A homebody's home-buddies. (Cute .gifs ahead!)

I discovered that my s4 (mom's hand-me-down, thank you so much Mama, changed my life) has this really cool camera mode called "Animated Photo" which essentially, makes gifs by picking areas in the picture you want to move while leaving the rest stationary. Only catch is, The output files are freakin' huge! So you might have to wait a bit for these to load. Leave them in the background or something!

This was the very first one I made with it and it's made me want to go to the beach or some other body of water so I can make more water .gifs! They are so relaxing. Although maybe not like this, from a tap. Makes me feel a bit anxious actually, especially with the recent water shortages. SOMEONE TURN IT OFF OH MY GOD.

This one I find to be super cute. It captures my little cousin Fheebo in his element. Bubbles make him scream and squeal. He's too excited about them! I love the way he pokes them mid air. bluplupblubup. blup blup.. blup blup!

Shortly after Fheebo's bubbles ran out, my brother Jaro comes home and Sansa excitedly welcomes him. Jaro, being the smart psychologist that he is, decides to wait until she calms down before acknowledging her. Luckily it happens within the 5-second window that the cam mode allows and I get to capture it! I love that she just plops down in front of him even though she's still really excited. 

"OKAY OKAY I'M CALM I'M CALM!!! PET ME NOW PLEEEASE ASDKJASFKAJL"

Anyway I'm officially a homebody now that I've quit my tutoring job, but weirdly enough, I've been going out a lot more ever since! I've been trying to be more outgoing and less... afraid of everything. I'm going to just immerse myself into music, art and introspective writing (and other things those things inspire) during this time while waiting for ~the big move~ which I might talk about later. I might need some spending money though, so I still have motivation to create stuff! Anyone of you who like my stuff at this beginner stage of style-discovery (haha it seriously surprises me that people like them at times, but in a really good way!), you can send me a message or email if you want a handwritten quote, an artwork or anything like that! I'm going to pour myself into just this. Just being this, just doing what I love doing. See where it goes from there. Start where I already am.

I'll try to be here a lot more too, this is where I want everything compiled after all! Because where else would they be if not here? (Tumblr, probably if I'm being honest.)

Best Birthday Popsicles

Speaking of my birthday -yes, let's all pretend you read my previous post, please- I discovered an awesome to make awesome chocolate popsicles on my birthday. My mom had bought a bottle of buffalo milk a couple of days before, and fearing that it would go bad before we could finish it, I decided to make popsicles with it! I just squirted all of the leftover Goya chocolate syrup we had left into the milk (also I put some milk in the bottle and shook it really hard a number of times to make sure I get all of the syrup!) and shook shook shook~ !

The result was popsicles that were much creamier than when I used instant coffee with just water. Buffalo milk is allegedly lower in cholesterol compared to cow's milk, and is certainly richer than the latter. The flavor really went well with Goya syrup. nyamnyam :3

My brother and I still remember the day our parents brought this popsicle maker home. It was the most amazing thing we've ever seen. It even has a base that gathers all the molten popsicle stuff and a straw to drink it with! Now it's a little banged up, but still pretty good. We were so excited when we found it while my brother was "spring" cleaning.

Thanks, kuya Monj!

It's smoother at the tip compared to the base which still feels like ice candy, but the flavor is good all throughout.

Even Sansa wanted some! But even though I usually share with her when I eat ice cream, I couldn't this time since it was chocolate. So we just pretended:

Yup. She got way into character.

Nifty Baby Feelin' Fifty

So I've got this nice drawstring bag that I love a lot. It's ultrablack and velvety and even if it has the tendency to attract mosquitoes and heat because of how black it is (the details are really black, but somehow the main fabric is much much blacker... hmmm.), I find it has the perfect mix of beautiful and simple for everyday use.

But a problem I often have with it is fishing my stuff out of the thing, especially when they're small. My trick so far has been to put anything small in the reasonably sized zipped pocket inside, so that it's close enough to the light of outside and doesn't have too much space for my hand to search in order to find a specific flash disk or pen or bill.

