Rosie’s Diner

There once was a young man who craved pizza.  It’d been a while since he’d had some of that cheesy warm goodness and so after seeing a particularly tempting commercial of Pizza Hut, he decided to call Pizza Hut Delivery to order a pizza and have it brought to his very doorstep.  He had the money to pay for it after all and even though the nearest Pizza Hut wasn’t that far away from his home, he figured that he hadn’t had pizza in such a long time that hey, it was worth the wait to have it delivered.

The person who answered the phone at Pizza Hut was polite…nice, even.  Unfortunately, he informed our young man, he was very sorry to say that that Pizza Hut branch was not delivering pizza anymore. This frustrated our young man no end! He’d been dreaming, fantasizing about that pizza!  He’d even prepared a plate and set a little place on his desk where the pizza was supposed to sit as he devoured it piece by piece.  He could actually smell the pizza in front of him already. 

He waited an hour.  Kept himself occupied doing this and that figuring that if he sounded too hungry or too eager for the pizza, the Pizza Hut guy was probably going to be mean and still deny his delivery request. 

Young man called Pizza Hut again to ask them to kindly deliver the pizza.  It wasn’t that far anyway!  He WANTED that pizza, but our young man was also proud. He never gave the Pizza Hut guy an inkling of how much he wanted that pizza. As kind as the Pizza Hut guy who answered the phone was, at the end of the conversation the answer was still NO.  The pizza was there, in the box, warm from the oven but they could NOT deliver it.

What is the moral of this idiotic story? 

The moral is this:  The pizza was/is good. If the pizza place doesn’t deliver then GO GET THE PIZZA YOURSELF. 

Duh, a good pizza is worth the effort.

Anyone who expects a pizza to deliver itself is not only dreaming, he’s obviously not going to get ANY pizza. Besides, pizza that delivers itself isn’t great quality.  Too bad.

It was raining on and off last Saturday so I figured it’d be the perfect opportunity for me to wear my seldom worn black newsboy hat. Ever since I watched "The Devil Wears Prada" I’ve been wanting a newsboy hat and since my mom was nice enough to treat me to one, I’ve had a hard time finding the right time to wear it. Although I would have preferred to wear it with knee high boots and a mini skirt, this overcast Saturday afternoon, I settled for skinny jeans, baby tee, jacket and the hat.  Anyway, today was planned for supermarketing with the kids so I didn’t really need to be dressed up just comfortable. Besides, supermarketing is a twice monthly whole day affair in my life and since I was down in the dumps I figured the hat would keep me ‘incognito’. 

Well, seriously, I don’t understand how a hat can be such a big deal. Everyone just had to stare, its like they’d never seen a human being wearing a hat before–so much for being incognito (snort)!  At first, I was thinking that it was all in my imagination.  I was probably feeling self conscious so my paranoia was getting the better of me but when Alie mentioned it,

"Ma, why is everybody staring at you?"

my first reaction was to take the hat off. But I stood firm. I am not, not going to take of my hat just because people are staring, I thought to myself, to he– with them. The hat stays on.

So the hat stayed on. From 5pm when we left the house up to 10pm the hat stayed on. Then it happened. I was walking back to SM Makati from where my car was parked (near North Park and Gerry’s Grill).  SM was pretty much closed and the kids, yaya, my sister and her whole troop were waiting for me in the lobby. I was walking purposefully along Glorietta 1 beside the darkened glass windows of National Bookstore when a car pulled up (a Toyota Corolla 2003 model, dark blue color, I can’t recall the license plate # but I sure wish I did) alongside the curb and the window rolled down. As I was walking the car was slowly moving along beside me while some &*%hole had his head outside the driver’s window muttering something to me. Take note, this guy was not an ex pat so I can’t say he was clueless about the customs of our country or where the "real" hookers hang out (try Starbucks 6750 or Gloria Jeans, idiot!). He was 100% Philippine made. Always one to think on the bright side (me?), I thought maybe I had dropped something and he was telling me about it, so I stopped walking and looked behind me.  There was nothing. I also looked around, to check if he really was talking to me. I found I was pretty much alone.  When I didn’t respond to his mutterings he closed his window and drove off. By this time I was almost across the SM lobby and the first person I saw as I walked through the doors was my brother-in-law George.

