June 13, 2007
Lazy summer days
All right, so much for laziness. My apologies for the short break from blogging. It’s been more than a couple of weeks since my last post and I offer no excuses. The author feels she is entitled to being a sloth once in a while. So how is everyone doing?
The family has been enjoying the summer heat. We try to do something different at the end of each week and on June 2, we rented pedal boats and put our legs to good use while pedaling about in Washington, DC’s Tidal Basin. The boy took charge of the steering wheel while husband and I provided the foot power. When the first wave of muscle pain set in, the breaks in between pedaling became more and more frequent. The weather was excellent and quite a lot of people were out and about, generally basking in the sun. For some reason, I thought of my beach adventures in the Philippines when my friends and I would rent a small banca so we could go further out to sea, which also reminded me of those childhood years when we would ride a banana trunk down the river. That was ingenious.
On the same week, we attended Unprom at Re’Sean’s school. Husband and I had a vague idea of what the night was going to be about but the boy insisted that we go. Well, think of the anti-thesis of Prom Night. Now imagine dozens of kids let loose in a gym, free to do whatever they want. Yes, you got that right – chaos. Not a single inch of the gym's floor was left unexplored. While some dance music was blasting from the speaker system, the boys were running around like dogs unleashed and the girls were screaming their lungs out while chasing each other. It was like Gladiator third-grade version. In the middle of this bedlam was a toddler who wanted to do a headspin. I was going to post a video so you can bear witness to the disorder but neither Youtube nor Google was working in my favor as of this writing.
With Threese’s help, I finally finished writing the article on Noraida Abdullah-Karim, a social worker from Mindanao who won the prestigious “Voice of Courage” award for her peace advocacy and humanitarian work in that region’s war-torn communities. My editor, Jacqui, drew me out of hiatus, otherwise known as laziness. It’s amazing what deadlines, imposed on short notice, can do. Her subtle reminder put my butt to work right away.
This week, we’re off to Illinois to visit the in-laws. Packing up for three people is no easy work. The last two days consisted of marathon laundry and ironing, capped by a rundown of what to bring and what not to stuff in our luggage. Of course, the most daunting part was my stuff. You know how we women are. If allowed to, we’d bring the entire bathroom with us. My OC-ness is kicking in. Let me go over the checklist again.