A Three-Day Sale

SM Malls, the largest mall chains in the country are having a three-day sale in some of their branches nationwide with SM East Ortigas included. As it is closer to home, a mere less than five-minute tricycle ride and about a three-minute walk from the terminal, I decided to go.  An SM mall is where you could find exclusive shops and the regular chains of stores as well. They have lots of restaurant and eateries inside, Just take your pick.

Their linens are definitely a steal at half the price. I bought two sets and extra pillow cases at 50% off too. Curtains are selling at 20% discount. I found it hard to match (a contrast actually, just picking a particular color from the bed sheets) with the sheets but found some in the end.  There are so many items at discounted prices but these are my priorities.  How lovely to see all those displays but you need  cash or your credit card to buy them. Today is also the grand opening of Uniqlo Phils. SM East Ortigas branch.  Uniqlo is a brand of affordable  but stylish wear  for all ages and all sizes.  I had a grand time visiting the site but I didn’t buy anything there.  I am looking for something I could give Nate later on, maybe toys or shirts but I was not able to choose from the array of display at the mall.  Maybe I will comeback this weekend to visit the mall again.

I decided to drop by National Bookstore later but the new branch lacks those books I was looking for. I guess it is always better to visit Booksale, they have a nice collection of books that are almost always new.

Window shopping is okay but it is even more lovely when you actually shop for goods that you need and for those things that are sometimes bought on a whim.

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When Tomorrow Comes

Gosh, it is the end of the month again and I’m like “where have all the days gone?” Time flies so fast and before we know it, another month is gone.

March  has been a little active socially , that is. We’ve attended a wedding,  Nate’s graduation and a dinner at Dampa Seaside. It is always a thrill to see relatives and friends who you haven’t gotten in touch with for quite a while.  It is always nice to bond with one’s family and enjoy some moments singing together in a karaoke bar belting your heart out for a favorite song.  It is always lovely to see other places aside from the four walls of the house. I am not complaining, it’s just that I seldom go out with friends nowadays.  It is always  church, market, grocery store, malls and a monthly visit to my internist.  It is more on being online to update my blog on  WordPress and to update my shout outs on Facebook.  It is most of the time holding a book in my hands or reading a story on my tab. I do enjoy those quiet moments though, they are quite precious to me.

I am thinking of buying a camera. My recent Canon Ixus is dying. The screen is dark at the edges and I haven’t taken any photo for the last six months or so. It is always Nissa who sends me those lovely shots in her expensive cellphone.  I miss taking shots of my garden blooms.  I also miss gardening but sometimes it is so hot even in the late afternoon with nary a breeze to cool it off. It’s undoubtedly summer now.

It is almost April.  Gone are those days when I used to blog about month endings and beginnings. It was a religious undertaking for quite a while. Blogging – sharing life and one’s thoughts in cyberspace. I’ve always enjoyed it, turning my thoughts into a few sentences  and writing a post.

There are these apps on other sites linked at Facebook where you are asked to take (just for fun). They tell you who is your best friend in life, what will happen to you in 2017, what you will look like twenty years from now (if you are still alive, that is).  Seems as though they know too much of your life based on the  things and profile you share on Facebook. I tried one once, about Grammar and I got this result. “You are a PhD”.   I laughed. Goodness, I haven’t even taken any graduate studies at that.  I finished BSC Economics though almost forty years ago.

When tomorrow comes, we still have lots of thing to share and talk about. We still have those lovely moments to experience, we still have those days to look forward to.

 

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Sepsis

I’m done reading my third book of  Amanda Prowse, my 61st read on the Goodreads challenge this year. She writes prose but her subjects are varied and worth-reading.  All the three books that I’ve read so far are superbly written. I don’t usually go about reviewing books or writing about book summaries. It’s really more on how it made me interested to read it.  Three -and-a-half Heartbeats is a work of fiction that deals on sepsis awareness.

Most of us are not probably aware of what sepsis is. I heard  of it the first time when Nate was born more than four years ago. Nissa labored for so many hours before her OB gynecologist decided to operate on her by Caesarian section. She was induced earlier but the baby wouldn’t come. Nate was confined at the NICU for two weeks before we were able to bring him home because of sepsis. We were so worried seeing him  incubated that long and Nissa had to extract her milk at home  for Nate. We were so blessed that he is now growing up to be a smart boy.

