trio no more

sharon and i bade goodbye to joan last thursday night at the bus station. it was a fast and no fuss farewell to a friend. we were just our crazy selves, walking to the bus station with me, dragging oscar, sharon tugging on joan's luggage while the latter was screaming "goodbye stryn". we took pictures of ourselves with my half-blown camera, laughed at the littlest things and complained about the secondhand smoke that we couldn't avoid getting from the other waiting passengers. we hugged each other so tight and kissed goodbye. at 11 25 joan's bus finally left stryn.

our trio's down to two.

these two girls have been more like a mirror who talks back to me. i can tell them anything and most of the time, they did not tolerate my nature. instead, they would slap me back to reality with words like "g__a!", "tanga ka ba?!", "loka" and a lot more words which were, and still are, taboo to me. in cases when they seem to have a diarrhea of the mouth, i never failed to remind them to use a mouthwash.

honesty is the best policy: in our trio, everyone can just speak freely. even if it means hurting the other one. well, i messed up most of the time, so i had enough of those things that i didn't want to hear but i had to listen to from them anyway. the two of them were a little bit harsh in our confession-penitence episodes, but i have to admit that their points were qualified to be right.

saying goodbye to a friend is hard for me. i don't want to be the friend who's left behind. cliche as it may sound, but i'm happy for joan. she's chosen the less popular decision but i know that she's happy with her family and loved ones.

well, we could still be a trio. only that the pacific ocean separates one from the other two.

trick or treat

at 2am on an early sunday morning of September, sharon, me-myself and kuya oscar, dragged our heavy butts down to the centrum of stryn. we were just supposed to take kuya oscar for a walk and we also wanted to clear our lungs and heads with fresh air after long hours of babysitting, knitting and watching incomprehensible films on norwegian tv.

as we strode along the dimly lit street, i asked sharon if we could drop by at joan's and say hi. she immediately agreed to the idea. for the remaining steps down to walhalla, we were like little girls, restlessly giggling.

the light in joan's room was lit up when we came to walhalla. sharon peeped through her window to see if she was still awake. when she confirmed that joan was down, i banked at her window. a few seconds later, the light in the room was turned off. sharon and i were exchanging signals between our muffled laughter. sharon knocked again and we hid. nothing happened. in the pregnant silence, oscar barked and our little trick was over.

time for the treat! two cans of wildberry cider and half a bar of chocolate. it felt like heaven. sharon and i gulped down our treats in twenty counts, chatted with joan for a bit and walked our way back to the upper east side of stryn.

next time, our trick will be more grand. we were thinking about costume, blah..blah..blah...

knitting

i finished knitting my first hat yesterday : ) and i am so proud of myself!

sharon, my knitting mentor, was on the verge of throwing me out of her apartment at 10 in the evening. she lost her patience with a slow-learner like me. i, on the other hand, was so intent in sucking all that i needed to know from her before she leaves for Denmark. so, in an hour or so, she taught me how to decrease, increase, do some stitches other than the normal one. boy, was she tired of me! but i really made my first hat! at least MY patience has paid off! haha!

...my mother would be shocked if she knew that i am knitting. she tried to teach me this domestic skill when i was in grade school. i didn't have the will and patience to learn something SO boring that time...

coraline

i went to see the animated movie "coraline" which was based on neil gaiman's novel of the same title. it was about a girl, coraline jones, who was so bored with her new life in their new house...so tired of her busy parents - a mother who didn't cook and a father who was...Boring. then, coraline found a door which led her to her "other home" and her "other mother and father". the other dimension was so much better, for coraline, at least. what, with all the treats from her "other parents". i could have been convinced to stay in the other world, too, if i can have watermelon and lychee smoothie in an instant. anyway, it turned out that her "other parents" were really bad creatures who just wanted to "eat" her so that they can retain their fresh, vibrant and youthful aura. at this point, coraline was so desperate to go back to her real home and parents. only to realize that they were gone. our brave little caroline went back to the other end of the "door" to win her parents back from the evil "other mother", which she succeeded, plus, she was able to find the eyes of the three ghosts who were imprisoned by the copycat mother. in the end, coraline was reunited with her parents, who were not so perfect but REAL.

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i arrived in a very quiet house. very quiet, like, i can hear my own heartbeat. i was thinking, am i in the other dimension? is this a part of the movie? only that instead of coraline, it's "joan" who's in it? so where is my "other mader" and "other finn-einar" then? as i was tiptoeing on my way to the kitchen, oscar came out from his hide-out under the living room table. he's real! he didn't have button-eyes! kuya oscar is for real! but wait, my family is still gone. mmmmmm....okay. i'll just sleep through this and tomorrow everything will be back to normal.

starting to choke

she has always wanted to be in a relationship. a hopeless romantic. dreaming of meeting her perfect man in the bus, elevator, in the mall...all of those far-from-reality scenarios on how people find their one true love.

now that she's into one, or so it seems, she's kind of scared and irritated. the fact is, she cares for this guy. she cares for him when she wants to. she loves him when she feels like it. she meets him only when she feels like she loves him. when all these feelings are absent, she retreats into her own world. she even forgets about him, until somebody wakes her up and remind her that she should never let go of this man. people around her tells her all the time, that she's so lucky to have found a man like him. she doesn't agree with them.

he wants to meet her soon. she doesn't want to. but she feels like she needs to. she knows that she can't give him up just now. and meeting him is like going into a party with no alcohol served.

he said, it will be fun seeing each other again. she thought, he doesn't even know the meaning of the word "fun".