I have a love-hate relationship with rain. I love it when it’s raining and I am inside the house. I hate it when I am outside and it is raining. I love the cold weather, I hate the muddy roads.

What I love about rain more than anything else is the promise of something new after a downpour. There’s a general feeling of being cleansed. And of finding the rainbow at the end it all.

When the typhoon hit the country, all I wanted to do was to burrow under the blanket and be warm. Thanks to the electric provider here in the metro, I didn’t need a blanket anymore. No power, weather inside the house became warm.

So what I did was just chit chatted with my siblings and just spaced out.

What did you do?

I am still looking for the teen pocketbooks Sweet Dreams. I will buy any Sweet Dreams book that is for sale. I really love the books and I want to collect it again.

Have you read any Sweet Dreams book? My favorites are P.S. I Love You, Comedy of Errors, No Strings Attached, Wrong Way Romance, and Fair Weather Love.

What’s yours?

Wouldn’t it be totally cool if you have these views from your deck?

Now that’s what you call beauty!

Some people are really lucky to have money in their disposal to get properties they can grow old in. Of course a tsunami can easily destroy a house by the shore. But you don’t think about it when you have these views. You don’t think about disasters or the cost of repairs and maintenance when all you can think about is God’s generosity in sharing something as breathtaking as the view of the sun rising and setting.

Someone just loves to kiss someone’s ass! There’s no other way to say it but that. Or I should have just posted the photo above and captioned it as kissing someone’s ass is love?

I get irritated when I see the person kissing the other person’s behind. Always. I mean can’t the person think of anything else to do but wait for updates? Seriously?

???

Do you also suffer from neck pain when in front of the computer for an extended period of time? I do. My sister does, too. We both don’t know how to remedy it except massage each others’ shoulders and then rest for a while. I think standing up from your desk from time to time might lessen the neck and shoulder pain. Or stretching your hands up in the air. I do the latter often and I feel as if the pain lessens.

Do you experience this, too? What do you do?

Why does it feel like you want to jump off the cliff when you are so stressed out and you like you are being cornered by life? I hate feeling that way. I hate being nervous. I hate being scared. I hate being pressured.

Whenever someone in the family is being threatened by life, I feel like fighting back for them. I also feel scared and cornered. I feel like I am not ready if something bad happens. If it’s just me, I wouldn’t feel that way. But if it’s someone I love…

Life just sometimes feel like you are jumping off a cliff. What’s down there is always unexpected. You might be seeing water but it could be rocks. You can land badly and end up dead. Or you can land safely, your fall cushioned.

Death is inevitable. We cannot avoid it. Those who said that they found the so-called elixir of life are lying. News flash: there’s none! You can probably dance around death. Avoid it temporarily. But it will still come get you eventually, when you least expect it!

But when you think of it, death isn’t all that bad. It isn’t fair to give it that bad rep it has. It can be kind, too. Imagine a person suffering extremely… Death is the only thing that can relieve the person of his suffering. It can be kind, too.

And in some cases, death brings families closer together.

In our family, we’ve experienced death one time too many. We don’t welcome it but we are realistic enough to face it with an open mind.

I get fixated over something I want. Like right now. All I can think of is hitting the beach, bringing with me a couple of good novels, and total relaxation! That’s what I’ve been thinking for the past few weeks now. It’s just too bad that the opportunities for me to hit the beach were all wasted. There were circumstances that prevented me from hitting the road.

Money. I am short of funds because of more important expenses. Time. I have been working doubly hard for the past few weeks. I figured instead of hitting the beach or going anywhere else, I might as well spend my time working.

But one of these days, even if it’s raining already, I will go to a resort and do what I’ve been dreaming of doing… chill out and have fun!

Something to think about and inspire us all.

A group of frogs were traveling through the woods, and two of them fell into a deep pit. When the other frogs saw how deep the pit was, they told the two frogs that they were as good as dead. The two frogs ignored the comments and tried to jump up out of the pit with all their might. The other frogs kept telling them to stop,that they were as good as dead. Finally, one of the frogs took heed to what the other frogs were saying and gave up. He fell down and died.The other frog continued to jump as hard as he could. Once again, the crowd of frogs yelled at him to stop the pain and just die. He jumped even harder and finally made it out.When he got out, the other frogs said, “Did you not hear us?” The frog explained to them that he was deaf. He thought they were encouraging him the entire time.

Be careful of what you say. Speak life to those who cross your path. The power of words… it is sometimes hard to understand that an encouraging word can go such a long way. Anyone can speak words that tend to rob another of the spirit to continue in difficult times. Special is the individual who will take the time to encourage another.

*Taken from an email message sent to me.

I am looking forward to a great weekend. Maybe walk a mile, finish a good novel, or enjoy a lovely brunch with the family.

Whichever, I know that I will find a way to catch up on sleep and relax.

How about you, what are your plans for this weekend?

Let me tell you something… I can work better if there’s music in the background. I am not like other people who couldn’t work with music. My friend’s like that. She couldn’t stand any noise when she’s thinking. It disturbs her train of thought. In my case, music is my muse. It helps me come up with so many ideas that I need for my work.

