The Husband is dining out tonight with friends at work and so I have our home all to myself tonight (or at least til he arrives home). Since I didn’t have any gimik of my own, I decided to just chill at home with Chinese take-away dinner and watch an episode or two of Lovers in Paris (I suddenly missed watching Koreanovela).
I love it when the Husband goes out with friends once in a while. He’d usually invite me to come but more often than not, I’d decline. I respect his time with his friends the way he respects my time with mine, so no problem at all. We believe that hanging out with friends separately is one of the things that make our relationship healthy and an exercise in giving each other some space even if we’re already married.
Sometimes when he’d say he’s going out with friends, I’d cheerfully say, “Really? Weeeee, I’ll have the house to myself while you’re gone!” And we’d just tease each other to death. The best part is when we’d have to say goodbye and I’d wish him “Enjoy, baby!!!”, and he’ll reply, “You too, babe.”
Most of us are not so eager to back to work on Mondays, especially when we had so much fun over the weekend. And to add to that, we almost always feel that weekends are never enough–I couldn’t agree more. How I always wish that weekends would just go on forever.
So what do I do in order to start my week on a positive note and be more excited about it? Other than following my tips on ‘How to Get Along with “Monday”‘, I make a list of all the good things I was grateful for the weekend that passed, I call it “My Weekend’s Happy List”.
Here are some of the happy moments I had over the weekend:
Friday afternoon tea with my friend Cathy. This was an overdue reunion and finally, we found the time to catch up. Like me, she moved here to start a new life and a family. I’m so grateful I have someone from my childhood who lives here too (we attended the same school from elementary to high school). And a great bonus is that we live in the same area–we’re practically neighbors, yay!!!
It was great catching up with her…great to hear updates about our other friends from school and at the same time, there were a lot of remisning of the good old days. Made us miss our high school days *sigh*.
We had a chocolatey meryenda feast at Max Brenner and shared a plate of Tutti Frutti. I had my usual Max Brenner Cappuccino.
Breakfast with plurkmates/twitmates Jo and Pen on Saturday morning. Other than chitchatting via plurk and twitter and sharing stories via our blogs–yes, we never seem to get enough haha–we also enjoy hanging out in the flesh, even if it meant getting up early on a Saturday morning (instead of sleep in) to have breakfast together.
A trip to the park. Isn’t it relaxing to hang out at the park and be surrounded by lovely green and blue sceneries? I love going to the park all the time but on some weekends, our schedule does not allow us to. This weekend, my husband and I were fortunate to be able to hang out with friends as well–double fun!
Sunny weather on a winter’s day. So what do kids do when the sun is up? We play!!!! Other than play out in the sun, I’m always grateful for sunny weather on weekends because it is a big help to dry out the laundry.
Our laptop is now working!!!! After a year of “hibernation”, thinking that our laptop is dead (and in need of serious repair), lo and behold, the husband tried turning it on on Sunday afternoon and it worked! Holy guacamole 🙂
So there, a few of the happy highlights of my weekend.
What my Weekend’s Happy List does to me:
On days when I need cheering up, I open the pages of my journal and draw inspiration from my Happy Lists. I maintain a journal as well and it is there that I write down my Happy Lists–I have an Everyday Happy List and a Weekend’s Happy List.
Thinking about the happy moments of my weekend makes me more enthused to go to work on Monday. Since I started cherishing my weekends more, I seldom go to work on Monday unhappy and “un-ready”. It helped me overcome “Monday-itis syndrome”.
It made me look forward to another weekend with a smile.
Sometimes, I still have unsatisfactory and challenging moments during my weekend. But when I start counting the more favorable blessings that I’ve encountered over the weekend, the good always outweighs the bad.
So what about you? What’s in your Weekend’s Happy List?
Ito ang aking lahok para sa Litratong Pinoy ngayong Huwebes na may temang ALMUSAL.
Halika na pumikit limutin ang problema Hihintayin ang umaga Magpahinga, panaginip ang ikaliligaya Darating din ang umaga
Chorus: Basta’t tayo’y magkasama Laging mayro’ng umagang kay ganda Pagsikat ng araw May dalang liwanag Sa ating pangarap, ooh… haharapin natin (haharapin natin)
Magpahinga, panaginip ang ikaliligaya Darating din ang umaga
Chorus: Basta’t tayo’y magkasama Laging mayro’ng umagang kay ganda Pagsikat ng araw May dalang liwanag Sa ating pangarap, ooh… haharapin natin (haharapin natin)
Bridge: Ang sikat ng araw Na may dalang liwanag
Chorus: Basta’t tayo’y magkasama Laging mayro’ng umagang kay ganda Pagsikat ng araw May dalang liwanag Sa ating pangarap, ooh… haharapin natin (haharapin natin)
The plan was just to get caramel sundae at McDonald’s but what was supposed to be just less than a 5-minute drive turned out to be more than an hour joyride that lead us to Starbucks, three suburbs away from where we live.
