One habit I can't seem to let go of...

I've done quite a lot in my 3 years worth of journey to self-empowerment. It started with the realization that I've been a pushover all my life and that I wanted to change that. I've read self-help books, attended seminars, surfed the web for all the information I will ever need to empower myself. I'm not even halfway through with the whole thing but I want to believe that I've made progress, no matter how small it is.

Having said that, I've read probably all the top 10 lists the internet has to provide. I've seen countless versions of the same lists, too. Most items from the list, I can do with ease ever since I started with this self-empowerment thing but there's this one thing that I can't seem to do: Letting go of someone who hurts me. The instructions are clear and simple:

Sometimes you have to walk away from people, not because you don’t care, but because they don’t.  When someone hurts you time and time again, accept the fact that they don’t care about you.  It’s a tough pill to swallow, but it’s necessary medicine.  Do NOT strive to impress them any further.  Waste not another second of your time trying to prove something to them.  Nothing needs to be proven.  Do not act with any thought of them ever again.  (via MarcAndAngel.com)

I've let go of people - mostly guys - who "hurt" me but I still manage to get into another relationship - not necessarily a romantic one - with a guy who will still end up hurting me. I don't know what it is about me that attracts these kinds of guys. They're not necessarily jerks; I think it's more of they just have other things that they care about more than me. Anyway, I still want to know what attracts me to these guys...or them to me...or both.

Going back, I need to get rid of this habit. I need to empower myself over these guys. It's the one thing that's been holding me back. This probably is the reason why I haven't found "The One" up until now. Which is sad, if you think about it 'cause I already have a kid and all... (Self-empowering after-thought: I don't need a guy to be a great mom, anyway, so it doesn't matter if I haven't found "The One" yet.)

My Election 2013 Experience

Please forgive me for taking a photo without cutting my nails first. Katams e.

When I woke up this morning, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to vote. I didn't want to go through the hassle plus I knew that whoever I voted for most probably won't win (Hello, Gibo Teodoro). As the day wore on, though, I keep on having this nagging feeling that I SHOULD be voting. Maybe it's the righteous person in me (yes, I have a righteous alter ego). I slept the feeling off, though. But when I woke up and realized that I still had less than an hour to vote, I dragged my brother to the precinct. It took me a total of 5 minutes to vote. By the time we got there, it was almost 6:30pm so there literally weren't any lines.

To those who want to judge me for my choices, here are the candidates that I voted for (in no particular order):

• Teddy Casino
• Riza Hontiveros
• Richard "#ipasoksidick" Gordon
• Chiz Escudero
• Ed Hagedorn
• Ramon Magsaysay Jr.

For the partylist, I voted for Ladlad like I did back in 2010.

Anyway, here are some of the observations I had in our precinct (119A, Mercedes Exec. Vill. Clubhouse) this time around:

1. Police assistance desk didn't have an actual desk. What.
2. The PPCRV booth, as usual, was placed right beside the entrance. Made me miss working for them during the elections.
3. The girl in-charge of the laptop for PPCRV was connio. Not that there's something wrong with being connio (hypocrite) but people in our village aren't exactly like those who live in Corinthian or Valle Verde. I bet most of the voters here had a hard time understanding her speak.
4. The PPCRV team leader was really helpful. If he could carry me through the throng of pasaway candidate pollwatchers, he would.
5. As per the Halalan 2013 app, my Voter's ID has already been printed. I am quite disappointed that I didn't get to claim it in the precinct. It would've been really convenient for the voters to claim it there instead of going to the Comelec branch - in my case, in Cainta City Hall which is one hour away from my place.
6. Nobody was wearing any ID. If some kind of commotion happened in the precinct, you wouldn't know who you're going to approach. Well, except the PPCRV volunteers who were wearing their uniforms.
7. Pollwatchers of candidates were blocking the way. I hope next time they have a designated place to stay in and that they actually stay there. Goodness. Breeding, people.
8. The PCOS machine was busted when I got there. There was this guy who didn't have an ID that kept on jamming bond papers in it like it was gonna solve the problem.
9. When I went over to the tables, there were people watching me from the outside like they wanted to jump my bones or something. I chose a seat very far away from the window (them) but not that close to those annoying pollwatchers working for the candidates.
10. Limited markers were available and most of them didn't have ink.
11. Instead of feeding the ballot to the PCOS machine, I fed it to an envelop.
12. I didn't trust the guy who put indelible ink on my nail but he did a good job, not like the one who put it the last time.

It was a rather pleasant experience. I think the excitement from the first time just wore off, giving me a chance to observe everything around me.

This time around, I can say that I've matured as a voter. In 2010, I just wanted to take the photo with an inked finger and let people know "I'm mature, bitches!". Now, it really is all about wanting change; wanting a brighter future for Brianna. (This is for real, you guys. Perspectives change when you have a kid.)

Updating my playlist

Being a full-time mom does weird things to your playlist like having these four songs added into it while you play them (supposedly) for your daughter non-stop for a month:

 

I guess it's obvious why I like this song. It's all about love. It's the closest thing that the Hi5 gang has to a love song. Actually, I just checked the lyrics here and it is indeed a love song. It's simple but it's a really sweet song.

 

Wow! is about doing things that you think you cannot do. It's empowering. It's telling us to do whatever we want and be whatever we want to be because we were all born amazing.

 

Some Kind of Wonderful is yet another love song in this children's songs line-up. I love how whoever this song is written for is everything to the person who wrote it. It's the perfect pop love song.

