Wordless Wednesday - Before and After

To a mother like me, this is more like what I want to see each time I go into her playroom. Organized. Clean. But then again to my child’s preference…



This is more like what she had in mind.



Happy Wednesday again everyone.

I Love You THIS Much Award

Isn't she sweet?!



Dette has become one of my good friends in the blogging world. And she gave me this cool award. So sweet! Love you back girl! Please check her out at MammaDawg. She has great post.

Now I'm handing this award to my good friends Debbie of A Fil-Am Journey and Vhiel of Can of Thoughts. I love you this much guys!

Another Sleepless Sleepy Nights

It’s 1:18 in the morning and I should be in bed right now.

This is one of those sleepless sleepy nights. I have about five piles of laundry to go. And what in the world have I doing for the last 8 hours? Hmm, let me think.

Darn. At 3:13 this afternoon I realized I had to send out a laptop back to San Antonio and it was too late. FedEx had already come by for the day. This means I had to stop by their office on my way home. Just another stop I didn’t wan to make.

-- Some How I Tripped. --

Got home around 6:10. Gee time just flew by. My husband got this coupon from Nike for 25% off entire purchase of $125 or more. Since I’ve needed a new pair of running shoes we decided to go. I got me a new pair of running shoes, shirt for hubbiepooh, a sandal for little miss sunshine and a pair of shoes for her too. It was funny looking at her walking in her new shoes for the first time. She was wobbling. But to my surprise she has not tried taking them off. Let see how long those shoes will stay on.

Somehow from all that walking around Nike, we realized we were not in the mood for taking-the-steak-out-of-the-refrigerator-thaw-it-out-start-the-grill-steam-the-broccoli-grill-the-steak-eat-clean-up. On our way home, we stopped by On the Border for dinner. Got home around 9:40. Already? Oh, by this time little miss sunshine still has her shoes on, surprisingly. She must have liked them better than sandals. Or she just does not know yet how to take them off.

It’s amazing how time just came in a swoop and not realize how unaccomplished I was.

So it’s 1:37, I better go to bed… more coffee for me tomorrow.

First, Now and Last

I got a tagged Vhiel
So here goes...


First

* First name: Cathy
* First screen name: ccandia79
* First funeral: My uncle died and don't remember how old I was
* First kiss: not telling, lol
* First love: as is this one, lol

Last

* Last beverage drank: what else, coffee
* Last food consumed: banana
* Last phone call: HP Technical Support
* Last time showered: this morning
* Last CD played: Jim Brickman in my car this morning on my drive to work
* Last website visited: Anything and Everything in Between

Now

* Single or taken: absolutely taken and never will be available
* Gender: Female
* Birthday: last Sunday
* Sign: Cancer
* Shoe size: 6 1/2 - 7
* Thinking about: Going home

Participants:

1.) Me and Mine
2.) Creative in Me
3.) Little Peanut
4.) For the LOVE of Food
5.) Pea in a Pod
6.) SugarMagnolias
7.) Blogsilog
8.) Captured Memories
9.) Cherry’s Comfort Zone
10.) Thinking Out Loud
11.) Wishing and Hoping
12.) Buzzy Me
13.) My Precious Niche
14.) Just Me.. Eds
15.) Eds Mommy Life
16.) Can of Thoughts
17.) Designs By Vhiel
18.) Vhiel's Corner
19.) Anything and Everything in Between
20.) Me and My World
21.) You...

I'm tagging everyone!

My 29th Year

It has been a pretty amazing ride for me. Now that I have reached this stage of my life, I am so thankful for everything that I have accomplished and most of all blessed with. Here are some of the things I can still remember while growing up.

From the first year ‘til 4, can’t remember anything there. They were all vague.

5 – I wanted to go kindergarten. I passed all the tests they had given me but still resisted saying I was too young and had to wait one more year. I wanted to go to school so bad.

6- I remember climbing up the burner so I can make rice. And in the old days we didn’t use any gas stove. It was the “find your own firewood and use them to make fire for cooking”.

7 – We had to move out of the compound owned by the company my step dad was working for and relocate to the city.

8- I was a transfer at this new school and was placed with the B section class. A week later I was moved to the A section class.

9-10 I was always in the honor roll though I started hating school because I find it pretty boring. I also started getting in to trouble for stealing fruits from our neighbor’s farm. I get spanked all the time. No wonder.

11-My mom transferred to a private school and I hated it. There was this boy teased me all the time because of my nose. And when sixth grade came, I moved back to my old school. Hmm, I wonder what happened him now.

12-Back to old school

13-16 High School… It was amazing times. Who does not love high school? Crushes. Barkadas. Competition to remain on the top five was on until I was in the 4th year.

17-20 College. I went to a technical school the first year and the year after I transferred to a catholic school. Played for the volleyball team. By the time I was in the third year, I got broken-hearted the first time. But all in all, I had a group of really good friends that were truly irreplaceable. They’re all married now and have kids on their own.