But then this baby enters the picture:

It was an impulse buy during our trip to Vigan; we often went to National Bookstore (he even went without me once because I was too tired) and one time we bought a book about card magic, some cards, and this pink thing. I used it to read books, sure, but today I thought of a better use for it:

Tadaa! It's perfect. I first thought I'd have to clip it to the zipper, which doesn't work well anyway because it doesn't clip shut, which it needs to ensure it doesn't trigger the light. But I realised that the tiny clip on it is perfect for the tag inside the bag! And so it is now permanently installed in my beautiful black hole of a bag.

In very unrelated news, my cousin posted this old picture of us on Facebook:

Beardy said it looked like I was already feeling old.

It was my second birthday.

Lastly, here is a picture of Sansa (I haven't posted pictures of her here for a while!) looking very happy to see us all home, and proud of how newly bathed and fluffy she is:

The contrast of her and my mom's expressions is priceless.

WHERE'S THE PAUSE BUTTON???

I'm pretty sure it's located somewhere here, in this activity. Writing down or recording daily events however which way; through blogging, writing in a journal, and reflecting on time spent.

I'm being really disturbed lately by how fast time has been flying since Beardy's been around. I feel like the month of May passed by at a very leisurely pace and apparently I erroneously let that reassure me that the months of June and July, during which Beardy is here with me, would be the same. Of course they can't! I bet May only passed by so slowly in my head because I was impatient for him to come back. Now that he's here and making fireworks go off in my general state of being constantly, time is done trickling away and has remembered whatever shortcut it was using to whooze by poor ol' limping me during the time I was trying to graduate from college.

I've been having difficulty organizing photo files to upload because these kinds of details are somehow super hard to organize and mentally grasp when I'm this constantly excited. Even with that being the case I still actually feel like I'm a lot better this time around than last year. Last year felt completely hazy while this time around I can manage to rein the controls of my mind every now and then to zoom and focus into each moment instead of constantly treading a weird mental state of anxiety and restlessness.

Beardy and I have been a lot better at staving off boredom. I don't know why but there's somehow so many things to do. Even when we're stuck at home because of the rain, there's watching Game of Thrones or Bob's Burgers, playing the Lord of the Rings card game, or playing with Sansa and her new rope toy that we bought from one of those everything-66-or-88-pesos japanese stores. (not to mention a lot of time and discussing is still required for us to figure out what Beardy can eat each day! He's still as picky as before, just more confident to be honest about it haha)

Sansa immediately loved him and she can't stay away from him whenever we're in her floor. Surprisingly, he seems to like her a lot, too! Even though she can be a serious restless ball of furry energy.

beardy with his apple green tea and our really bad impulsive chess openings (i lost both times.. even though he likes to say i won the second one. which was officially a draw anyway)

When we do manage to get out of the house, we usually just go to Paseo or the grocery store. On one rainy day we hopped from Ryuma (our favorite japanese restaurant) to Moonleaf to National Bookstore to Chowking!!! Because the rain just wouldn't stop and we couldn't leave the general area. It was enormously tiring but Beardy was hilarious the whole time so it wasn't really so bad. He bought me a Harry Potter coloring book. Keeper.

But on other days we commute a bit farther to other places to meet my best friends, or tag along with my mom and brothers to eat out or just go out and do whatever.

with his watermelon shake which he actually really enjoyed, he just likes to look a hesitant in pictures to tease me

It's been seriously fun. Even the first day, which was actually my mom's birthday celebration. We fetched him at noon and he was really anxious at first to have to see MY WHOLE FAMILY at once right away but it actually went pretty well! We just mostly spent time with my niece Nica who is at that phase where she loves me so much and wants to spend all the time she could with me (I feel the same way about her) hanging out in my room or walking around the village, then we did the same with Sansa, who amused Beardy a lot by being REALLY BAD AT WALKS. That really set up the mood for the rest of the ten days he's been here, and it's been great so far and I'm excited for what's to come but at the same time I'm like SLOWWW DOWNNN WHY IS IT JUNE 12 ALREADY

I'm just really greedy for some Beardy.

the lovely way there

written @ midnight before easter

today was lovely.

i woke up to the sound of my brother knocking on my door, telling me that mama said we're going out to eat and shop at Paseo. It was my older brother's birthday recently and because he wasn't home the entire time, mama wanted to take advantage of the weekend to buy him something nice.

