what do you do when you begin the weekend with a fight?

well, then you spend the rest of the weekend making up, of course!

two huge fights aside, the weekend was quite lovely, if wet. after a class on special issues in taxation (don't even begin to ask what that means) where i was called on to recite AGAIN, i began my weekend with a sidetrip to SM sucat where i unabashedly sashayed into my friendly neighborhood barber shop to get my nails done. took out food from kfc, checked my favorite carwash (full!), and then home until it was time to for pat to pick me up for our saturday evening date. we were all set to watch a movie at festival mall when he decided to wanted to check out if cafe adriatico was open already. nope, sorry, it's still just cafe breton, so we ended up checking out the bazaar at the car park beside st. jerome. a huge snowman, two sticks of barbecue, a corn dog, two cans of coke, and two cones of dirty ice cream later, we found ourselves waiting for the anticipated mass, checking out the gay couple in front of us and thinking how sweet and wonderful it is to hear mass with your loved one. a looooong mass later, we parked ourselves in outback where we were offered bread every five minutes (soup would've been nicer). from 9 to 10, we basically window-shopped as i tried (successfully) NOT to buy two books from powerbooks which i've been salivating over for the longest time but i know would prevent me from studying the next couple of days.

on sunday, my brother asked me if i wanted to go to southmall with him and his gf. i called pat to confirm he won't be free until much later, and so it wasn't long before i was the third wheel and my brother's girl was giving me the evil eye cause he was basically hanging out more with me than with her. again, i successfully resisted buying anything, including this lovely shrug which can be worn 12 different ways. since my brother's gf wanted to significantly add stamps to her starbucks card, she cajoled my brother into going all the way to ATC. there, pat met up with us and he took us to the cuenca bazaar where i finally emerged with something: a lovely pink suede bag for school.

monday was really wet, and while pat and i initially agreed on just hanging out at home and having food delivered, we were both experiencing cabin fever by 5 pm. with nothing to watch on television and the game cube proving to be not that much of a distraction, we then decided to go to price mart where all we got was a huge bag of cheetos and yakult, and have dinner at yellow cab.

see, there's no point at the end of this post, and the narration of how my weekend was sounds so much like my earlier posts where i did nothing but say what happened to my day. but what the heck, i had a lovely weekend. a fun weekend. a rocking weekend.

thanks to gat. andres bonifacio.

my aunt went to bangkok without me and all i got was a fake pink coach bag

no, really, it's true.

she SMSd me yesterday, "reporting" that yes, just like i asked she got me something pink, and some dried squid, and if i want, she'd throw in a body scrub for good measure.

so what's the pink thing, i asked.

a fake pink coach bag, she said.

a WHAT?

see, my aunt is a benevolent, generous, and loving doctor with no children whose only sister is in canada. translation: she has no one to share her closetful of pretty bags with. and what good is a closetful of pretty bags if you can't share it with anyone, right?

right.

that lovely gucci bag with a bamboo handle i abuse every single workday? hers.
that lovely louis vuitton bag i abuse every single weekend? hers.
that lovely polo bag i use to lug my lawbooks around in? hers.
that lovely anne klein bag that's somewhere i don't know but i know is still with me? hers.
that lovely kenneth cole bag which has a huge yellow highlighter stain on the inside? hers.

i told her when she dies, i want three things only:
her watch collection.
her bag collection.
and her bed.

(incidentally, my other female cousin wants her jewelry, and my brother wants her tv. my favorite male cousin wants her car, and the three in canada can use her house as their rest house when their home. see, we've got her will all figured out. this is what you get when you study succession.)

anyway, since this is the also the same aunt who shuns anything fake and would rather wear something un-branded than something fake, i thought when she said coach, she meant real coach.

man, my first real coach bag. i could almost smell the leather (or fabric, or whatever! i'm not picky).

unfortunately, i forgot she went to bangkok, and bangkok has all things pretty but faux.

so, when you come across me one of these days with a lovely bag slung over my shoulder, don't even ask. i'm telling you now.

yes, it's coach. and yes, it's fake.

sisig will never be the same without you

i got your name wrong the first time. the day after my first dumol class which i shared with you, i remember you calling me the 3rd "v" in the office, and i remember saying back, "and you're paolo rosal".

