i'm so sleepy but the sleepyhouse needs me

I hadn't had much sleep over the last few days, much less time to blog, so here I am again doing the bulletpoints. It's amazing how my life is now convertible into bulletpoints. But I digress.

• My weekend was good. Running a ballet school is a breeze; perhaps the hardest part about it was getting up and leaving early enough to get to the studio before the students got there. That was the only stressful part of it, teaching all those classes were not only fun but encouraging. Encouraging because I now feel like teaching is one of those things that I'm excellent at. And I need the encouragement because scroll down to the next bulletpoint.

• It's more or less decided. I'm going to teach in UE. I think next semester. I haven't signed contracts yet and I don't know how much I'm supposed to get, but I've been called to examine the curriculum and prepare a tentative syllabus. I'll give you details when things are more definite and carved in stone.

• Some bad news. I was picked on. Because I'm the only one they can pick on. I felt bad about it because I couldn't believe that these were the people I had to deal with and the impassioned, morally-sound protector of the helpless in me just found the entire thing unfair. Don't take it out on me if you're unhappy with what you're given, if you think what you have is going to be taken away from you. Don't take it out on me if you were born an asshole and will remain an asshole your entire life. Don't take it out on me if you can't take it out on people who do much worse and get away with it. But I was trained to know from the get-go that life is often unfair and many assholes walk the earth. I was trained not to show that their pettiness and spitefullness got to me, even if they did.

• On a brighter note, I rock. I had three performances today, and while high school boys weren't falling in love at me the way they were with Tara, I danced my butt off in all of them and was very happy with myself. I did not fall apart even if my body was tired (and my butt was killing me, since I did dance it off) and my toes were painful. I slipped only once - at the end of the tours de finis in Classical Symphony but caught myself and threw myself into that arabesque and tried to hold that penchee against the ineptitude of my partner and saved that dance when it would have been unsalvageable. I pat myself on my back.

• My butt still hurts though. Maybe I need a Mathilde-esque massage.

• I really don't care if high school boys aren't screaming when I do my curtsy, it's just funny to mention because I had gotten so used to being hounded by the underaged and then when they finally prefer somebody younger, I'm all WTF? A woman's gotta have her pride, ya know? Anyway, in the real world, there's only one younger man for me, even if he's only younger by eight months. He matches me on every level and I'm still reeling from the wonderful weekend we spent together. I so look forward to the coming weekends (and the days between).

• While I did enjoy that weekend of freedom, can I just say that I'm glad that my family is back from vacation? I missed my sister, you can't tell how much. I even miss how she gets mad at me, that's how much I missed her. We're gonna go watch Meet The Fockers as soon as we can (yes, we're losers - even my mom said, "You haven't seen that yet?" - and we shall rectify that).

• I have two days off. I'm going to spend most of them sleeping in bliss. This week has officially ended for me, I've done enough dancing, sunning, stressing, crying, laughing, loving to last me all winter. Well, till I wake up again on Saturday, that is.

going indie

My parents and sister are in Bora. My brother is getting ready for an entrance exam for higher education in UP early Sunday morning. I am going to spend the weekend without parents or relatives, or anyone looking over my shoulder. It's like a dry run for what my life's gonna be like when I start to live on my own.

A short thought (or a long one that I intend to be short): how do you exactly live on your own in a country like this? In my case, it will only be when I leave the country (if ever) or get married (if ever). But then if I get married, I don't think that's exactly classified as living on your own. And if I ever leave the country, I doubt I would do so on my own. Okay, that's short enough.

I've been living pseudo-independently since 1999, though I've had to come home every weekend to teach in the studio, and since I'd be living with the rents every weekend, I never really thought of it as being on my own. When I was still working for that record label, my officemate and friend Jennie said to me right before she left her parents' house to live in an apartment two hours away, "Now I won't be so envious of you anymore." It only occurred to me then that what I was doing was considered living on my own. Even if I did come home to the rents on the weekends.