"George! Some @#$hole just tried to pick me up!  He actually thought I was a hooker! What the (*&$ gave him the idea I was for hire?" I ask incredulously. George just looks at me smiling while shaking his head from side to side and says matter of factly, "It’s the hat."

To make matters worse, my 16 year old nephew Nicky comes up behind him saying, "Nice hat! Where’s the go-go boots?"  Well, that was it– the newsboy hat came off. I know George and Nicky were just teasing me but still, it stayed off the rest of the night and tucked away in my bag.  The only remnant of its existence was the deep mark on my forehead where the hat’s rim once rested. 

Pretty sad that Manila doesn’t seem ready for hats other than baseball caps.  Either that or its not ready for me wearing a hat!  Whatever the case, Mr. Toyota, I hope you get a bad case of Herpes. 

I will wear my newsboy hat again…maybe not to shop but definitely, I will wear it again. So there.

Been quite a while since I’ve blogged. I always blog mentally, like when I’m about to fall asleep for an afternoon nap or at 2am when I can’t sleep. Once I was mentally writing this absolutely great blog that I was so sure everyone would just love reading! Later on it turned out I was having another one of those really bad hypoglyceamic attacks where my head goes all funny and I act weird (right, as if I don’t already act weird when I’m not having an attack!) I usually write wonderfully witty and interesting blogs in my head and then I never actually get around to posting them…or even remembering what I ‘wrote’!

So now, here I am. Blogging, for real this time, on a not-so-interesting topic: My New Years Resolutions. I figure sharing my resolutions with everybody will motivate me to stick to them.

So here goes (I feel like David Letterman here…):

1. I will take better care of myself medically. This means I have to get a competent doctor and see him or her regularly.

2. I will get rid of all the supposed ‘friends’ I have who are users! Actually, this pertains to only 1 person who shamelessly used me (as a driver) and my car to chase after her ‘boyfriend’ one Sunday night when I should’ve been home with my kids! To make matters worse, she had me circling around some godforsaken slum area in Cubao because it turned out she didn’t even know where the guy lives! To think this woman supposedly has a company car…why the (*&^ doesn’t she use it?!

3. I will exercise! I’ll walk every night since I can’t find the time to go to the gym.

4. I’ll build up my savings…for the kids, for the future, for emergencies.

5. I’ll pay at least half of my debts this year and not make any new ones.

So that’s it. My 5 resolutions. Hope I can stick to them.

There is this wonderfully entertaining and cute show on Nickelodeon’s Nick Jr.  called The Backyardigans.   Its about 5 computer animated animal characters (who are actually children); Austin, Pablo, Tyrone, Uniqua and Tasha.   Every episode has a theme where the kids imagine themselves as pirates, vikings, jungle explorers and castaways on a deserted island. Each episode ends with the imaginary setting turning back into the backyard with the kids going back to one of the kid’s home for juice and a snack–the last episode I watched, "Castaways", they had Apple Sauce after their castaway adventure. 

The best parts of the show are the musical numbers which are so good, even adult viewers are tempted to clap and sway in time to the music.  Hehe, I do, did.

After watching an episode sometime last month, I suddenly wished that we had a common backyard where Maxine and other kids can get together and play the same way the Backyardigans do.  There was something about watching that episode that reminded me of something but I couldn’t place what it was.  Then I remembered…I was a Backyardigan, too!  Except we didn’t have a back yard, we had a front yard with a swing and that was my yard….I was a Front Yardigan!  How could I have forgotten? 