you were shocked, insulted even. you dropped your jaw in that theatrical, ever so slightly exaggerated way you do things sometimes, and corrected me. i blushed a little, thinking, damn, it's my second day in this freezer they call faculty room and i've probably crossed the path of the office jester and he'd probably hate me forever and ever, amen.

you didn't, at least i don't think so. but i was never your favorite, always wishing for art to be your teaching assistant once more. sometimes, i'd think you hate me and my evil ways, but then you'd have something special, like a harry potter button, for me, or a christmas gift, or offer me a ride home.

there's so much to remember - probably cause i've known you longer than the man i hope to marry. there's your huge red bag when we went up to baguio, and the many times i cried on your shoulder over yet another failed relationship. there's you offering your brother as my date for my best friend's wedding, and him actually accepting the invitation. the birthday parties at art's house, your excitement over anything connected to mau and mira in general. there's you deleting spam trader cause i always played with it -- while in class -- claiming i can multi-task (and i can, really!). there's the pictures in your palm, the many school visits we had convincing all those chi-chi pre-schools they ought to accept our students for practicum.

i know i put up a brave from the day you told me you'd be leaving. you won the victor neri bet, you claimed. i didn't even blog about you, believing that much like a pimple, the less you thought about it, the better off you'd be. i was wrong.

you're not there to make me laugh, you're not there to piss me off. you're not there to remind me to pipe down, you're not there to tell me my top's "giving way too much information". you're not there to say "i love you patrick" when he calls.

and most of all, you're not there to share the pure, unadulterated joy that bubbles up on tuesdays and thursdays when we chance upon our favorite sisig.

somehow, the four different floors of the UP law library has different personalities.

the first floor is where the newspaper-reading, internet-browsing, and lex-using social butterflies all converge. the second floor is holy ground. now, legal bibliography taught me that this is where are the AMJUR and foreign publications are located but the unofficial curriculum of law taught me that this is where you stay if you seriously wanted to study. the third floor is where you stay to study with your classmates, friends, and anyone you wouldn't mind sharing a table with. it's also where the reserve section is, and the photocopying machine. then there's the fourth floor. students who study here are the hardcore law students: read, memorize, read, internalize, read, memorize again, pack-up, go to class and perfect the exam.

now, if you really know me well, you'd know that the library is not the place to look for me. i'd sit on the railing beside the library, on the steps behind the library, even make small talk with classmates in front of the library but not inside the library. once in a while i pop in the library to pick up my readings from ate con, the photocopying princess, and sometimes, i have to venture inside the library to look for some classmates, but i believe i've spent more hours loitering in the fishball stand than studying in the library.

however, one and a half weeks after my supervised legal research ten-page draft was due, i realized that i have to actually spend time in the library. i tentatively used the computer in the first floor to check out the available books and inwardly flinched when i realized that should i want to write a decent paper, i'd have to go up to the fourth floor.

while i admit i am an awful student, i have no plans of not graduating simply because i was too lazy to do my SLR paper. and so i trudged up the stairs and tentatively knocked on the fourth floor door so the librarian would open the door for me.

somehow, i made it through the experience. the librarian was kind enough to teach me how to use the book which contains a list of all the journal articles ever published. i learned that while you cannot bring the books home, you can bring them to the photocopying machine in the third floor and they'll be the one to return it. i learned that UP law has a pretty decent collection, and that there's actually a journal that's called "william and mary law journal" which sounds weird cause it sounds more like a lounge act that a serious publication. i mean come on, william and mary?

maybe this saturday i'd be back. maybe i'd even bring my commercial law review outline and do some hardcore studying.

maybe, the fourth floor is the key to an invitation to the order of the purple feather.

i only wish i didn't realize it when i was already in my last semester.

when you realize that you're giving everyone on the road the dirty finger and your face is locked in this permanent wrinkle, you know it's time to whip out your favorite bootleg eraserheads cd and sing along with ely buendia.

i always sing along to track number 16 first, pare ko, while thinking of the movie where jao mapa was the good guy, claudine baretto was the object of everyone's affection, and mark anthony fernandez was the way he always is - a little scruffy, very spoiled, and very very lovable. i sometimes imagine myself being so frustrated in loving someone that i'd spawn very honest lyrics about that love.