When I was working in a call center company, I used to be annoyed that all of us have our own radio stations on. I would turn my volume up a bit so they would turn down theirs. Anyway, I was the highest ranking officer in that room so I felt I had every right to the music. As silly as that sounds, it was totally important to me to have my own music. Because if I didn’t get to hear my own music, it got me totally irritated and I was usually left being that way for the rest of the day. It was really silly, I know! My co-workers loved to listen to corny local songs. I wouldn’t have any of that. I loved (and still do) working with smooth jazz and R&B on the background. Or simply mellow music. Other than that, I totally get distracted.

I was silly and still am and I couldn’t do anything about it.

There was a time when I was working for this locally own corporation when I felt like being alone most of the time. My co-workers would ask me to go with them to lunch or somewhere but I would refuse. I would make up alibis just to get out of being with them. It’s probably more of the fact that I didn’t like them that much and that I preferred my own company if it meant making small talk with those people. I wasn’t a snob but they probably thought I was or worse, that I was a weirdo.

I didn’t mind at all. Even if they thought that I was a loser or something. I just didn’t feel like I could survive an hour with them. They were a bunch of hypocrites, smiling in front of you, gossiping about you when you turn your back. I am better off without those kinds of people.

I love going to the beach. Not to swim because I don’t know how. I just love to stare at the water and let my mind wander. Yes, I am a daydreamer. I can think and solve a lot of things in my mind when I am near a body of water or when I am in a calm and peaceful place like inside the church.

There was a period in my life when I was troubled by so many things. I was out of job with so little resources left that I felt so messed up that time. I often go to the church nearby during odd hours just to sit there and think. It gave me peace. It gave me the quiet I needed to be able to think clearly. I was able to map out the next year of my life just by staring at nothing.

I am not troubled right now but I need to map out the next couple of years of my life. I have so many goals I want to achieve in the immediate future. Not just for me but for the family as well. I need to go to the beach. Or do I just go to the church again when there’s not much people inside?

No matter how far wrong you’ve gone, you can always turn around.

There is so much truth in this statement. I once committed a very big mistake. I suffered because of it. It even haunted me for years! But maybe the One Above saw how much I have repented. He saw how much I wanted for my life to change. And that I suffered enough.

I was able to turn my life around. It was not easy but I managed to do it because I WANT TO. It’s all in me. I wanted change in my life and I was able to do it.

You can turn your life around. You just have to want it for it to happen.

Love can really drive a person crazy. We had a neighbor who literally went mental when his girlfriend of so many years broke up with him. The elders in the neighborhood would shake their heads whenever they saw the man drunk and talking to himself. He was taking up Law when it happened. He would recite the Civil Code to you while talking to himself at the same time. He was that broken in mind and spirit.

He never recovered from the heart break. He was thrown out of the house of relatives who used to take care of him. He was always drunk and would not accept help from anybody. Poor guy.

Whenever I am reminded of him, I worry about a friend who’s so much in love with her boyfriend. He promised to bring her to the man’s country and marry her there. She is already moving heaven and earth to prepare for the big move that will happen by October. What if it doesn’t happen? She will surely get depressed. Big time! She is so looking forward to a new life in the arms of the man. I pray he follows through.

Ahh, love.

I only have a handful of friends that I keep, treasure and nurture. These are the friends that I happen to be friends with way back in high school, and those that I met along the way and whom I have been with through tough times.

The typical expression of opening friendship would be something like, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one.
- C.S. Lewis

This is how my FB description reads: I’m not much of a social creature but I treasure the few people I connect with. And it is true. I do treasure the few people I am still friends with. I’ve been friends with so many people. From school, work, neighborhood. But the handful that are still there are the ones that have stood by me through the tough times.

Mostly, friends from high school are the ones I totally jive with. They are the ones who know the real me. I have so many frustrations in life and when you ask them, they know about it. They know my family, I know theirs. And they’ve been my friends for almost two decades now. Yes, that long! We regularly see each other but even when we don’t because we’re busy with work and family life, when we see each other, it’s like it was just yesterday when we last talked. There’s never a dull moment. There’s never a topic unexplored. Yes, even the sensitive ones.

I pray that we will remain friends until we grow old and gray. Until we can’t hear each other well and would need to squint our eyes to see each other. I pray that we will be there for each other through good and bad times. I love my friends dearly. Even those times I get frustrated with one of them!

One of the things I regret the most is not being close to some of my cousins on my dad’s side of the family. Sure, I talk to them from time to time. But it’s not like they are my friends. We’re only related by blood but I don’t know if we have anything in common.

I wish we will become close. I know the younger ones find it awkward to talk to me. I am not the type of person you’d easily get along with unless you spend a whole day with me. And since I see my cousins irregularly, I don’t think they would feel comfortable around me. The only one I am really friends with is my cousin who’s working abroad. We chat almost daily and we really talk about everything. He’s the same age as my brother who died and it might be a transference of sorts because I see my brother in him. Aside from that, this cousin of mine is a wacky person so you can easily find a rapport with him.

My youngest sibling, my brother, is the one who’s close to most of your cousins. Age range and he’s really very friendly.

If I could turn back time, I would have done things a bit differently in my life.