This Starbucks branch has a drive-thru…
During winter, I always order their Signature Hot Chocolate. The Husband ordered for the both of us and surprised me by requesting the barista to add marshmallows on top 🙂 How sweet. He knows that I love marshmallows.
Then he added a dash of chocolate powder on top before handing it over to me. 🙂
I brought along baon for our afternoon snack–Hopia Combi (queso and ube). We were supposed to really eat these had we stayed home so I brought it with me.
Other than eat, we just hung out there for a bit, enjoyed our drinks and cam whored. We were both in the mood to practice taking shots using the 50mm lens. I haven’t been using it lately as I primarily used the 18-55mm lens (that one I broke) for blogging. So now, I need to brush up my skills on the 50mm since I think I will be using this more often. Thru the use of this lens, I realized na lalo kong napa-practice ang pagtanggal ng camera shakes ko and for me, that’s one of the most important things in order to achieve a good photograph. One may know the technicalities of photography but if you are prone to camera shakes, the photos you’ve captured could be useless. I’ve had so many photos that was put to waste just because it was blurry due to camera shakes. After two years of doing photography and a lot of pang-aasar from the Husband (my best and worst critic), thank goodness, I’m improving.
Anyway, we went home with more than a hundred photographs just by hanging out for 45 minutes at Starbucks. That is quite normal for us. Pag nasa cafe kami at kung nasa mood kami, sometimes wala kaming ginawa kungdi mag-pose at mag-picture. It’s like a game to us–one becomes a photographer and the other a model. Pinagtri-tripan namin ang isa’t-isa actually hehe. For example, if I’m the one holding the camera, I’d ask the Husband poses such as “galit”, “masaya”, “excited”, “natatakot”, “gigil”, “nginig”…until the requests become weirder or funnier (“kunwari nakakita mo ang ex-girlfriend mo!”)–pa-kwelahan ng utos at pose. And we’d end up laughing our hearts out when we review our photos. While reviewing the photos, pa-kwelahan naman ng captions hehe. Kababawan ever! 🙂
We’re down to the 8th month of the year and I can’t believe it is nearly Christmas (!!!). So I want to start the month of August with a funny, yet very inspiring speech from Ellen Degeneres, TV host of The Ellen Show. Hoping that this speech will give you that extra boost to your enthusiasm in achieving your goals this year.
I hope you enjoy it as much my Husband and I did. I’ve also provided a transcipt should you want to read instead of watch. Could be a long read for you but I’ve marked some key phases in bold letters.
Have a great week and be inspired!
Transcript:
Thank you, President Cowan, Mrs. President Cowen; distinguished guests, undistinguished guests – you know who you are, honored faculty and creepy Spanish teacher. And thank you to all the graduating class of 2009, I realize most of you are hungover and have splitting headaches and haven’t slept since Fat Tuesday, but you can’t graduate ’til I finish, so listen up.
When I was asked to make the commencement speech, I immediately said yes. Then I went to look up what commencement meant. Which would have been easy if I had a dictionary, but most of the books in our house are Portia’s, and they’re all written in Australian. So I had to break the word down myself, to find out the meaning.
Commencement: common, and cement. Common cement. You commonly see cement on sidewalks. Sidewalks have cracks, and if you step on a crack, you break your mother’s back. So there’s that. But I’m honored that you’ve asked me here to speak at your common cement.
I thought that you had to be a famous alumnus – alumini – aluminum – alumus – you had to graduate from this school. And I didn’t go to college here, and I don’t know if President Cowan knows, I didn’t go to any college at all. Any college. And I’m not saying you wasted your time, or money, but look at me, I’m a huge celebrity.
Although I did graduate from the school of hard knocks, our mascot was the Knockers. I spent a lot of time here growing up. My mom worked at Nucum and I would go there every time I needed to steal something out of her purse. But why am I here today? Clearly not to steal, you’re too far away and I’d never get away with it.
I’m here because of you. Because I can’t think of a more tenacious, more courageous graduating class. I mean, look at you all, wearing your robes. Usually when you’re wearing a robe at 10 in the morning, it means you’ve given up. I’m here because I love New Orleans. I was born and raised here, I spent my formative years here, and like you, while I was living here I only did laundry six times. When I finished school, I was completely lost. And by school, I mean middle school, but I went ahead and finished high school anyway. And I – I really, I had no ambition, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I did everything from – I shucked oysters, I was a hostess, I was a bartender, I was a waitress, I painted houses, I sold vaccuum cleaners, I had no idea. And I thought I’d just finally settle in some job, and I would make enough money to pay my rent, maybe have basic cable, maybe not, I didn’t really have a plan, my point is that, by the time I was your age, I really thought I knew who I was, but I had no idea. Like for example, when I was your age, I was dating men. So what I’m saying is, when you’re older, most of you will be gay. Anyone writing this stuff down? Parents?