I may have been all by my lonesome (didn’t have anyone else to play with most of the time, sniff, sniff) and I didn’t really break out into hip and entertaining song and dance numbers but I certainly transformed our front yard into the coolest, most fun places I could think of back then (well, if that were now, my front yard would perennially be set up as Kalye back in 1992 when Coco Jam played on Friday nights, The Breed on Wednesday nights and Razorback on Saturday nights and I could still stomach Red Horse…).  A high rise apartment building where I lived and owned the coolest condo where my friends and I concocted magic potions and spells that were meant to save the world, a school building where I was in command of my own classroom and happened to be the coolest teacher on earth–maybe nothing as adventurous or colorful as a deserted island but still, I was anything and anyone I wanted to be.  So what if our maids used to make fun of me for talking to myself (or so they thought) whenever I was on my swing out on the front yard.  I was a Front Yardigan being anyone and being anywhere I imagined I wanted to be!  Hurray for those days…!

I hardly use my imagination anymore and I scold my daughter when she does.  I don’t want her to wake up and have reality hit her in the face the same way it hit me.  Well, the things I always imagined would happen to me, never did, but the things I never ever imagined did happen…so I guess there is a balance to this sad tale…I guess, when I look back I’m happy that I was a Front Yardigan.  It was fun and perhaps even better than experiencing the real thing…Let’s all be Backyardigans again…we can come back to my house afterwards for some Apple Sauce

Where do those slippers, shoes, bakyas, rubber shoes and sandals that we have seen on the road at one time or another in our lives come from????  Why on earth are they on the road?  The other day, driving along EDSA Pasay City area I spotted a pair, yes a pair of slippers in the middle of the road.  They were men’s slippers.  One of them was busted, but the other looked intact.  Picture this:  you’re walking across EDSA (god knows why when its a major thoroughfare) and your slipper breaks.  So to save time and effort, you take off both your freakin slippers and leave them in the middle of the freakin road and then continue walking to the other end of the road freakin barefoot. Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is becoming more evident to me everyday!

Slippers I get.  Slippers I understand.  I mean they do break so if I see a slipper on the road, I figure it broke and the freakin owner was too much of a pig (yeah, I consider people who leave or throw trash on the road pigs) to pick up the freakin slipper and throw it in the freakin trashcan.  But what about shoes? rubber shoes?  one rubber shoe in the middle of the road?  What the hell happened to the other shoe?  Who dropped it and why in heaven’s name didn’t he notice that he had dropped his freaking rubber shoe?!

The freakiest thing I once saw was when I was a kid and South Supermarket used to be in Magallanes.  There was a car parked in an odd way along that long Magallanes road parallel to South Super Highway.  It was open, but no one was inside.  There was one shoe outside the driver’s door, a glamorous high heeled shoe that obviously belonged to a woman.  Two policemen and other passersby surrounded the car.  My mom was too dignified to stop and kibbitz like the other usis but later on our driver told us that the car had been there since early morning and there was no sign of a driver, nor of the owner of the shoe.  Never heard anything about it again, but it certainly bewilders me what happened to her.

If I got out of my car and picked up every shoe, slipper, and the various footwear I see on the road hencefoth, I will probably have a huge shoe collection to beat Imelda Marcos’ after a few years.  Too bad no one ever drops their Manolo Blahniks.

No, you have not accidentally stumbled upon an online version of Our Daily Bread.  This is my blog and for my two solitary readers (yeah you know who you are!) who actually bother to read my mental meanderings, please do bare with me.

Yeah, I know that when bad things are happening to us and someone tells us this, we want to smash their faces in.  Well, at least I do.  But in some instances I have seriously noted that its so true.  Take what happened to my beloved Baby Pillow.  Had it not been for that nightmare event in my sleeping life, then my Baby Pillow would still smell old and be lumpy and unpresentable to the human species.  It took the maid totally ruining it to make me desperate enough to bring it to the cleaners and voila, now BP looks good as new!  Fluffy, great smelling and actually huggable once again.  I kinda miss the old lumpy 19-years-of-germs Baby Pillow but I think that little stint it went through in the washing machine gave it another 19 years of life. Whew, I can die and Baby Pillow will be okay.  Whew!