We had brunch at Cafe Breton. The ambiance and the food was lovely. I didn't bring my camera, and I don't regret it one bit. At times like this a good camera phone would be handy, because I'm simply not willing to lug a giant camera around and ruin the moments as they come. I kept thinking about Emmy and how interesting he would find the place to be, being an actual Breton himself XD I imagined him picking the menu apart... He certainly wouldn't miss the "Bon apetit" on the very cover ^^

We went around to look for jeans for Nikko, but the heat was unbearable and we ended up just getting some groceries (in my case, going around and around and around looking at interesting stuff at True Value after showing them where the dog food was), deciding to just do the jeans shopping tomorrow. However, on the way home Nikko asked mama if she could just treat him with the game he wanted to buy in the first place XD

She agreed, so after going home, Nikko and Monji went back to paseo to buy rice and Nikko's computer game.

Shortly afterwards, Fr. Ernie and a friend of his arrived to have lunch at our place. I prepared a simple salad for them. And then shortly before them leaving came some of our relatives who wanted to go to Tagaytay, who ended up just staying over!


I set myself to write ten pages each day from Today 'till Thursday, but obviously this first day didn't really go as planned. I spent most of the afternoon hanging out with the kids, who I wished, but didn't think, were coming. The teens and adults of my generation hung out at the balcony to drink in a circle.

(from abbie's IG tengs abi)

I joined them too, for a little while, but I mostly just feasted on the snacks and gulped a bit of sprite-vodka and had some laughs and weird discussions about hilarious and inappropriate stuff before I was asked to watch over the kids who wanted to come back upstairs to my room... I love these kids (and it felt weird to drink at a time like this anyway) so of course I came upstairs with them again, and hung out some more. In case you have NO IDEA what "fun stuff" a 22-year old can possibly do with a 5, 9 and 13 year old, there's a lot!:

• weird, surprisingly dangerous bowling with 2L mtn dew bottles and a stuffed soccerball
• a lot of Flow Free (a game which Nica, the 5 y/o was FREAKISHLY good at!)
• while talking about A LOT OF STUFF
• potential creepy, ghostly scenarios
• life in general
• hilarious stuff that happened to us in school (im so happy i can remember a lot from gradeschool)
• embarassing stuff that happened to us in school
• hilarious everything else (kids are funny okay)
• adventure time of course
• some brilliant drum-tap-thing with pens
• drawings

So yeah! Now my room looks like this:

(eep im so happy about the way this nook turned out! there's like, a pathway for the bathroom door haha)

I went downstairs to check on Sansa and saw her in her cage, lying on her back, stretching her front paws towards me like a baby reaching up to be carried. Haha! It was so freakin cute and hilarious, I wish I took a picture! After realising that the belly rubs weren't making her fall asleep, I decided to let her out and rubbed her belly after making her lie down on one of her usual spots beside a sofa. She still wasn't feeling sleepy. She followed me around for a bit as I poked at things in the kitchen and made myself some tea, and then she went to the rug and peed properly. As if it wasn't enough, I opened the side door and she went out to poo at her spot outside!!!! I had applause go off in my head I was so happy!

GOOD GIRL!

And so yeah, even though I probably won't finish 10 pages before I sleep today, sitting here in my spot (well, lying down on my belly right now), thinking about the wonderful day that just came and went, I can't help but feel calmer and not too focused on my ultimate dream of graduating so much that I lose sight of what's important in life and the little dreams that keep coming true every day.

Great family day full of fun activities, having my nieces and youngest cousin around to play and have fun with, seeing my older cousins have so much fun together by just sitting in a circle, having a room I love to bits, being able to borrow a laptop 24/7 even after losing my own, great food, being able to eat healthily even though I'm stressed (fruits in a blender a-plenty), having the special gugo bark shampoo my mom gave me (thank you so much mama) after finding out that my hair was falling out due to stress work SO FREAKISHLY WELL, having an inside dog that is so awesome and loves me so much ~~~ the journey towards the goal certainly is lovely.

It just feels that being able to graduate isn't really for me anymore, because I'm really fine. This life is good to me. Finishing school would be a way to give back to my mom, who has provided me with everything I need and so much more. And that's what should drive me. It's the least I could do, to make her proud.