21-25 Moved to United States and learning every trick and trade of living abroad.

26- 27 I found the man of my dreams and decided to spend the rest of my life with him.

28 – Had a beautiful baby girl.

29 – Got addicted to blogging, lol.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Cathy.

Saturday Scrapbook - Shy

This is a scrap I just made recently. Love this one a lot. She was so shy when I tried taking her picture after she had handful of cheese puffs.

You are such a messy eater but hey, that's one of the joy of being a child. Don't worry Mommy is not expecting any clean ups afterwards. Just keep smiling and make Mommy's day.

Join Scrapbook Saturday!

This Is Definitely Your Stress Release!

This is so funny.... take time to read all the way to the end. The following is from a British journalist stationed in the Philippines . His observations are so hilarious!!!! This was written in 1999. Matter of Taste By Matthew Sutherland I have now been in this country for over six years, and consider myself in most respects well assimilated. However, there is one key step on the road to full assimilation, which I have yet to take, and that's to eat BALUT. The day any of you sees me eating balut, please call immigration and ask them to issue me a Filipino passport. Because at that point there will be no turning back. BALUT, for those still blissfully ignorant non-Pinoys out there, is a fertilized duck egg. It is commonly sold with salt in a piece of newspaper,much like English fish and chips, by street vendors usually after dark,presumably so you can't see how gross it is. It's meant to be an aphrodisiac,a lthough I can't imagine anything more likely to dispel sexual desire than crunching on a partially formed baby duck swimming in noxious fluid. The embryo in the egg comes in varying stages of development, but basically it is not considered macho to eat one without fully discernable feathers, beak, and claws. Some say these crunchy bits are the best. Others prefer just to drink the so-called 'soup', the vile, pungent liquid that surrounds the aforementioned feathery fetus...excuse me; I have to go and throw up now. I'll be back in a minute. Food dominates the life of the Filipino. People here just love to eat. They eat at least eight times a day. These eight official meals are called, in order: breakfast, snacks, lunch, merienda, merienda ceyna, dinner, bedtime snacks and no one saw me take that cookie from-the-fridge-so-it-doesn't -count. The short gaps in between these mealtimes are spent eating Sky Flakes from the open packet that sits on every desktop. You're never far fro m food in the Philippines . If you doubt this, next time you're driving home from work, try this game. See how long you can drive without seeing food and I don't mean a distant restaurant, or a picture of food. I mean a man on the sidewalk frying fish balls, or a man walking through the traffic selling nuts or candy. I bet it's less than one minute. Here are some other things I've noticed about food in the Philippines : Firstly, a meal is not a meal without rice - even breakfast.In the UK , I could go a whole year without eating rice. Second, it's impossible to drink without eating. A bottle of San Miguel just isn't the same without gambas or beef tapa. Third, no one ventures more than two paces from their house without baon (food in small container) and a container of something cold to drink. You might as well ask a Filipino to leave home without his pants on. And lastly, where I come from, you eat with a knife and fork. Here, you eat with a spoon and fork. You try eating rice swimming in fish sauce with a knife.
One really nice thing about Filipino food culture is that people always ask you to SHARE their food. In my office, if you catch anyone attacking their baon, they will always go, "Sir! KAIN TAYO!" ("Let's eat!"). This confused me, until I realized that they didn't actually expect me to sit down and start munching on their boneless bangus. In fact, the polite response is something like, "No thanks, I just ate." But the principle is sound - if you have food on your plate, you are expected to
share it,however hungry you are, with those who may be even hungrier. I think that's great! In fact, this is frequently even taken one step further.
Many Filipinos use "Have you eaten yet?" ("KUMAIN KA NA?") as a general greeting, irrespective of time of day or location. Some foreigners think Filipino food is fairly dull compared to other Asian cuisines. Actually lots of it is very good: Spicy dishes like Bicol Expr ess (strange, a dish named after a train); anything cooked with coconut milk; anything KINILAW; and anything ADOBO. And it's hard to beat the sheer wanton, cholesterolic frenzy of a good old-fashioned LECHON de leche (roast pig) feast. Dig a pit, light a fire, add 50 pounds of animal fat on a stick, and cook until crisp. Mmm, mmm... you can actually feel your arteries constricting with each successive mouthful. I also share one key Pinoy trait --- a sweet tooth. I am thus the only foreigner I know who does not complain about sweet bread, sweet burgers, sweet spaghetti, sweet banana ketchup, and so on. I am a man who likes to put jam on his pizza. Try it! It's the weird food you want to avoid. In addition to duck fetus in the half-shell, items to avoid in the Philippines include pig's blood soup (DINUGUAN); bull's testicle soup, the strangely-named "SOUP NUMBER FIVE" (I dread to think what numbers one