Of Banchetto and Blueberry Cheesecake

Time for some more gritty, blurry pics...

Of late, we've been observing our own Friday night ritual of having a meal at midnight, maybe an hour or two after that... Obviously, we don't get to do the usual Friday night out thing, with the kids and all. And even if we could get somebody to watch the kids, it wouldn't feel right to go out when we're missing prayer meeting at our church.

So, Friday nights (and some other nights too), Mark drives to the nearest banchetto (supposedly ban-ket-toh, but expect to draw a blank stare if you pronounce it like that, lol - it's the trend around here - parking lot food stalls that mostly cater to the call center graveyard shift crowd, like a night market devoted to food) and buys grub. Since I've started editing, my work has become pretty much OT in nature, and with tending to the kids and trying to work on projects (Mark's hotsling - the baby's almost a year old!), I'm up until the wee hours. And Marguerite has adjusted her bedtime to stay up with us (that has to change).

So here are some pics from last Friday. Mark got Ilocos empanadas, paella negra, mango cheesecake and brazo de mercedes...

Now, Mark and I have been commenting that we're spending too much on food (there's also our regular snack supply, of course), and while we'd like to indulge our cravings (I'm still exclusively breastfeeding a baby who wants to latch on every time he sees me, which is all the time, hence my incessant hunger -- Mark doesn't have an excuse, lol) - the random spending has got to stop. So, when we did our groceries for this week, we bought ingredients for stuff that we could make ourselves. We started with blueberry cheesecake earlier in the week. A store-bought version would have cost us about Php700-1000. Making our own cost us about Php400-500. Plus there's the pride in your own work and the bonding benefits of making it with my daughter...

 

Sick Kids and Braid Bonding

It's that season here. Rains and flu. Cameron went down with a cold, spread the bug around, and then got sick again - teething woes, but he was a sick little munchkin for several days, so much so that I took him back to the doctor just a week after his 11th month well-baby. I was pretty sure it wasn't anything serious, but I wanted my teeny fears of ear infection, dengue, etc. allayed.

So heartbreaking to see your kids having a bad time of it.

Marguerite got better pretty quickly and here we are playing around with our hair at bedtime. I braided our hair together, kind of like Siamese twins (joined at the hair and about 30 years apart)... I'd like to think that we're putting in some quality in these little snippets of true presence (as opposed to "Here, get busy with this so you'll be out of my hair while I work, but I'm right here, remember, just a couple of steps away." Hmph, I'm so tired of being a sourpuss. Time to get over that. Anyway, pics.

Spinning Days

Hello. Just a quick update. I'm afraid that if I scratch beneath the superficial stuff, I'd start articulating all of my thoughts and I just don't have time for that.

And while it's true that life's pretty hectic these days, it's not too toxic that I can't even spare a minute to post a quick paragraph or even just a picture... the truth of the matter is that I'm not finding my days lovely at all. This is not the life I'd set out for at all. I'm praying for positivity. I think I'm thankful. I'm counting my blessings, and I know that there are a lot... I like my work, I like having a stable source of income... BUT...

I hate that I'm just overcome with guilt and shame over the level of stewardship that I'm eking out for my children these days. I hate that I have to tell my daughter that I'm too busy to do things with her. I hate that I'm not able to micro-experience my son's infancy (which I was able to with my daughter - in retrospect, I do admit that there were very many moments when I was almost prostrate with paranoia over the most ridiculous worries, and regrettably over-indulgent when it came to postpartum hormones). I hate that the days are not lovely in quite the way that I want them to be lovely...

I didn't pay too much attention to my physics class my senior year in high school, but I do remember the Uncertainty Principle - I think I can compare my current struggle with that... I don't want to get a hernia explaining the comparison, so I'd leave it at that and not expound...

I'm praying. There's what I want, of course. I'm praying that with the strength of my yearning for something that I don't move heaven and earth to get to the point that I want. In my dorkiness, I can be quite determined, and I'm not sure that getting what I want is the best thing for us. Because, though still (relatively) young, I've already experienced enough to know that it's better when God's will - and not mine - is done...

That's just the surface, believe me -- On a happy note, I do have pictures - stuff from my phone, so they're mostly bedtime stuff (If you try hard enough without hurting yourself, I think you could possibly find the logic there, lol)...