Just when I realized that I had not been on rabid bitch mode for like ... months now, "someone" asked me how to be mean. Like I was an expert on the subject. Me? Mean? Maaan, I was about to chuck all my edgy black suits for floral dresses, hats and orange slip-ons ... and you think me capable of meanness? I have been so serene and motherly since my exit from corporate life! I have had not reason to use more than one expletive in a sentence for a year now! I have turned into the **bleep**ing Heir of Hufflepuff, goddammit!
Okay, this much I know about meanness ...
One, not having glassy-eyed innocence is not equal to being mean. Just because I will never in a hundred years be suckered into buying say, that faux-French oil lamp your sister's husband's cousin is selling me for P12,000, I am NOT "unhelpful to others".
Two, having the ability to be mean does not mean you enjoy it (all the time). I was really hard on myself for laughing at your stupi ... bad luck. Eight cellphones snatched/stolen/lost since 1997 is really ... something.
Three, wielding a nasty sense of humor is not always bad. If it makes you not come around my house anymore, then it's a good thing. Very good thing.
Being the Vitamin C-deficient carbon life form that I am, I caught all the viruses my children were nursing last week. 'Got me fever, chills, cough, snot -- the works.
My cough sounds like the one our dog Sigmund had before it died. He sounded like a smoker coughing from inside clogged plumbing.
This morning, I coughed up something big and fleshy. It may have been part of my lung.
The Burning Question: So, what was the worst illness you had to fake to get out of something you didn't want to do?
Today, I am convinced over again that women are "persecuted" in ways the male of our species (or any other, for that matter) will never understand. Women are asked to put more of themselves out there, to exert more effort, just to meet par. And when you (I do mean "I" here) go with the flow, you feel like a hollow, conviction-less sell-out.
Yes folks, today I had my body waxed.
My mind tells me to rebel and just let body hair grow wild; but another shallower, vainer part of me (the same part that shrieked when Julia Roberts was photographed with hairy pits) keeps reaching for the latest depilatory on the market. Today, my aesthestician and I tried this new honey wax thingie. The honey component, the packaging wooed, keeps skin feeling smooth and young. Yada yada yada.
What wasn't on the can was the way the product can do that is to actually pull your outer skin off with every tug! By "new" skin, the manufacturers meant exposing the layer above your freakin' blood vessels!
I'm hairless, pink, sticky and very, very grumpy. I am a lobster in honey sauce.
The Burning Question: So, what things do you do because you feel you have to -- things you would stop doing, if only you weren't so "weak"?
My kids and I ventured to a new but small hospital in Marikina this morning. My husband's first cousin's wife (ang lapit, 'no?) practised pediatrics there. Two of my kids were ill and the last thing they needed was to sit in traffic for two hours to get to Makati Med, just so their mom could feel chichi.
Oh, yeah -- today's lessons:
1. Do not faint when your feverish, immunized-to-the-bone, 9-month old baby who broke out in pink spots is diagnosed with 'roseola infantum'. That's just doctors' scare-a-mother-sh*tless term for 'tigdas hangin'.
2. Multiply pounds by 0.45 to get kilograms. Not 2.54 (that's for converting inches to centimeters, you idiot). Admitting you forgot this was way too much entertainment for the nurses. And slyly disclosing that you can convert farenheit to centigrade naman does not a good comeback make.
3. Never, as in NEVER schedule a gall stone operation when the NBA finals are on. Especially when there is a cable-hooked waiting room TV right outside the OR.
There comes a time in every adult's life when all your friends seem to be getting married, when thick embossed linen envelopes in the equivalent of a rain forest arrive at your doorstep with no end. On one hand, you feel blessed because you have been asked to take part in such an important part of someone's life -- you can gleefully insult your friends' gowns/suits til your eyes go numb. On the other, it also marks the end of your all-night adventures. If you're lucky, you'll get a gift-sucking inaanak [godchild] to replace the drinking buddy you're losing.
Then you come to where I am -- when all of your friends seem to be breaking up. Some after two years, some after twelve. The horror stories from my female friends of stuff their husbands do is enough for me to want to beat Mel with a golf club now to save me future heartache. The revelations from my male friends of the passion in their marriage going "poof" make we want to go ask Mel to declare his undying love for me -- every three minutes. (Hang on, hitting him with a golf club may dampen his desire to tell me he loves me. I have to rework that plan.)
During these cheesecake-coffee/beer-chicken-wings sessions, I try to do the decent thing and empathize, console. Except for that time when J told me he found his soulmate in his cheesy tubetop-loving mistress, when of course, I had to cough "bullsh*t" between bites of my chicken. And I just had to highlight to T in our recent email: "IF YOUR HUSBAND SENDS YOU AN ANNULMENT APPLICATION FORM, HE DOESN'T WANT TO GET BACK TOGETHEEEEEEEEEEEER!!!"
It scares me how I was the first on board the marriage train and how, after my friends got off at the last stop, I am still holding hands with Mel. You think they know something I don't?
The Burning Question: So, if your partner was cheating on you, what song would you sing while you burn all his/her clothes in a hole in the backyard?
Days when my daughter's nanny is on leave are ones when my whole world stops so I can veg with Lisa. I don't know where time goes when I'm with her. At 8 months, she is more absorbing a conversationalist than most adults in my Outlook Contacts list.
After breakfast, we would bathe one after the other. Mini-arguments would ensue right about the time I try to squeeze her butt in to a pair of leggings.
MONA: Stop wiggling! LISA: You promised me! No fru-fru clothes! MONA: This ensemble happens to scream 'cool', not 'cute'. LISA: Why didn't you get the pink and mint green combat pants Ninang [Godmother] Chet wanted to buy for me in Las Vegas kasi eh! MONA: It had zippers all over, for Pete's sake! You could hurt yourself! LISA: Pain for beauty is okay by me! Just don't stuff me into this outfit! MONA: Tough. LISA: Hmmph, I will just have to leak poop out of my diaper so you'll be forced to change me again.
Between feedings, we would dive into my queen-size bed where I would grab a book and between chapters, would engage in idle chit chat with my child as she rolls around on the bed beside me.
LISA: Mommy, what's does Daddy mean when he makes those tick-tock-popping sounds at me? MONA: Oh, he's trying to amuse you, dear. LISA: No way. MONA: Yes way. Boys will always do weird stuff to get your attention. A self-respecting woman would not give in. Dapat deadma lang, anak. But when it comes to your father, throw him a bone once in a while. Do a girlie giggle for him next time. LISA: Whatever...
(Silence. Lisa crawls over my stomach.)
LISA: Mommy, you've got flabby abs! And you've got stretch marks! MONA: Your fault. On both counts. LISA: Are the big boobies my fault too? Hahaha! MONA: No, but yours are going to be just as big. From my mom to me to you. Hahaha yourself!
(Silence. My stomach grumbles.)
MONA: Jeez, I'm hungry. LISA: You're on a diet. MONA: Precisely. (Silence.)
LISA: Wanna suck on my fingers? It kills MY hunger pangs. MONA: Okay, sure.
(Silence. Looks up to me as she is falling asleep.)
LISA: I'm glad I can talk to you, Mommy. I love you. MONA: I love you too, anak.
Oh, do I. I love my child so much it hurts just thinking about how much I love her and what I wouldn't do for her.
No one can claim they've lived until they've loved that way.
The Burning Question: So, what have you done for love -- romantic or otherwise? Preferably grand and self-demeaning please.