through four are); and the ubiquitous, stinky shrimp paste, BAGOONG, and it's equa lly stinky sister, PATIS. Filipinos are so addicted to these latter items that they will even risk arrest or deportation trying to smuggle them into countries like Australia and the USA, which wisely ban the importation of items you can smell from more than 100 paces. Then there's the small matter of the purple ice cream. I have never been able to get my brain around eating purple food; the ubiquitous UBE leaves me cold. And lastly on the subject of weird food, beware: that KALDERETANG KAMBING (goat) could well be KALDERETANG ASO (dog)... The Filipino, of course, has a well -developed sense of food.. Here's a typical Pinoy food joke: "I'm on a seafood diet. "What's a seafood diet?" "When I see food, I eat it!" Filipinos also eat strange bits of animals --- the feet, the head, the guts, etc., usually barbecued on a stick.. These have been given witty names, like "ADIDAS"
(chicken's feet);"KURBATA" (either just chicken's neck, or"neck and thigh" as in "neck-tie"); "WALKMAN" (pigs ears); "PAL"(chicken wings); "HELMET" (chicken head); "IUD" (chicken intestines), and BETAMAX" (video-cassette-like blocks of animal blood). Yum,yum. Bon appetit. WHEN I arrived in the Philippines from the UK six years ago, one of the first cultural differences to strike me was names. The subject has provided a continuing source of amazement and amusement ever since. The first unusual thing, from an English perspective,is that everyone here has a nickname. In the staid and boring United Kingdom, we have nicknames in kindergarten, but when we move into adulthood we tend, I am glad to say, to lose them. The second thing that struck me is that Philippine names for both girls and boys tend to be what we in the UK would regard as overbearingly cutesy for anyone over about five. Fifty-five-year-olds colleague put it. Where I come from, a boy with a nickname like Boy Blue or Honey Boy would be beaten to death at school by preadolescent bullies, and never make it to adulthood. So, probably, would girls with names like Babes, Lovely, Precious, Peachy or Apples. Yuk, ech ech. Here,however, no one bats an eyelid. Then I noticed how many people have what I have come to call "door-bell names". These are nicknames that sound like-well, doorbells. There are millions of them. Bing, Bong, Ding, and Dong are some of the more common. They can be, and frequently are, used in even more door-bell-like combinations such as Bing-Bong, Ding-Dong, Ting-Ting, and so on. Even our newly appointed chief of police has a doorbell name Ping. None of these doorbell names exist where I come from, and hence sound unusually amusing to my untutored foreign ear. Someone once told me that one of the Bings, when asked why he was called Bing, replied, "because my brother is called Bong". Faultless logic. Dong, of course, is a particularly funny one for me, as where come from "dong" is a slang word for
well;perhaps "talong" is the best Tagalog equivalent!!!
Repea ting names was another novelty to me, having never before encountered people with names like Len-Len, Let-Let, Mai-Mai, or Ning-Ning. The secretary I inherited on my arrival had an unusual one: Leck-Leck. Such names are then frequently further refined by using the "squared" symbol, as in Len2 or Mai2. This had me very confused for a while. Then there is the trend for parents to stick to a theme when naming their children. This can be as simple as making them all begin with the same letter, as in Jun, Jimmy, Janice, and Joy. More imaginative parents shoot for more sophisticated forms of assonance or rhyme, as in Biboy, Boboy, Buboy, Baboy (notice the names get worse the more kids there are-best to be born early or you could end up being a Baboy).
Even better, parents can create whole families of, say, desserts (Apple Pie, Cherry Pie, Honey Pie) or flowers (Rose, Daffodil, Tulip). The main advantage of such combinations is that they look great pa inted across your trunk if
you're a cab driver. That's another thing I'd never seen before coming to Manila --taxis with the driver's kids' names on the trunk.
Another whole eye-opening field for the foreign visitor is the phenomenon of the "composite" name. This includes names like Jejomar (for Jesus, Joseph and Mary), and the remarkable Luzviminda (for Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao ,
believe it or not). That's a bit like me being called something like "Engscowani" (for England , Scotland , Wales and Northern Ireland ).
Between you and me, I'm glad I'm not. And how could I forget to mention the fabulous concept of the randomly inserted letter 'h'. Quite what this device is supposed to achieve, I have not yet figured out, but I think it is designed to give a touch of class to an otherwise only averagely weird name. It results in creations like Jhun, Lhenn, Ghemma, and Jhimmy. Or how about Jhun-Jhun (Jhun2)? How boring to come from a country like the UK full of people with names like John Smith. How wonderful to come from a country where imagination and exoticism rule the world of names. Even the towns here have weird names; my favorite is the unbelievably named town of Sexmoan (ironically close to Olongapo and Angeles). Where else in the world could that really be true? Where else in the world could the head of the Church really be called Cardinal Sin? Where else but the Philippines ! Note: Philippines has a senator named Joker, and it is his legal name.