This last song became a part of the playlist not because of the lyrics but because of the music. I love how the song would (probably) fit in a (really cheesy) club playlist.

I hope I'm not the only one with weird children's songs in my playlist... Well, actually, I take that back. I really like these songs (plus Tim Maddren is in all the videos so...)

I have the biggest hair among all the people I know (personally).

I am the only person I know that has this big, unruly hair. I don't even know what happened because when I was a baby, I looked like this:

A lot of people thought I was a baby boy because of how light my hair was. My lifelong yaya, Ate Thelma, told me that she would put gata on my hair every once in a while to make it thicker and now, I blame her for this mess:

Photo by Brianna. This is the only photo I have of my hair because I don't take photos of it really when it's all kinky.

Well, it's not entirely the gata's fault because I had my hair relaxed twice and a lot of hairstylists have been reprimanding me throughout the years about it so I guess that - plus that time I had my hair colored in college - made more damage than the gata.

Anyway, yesterday was the last straw and I thought that I needed to do something about it so I went to my mom's bathroom and went snooping around for her hot oil/moisturizer thingy but I ended up using this:

The decision to use this has got to do with that short span of time in high school before I had my hair relaxed where I couldn't take the unruliness of my hair. I used this every morning before I took a bath. I did that again and then this happened:

I'm sorry for the face. I didn't know what face to do because I was inside the freaking bathroom.

I HAVE FOUND THE CHEAPER OPTION! Wooh! I was convinced that I needed to have my hair rebonded but I love how my hair looks healthy now and best of all, BAGSAK NA SIYA! My hair doesn't look like some feather duster anymore! I did it again today and will continue doing it if it makes my hair look like this without the help of a flat iron.

Man, this post is overworked but really, really shallow. 

Trip to the ol' Alma Mater.

I went back to DLSU this morning to register for the Animo Run - yes, I am trying to live a healthy life...TRYING TO - and to renew my alumni ID that has been expired since October last year. To tell you honestly though, I don't know what other uses my alumni ID have besides a free, no-hassle pass into the university and free Chimichangas in Burgoo but I had it renewed anyway. (Dear La Sallians, if you are not a frequent visitor of your school and you don't use/need discounts, renewing your ID is not worth it. Five hundred freakin' pesos for it and it's valid only for a year... Tsktsk.)

My sister accompanied me the whole morning (Thanks, sis!) and she never complained about walking from UM to Agno only to go back to the South Gate again. Anyway, there are some huge changes in DLSU that weren't there the last time I visited:

1. DI NA PWEDE MAGYOSI SA AGNO. Okay, it's one thing to make it look like the way it looks like now, it's another to make it smoke-free. Nakakalungkot isipin but my college life was kinda ruined by this development. I WANT THE OLD AGNO BACK! Yung masikip! Yung maputik! Yung may masarap na liempo at bacsilog!
2. Archer's Lair? It's called Green Lane now and may Chicboy at Starbucks na dun.
3. Microsmith and Red Spoon are now closed. This is a sad, sad day indeed.

and the greatest change I've seen?

The Henry Sy building.

Wanna know what's weird about this building? It's blue.

Anyway, I missed hanging out at the the old Amphitheater. At least this one hasn't gone any changes... Well, actually there is. The turtles aren't there anymore but I kinda expected that because when Ondoy happened, I heard they swam away to some sewer or something.

My favorite view in the Amphitheater.

I had this thought, though, that the crowd changed drastically because of all the fashyown changes that's been happening everywhere but surprisingly, the La Sallians stuck to the jeans-shirt-sneaks combo.

I WANT TO GO BACK TO COLLEGE! Alam mo yung papasok ka para tumambay, iinom before/after/during classes/retreat, maglalandi sa mga classmates kahit may boyfriend, magccut ng class para manood ng NBA sa McDo at mahuli ng prof mo... Yun. Lahat yun gusto kong balikan...

I like how this looks like.

So I changed how my blog looks like again. This nifty template caught my eye and immediately changed my previous template to this one. It looks so neat and so grown-up. I think I will stick to this template for a while...that is until Blogger adds another look that is more mature than this one.

I'm so fickle-minded.

#4. My favorite color is blue. When I got pregnant, though, I suddenly fell in love with the color pink. Now, almost all of my stuff are pink.

Brianna's growing up so fast...

We went back to Brianna's pedia last Saturday in St. Luke's in E. Rod for her monthly check-up and here's what the pedia has to say about Brianna:

1. She grew 2cm since the last time we saw her... which was just 2 weeks ago.
2. Brianna also gained a few pounds since we last saw her pedia. I thought her gaining that much was disturbing but Doc said it's normal for breastfed babies.
3. The pedia complemented her about raising her head longer. Doc Pau said she's "advanced" than most babies her age. This gave a huge grin on my face which lasted 'til the next day.

Brianna had her third set of shots last weekend, too.

Add that to the fact that we had to buy her clothes (again) already because she outgrew most of the clothes we have here. Yes, even those white wrap arounds (I dunno what it's called) that make her look like (what I like to call) a "generic" baby.

Plus she wakes up na when it's noisy or when you leave her alone on the bed. Before, you have to wait for her to get hungry for her to wake up. Now, all you have to do is to turn the volume up and viola! She's awake!

She also has another "vice". She "hangs out" in front of my boobs whenever she feels like it. She cries when I move away. As Ran said, "mga batang adik sa boobs".

I'm happy I can actually witness all these changes in Brianna and that is why I am having second thoughts on going back to work before she turns one. I need your opinions...