Office cheer

My department's official christmas portrait. Sunday couldn't join us, but he lent us his two boys..

Amy, May, Liza, boy #1, Michelle, boy#2, and me. Cheers!

Incomunicado

The stars have aligned, and planets neptune and jupiter plus the rest of the constellation, including all the signs of the chinese horoscope have decided that today December 18 will be a day of complete rest, stillness, and zen meditation. I still have to pinch myself to make sure this is real .... our dear dear IT guys, bless their souls, decided to pull out my computer yesterday afternoon for 'isolation' and repair, and the service unit will not be available till tonight -- which means -- NO EMAILS THE WHOLE DAY! YAHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Out-of-office Asssistant - Monday, December 17, 5:00 pm: My PC has been pulled out for repair, and replacement will not be available till tomorrow afternoon. Thus I will not be able to respond to your emails till Wednesday, December 19. If urgent, kindly re-direct to either of my staff ecdrilon@rgoc.com.ph or pegomez@rgoc.com.ph. You can also send me an sms message. Thank you.

Ah...bliss!

Christmas won't be Christmas....

"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled poor Jo lying on the rug. I remember reading Little Women one million times when I was 12, and that was the very first line of this classic story. I couldn't agree with Jo more. Christmas really won't be Christmas without any presents, which accounts for December being my most stressful month, I honestly wish I could strike it out from my calendar. It isn't the money, really, since you can actually find real cool stuff for only Pxx.50 now. (Found some super cute pot holders shaped like huge fish..where you insert your hand in the belly and your fingers into the head..and the mouth actually moves, so you can use it as hand puppet at the same time.) Pxx.50!!! Am giving it to sooooooooooooooo many people. In fact, I better erase the price now and just put xx's instead, in case they get to read this and think I'm a cheapskate. Another steal was this "mini spa" which, again, I got only for Pxx.75. I bought the entire mound of mini spas stacked one on top of the other in the aisle in Robinson's. It consists of a cute painted ceramic burner, 2 votive candles, and 2 tiny bottles of oil, in cute packaging. with ribbon pa, so you don't need to wrap the box. What a steal! I dread to think what the oil smells like...

So.. As i was saying, it isn't so much the money, but the TIME and ENERGY spent in looking for these 'steals' (because I don't have enough money).

Please don't ask me to explain.

A Ratwak Christmas

I'm tamad to make kuwento, it's enough that I relate the after-effects of the Ratwakan Christmas Party held last Friday December 7. Vicky never got home. She doesn't remember much, she just suddenly woke up in Carmi's house.


Q called the next day declaring he was about to check into Makati Medical.

I had to nurse a muscle-strained right arm for staying too long in one position (holding the airsickness bag right infront of Carmi's mouth) during the 45 minute ride from Alabang to Makati. My head was leaning against the window with eyes closed, but I was scared stiff she would vomit all over me. So I held the bag in mid-air the whole time.

It seems the only sane and sober person in the group was our unsung hero Ricky. Since it is his duty now to ferry all of us rat girls to and from ratwakans, we make sure he gets to drink ONLY diet coke during the last hour of the party. We call him our bus driver. Ginny is supposed to be his navigator or the only girl who cannot fall asleep on the way home. Part of her wifely duties of course.

The party was another record breaker in terms of enjoyment decibels. Shouting, screaming, laughing, guffawing, giggling, snorting, drinking, AND .. dancing to eightees music! -- See pics -- Carmi as Carmi and Malu as Alma Moreno!

Who killed my door?

Oh no, another question that's up there with the likes of Who killed Ninoy. This time, why is the door of my bedroom getting too big for its hole? About two months ago, Luis boxed the center of my bedroom door with herculean force when he lost his temper while engaged in a verbal battle with moi. So I guess instead of boxing me, he boxed the door, which is definitely the lesser of two evils I suppose. ANYWAY, nothing happened to the door - or so I thought. But we noticed that little by little, as the days and weeks wore on, the door became tighter and tighter.. as though it were expanding horizontally! The tightness was coming from the width, not the height of the door.. meaning it wasn't dropping. It was just growing sideways! We at first tried SANDING OFF a good portion - which improved the situation a bit for a few days, till it mysteriously grew again. And so, with a vengeance we borrowed a CHISEL and started slicing off layers of wood from the side. That improved things tremendously, what a relief ... till...after a week... just like some gremlin or monster or blob from a horror film, the door slowly started increasing its width again. As of TODAY, it WILL NOT CLOSE.

Luis thought of posting this very mysterious problem in yahooquestions - And so one fine afternoon I did just that, and voila..got a slew of mean replies ranging from I should have boxed my kid instead to why not enroll him in anger management courses -- all pointing to the fact that I screwed up this whole motherhood business...and THAT is why my door will not close. Total of eleven replies in 24 hours... Click on the link below and you be the judge.
My Yahoo Question

Cupcake wishes

The idea of making birthday wishes over lit cupcakes is not exactly an original but who cares, all 15 of us had such a warm fuzzy feeling this afternoon as we celebrated Mommy's 78th birthday doing the candle-on-a-cupcake wishing thing. The kids (we call them kids but they're ages range from 13 to 20 years old) organized everything with a little help from their youthful auntie Mel. And the result was a tear jerking, heartwarming ceremony where each of us recited our special message for Mom while holding our lit cupcakes. Mom blew out the candles after each message. And of course the most special candle was the one held by Dad who gave a lengthy, candle-melting, long and winding but very touching speech that left us all teary eyed. And he ended it with a passionate kiss ma-la Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr.. pant pant... see pic below.