Second Childhood and High School Crushes in our 30s!

The new Transformers movie is out and thanks to typhoon Feria’s threat, classes were suspended coincidentally on its opening day and as usual, it ironically turned out to be a clear morning after all so off to the malls the students flocked – Kean and us included. Thanks to a new Cubao secret (not too secret anymore now) – Ali Mall’s newly refurbished Cineplex – we were able to bury our bottoms very comfortably. While everyone else in the metro endured the long lines and the “standing room only” viewing, my family and I practically had the shiny new Ali Mall all to ourselves. I love it that we just live a street away from the classic Cubao landmark! Araneta Center is our backyard.



Speaking of Transformers 2 and in the light of Michael Jackson’s demise, the perfect song for my husband these days would have to be “Have You Seen my Childhood?” Like a “spoiled” kid in a candy store, his current indulgence is shopping for Transformers toys. And he really plays with them!!! The good news – he and Kean are totally bonding over it. The bad news – these toys cost at least P300 to P500 a pop! It may sound silly but this is really serious stuff for Joseph. Compared to my toy-filled childhood, he resents that his parents didn’t get him any of these robots back then. He recalls his mom saying, “It’s beyond your toy budget…” So the poor little boy had to live through watching those Uncle Bob’s Lucky Seven Club’s toy commercials without ever getting at least one of them. Awww… So now, I’m playing “mommy” to his reincarnated JJ (his nickname back then) and buying him these robots. Good thing that I’m also a fan and an ‘80s buff so I understand the need to feed the nostalgia.

So while my husband is going back to being 7 years old, I on the other hand had my own trip back to my 16 year old self by having a very ridiculous high school like crush on Zachary Quinto. Sigh… the name alone creates psychedelic hearts on my eyes. Let me just shriek! He’s soooo cuuuute!!! OMG my face is flushing just thinking about him.



Okay, before I go on any further, you might be wondering who the heck is Zachary Quinto? Well, for most people now he’s Spock from the new Star Trek movie but before that he’s been Sylar to me and to the legions of Heroes fans. I have never missed an episode of Heroes and even if the TV series has become too preposterous in its recent plot developments, there’s no stopping me from following Sylar – the super-powered serial killer who hunts the super-humans in order to steal their powers! He’s primarily a villain but I know there’s more to that psychotic persona… I know there’s a heart buried deep within that hate… I was thrilled when the series showed the character’s soft side as the plot’s paradox in the “Villains” season.

Anyway I could go and on about my own character analysis of Sylar – originally Gabriel Gray – but that would be too much of a geek talk. Yes, my husband and I are self-confessed Heroes freaks. We even plan to name our first daughter (IF EVER) Claire – after the show’s cheerleader character with the regenerative powers. Alright enough Heroes gab. Let me go back to Zachary.

I’ve always been attracted to him but the adulation was just limited within the show. I’ve had plenty of major celebrity crushes in my teenage years – you know that type of silly obsession that make you cut out their photos from magazines and stick them on your walls (don’t laugh!)— but I never thought I would actually have one again in my 30s! The last major celebrity crush I had that lasted all throughout my adolescent years was Keanu Reeves (don’t laugh again!) Hey if you saw him on “Pointbreak” you’d know what I’m talking about. And now ZQ makes me gush.

Like I said, before I was just in love with Sylar the character but now I AM IN LOVE WITH ZQ – the man who plays Sylar & Spock! This video did it all for me. Check out ZQ’s interview on Ellen last May.



Isn’t he totally adorable! Nothing kills me more than a guy who’s cool enough to strut some dance moves on national TV! Kilig to max! And so that got me hooked! I went online and plunged into Google ZQ Mode. I found his official website, grabbed his ooh-la-la GQ photos, put them interchangeably on my desktop (I’ve just recently named my laptop ZQ), became his fan on Facebook, and now having my own toy shopping spree by getting these Sylar and Spock action figures online!