Anyway, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and the way I ended up on this path was from a very tragic event. I was maybe 19, and my girlfriend at the time was killed in a car accident. And I passed the accident, and I didn’t know it was her and I kept going, and I found out shortly after that, it was her. And I was living in a basement apartment, I had no money, I had no heat, no air, I had a mattress on the floor and the apartment was infested with fleas. And I was soul-searching, I was like, why is she suddenly gone, and there are fleas here? I don’t understand, there must be a purpose, and wouldn’t it be so convenient if we could pick up the phone and call God, and ask these questions.
And I started writing and what poured out of me was an imaginary conversation with God, which was one-sided, and I finished writing it and I looked at it and I said to myself, and I hadn’t even been doing stand-up, ever, there was no club in town. I said, “I’m gonna do this on the Tonight Show With Johnny Carson”- at the time he was the king – “and I’m gonna be the first woman in the history of the show to be called over to sit down.” And several years later, I was the first woman in the history of the show, and only woman in the history of the show to sit down, because of that phone conversation with God that I wrote. And I started this path of stand-up and it was successful and it was great, but it was hard, because I was trying to please everybody and I had this secret that I was keeping, that I was gay. And I thought if people found out they wouldn’t like me, they wouldn’t laugh at me.
Then my career turned into – I got my own sitcom, and that was very successful, another level of success. And I thought, what if they find out I’m gay, then they’ll never watch, and this was a long time ago, this was when we just had white presidents – this was back, many years ago – and I finally decided that I was living with so much shame, and so much fear, that I just couldn’t live that way anymore, and I decided to come out and make it creative. And my character would come out at the same time, and it wasn’t to make a political statement, it wasn’t to do anything other than to free myself up from this heaviness that I was carrying around, and I just wanted to be honest. And I thought, “What’s the worst that could happen? I can lose my career”. I did. I lost my career. The show was cancelled after six years, without even telling me, I read it in the paper. The phone didn’t ring for three years. I had no offers. Nobody wanted to touch me at all. Yet, I was getting letters from kids that almost committed suicide, but didn’t, because of what I did. And I realised that I had a purpose.And it wasn’t just about me and it wasn’t about celebrity, but I felt like I was being punished… it was a bad time, I was angry, I was sad, and then I was offered a talkshow. And the people that offered me the talkshow tried to sell it. And most stations didn’t want to pick it up. Most people didn’t want to buy it because they thought nobody would watch me.
Really when I look back on it, I wouldn’t change a thing. I mean, it was so important for me to lose everything because I found out what the most important thing is, is to be true to yourself. Ultimately, that’s what’s gotten me to this place. I don’t live in fear, I’m free, I have no secrets. and I know I’ll always be ok, because no matter what, I know who I am. So In conclusion, when I was younger I thought success was something different. I thought when I grow up, I want to be famous. I want to be a star. I want to be in movies. When I grow up I want to see the world, drive nice cars, I want to have groupies. To quote the Pussycat Dolls. How many people thought it was “boobies”, by the way? It’s not, it’s “groupies”.
But my idea of success is different today. And as you grow, you’ll realise the definition of success changes. For many of you, today, success is being able to hold down 20 shots of tequila. For me, the most important thing in your life is to live your life with integrity, and not to give into peer pressure, to try to be something that you’re not. To live your life as an honest and compassionate person.To contribute in some way. So to conclude my conclusion: follow your passion, stay true to yourself. Never follow anyone else’s path, unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you see a path, and by all means you should follow that. Don’t give advice, it will come back and bite you in the ass. Don’t take anyone’s advice. So my advice to you is to be true to yourself and everything will be fine.
And I know that a lot of you are concerned about your future, but there’s no need to worry. The economy is booming, the job market is wide open, the planet is just fine. It’s gonna be great. You’ve already survived a hurricane. What else can happen to you? And as I mentioned before, some of the most devastating things that happen to you will teach you the most. And now you know the right questions to ask in your first job interview. Like, “Is it above sea level?” . So to conclude my conclusion that I’ve previously concluded, in the common cement speech, I guess what I’m trying to say is life is like one big Mardi Gras. But instead of showing your boobs, show people your brain, and if they like what they see, you’ll have more beads than you know what to do with. And you’ll be drunk, most of the time. So the Katrina class of 2009, I say congratulations and if you don’t remember a thing I said today, remember this: you’re gonna be ok, dum de dum dum dum, just dance.