i then move back to tracks 7 and 8, magasin and ligaya. magasin happens to be a true to life experience for my brother - back when maui taylor was in csa and was a flat-chested freshman, my brother, being the all-knowing senior, decided to court that cute little thing. i never really knew about it until he showed me a picture of her when she started appearing in the now-defunct TGIS. and then one day, there she was, in all her almost-naked glory amidst pastries and other fattening what-nots, in a men's magazine that my house mate just happened to have lying around in the condo. my brother's reaction? sana dati pa siya nagka-boobs.

ligaya will always remind me of fourth year high school, when our accounting teacher's first name was ligaya and eheads was the biggest hit since everyone stopped listening to mike francis' two hit songs. my classmates would serande her and i know her advisory section actually sang that song in one of the school programs, somewhat a tribute to her, which didn't really work cause i remember having to cheat in accounting to make sure i pass.

eraserheads - with ely of course - can always do that to you. i bet each song means a different something to each one of us. my mom told me in the past how she's always reminded of me overdrive, and how the her favorite song is para sa masa because of the line "para sa fans ni sharon cuneta". UP students of the 90s probably thought of them each time they passed by narra and saw some quiet guy strumming his guitar. the back cover of their book, fruitcake, where they finally had pictures of themselves in togas taken (allegedly as a tribute to their parents who never saw them graduate from college, because they never did) reminds you of the millions of UP students who never marched from one end of quezon hall to the other, pausing in the middle to receive a bond paper encased in a stiff maroon folder with the UP parrot (yup, its a parrot, not an eagle) in gold ink.

while eraserheads is still out there, the eraserheads as i knew them isn't anymore. i'd forever have that cd though and one of these days, when the christmas traffic begins to tax whatever little patience i have, i'd probably slide it into my car's cd player, push the buttons to bring me to track number 16 and sing along with ely the lines i never grow tired of singing: o pare ko, meron akong problema ...

you'd think that after being in school non-stop for the last 23 years (2 years of pre-school + 7 years of gs, + 4 years of hs + 4 years of college + 2 years m.a. + the last 4 years of law school) i'd breeze into a classroom like it were my kingdom. after all, unlike everyone in my law class, i'm also a teacher, which means i know how it also feels to be the one dispensing the unos and the sincos.

however, i can't.

tomorrow's my first day of what would hopefully be the last year of law school and i feel queasy, tense, not to mention nervous as hell. and unlike the last four years where i've always managed to be with my blockmates, now i'm stuck with an OLA team with 9 other people i don't know (they're all from the day class, i'm from the evening class) and 3 electives that my classmates were smart enough to avoid.

unlike a pre-schooler, i've no mommy to hold my hand, no daddy to bring me to school in his shiny car, and yaya won't be waiting outside in case i need someone to be with. unlike in college, my boyfriend won't be in the same class, and neither would my high school barkada be waiting for me in casaa for lunch.

at 27, i'm too old to be feeling the jitters. i've bought my own car and i've had a major operation done on my already. i have traveled to davao on a super ferry alone and i've snuck to baguio and sagada and galera with my parents not knowing it (well, they did, AFTER i went to these places). i'm two years past my "i-gotta-get-married" target and i've learned to live with it. i've slept alone in my room after watching sixth sense and the others.

so i don't effing understand where this fear is coming from. but believe me, it's there.

so i was having a couple of bad days in a row ...

i had a bad wednesday, which led me to blog about it thursday, except that after checking my spelling (i am a terrible speller), blogger decided to delete it which meant i was more pissed than ever.

come on, i (sorta) worked hard at writing that damn post.

so the "i'm having a bad day" became "i'm having two bad days in a row". Add to that two long meetings, one of which had the assistant dean asking me to take the minutes down, and an outfit i just put together cause there was absolutely nothing to wear in my closet, and you have one grumpy girl complaining, " i feel so pangit" (somehow, and i bet you'll agree with me, "ugly" just doesn't convey the same emotion as saying pangit).