I’ve been reading immensely about him and following his updates on FB. I even sent him a relatively long (giddy-sounding) birthday message last June 2. Actually his birth date stopped me in my tracks. The date was all too familiar and after jogging my memory about its significance, I stammered. He shares a birth date with some guy I used to “know”. Let’s just not expound on the meaning of “know” alright? I’m now a happily married woman. Enough said. But guess what, I also realized that ZQ and this so-called birthday twin actually have some semblances here and there. Hmmm… now this is the part where it kinda gets weird and worrisome. And I don’t know how else to end this blog so I’ll just trail off…

Hormonal Than Thou

Maybe you’ve already noticed that I’ve been gone from my blog for almost a month now! Come to think of it, I only have one entry for June and that was just to remind my readers that the missus is still online. I haven’t died (not yet). Being gone from the blogosphere this long is definitely a record for someone who lives with her laptop every day. The Tagalog slang words “windang” and “ngarag” would not even suffice to describe what happened to me the moment we entered the month of June. I just didn’t fly off the handle… I really snapped!

During the 1st week of this month (when classes began), I was in a manic rage. The smallest things irked me. It was as if an evil version of me took over my body and cried my eyes dry, screamed my throat hoarse, and just choked my heart and soul. My mind went totally blank one specific day and with my eyes blurred in tears, I hailed the cab, sent a text message to Joseph saying I want to be away from everything, and just took off! The sky was in its grayest gray and my spirit felt as ashen and burned out. The cab driver asked where to and I just said, “I don’t know manong… far away…”

At that time I didn’t know exactly what was going on. I was extremely sad, quasi-suicidal, and ultra-sensitive that I ridiculously cried at every HBO movie that was on… even “You’ve Got Mail!” Looking back, I can now qualify that the reasons for my breakdown were a lethal combination of so many things happening at the same time in that dreary gloomy depression-perfect weather.

There was the stress, frustration, anger, guilt, disillusionment about the church’s commemorative book project that I was heading… Financial pressures and expectations from our families… Our nervous pending 1st bank loan application as husband and wife… Kean coming back from Davao and starting Grade 1 on a very early 7AM class (which meant I had to get up at 5AM to prepare his breakfast & baon; wake him at 5:30; get him all ready for a measly hour that speeds by like a flash of light before his school bus picks him at 6:30!)… And then of course on top of waking up way too early is losing a lot of sleep over my work (as a freelancer, only one principle holds out: no project – no pay)… Worrying about my husband’s growing dissatisfaction with his career… The sad bed weather… Cabin fever… Lack of “actual” human contact… Desensitized by hollow cyber communication… and most of all my HORMONES!

The epic saga of my hormonal battle lives on. After taking some time off from the stressful and expensive fertility treatments late last year, my doctor put me on my hormone treatment again a couple of months ago to stabilize my hormone levels since I’ve been missing my periods again (not due to pregnancy, sorry to disappoint you). The treatment’s supposed to impede my weight gain too. This is all too technical, really. Explaining how hormones work in lay terms is too tedious because nothing is really cut and dried in defining these conditions. A lot of women don’t have troubles with their hormones at all while some just flip out – Example: Me.

I texted my doctor a days after what happened to me that horrible week. I knew I had to consult her because right after the height of my hissy fit, my long overdue period finally came. I knew right then and there that my train wreck episode last week wasn’t JUST about the immediate crises in my life and the dark clouds up above –my hellish hormones did some major damage.
She told me that based on my latest hormone tests I am vaguely somewhere in between having some premature ovarian insufficiency (or premature ovarian failure) and polycystic ovarian syndrome. In very loose simple terms, it means that my eggs ain’t growing and my pituitary gland and hypothalamus are not in synch which in textbook terms gives me symptoms of extreme PMS which could lead to early menopause!!! Huwwaaattt! This even makes me worse than my mega-moody mom!

Anyway, that’s the scientific explanation of my recurrent bi-polar tendencies. While I was in that cab, curling myself warm in an old cardigan (the first one I could pull out of my closet as I was rushing to flee from our apartment), staring irately out the windows as we drove past Gretchen, Angel, KC, with their sucked-in cheeks matched with either stoic looks or dolphin smiles, I thought everything around me just looked grating. I was so antsy that day that I couldn’t even resist e-mailing the management of this chi-chi restaurant at Boni High Street to nitpick at their grammatically-wrong electronic flyer which my inbox received that morning. It said, “… it’s our 2nd Year Anniversary!” to which I replied, “I am concerned that a high-end restaurant like you would be careless about your marketing copy. It’s supposed to be just ‘2nd Anniversary’ and not ‘2nd Year Anniversary’!” I know it was entirely not my business. In fact who cares about some ridiculously pretentious expensive restaurant who doesn’t even know basic grammar? Well on that day I cared. I cared because I wanted some sense of order and control in my very chaotic world. Sigh…