I consider this weekend as total freedom because I'm running the studio on my own. I have to make my own means to get there, to find something to eat, to get home. I can do anything I want. And even if Lucas comes home at any time, it will feel like he's only visiting.

Before they left, my Mom hugged me so alarmingly hard, like they had sent me off to prison or given me up for adoption or something. I reiterate, how do you ever really live on your own?

I hope I have time to make Nigella's Bitter Orange Ice Cream. Yum.

i miss discovery travel and adventure - a food post

I've been watching a lot of cooking shows on the Lifestyle Network and ETC lately, to fill in the gap of Discovery Travel and Adventcha, a channel Skycable no longer carries (I would love to write to Skycable about this matter but I'm not the one paying for my own cable and we all know what happens after I announce that I will write a letter of complaint, so let's not pursue the issue). The ones in ETC are kinda lame, but Lifestyle has some great cooking shows. The best is this fabulous woman named Nigella. I love Nigella. She's this beautiful big woman who cooks the most scrumptious looking food and she looks like she's super enjoying the food she's eating when she's done cooking them. That's how food shows should be. I know I'm always hungry after I watch an episode.

I've been eating a lot lately. I think because my parents were rather worried about my purported anorexia that I have to stuff my face every chance I get to keep everyone relaxed about the topic. Beyond eating a lot, I'm also cooking a lot. Jacqui is laughing at me when I start cooking after watching people cook on TV but I don't care, it looks good and I'm not on a diet. I'm also loving that my culinary skills are slowly improving. Sure, they may not be complicated meals, but just you wait, I'll be cooking stews in no time.

You'd love stews, wouldn't you?

Anyway, if I had one complaint about Nigella, it's that she sometimes mumbles when she explains how to cook something and she made this cool orange flavored ice cream but I don't know what white powdery substance she put in before she put cream. Was that flour? Baking powder? Cornstarch? How am I gonna make orange flavored ice cream now?

Right now, I want to cook some tikoy. I've been thinking of tikoy a lot lately, I guess because it's Chinese New Year and a lot of tikoy is on display in stores. I'll buy some over the weekend and fry them at home. I haven't bought tikoy yet because Jacqui said to wait and see if any of her Chinese students give her some. And then my sister has a rare ditz moment, today of all days: the MRT breaks down and she doesn't know how to commute to La Salle from the weekday house, so she goes home and calls the school to let her students know she's not making it to class. So if there ever was any tikoy, we won't be seeing it anytime soon, if at all.

Speaking of Chinese food, I had dinner with the rents and sibs at North Park on Macapagal Highway two nights in a row over the weekend. I had never really eaten at North Park before, not even the one on Makati Ave, as I'd always be in Hap Chan instead. Anyway, it was my first time to try their soft tofu with mushrooms and brocolli flowers, which is the best thing I've eaten in any Chinese restaurant, super rivalling Hap Chan's garlic brocolli. I thought eating there the very next night would kill the experience, but I realize that the food there is made of sterner stuff.

Also, can I just comment that the comfort rooms in that building are the best public rest rooms I've ever been in, better than the ones in Greenbelt. These have handheld bidets (are they still bidets if you can hold them and aim? I refuse to call them mini-showers)! What gas station rest room has bidets in each stall (oh yeah, there are four stalls)? I hope they remain well maintained.

Back to food. Right now, I want to eat lumpia but I have to wrap it. My mom makes the meat mixture and she sent it over with lumpia wrapper. I'm an expert at wrapping lumpia. But I have never made the meat mixture before though. I can actually picture it in the future, asking my mom for lumpia to wrap to feed my kids. Right now, they remain in my fridge, unwrapped (the lumpia, not my kids). I haven't had time to wrap any, I've been doing too many things (I swear, going online is as addictive as coffee and sex, there should be some study made and some form of cure created). I'm going to wake up early tomorrow and have some for lunch.