Then there was the time I was rushing to meet Ivan at a highly important free oyster event (any event that offers oysters free of charge, to me, is earth shatteringly important) and the traffic along South Super Highway parallel to Don Bosco was gross.  I was darned late (as usual) and really irritated (like always) and a truck smashed off my side mirror completely.  Of course, I screamed bloody murder at the truck driver and hollered for the Police until I realized that my car wasn’t registered! Picture this, me standing in the middle of SSHW, screaming at the top of my lungs, "Tawagin niyo ang pulis, ngayon mismo!" (yeah, complete with my weird accent)  Then realizing after a 2-second beat that my car was not registered and turning to the hapless truck driver with a sheepish smile saying, "Manong, baka pwede nating pag usapan ito?"  Thank goodness the cops who actually came were cops, cops and not traffic cops and they helped me get the information from the truck driver and the name of his boss, etc. without noticing the absence of that 2004 sticker (the 2005 sticker goes on in October).  I was pretty shaken, wondering what in heaven’s name I had done to deserve such a bad break.  But you know what?  Some good, actually a lot of good, came out of that bad experience.  First of all, the owner of the truck turned out to be a really nice, lonely old dude who became my sugar daddy (hahahaha NOT!)…he didn’t become my sugar daddy but he actually entertained Ivan and I in his house, showed us photos of his kids and wife in the U.S., told us his secret to staying happy, gave me P3,000 for new side mirrors PLUS a dozen or so red salted eggs (yum!) from his business.  The next day, I bought not one but TWO brand new side mirrors (cost: P2,200 and before you think I took advantage of Mr. Sugar Daddy, they don’t sell side mirrors singularly in Banawe.  You either buy the pair or you go to a junk shop and look, no you forage, for one) and got a lot of other little things bothering me fixed up in my car with the change.  Now that just goes to show you (and me) that sometimes, bad things really do have to happen so good ones will follow.  My car still needs A LOT of body work but hey, I got two brand new side mirrors, baby!

I had to meet and fall in love with a shitface philanderer like Rene and go through 4 years of crap with him to get my darling Alie. 

I had to be jobless, penniless and sleeping on a folding bed in a nasty relative’s basement to realize that class doesn’t come from how much money you have in the bank or how expensive your clothes are, its inborn and even a zillion pesos can’t buy it. 

I had to meet (and lose to distance) someone very very special to me to get the resolve and strength to find a way to travel abroad.

I could actually stay in front of this computer and list a lot of good things that came out of bad…

Then again, there are some BAD, BAAAAAD things that happen where you cannot imagine any good  coming from it.  Then again, that’s another blog post entirely.

I think Paris Hilton and Nicole, too for that matter, are both walking, excuse the word, pussies.  That is basically all they are!  Now why I would want to watch a show that has two walking pussies doing things normal people do beats the hell out of me.  Why should I watch two pussies on television when I’ve got one of my own?!  Now why the heck don’t these Hollywood producers come up with a show with two walking Penises doing things normal people do?  The only walking Penises show they have on now is, how depressing, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy! 

Last Monday night I snuggled into bed, my head heavy on my big fluffy pillow, drifting into that state between being awake but on the verge of sleep and like I always do when I get to that point, I reached out for my baby pillow.  BUT IT WASN’T THERE!  I checked underneath the pillows, underneath Maxine and pretty much underneath Ivan and his pillows which are lumpy and too soft and not as nice or as many as mine are.  NO BABY PILLOW.  If Monday hadn’t been such a shi*ty day and I wasn’t so tired I would very likely have woken up every living person in the house to look for it, but in my fatigue induced stupor I simply padded over barefoot to Alie’s room and stole one of her four baby pillows.  Unlike me, Alie is not emotionally attached to her baby pillows.  Unlike me, Alie hasn’t slept with her baby pillow (the same one, mind you) for the past 19 years.  So I figured she wouldn’t miss it and I could sleep, pretending this flat piece of cloth, hardly what I would call a pillow, was my faithful sleeping companion.