So there I was – crying inside a cab going to nowhere. And then suddenly God spoke to me. While we were crawling on EDSA, my cab driver was actually reading the Bible! Wow, that was a first! Have you ever seen a cab driver do that? It was rare indeed. My husband was calling me. His text messages were pleading for me to come home already. I caught a glimpse of the verses that the driver was reading. He was on Colossians, and my eyes landed on the words “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh to them.” I knew it was God telling me to go home to my husband, and it was an assurance that despite what I did that day, Joseph would understand and his love would just overflow for me because no matter what happens, no matter what I’ve become that day, he still loves me because he promised to do so right before God.

So I asked the driver to turn around, and the moment I got home, my husband greeted me in a warm bear hug and said nothing but, “I LOVE YOU!” We prayed together and I just felt truly blessed for having him as a husband. God really gave him to me ‘coz I couldn’t imagine any other guy capable of handling ME.

June is almost over. With fervent prayers, I survived. Now, my body clock has finally adjusted and in fact I even wake up a minute earlier than my set alarm. Kean and I don’t recreate WW3 during mornings anymore. The commemorative book is finally on its way to the printer. A new career prospect is presenting itself to my husband (please pray with us about it). The weather’s still crazy but my hormones aren’t anymore. The hormonal Jill is trying her best, by God’s grace, to be holier than that Jill who flipped out early this month. Pray. No more preys. Amen.

The Missus is Online Again!

Ladies & gentlemen... I'm Back to Blogging!!!

Wow! I just made an all-time record – I haven’t blogged at all for more than 20 days!!! Yes, dear readers I am still alive though living like a zombie on auto-pilot for the past weeks ever since Kean started school again. Sigh.

My little boy has just entered Grade One and his classes start at 7:15 AM. Considering how slooow Kean moves in the morning, I had to wake him up at 5 AM to have enough time for a good breakfast and for his daily grooming and health supplement rituals before his school bus picks him up at 6:30 AM sharp! So this all meant that I had to wake up at around 4:30-4:45AM to cook breakfast, and prepare his baon, etc…

Let me tell you this – I am the worst morning person in the world! My body and mind are just not built up for the crack of dawn. So for the past weeks, my body clock has been badly disturbed that as soon as Kean gets picked up by the school bus, I’d catch up on a few more zzzz’s and would end up sleeping the whole morning. I would only wake up when Kean finally gets home at around 1PM, so don’t count on me being productive any more.

Ever since this routine started, I just don’t have the mental energy to multi-task all my pending projects and do some blogging in between. My creative juices were parched. I was always grouchy. I always felt tired. And my lethargy only resulted to a sloppy household – the laundry pile was always brimming; our closets were a mess; the floor not mopped, the carpets not vacuum cleaned; food was always delivered or those simple dishes – all of these just added to my depression.

All this time, I was writing my pending projects and editing the fifty stories for the church’s commemorative book while on auto-pilot! Truly it was only God’s sufficient grace that kept me on and made me finish everything. On my next blog, I’m going to tell you about the WORST DAY of my life ever which happened during the first week of June.

Anyway, finally all my projects for June are done and the contents of the book are now in the hands of the layout editor, and as an added bonus, my father is in town for another short visit. Compared to the last time he was here, his arrival has never been most welcomed than now. He came right in time for Fathers’ Day yesterday. We've patched up immensely after our big fight last year. Celebrating this special day this year was indeed "special!"

He said he wants to help with taking care of Kean at least for a few months while I do my work. And besides, he’s really got nothing to do much in Davao now since our grandmother (his mom – the one he’s taking care of) is currently vacationing in Canada with my aunt’s family.

I already began getting back my creative rhythm a few days before. With Papa here now to help me and with all the stressful projects done at least for this month, I can have the last few days of June to catch up on my blogging. Oh my, I’ve got loads of stories and thoughts that I’ve been dying to share to you so stay tuned for all of that. The Missus is online again!

Celebrating Fathers' day yesterday @ our default Sunday restaurant -- Pho Hoa