(Meaning I should go off to sleep now. Goodnight!)

my sala costume, aka the supposed wedding dress

full length:

The photo is rather blurry because it was taken by my sister with my 3650 and not a real camera so the resolution kinda sucks and my face looks like I have the mumps. But you can see the dress in its entirety here. Check it out, it's got lace sleeves and a lace overwrap over the entire top - it's so pretty, and petticoats under the full skirt and, my favorite, a train.

This ballet, Mantones de Manila, is an autobiography of the choreographer asides from a showcase of different settings of rural Filipinos who like to dance. There are three sections of the ballet: Sala, where four giddy dalaga Filipinas dance in a traditional Filipino living room while preparing for the wedding of their friend, Tony Fabella's tribute to Alice Reyes and his time spent with the early Ballet Philippines; Piging, where couples attend a party and dance the polka, tango, and a fast waltz, Tito Tony's tribute to Philippine folk dance; and Entablado, where Tito Tony dresses everyone up in tutus and boasts of our aptitude for classical ballet, representing his time making ballets with PBT. In Sala, the steps are more neo-classical/modern-y, with more emphasis on body movements (contracts and releases) and arm gestures than leg movements. Whatever leg movements there are exist to play with and display the long, flowing, floor-length skirt. Just a little backgrounder so that y'all won't be wondering what I'm doing dancing in a dress like this.

closer

Check out the detail of lace on the neckline, the sleeves, the hem of the bodice and the parts of the skirt beside the purple ribbon that line the sides of the skirt. Each dress has a different color per dancer. There's a nice blue one that actually fits me better but I was being generous because Tasha has a slightly bigger build than me and the blue one is bigger than the purple one, and so on. I'm also taken with the headdress, bunches of pink chiffon sewn together to look like flowers, framed by random beads.

view from the top

This pic is just here because I think I look pretty in it. And look at my eyelashes. I think God didn't give me eyelashes because I'd be too pretty if He did and it would upset some balance in the world. (Haha, kapal!)

I don't think I'd wear something like this when I get married, though. I'd probably show more skin. And a veil that falls to the floor. Knowing me.

thirty and planning

I attended my mom's high school homecoming the other day - not the event itself but the tech rehearsal the day before. I've never been in a room full of women all older than me whose ages I more or less was aware of. It's strange how that kind of situation can give you an entirely different perspective of life. There were batches of sixty year olds, fifty year olds, forty year olds and I balked suddenly when I realized I'm only ten years younger than them (the mommy-looking forty year olds onstage)!

I made two important decisions then and there: 1. Instead of making my future brood of children my big achievement of my life, I will go do everything I want to do for myself first. And 2. I will be utterly gorgeous even when I reach the age of 40, 50, 60 and beyond.

(Though my second decision must be making people shake their heads at me because of course I'm not ever ever gonna look my age, given how I look now. One of my classmates, a delightful woman named Lilliput, asked my mom how old I was and she misheard my mom's reply of "Thirty" for "Thirteen." "But she does look only thirteen!" she exclaimed when my mom protested. Yeah, I fool everyone.)

My first decision is something I've actually been planning for a while, a long while already, I'm just not quite following through yet. But I've thought about it over the weekend and I've figured it out. It's not my life that needs direction. Just me. I know where I want to go, I just have too many things I want to do that I'm juggling them quite badly. They're all up in the air and I concentrate on the first thing that falls. Then I totally ignore that when something else comes crashing down. It's no way to live!!

I'm going to really crack the whip on myself from now on. I have a really good job prospect looming on the horizon, so before I take that on, I want all my personal projects done and out of the way already. I'm thinking that even if I don't get the job, I would have finalized the updated syllabus for our family's ballet school, published that compilation of my old blog archives, written at least half of my Maria/Waya novel, started real work on my thesis.

Sounds like a plan, man. Now, get the whip out!