I really hope I make it!!! Please send me ALL of the good vibes you can muster. I really need them!

xxx

PS: these kids are funny even while asleep. two are sleep-talkers and one is a snorer. hahahaha

Once Upon A Time there was a dog named after a brand of watches

Swatch was the very first dog I ever knew.

She was a very sweet, motherly Japanese Spitz and had kind eyes and the calmest disposition any of our dogs ever had.

She was a year older than me so I had known her "forever" when we lost her.

My dad would let the three dogs come out as a pack, and they would usually return home together. 

One day when I was maybe eleven or twelve, Swatch didn't come back with the others.

I cried a lot and waited for her to come back for a long time. The new year came and I remember crying because I remembered her and somehow understood that she wouldn't come back again. My dad held me and consoled me. He said maybe she didn't want me to see her die because she was already very old. He said it's the new year and I should welcome it with a happy disposition to make way for more happy things.

I don't remember her being very sick before wandering off, but today I wondered and searched, and was moved by the following text that I found:

Dogs wander off to die because of a left-over pack instinct from the wolves. The scent of a dying or dead animal attracts carrion hunters, like vultures and coyotes. Larger, more dangerous predators, like bears, are then attracted by the blood that is exposed by the scavengers. Even if a larger predator isn't attracted, other wolves may smell the blood and begin a territory war if the deceased wolf's pack is small.

Therefore, the dying wolf will separate himself from the pack, in order to protect that pack and its territory.[x]

When I grew older, I accepted that that was just wishful thinking, that she simply got lost, maybe taken by strangers, or whatever. I now know that letting them out on their own without supervision was irresponsible. But maybe there was some truth in it after all.

Swatch was the first family member I ever lost, and she taught me about loving and losing, and appreciating the good memories instead of focusing on the loss. A few years after, I lost other dogs, and even a few very dear people in my life. Including my dad.

shoe cuddles

Now that we have Sansa in our family, I feel reconnected with Swatch. She has the same gentle look in her eyes and the same color of fur, save for her beige blotches. This is the first time for me to have a dog in my family come after I've learned a bit more about the proper way to treat and understand dogs (and possibly the last dog ever before I move out). I'm afraid that it may be a long way until I develop enough confidence in myself to remedy our relationship with our other three dogs (they're treated well and fed well, but we don't get to walk them and train them) but for now, as selfish and self-centered as the reasons may be, I feel like I'm finally atoning for the neglect I couldn't help but allow towards all the dogs we've had by taking care of her the best I can.

PUPPIES!

on February 25 came not just one, but two pups in our house.

two adorable poodle-chihuahua mix puppies.

my uncle bought one so two were delivered, and they both stayed in our house for a week.

one was black with very interesting white/brown details on her coat, and the other was white with off-white spots here and there.

in my head i started calling them obvious names, flower or skunk (she looked like flower from Bambi), and mallow. strictly because of their coats.

when they came to our house, my uncle was still deliberating which one to pick. i posted pictures on facebook, and flower caught his eye, as she caught everyone else's because of her beautiful pattern. i, however, felt that i wanted to become a very good owner to whichever pup will be hours and therefore felt the pressure to keep the less-energetic puppy, to be sure that i would be able to handle her. and that was mallow. mellow mallow.

i loved them both, though :)

pretty equally.

when my uncle made his decision, i felt obliged to take more pictures of flower

because she'd be leaving soon and ohmy god look at how cute!

but soon after she did, mallow had a lot of phototimes too.

in the end, my cousin, who is flower's forever-master, named her Baji.

As for mallow, my family agreed to my suggestion Sansa.

I thought about it because it sounds like what she looks like, and the way they fought reminded me of Sansa and Arya from GoT.

Sansa has her naughty moments, but overall she is very mellow and loving and makes EVERYONE smile. Even strangers! We took her to Pangasinan and she behaved very well during the long car rides and more-or-less follows us around off-leash in public (the leash still scares her so she won't follow if we put it on her)

As for Baji, my cousin is a teenage boy so I'm guessing he can handle her energy (just don't leave her alone in the crate and let her settle somewhere because she can scream like she's being murdered!) . And she's very smart and quick to pottytrain while she was here (Sansa still needs a little more time) so I'm sure they will love her :)

So there. A very long hiatus but very cute puppy pics so I hope you forgive me.