since i didn't relish going home and sitting like a blob in front of the television and i didn't feel like staying at work a minute longer, i drove aimlessly until i found myself making the right turn to SM sucat. my feet took me from one floor to the next until i was standing in front of several parlors.

going straight was advertising x-tenso but i didn't feel like blowing my tuition money in exchange for beautiful, lovely hair, so it was a no-go. i could have gone to let's face it for a facial, but i didn't exactly relish any of my experiences there, or in any of those facial centers that have sprouted up like mushrooms either. david's and i haven't really been on the best of terms, with the exception of this girl who does their threading in festival so that wasn't an option either.

i was ready to give up on my quest for the ultimate parlor experience when i spotted a barbershop. yup, a barbershop. i peered through the windows and it seemed like EVERYONE was having quite a relaxing time. maybe a manicure and a pedicure, i thought, since it was one of those "full service salons". i inquired and they said, yes, they also cater to women.

i've always wondered about those lovely barber chairs and when i finally parked my ass in one, i realized why men kept their hair short: god, it was such a treat sitting in those ultra-luxe, ultra-comfortable chairs. if all my haircuts were to be in those lovely chairs that can do anything, i'd cut my hair every single week too.

wait, i'm digressing, as i always do.

anyway, as the lady was doing my pedicure, i couldn't help but glance at everyone else. everyone seemed like they were having the works done. there's this guy getting a massage, another one getting a facial, and yet another one getting his hair dyed. there was this lady having her foot scrubbed while here face was under this blue mask. and everyone - EVERYONE - was asleep!

i quickly inquired about prices, negotiated a bit, and it was not long before i was likewise having the works done on me.

three hours later, and a wallet significantly lighter, i emerged from the barbershop. my fingernails were lovely squovals and my toenails were painted a pretty shade of tan. my face was devoid of all the little black spots that no apricot scrub can wash away. my hair was shiny and bouncy (walang sabit!). and all the knots on my back were gone.

and what do you know. i didn't feel pangit. not one bit.

almost two years ago, i had to undergo an operation where one of my ovaries was surgically removed to save my entire reproductive system. while it did not make me any less of a girl (just check out my shoe-bag-clothes ratio), it somehow pushed me into a dating frenzy which resulted in less-than-desirable boyfriends.

yesterday, as we were eating lunch at home, my brother asked me if the thought of marriage ever crossed my mind. of course yes, i answered, thinking back on those many nights when i'd count how many months i had to go before the two-year deadline imposed by my doctor. much like any woman my age, i had the husband, kids, and house with picket fences dream. i prayed for the elaborate wedding, practiced signing my name with various last names (admittedly, in the middle of boring law school lectures i still do that, sometimes), and planned my entire entourage. all those friday and saturday nights spent alone at home i sometimes panicked, thinking that maybe my future mate may be out there, partying, while i chose to curl up with a good book.

i used to have "the grand plan" implanted in my young, impressionable, 20-year-old psyche. i thought i'd get married at 25, do my master's in education and graduate by 27, and have my first child by 28. i hung on to two dying relationships, the first one with my college boyfriend which resulted in me not going to law school immediately after college, and another one with my work boyfriend.

but then i met gizelle, a girl from work who's pretty impressive in my book, and when i hitched with her home one day, i gained all the wisdom i should've picked up when i was 25, bitter, and blogging about my problems in general.

travel, she told me, and do everything you've always wanted to do. don't wait for the man of you dreams to fulfill your dreams for you, and don't make your dreams dependent on someone else. when the time is right, and when YOU are right, the right man will come. and when that happens, it'll be the best damn thing in the world. cause you're not giving up anything for him, you're actually ready for life with him.

and she's right.

so, right now, i may have the coolest boyfriend in the whole world., but on a good day, marriage is usually the last thing on my mind. because there's so much i have to do - as a single woman - before i'll be happy settling down with anyone. i'm slowly but surely paying off my dream car. i'm one semester away from law school graduation. i'm making sure that the five years i spent teaching does not go to waste by putting everything in place before i resign. i'm building bridges with my parents and my brother. i'm finding out who i am and what i want (aside from an endless stream of jimmy choo shoes). and maybe, when everything's cool with me, i'll be ready for that part called "us".