Random Threads

I took these photos last month. A fun night was had by all. I met some new "old friends" in Subic in the last few months. Cheryl Singzon who arranged for us to be extras in the Filipino movie, "My Best Friend's Girlfriend" , has been a great resource for information and is fun to hang out with! It's always fun and nice to meet other confident and modern ladies. (I n the top photo L to R : Cheryl, me, Khana) Then she introduced us to Kahna Verzosa, whose family owns the Subic Park Hotel and she is it's GM. What a great gal!! We had them both over one night and starting goofing around! I plied them with wine and we all got silly! So here are those shots wine induced me to take! Actually I am old enough to be their Aunty, so I have adopted them and am now their Aunt Mame! I got really bad leg cramps the night before last and it left my calves knotted up, so last night I threw a massage party here at the house and had them over to luxuriate and relax toget...

I have thought about what people say about health, wealth and happines. Of late I am missing the health part, and I can tell you all the rest don't mean much without it. I have been having a battle with health most of my life, but the last few years have been an swim upstream! Just when my life is so full; a great hubby , a baby in the house and I'm finally near my parents and living in my beloved Philippines after spending most of my adult life in the United States, my health has taken a real down turn. It's so hard to keep my spirits up when I can't get my body to cooperate! Yet I am still filled with so much gratitude for all the other blessings in my life! I figure, it could be even worse. Especially when I look all around me and see other people in much more difficult life situations. At least I am surrounded by those that really love me, and the natural beauty of Subic is so aweinspiring. I took that photo of the Oriole in the tree outside my bedroom window! Ahh...

Raising a baby at the late age of 59! It's not always easy for me, I must admit. I want to do the right thing for her always. But my patience isn't what it could be. Watching Alysha from infancy, at 1 week old, to date at 7 months has been a revelation! I am often times filled with awe, interspered with perplexity! She is so smart and is fully aware of what is going on around her. She notices anything and everything around her!  I am really looking forward to the day that she can talk! Even a child talking back has got to be better than the squeals and grunts a baby makes! This challenge I am up to! It's the not knowing what she needs that frustrates and bewilders me! As far as baby's go, she is really a good one! And since Dave and I love to shop for her, she is quite the fashionista already!

I wrote this poem when I was 9 or 10 years old. I didn't think about it, it just came rolling out of me. It's the first and last poem I ever wrote! “Long ago in an ancient and forgotten land, We strolled through green meadows hand in hand. Eyes gazing upon a foamy billowy sea and there we sat, just you and me. You told me stories of your adventurous youth,me, my girlish fantasies. Oh! How we laughed, not a care in the world except for one another. But that was long before life took us both Into her gaping mouth and sucked us into her belly. Now not years but lifetimes since, I can still see your sparkling eyes and Eternal spirit. And love is not the childhood dream I once held and lost. It is more. Yes! much, much more.”

For us dear, Never a tomorrow. I fell in love when I was 16 years old. After having endured the traumas described in previous blog page named "A Child No More" , I was ready for some magic. I was not your average teenager by then. Falling in love changed my life’s path forever. I always held an ideal of what the man I fell in love with would be like. It seemed like everyone I really liked then was spoken for or simply wouldn’t be caught dead with me. I decided I’d rather have boys as friends because I couldn’t stand it when they got all fawn eyed and gooey. I wanted a man who knew his own mind and could teach me things I didn’t know about life. When I was 16 Being alone with so many secrets I just wanted someone to love me...truly love me. My love was doomed from the start. I met “Leo”, a pen name, to protect the innocent, in the office of a friend, who happened to be a dentist fixing a bridge for him. A totally unromantic setting to meet the man of your dreams. B...

At the tender age of 13 my life took an awful turn.  It irrevocably tore whatever remnant of childhood might have lingered in myself. I only remember that my parents were out of town in the provinces...in those days, no cell phones, not even a phone in the province (bukids) for my parents to call and check on us. A lot of the details of this incident are now vague, my brains' protection against the trauma I suppose. I remember asking my brother to take me to the beach in Batangas, I cannot be more specific and later you will see why. He did. He dropped me off, I assumed he would come back the next day to fetch me, which he did not. After he left, I went to one of my real blood uncles beach house which I assumed I could use but was closed for some odd reason, even the caretaker was no where to be found. I strolled down the beach till it became dark and I came upon the home of a family “friend” allied by friendship since my grandfathers time. I knocked and my two “titos” ...

At the Batangas Ice Plant My first big crossroad came when my parents took me to pay their respects to my auntie whose son was hit and killed by an automobile while he was riding his bicycle. I think I might have been about 15. All I remember are the pictures in my head still so vivid. It must have been soon after the incident, we were at the mortuary, his body had not yet been prepared. I had to go to the bathroom, I followed the directions and wound up opening a door, alas, my eyes behold my cousins’ broken and bloody body, on a wooden table. Blood everywhere, his arms akimbo, broken, broken everywhere it seemed. I stood paralyzed and stunned in morbid fascination. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t take my eyes off this horror. It shocked me to see a thing which was only earlier human, alive and vibrant. I think this is the first time that death was made real to me. I thought “where are the strings attached that animate us”. He’s only meat now, a carcass, an empty shell. I though...