According to research, sepsis is   “a life-threatening condition that arises when the body’s response to infection injures its own tissues and organs. Sepsis develops when the chemicals the immune system releases into the bloodstream to fight an infection cause inflammation throughout the entire body instead. Common signs and symptoms include fever, increased heart rate, increased breathing and confusion”.  The most common cause of sepsis is bacterial infection.  Sepsis can also result from other infections.  it may affect someone at any age but babies are the most susceptible to the disease. Most of us are not aware that sepsis exists until it is too late.

According to sepsistrust.org:  Every year in the UK, there are 150,000 cases of sepsis, resulting in a staggering 44,000 deaths – more than bowel, breast and prostate cancer combined.

Going back to the book, I hope you will find time to read it too

 

 

 

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Are You Having A Life Or Merely Existing?

A proverbial question we all wonder about sometimes.

I have a friend who once felt so down because of her health.  When we are at that instance that we feel so helpless with ourselves, we get depressed. And this is so true with having issues with our health. I would like to say, “I’ve been there, done that” but each of us face different challenges every day. Each of us see problems as a glass half-full or half-empty.  Our attitude towards everything makes a big difference.

Are you having a life or mere existing?

Our life unfolds right before our eyes. We can choose to be happy or enjoy those little things that to some people are just that, little things. Sometimes though, they make us happy or maybe we just don’t see the values of a moment. We don’t understand how it is to be happy in simple things. A child’s smiles and laughter would always make my day complete. Seeing the morning sun and feeling it right on my  face is  just lovely.  Watching a drizzle and catching it right on the leaves is an enjoyable thing to do. Playing with one’s pets for a few moments is happiness itself.

Learning to do something and making it a hobby is just as rewarding. Back in the 90’s while I was still at the bank, our former boss taught us cross-stitching. That started my joy in collecting different colors of skein thread and always looking forward to see another design to do. I was able to give some  cross-stitch frames as gifts to friends and the rest are still hanging in my bedroom. There was also a time when Nissa and I made cellphone holders too.  I am trying my hand now at coloring books but then my hands sometimes are not quite steady. Nissa gifted me with two thick adult coloring books a several  colored pens and pencils to start with.  It is a lovely experience to always learn new things, more so when you have just turned 60 and a senior citizen at that.

Being brave enough to try other things in one’s life speaks of the many, many times you felt hesitant to have a hair cut, You’ve been used too long with a wavy and somewhat long tresses that you are afraid to try new hairdo.  Yes, it’s one brave thing to do.

Saying yes to people and learning to say no too in the process. Are you always this kind of person who says yes all the time but doesn’t mean half of it? Or are you that someone who honestly can turn down something and learn to say no?  When you think it is not good for you or you are brave enough to try something new. It has always been a touch and go  for many of us. We always wonder about the “what if” in our lives.

I love this quote from Steve  Maraboli.

“When you are just EXISTING, life happens to you… and you manage; when you are truly LIVING, you happen to life… and you lead.”

Does life just happens to us or we happen to life? Big questions that sometimes we just ignore. Live life and be happy.

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Another Milestone For Our Baby

 

Just updated my blog on Our Precious Bundle Of Joy  posting photos of Nate on his graduation from Nursery yesterday afternoon at Manila Hotel.

It was a lovely day of celebration, family togetherness and bonding. We were so proud of our baby. Time flies fast. It seems like it was only yesterday when he was in nappies and we were singing lullabies and children’s rhymes to him.  How proud we are of him.

Next school year he will be in  Kindergarten  and it will be another milestone to go through and  tackle. I wish  you all the best Nate. I am pretty sure  you can do it better.

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Moving Up

It’s our little  Nate’s moving up today at the famous Manila Hotel.  It is his graduation from Nursery. Next school year he will be in kindergarten.  Here’s our future pilot.

We will be having dinner together with the family and Nissa’s in-laws later on. What a lovely day to celebrate with our boy.  So excited.

 

 

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Deleting E-mails

I spent the morning cleaning up e-mails on my Yahoo mails. Most of them (in thousands)  are comments and like notifications from WordPress. I decided to change my Discussion Setting so I won’t have to be notified thru e-mail when I get likes and comments from the site, after all, WordPress has its own notifications once you receive the former.  For new posts of the blogs I follow, I have my reader feed  which is always up to date with them. It was  quite hard to delete each page of the e-mails since I receive other e-mails too aside from the ones at WordPress so I just chose  which to delete.

It’s the same thing with Facebook which is lot busier than my blogs at WordPress. Facebook is  updated all the time in minutes and in seconds even. My reader feed is full of notifications sometimes. Unlike  WordPress,  I get a summary of postings made at Facebook. I could no longer remember how it was done before when I opened my account at the site. Here’s the funny thing, I have to retrieve my Yahoo account through my cellphones. I can’t remember I’ve been using the old password  to log in. My goodness, I have changed it last December (senior moments to the max). Good thing though I’ve written all my passwords except those I frequently use every day. I haven’t logged in to may Yahoo account close to three months now, yes, until today. Just imagine!