I love my baby pillow.  Love as in love more than I actually like some people!  I love my baby pillow more than I actually love my oldest sister.  That pillow has been with me to every part of the world I have been to: Sweden, Australia, Hong Kong, Bangkok, the U.S. and Indonesia.  In fact, my baby pillow is my in-flight companion despite the fact that almost all airlines have great smelling, fluffy baby pillows for each of their passengers.  Who needs those impostor baby pillows when I have my old faithful? 

That pillow has been with me when I’ve given birth to Alie and Maxine and when doctors have insisted that I leave the baby pillow in the labor room since its not "sanitized" I have looked them straight in the eye despite enormously painful contractions and dared them, double dared them, to take it away from me.  In fact, almost every time I am rushed to the hospital for a hypo or hyper attack, my baby pillow has been by my side, even if I’m unconscious.  The last time I remember not sleeping the night with BP was in Sweden when I lost consciousness in the middle of the street and all my luggage was left in the salon where I had just had my hair cut.  The night I spent in that Swedish hospital, BP must have been wondering where in heaven’s name I had gone off to!  That was 8 long years ago.  Baby Pillow and I haven’t slept a night apart since then.

So the question on Tuesday morning was, "WHERE IS MY BABY PILLOW!?"  As suspected (and dreaded), the maid washed it.  WASHED IT AS IN SOAKED IT IN WATER! I tried to blow dry it but it didn’t do any good.  Of course, I didn’t need to ask her WHY.  She washed it because Maxine peed on it when she was playing on my bed.  You have no idea how it felt to see and feel my baby pillow in lumps.  It was no longer a pillow.  It was a sack of marbles.

I gave it a day under the sunshine to get dry and then another day just for extra measure, but when I came home last night, it was still a sack of marbles.  Smelly damp marbles at that!

Worse, no one, and I mean no one could understand my despair at this heinous crime that had been committed against my pillow!  Thank goodness Anna was home when I called to wail to her about it.  In fact, she had a wonderful idea.  Take it to the laundromat.  Have them put it in the clothes drier.  If it hadn’t been 9 in the evening I would have hung up and gone directly to the nearest cleaner and had it done but instead, I had to wait patiently till this morning.

This morning, I went straight to the cleaners before work.  Took my pitiful sack of marbles lovingly out of the plastic bag I had wrapped it in and lied myself blue in the face.  I explained to the cleaners’ lady that my 10 year old daughter loved her stinky pillow madly and that our well meaning maid had washed it.  Now that the pillow had turned to a pile of clumps my daughter was having a fit every night because she couldn’t sleep without it.  The cleaner lady looked at me knowingly and said, "Don’t worry ma’am.  I will put it through the washer again so it will smell good and then I will dry it.  It’ll be fine by this afternoon.  You can pick it up then and it won’t cost that much either.  It’s just a small pillow anyway." 

I almost kissed her!  Yes, I am highly ashamed of myself for lying…for denying my baby pillow! But it doesn’t matter much so long as I get it back and its alive, ALIVE again! It’s kind of sad that 19 years of international dirt, sweat from various er um individuals who shall remain nameless who have been lucky enough to sleep with me and my pillow and particles of my past have all been washed away now but I think what is truly important is my pillow and not my pillow dirt so to speak.

I’m in the office now anxiously awaiting this evening when I go and pick up my beloved baby pillow from the laundromat.  When I die, my baby pillow will either be cremated along with me or one of my daughters will get it.  Whatever happens though, I think I’m going to sleep pretty good tonight.