home is where the heart is.

what we left behind.

what we now come home to.

the biggest difference? actual, honest-to-God doors (those of you who visited d'original lungga know why i'm ooh-ing and aah-ing about that)

the first morning i woke up at aspen suites (yes, i know, kinda...poseur), i woke up on my own accord...and i felt like i had lived there forever, in a good way.

i spend my mornings sweeping the floor, when i have time. then i sit down, have coffee. feed cybs' fish...or water her basil (only when i'm feeling really housebroken).

...there is quiet joy in the little things...not that i wasn't grateful for them before. i guess i just didn't see them for what they truly are.

just when you think...

...everything is okay, that you're in a pretty okay place, and there aren't any monsters (or skeletons) left in the closet, that nothing can rattle you anymore because you've been so rattled and thrown around before you can scream "you want my blood? take my blood!" like samuel l. jackson, something slaps you in the cyberworld and you wonder what the fuck is happening and what the fuck is it with humans, so yes, it's all suddenly so fucking complicated.

but all this time you thought it was so okay, so it just goes to show you don't know diddly squat.

hail to the [laundry] chief

i played hooky today...the weekend flew past me, and monday morning felt like it should be sunday morning, so i "cut" work, and promptly started cleaning the apartment like mad.

i cannot cook to save my life (i live on canned tuna and cereal when cybs is not home), and when my sister left for malaysia for work, she left a million post-its on our various kitchen appliances, left explicit instructions on how to heat leftovers, and left a ton of leftovers in our fridge.

she came home about a month or two later to find the fridge still full of leftovers, and me a lot thinner because of a cereal diet.

i cannot cook to save my life, but i can spend hours cleaning, and take true comfort in it. i suppose it's the before and after feeling i get. dirty dishes now, clean dishes 3-5 tori songs later. dirty floor now, hairball free later.

in our old apartment, i'd hang newly washed clothes out to dry on our baby balcony. i'd take in the clear blue sky, the wind on my face, that whole looking out like a barrio lass move, and a sense of calm would come over me.

so am beginning to think i was a labandera in a past life. either a vietnamese girl (hence the tendency to say didi mow) in some rice paddy, or a redhead in ireland. for a moment i considered being russian, but then that would mean dealing with a lot of hot water, which i'm not a big fan of.

a new toy

...hopefully, a new friend. when they put her (i believe she's female) in front of me, she seemed pretty friendly, and approachable. she has a pretty screen (widescreen daw). her keys are nice to type on. and because there's a tech dude in the neighboring apartment building, am typing this via wifi choochoo on my bed.

cool!

i bought her with jason as my consultant/babysitter (daddy, daddy, hold my hand, the luddite in me is mortified).

some say she is the hyundai of laptops, but the specs (512mb, 60g hd, 1.73ghz [whatever ghz are]) are value for money daw.

like i said, she seems friendly, and we may (i hope) get along. made me think...maybe i'm really just a hyundai kind of girl. if you put me next to a BMW or a porsche, i wouldn't know how the hell to be :)

in other news...

something i've been dreaming of may be available to me. for just a week. but a week is still a week.

abangan!

48 years later...

i could talk about our new apartment (yahoo!)--but i don't have the necessary visuals. i could talk about all the [new] work i have to do--but that's an old tune. i could give you a backgrounder on my romanov fetish--but if i had to do that, then that would mean you don't know me, so go away. :)

anydahoo. this is what tsarina/tsaritsa/czarina alexandra normally looks like in most photographs:


either mataray or naiiyak na ewan. ...guess it's the face of a woman with a kid who has a fatal disease that her very own chromosomes passed on...

recently i ran into some pictures of her, and this time she looks like this:

in the memoirs of people who knew her personally, they talked about her paralyzing fear of appearing public, making her look like "she had swallowed a yardstick". but in private, she looked like that.

made me realize the power of a smile, you know?

even nicky looks "awfully" pleased.