Illness

I went home early yesterday, planning on studying for my exam this afternoon. Mainly because in my hurry yesterday morning, I left my school things on the bamboo set. What an idiot.

3 pm and I was dozing on the same set. I wake up to my mobile fone beeping. It was Dale and he was in a meeting. This, in reply to my earlier text message saying that I miss him terribly. So I did what any mature person would do: I sent him sexy text messages about how horny I was for him.

I sent about three then went back to my nap. An hour later, my fone rings and it's Dale. We spent some 20 or so minutes laughing at how he had to keep a straight face while talking to some business associate or something. I got him real good. After he hung up, I hunched down to some serious cramming.

But then my kidney started to ache with a dull throbbing pain. In a few minutes, it was too much to ignore. I had to drive to the drugstore for some meds. The boon of having a sister who's a doctor is that you don't have to go to the clinic to get diagnosed. With the modern wonders of communication, all it took was a text message. I asked Laurent to go with me.

An hour after taking the antibiotics and the painkillers, I'm curled up in my bed, crying and feeling sorry for myself for not having anyone to hold me in my moment of kidney ache, not even cats to shoo off.

I wake up at 12 midnight to take the meds again and tried to study. Nothing doing, so I went back to bed.

4 am, and I'm up, taking a bath and shaving for my date with Dale tonight.

5.35 am, I'm at the office trying to study through the dull throbbings of my kidney.

8.00 am, I take the meds again, check my email, my blogs. No, no comments today. Belle de Jour has two new posts, very entertaining. I've sent the url to her blog to Dale who's found it very addictive, and very entertaining. He said her blog makes voyeurs out of her readers. I wondered if I should send him the url to "The Inner Slut."

Nah.

8.10 am, my mom calls up to tell me that she and my dad will be leaving for my place at such and such an hour. I told her I planned to buy mussels Saturday evening, and asked what I should do with the buggers. I'll get oysters as well.

She's bringing adobo. Mmmmm....home-cooked meal after a month of isolation. Can't wait.

RSS

I understand the logic of site feed. For purposes of newsreaders, yes, it's a great tool. But I don't really understand why I have to put up a link to my blog's site feed on my blog itself. When I click on the link, I go to this page where my entries are shown, without the sidebar menu.

So?

What do I do with that, then?

Visitors

My folks are coming over this weekend, along with my niece and nephew. I have to get some mussels and oysters for them, especially my dad. Cavite, being a coastal municipality, is famous for mussels. Not so much oysters but I suppose where there are mussels, oysters won't be too far behind.

Raymond's going to be with them. He's a friend of my brother's, and has easily become a friend of the family's. Great guy, him. He's my car's mechanic and my tv's technician. He's coming over to connect my tv to an outdoor antenna. Needless to say, it's been four weeks of no tv. No big deal, really, as I get to watch tv only on weekends.

I'm actually looking forward to having my mom come over. I met her last Monday for lunch. We went to this Vietnamese noodle house and it was good. I miss her. I miss the craziness in that house. All these characters, aged five to sixty-five, parading around as a matter of course. It's only when you put some distance between yourself and your small little world that you get to appreciate the uniqueness of each other. It's easier to forgive when you're not so close to each other's throats.

More on laundry

I don't know what it is about laundry, but I seem to be obsessed with it. Yesterday, an officemate asked me why I looked so tired. I said it was the laundry. I've never realized it till last Sunday that being a mother was a monumental task. And I was doing laundry for just myself. I got a glimpse of how it was to manage a household of five, and it nearly drove me insane. The physical exhaustion is just too much for one person to handle. I now have new respect for mothers and wives.

Laundritis

Dale has diagnosed me with laundritis. I had remarked to him with much passion that I wasn't doing laundry that way again. Otherwise, I'd die. Hence, laundritis. I had to get the cure (a washing machine). Ah! But she doesn't have any money! Yes, but doesn't she have plastic currency? Yes, she has three of those, two of which are maxed out, and the third is an extension card of her dad's.

Never fear, as my Chinese horoscope has predicted for me in the Year of the Monkey, benefactors will appear left and right to lend a hand. And, voila! Nelson offers the use of his credit card, payable on the 15th of next month, extendible for another 15 days should I have difficulties in coming up with the money. Cool.

So we're picking up the machine on Saturday morning, after which i'll go report to work and then to school, and meet him again afterwards so we go home to my place together. He'll stay overnight and till Sunday, I suppose. This is something new.

Laundry

I did my laundry yesterday. A week's worth of laundry. Gad, how my body aches. It was hand-washing, folks. I still have to get a washing machine. I could have sent the whole caboodle to a laundromat but it was too much of a hassle, considering that I still had to locate one near my place and especially because I had run out of money. I honestly don't know where my money went.

Now that I'm living on my own -- again -- I have to watch every centavo. Back to scrimping and saving -- again.

This past week, I had nothing but bread and margarine, with a bit of fruit, in the evenings. I didn't have any money and nor time to go to market for greens for a salad, or even the vinegar, salt and pepper for the vinaigrette. Even the apples I got from my mom. I miss being at home with my family. But I have to admit, eating less in the evening has led to some loss of weight.

Back to the laundry. I was thinking this morning in the car, driving to work, that I had this wonderful opportunity to compalin about the division of labor in the house, except that I didn't have anyone to divide the labor with and, thus, to complain to. Did I feel lonely? No, I was grinning as I handed the toll gate teller my fee for that morning. But, seriously, folks, I need to get me a washing machine.

I also thought about the fact that I have two blogs. The "Dying" blog, I realized, is for my secret identity, the one no one knows anything about. This "Alone" blog is for the real me. This is me.

This is me.

Me. One who does laundry. One who runs out of money. One who goes hungry in the night.

Me. Alone, I have meaning, existence, plot and funny lines. I'm a sitcom all by my lonesome.