Wow,  WordPress has changed the colors of its buttons again. I can now see a bright red one on Publish  and when you click the Dashboard, it is all red too.  Sometimes you just can’t keep up. I prefer using the old thing as against the new buttons for adding  a blog. It is  hard to edit  the new one. Believe me, sometimes no matter how careful you are in typing,  there are always missed words or words which are not supposed to be there at all.  Editing one’s  post is a bit hard too because all along you thought you have typed the correct word but you have substituted it  with new ones.  There is always a reminder in the proofreading  box that you are not supposed to use passive words which I think is inevitable.

I have finally updated my newest blog  (it’s more than a year now) this morning. I  usually have photos and a bit of text there. Please visit it if you have time. It’s called Dreams Never End.

How is your blogging adventure?

 

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A Blessing Indeed

This morning I received another copy of the cute Irish Blessings book that I lost back in 2009 from the same friend who gave me the first one.  He sent it via a courier.

And these are just some of them, wishes and prayers that bring a smile when I read them.

May the good saints protect you

And bless you today

And may trouble ignore you

Each step of the way.

May your troubles be less

And your blessings be more

And nothing but happiness

Come through your door.

With the first light of sun –

Bless you

When the long day is done –

Bless you

In your smiles and your tears –

Bless you

Through each day of your years –

Bless you.

 Blessings to each one of you who read this.

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Another Wonderful Day

It rained last night, that kind that left water pockets on the pavements  and drenched the grass. I won’t have to water the plants today.  It is just the start of summer and yet there are these summer rains now and then. It is actually good for the plants and the grass and somehow diffuses the heat brought by the season. The climate is changing. Normally, we don’t get rains during summer except maybe for a few occasional showers in between.

The joy of seeing another lovely day.

The sun is shining now and the raindrops left last night are like tiny jewels on the grass.  Such a beautiful sight to behold. it is somewhat amazing how nature gives us all these gifts, simple things  that delight the senses.  I am thinking of finally planting the seeds I bought last year.  I’ve been busy updating my book shelves that somehow I forgot these. I guess summer would be the best time to plant them.

I am looking forward to having a copy of the newest book by Richard Paul Evans, one of my favorite authors.  The Broken Road is not yet out in the market. I think May 02, 2017 is the official date of launching.  I have been collecting RPE’s books over the years.  Most of the hardbound books I have were given by friends.

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Ah, Blogging

Some people and bloggers say that they don’t really mind if their blogs are here but stay silent in cyber space.  I do. I mean, one of the reasons why we share our thoughts is to be recognized as  bloggers  too, right? Of course it is a welcome bonus that our blogs  could be popular on their own.

I have just reached 460,000 plus visits a while ago. For me that is an achievement for this humble blog. I must admit that it is quite hard to reach a number that you would feel comfortable  with, if your blog posts  are being read. A year of blogging would not even yield a thousand visits if  people don’t read  your blog and other bloggers don’t visit it and make comments. I think the idea of blogging is to share what you are passionate about, be it simple recipes that you do on your own, photos of places you’ve been to,  things you love to write about and such other things that you want to share  with other people. I could not exactly remember when the button  Like  on WordPress was introduced but it a lovely way of showing how one is attracted and like a particular post. When I joined the Post A Day Challenge in the year 2011, I used  to get from 300-400 visits a day but that has waned over the years. Perhaps fellow bloggers and visitors  have gotten tired visiting this blog.  I can no longer see those who used to be active in posting too. Along the way, their blog has stopped. I miss them.

One feels glad when one’s blog is noticed by other bloggers. I am not one those who promote books (I am not an author)  and those who have thousands of followers in their midst. I write about the daily happenings in my life,  the illness I went through back in 2009, the journey of getting well and feeling normal too.  I am grateful for those days that lots of friends prayed for me and empathized with me.  I am grateful for those days that I was strong enough to face everything although it was a hard journey to go through. I am grateful for my family and relatives who were at my side during those days of  recuperating and getting well.

There are so many blogs that I come across about how to blog.  There are many blogs that tell you how to be a successful blogger. I think it all depends on what we want to share with the world. If our blog is public, every one could read it.  There are no sure “how to’s” on how your blog would be noticed, much less when you are blogging on a free platform just like me.

Ah, blogging.

 

 

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