm.

Anyways, my son is back in Frejus for three weeks with his lola. I’d like to think I have more time for myself and this blog. But I doubt. I opt to having more orgasmic activities now that I don’t turn into a dinosaur fighting King Kong every night. Ha.Ha.Ha. Joke. I have to behave, my brothers might be reading this post, if they are not busy doing their own er o….. activities!

So, I’m planning to write the highlights of our US and Canada trip last May, our vacation in Frejus last July, David’s changes and things in between in the posts to come. It’s just a plan, let’s see what I can actually achieve. I do not even have drafts. Type and post na ni.

If I’m a member of PPP, I would declare myself bankrupt already. Long time ago.

For this post, it’s something about meetic. For some who do not know about it, it’s a website dedicated to single people looking for single people. Simply put.

Today, I got a message on my cellie. Someone was trying to reach me while I was yakitaking on the phone with my mother. A guy. introduced himself first and called me a name I do not recognise. Excuse me I’m no Amélie! I listened to it intently trying to decipher a French tongue with a heavy accent in it.

I discovered that my “répondeur” can actually record long messages.

So single guy is looking forward to meet Amélie, that after several virtual exchanges he thinks they have lots in common and is excited to meet her in person. *laughs*.  It would be nice to have a drink somewhere and get to know each other more. *Pause. Ehem.Laugh*. This time I can’t contain myself and let it out. Lol! Bloody me, this is how single people of opposite sex arrange EB! I wonder where the hell Amélie is!

Single guy finally ended his pleasantries leaving his real name, his pseudo on meetic and his phone number. To make sure that I got the message, I mean Amélie, he repeated it twice.

For a few stolen sec I imagined myself desperately single. In Paris. During a long dead. dead summer break… and being Amélie! A big wicked grin wrinkled my face.

Snapping back to reality, I look at my phone, lost. Is this really mine!?

Since the David was born, three years, 24 days, 14 hours and 15 minutes ago, this is the very fist time I’m left all alone. The feeling is total weirdness.
I have looked forward to this week, preparing myself to indulge my free time on anything I wanted to do.
But the SILENCE is so magnified, it becomes so LOUD. The flat is empty. The carpet missing the thuds of little yet strong feet. The walls glaring longingly for screams. The bed wider at night, my pc suddenly begging for little fingertips. The TV so cold and already collecting dusts. Even the fridge is empty.
I celebrated my temporary found independence by watching a film yesterday with a GF. More than five years of not going to the big screen. Yet.I.didn’t.feel.really.missing.it.
In two rows of a night, I have indulged on my book, and covered several pages that can only normally be attained by two-weeks reading in the metro. But in between those pages, no matter how dragons and merpeople are attacking the hero, I found myself pausing, listening to the night. One freaking, fleeting moment passed by before my eyes and I heard my brain talking, this must be the feeling of being divorced sans child, sans relatives. Although a million-fold worst. Because I am alone but not really feeling lonely. And my conscious mind knows it’s all temporary.
My cellies became friendlier to me. The only connection to the two who are skiing and marvelling the wonders of the white mountains. I do not feel regrets of not going with them. Well, perhaps there is one, and that’s not able to see David skiing for the first time. Oh I love his firsts!
But time flies terribly fast! Work tomorrow and that’s it. Days pass by without me noticing them. I have to do the most I can for myself during this temporary-home-alone-bliss!
So, friends, I’m coming!

First man said: Don’t touch me! You’ll dirt me!
Second man replied: Get lost then, asshole, get lost!
Well, that’s how close I could get to the French version. Although I prefer the orginal version, kasi mas madugo sa tenga!
For ordinary human beings, this could just easily be seen as an ordinary brawl. Or a fight between a cheating spouse and the cheated-on spouse ha ha ha!
But the second man happens to be the President of France. And hearing those words. There’s an ultimate WRONGNESS in the picture!
Maybe aliens are dwelling in the Elysee Palace !
Oh God help the froggies!  Err, that would be including me!

P.S. i wonder if mr president reads this, would he deport me? maybe not. maybe he’ll tell me: “shut the fuck up you stupid brown monkey!” and then, well, change his mind and send me off to the amazon forests! ha ha ha!

On the way to the Wet Market to buy BBQ Chicken for our Sunday Lunch:

Me: David don’t you wonder why there are many strange cars, motorbikes and vans park around our building?
David: What mama? Up, up! (Blocking my way, arms raised up to their limits)
Me: No, you walk you are far too heavy to be carried now, you know that!
Listen, do you remember that Bible story about a very brave boy called David who toppled down a giant called Goliath?
David: What mama? Can we buy candies now?
Me: Yes, today is Sunday, it’s your Sweets Day! Where’s the money I gave you to pay for the bonbons?
David: Here. Touching the zipped pocket of his scarf wrapped around his neck.
Me: Ok. Well, as I said, all these cars and vans parked are the media people. They are the ones you see on TV, reporters, cameramen, all of them.
David: What mama?!
Me: There’s this guy, like David in our story. No, not you. He works for a giant bank in France, Societe Generale, let’s call it Goliath. And you know, this David apparently did something wicked and made this Goliath Bank go almost bankrupt. He made the bank lost almost 5 billion euros. Do you know how much is that?
David: What mama?! Je ne connais pas! (I don’t know)
Me: Well with 5 billion euros, you can have an island all by yourself, and there’s nothing there but bonbons!
David: Yes mama, I got money here, taking out his 50 cents.
Me: Look at that van there with a satellite antenna on top of it, and computers inside, look, there’s a man looking at his flat computer screen, see that?
David: What mama?!
Me: Well, what about if we make a scene. I’ll steal your 50 cents and run away shouting, and you come after me crying, screaming, “someone stole my 50 cents!”
David: No, mama, we’ll buy bonbons!
Me: You know if we do that scene, we might be on TV on prime time tonight. You’ll see me running and yourself screaming! Do you think it’s worth watching?
David: Arrete mama! Je ne connais pas! (Stop it mama, I don’t know)
Me: Well, then these reporters will be bored for hours and hours waiting for that David to come out. You see, that’s the police building there, across your school, and they kept David there for questioning. And all these reporters are waiting, waiting, and waiting they might sleep here all night!
David: No mama, I don’t want the police, let’s go buy bonbons!
Me, (Laughing at myself): Yes sweetheart, as I said Sunday is a Sweet Day! Let’s enjoy this day, and not be bothered about what adults do! One day you’ll understand what is 5 billion euros!

If you are running a business about NAILS, HAIR, AND CLOTHING REPAIRS, you would probably see me at your shop’s doorstep once in a blue moon. Or maybe never at all.
For girly-girly stuff such as nail painting and polishing, hair dyeing and shopping, I’m your ultimate BORING mate! I don’t wonder and I’m quite happy why none of my friends invite me to go doing these things.

NAIL and HAIR
Yesterday, I was on the verge of my life’s breaking event. I was seriously thinking of having my nails polished sans colors, and my hair dyed. Nails because with their length, they started chipping off and it’s such a nightmare when you put on stockings. And I don’t have to mention about the cuticles. Hair because my crown is steadily betraying my age and hubby is complaining about plucking the unwanted whites!

But woooff! This morning I woke up and thought about the time these will consume. I have to drop off David to school at 8:30 and would start queuing up in the nail care shop at 9 am. If lucky I will be finished by 10. Which would give me time to run to the hair salon, do the queuing again, and probably will be finished by 11:30 am, the time to pick up Davidl. That means my whole morning practically gone. For what?

As usual I’m back to DIM (do-it-myself). By 9 am my nails are shorter and clean, my hair chopped off. While doing those, I have two washing machines running (clothes and dishes). Four things being accomplished in 30 minutes. Before I left to pick up the piglet, clothes were hanged, dishes dried away, kitchen cleaned, rooms vacuumed, and I was able to call my family and wrote a blog entry and hopped around. That’s what I call accomplishments of a boring; monotonous life! Yet I feel better than having gone to all these nail and hair salons!

Palpak na mga Christmas Gifts!
I bought a watch for Papa for Christmas. I ordered it online, since I couldn’t find the model in the watch stores close to our place. It was said to be delivered on December 17. It fuckin’ arrived on January 4!

He bought me a pair of boots and winter jacket. None fits!

Yesterday, I obliged to go to the store to have my boots changed. At 10 am, I had my nose sneaking around Heyraud’s. David was running all over the place grabbing every boots standing! Papa brought him to a carousel for distraction, and I started feeling the irritation of Shopping. The boots he bought before Christmas is now on sale, and according to the sales lady, I can have anything I want as long as it tops off the price tag. I checked their bags. Almost collapsed at the price tags! Why would I get a fucking 250 euros bag? A scarf at 150 euros or boots at 250 euros for that matter! That’s abuse to the starving humanity! Blimey, I guess I could never be what they call “trendy”; fashionista” -  much less, fashion-victim.

As it was migraine kicked in. David was screaming that he wanted to eat in the restaurant. The sales lady started to throw us uneasy looks!

The shoes I picked up were now below the price tag of that Christmas gift. There were limited designs and sizes. I had to choose another pair, that whatever fitted. In the end papa paid more! I looked at his face, to see signs of disgruntles! None. He seemed satisfied. I told him nicely, next time he buys me a gift, I give him the list first I’m easy to please. Give me a good reading book and leave me alone for a day! It’s Christmas for me!

And there’s that Winter Jacket!
Everything fits except the sleeves. They go down to my knees! An assistant of the store already advised papa that we could have the sleeves shortened, should they not fit. Right! We have to pay for the service and wait for days to get the jacket back. This afternoon, while David is sleeping, I did it myself. In five minutes. Free, no rushing among the soldes-crowds, no freaking queuing at the store, no pushing of stroller in the cold and no headache!

Yes, I’m such a bore! But DIY? - Saves you time! Well about that white hair, I’ll have to ask Papa for a pulling-white-hair-therapy session. If he gets really grumpy, I have no choice but seek professional help. There’s no fuckin way I’ll walk around with white crown!