Cat Therapy and Grounding

I have been enjoying the afternoon breeze everyday. I go out to water the plants and rest in the garden after. The cats, usually Grogu and Pikachu or Anakin, hang out with me while I rest. They also hang out when I do some re-potting of plants. The activity calms me a lot. 

What's wrong with the cat? LOL

I listened a bit to an interview with Dinah Salonga and she mentioned grounding. She said we spend so much time indoors, we miss out on spending time with mother nature. My Mom used to nag me growing up every afternoon. She'd be doing some gardening and she'd persuade me to hang out with her. The activity usually includes merienda, some fried banana and juice, and that's irresistible. 

I always complained before about watering my Mom's plants. It took 3 hours to water everything because her garden was huge and she had a gazillion plants. I spend at least 90 minutes everyday in the garden. It used to be just 30 to 45 minutes, but we moved Mom's plants so my chore time doubled, haha. 

The cats always keep me company. I've been rewarding them with some treats. Sometimes Meredith comes. She likes watching the plants. I guess she's looking for lizards. It makes me feel protected even though I know they just want treats or a huge bowl of water. They help calm and ground me. 

When was the last time you just spent time outside just feeling the breeze?

#BeKind #StaySafe

Hurt My Back Yesterday

I had to cancel my pulmo rehab today because I hurt my back while transferring some bell pepper plants to my new plant stand. It was a small pot, but I guess I bent the wrong way. Ouchie!

I just rested most of the day, but I still watered my plants. I don't want them to wilt especially my veggies! Sweetie also harvested four bell peppers yesterday and two papaya fruits today. We had some papaya for merienda and it was so sweet! 

I won't make this post long since my back is still killing me. I'll do some of the stretches my PT, Wendy, taught me. I hope that would help alleviate the pain. 

#BeKind #StaySafe

Sewage Issues? How to Get Help from Government

Having sewage Issues can happen when a house is constructed beside or near your house. In our case, our area started flooding while the house beside us was being constructed.

We faithfully reported it to our homeowners association, but alas when the leadership changed no assistance was made. We didn't even get a response for our letters and just received passive aggressive reminders to clean your sewage sent via the residents group chat. 

Two years down the line, the frustration, the stench, mosquitoes and floodwater backflowing to our backyard led me to check if our city's Building Official can help. It was late Saturday afternoon and I sent a message to their FB page.

Within minutes I received a message and was advised to file a complaint following their format. My response was subsequently acknowledged and they said they'll send an inspector.

A week passed and I sent a follow-up. It was Friday, so I thought they'd visit the week after. We were surprised though when the inspector arrived at sunset. Long story short, the engineer endorsed us to the City Health Office, CENRO and our Barangay. We were visited by CENRO today.

So, if you're a homeowner, affected by unscrupulous contractors and deadma homeowners association you can go to your barangay, contact the Building Official, CENRO and the City Health Office. They advised us if no action is still taken, the operations of the contractor can be suspended or shut down.

We hope this two and a half years ordeal can be finished soon.

#BeKind #StaySafe

Decompress

The past few days has been crazy busy. It's stressful for me. I postponed my scheduled APE today since I woke up with a migraine. I was exhausted.

I got up after lunch already. It took longer for my body to recover, but I also had to put my mind at ease. So, I stayed offline the whole day and spent three hours re-potting cucumber and tomato plants. 

I between re-potting plants and playing with Grogu, the stress from the past week dissipated. I was tired by the time I finished, but I still had some energy for a joyride. Sweetie and I went out to get some gas since they said it will go up by ten pesos per liter! 

Pray for Peace!

Happy new week everyone!

#BeKind #StaySafe

Successfully Propagated Mom's Bougainvillea

I've been trying to propagate Mom's bougainvillea trees. She was really proud to have several variants of it and told me she just propagated them from cuttings. I would always catch her trimming them in the afternoons. 

I asked her once how she would propagate bougainvillea. She told me, just cut a step and stick it in soil. She had a magical green thumb and could grow anything. She mentioned though that the white variety was the hardest to grow.

Everytime I visit my childhood home, I take a few cuttings of the different colors. They were always blooming, so I'd just cut the stem with flowers. I tried it several times and followed online tutorials. I even got river sand to see if it would help. River sand is expensive though, so I'd mix it with loam soil. 

I managed to successfully grow four pots. I have no idea what variants I managed to grow. I've been waiting for flowers to come out and one finally bloomed one! I guess it likes rice water because I gave it some last week. 

Ohhh! I'm so excited! It's just one flower for now, but there are tiny ones growing. I made another batch to grow to make sure I complete all the colors. I'm doing this because I'm not sure if the tree will survive the construction. 

Cheers to more gardening achievements!

#BeKind #StaySafe

February, the Love Month

February was an interesting month for me. I explored a lot of stuff I love doing. I tried to cook more homemade dishes. I tried growing more plants and worked on my garden. I tried sewing a quilted piano cover (not yet done though). And spent more time exploring with my boys. 

I completed another month of 1 second everyday. A second is too short, so I made it 1.5 seconds everyday. I've also been posting weekly ones (when I remember, haha). It's easy to forget already what happened a month ago, so a second everyday helps. 

Here's last month's #1SE!

Happy March everyone!

#BeKind #StaySafe

My First International Speaking Engagement

I'm an introvert and I disliked recitation in school and absolutely abhorred doing presentations. I was always behind the scenes when we did our required class shows. You can just imagine how absolutely terrified I was during Speech class. Ugh. 

Fast forward to 2012, by this time I had gone around the Philippines to conduct trainings. I still disliked speaking in front of a crowd even though I had managed to speak in front of 3,000+ students for one engagement. I was assigned to introduce a product in Malaysia. They thought since I was the most "social" online, then I was best suited to introduce the product. 

The talk was short, just about 20 minutes. I had to convince the crowd of business people to try the platform. Well, I survived and after that I did the same thing over and over again in many countries across the world. 

If you ask me, I would still absolutely skip any speaking engagements. I've received invitations even after retirement, but I shy away from them since I get breathless when I have to exert effort to speak loudly. Being in that role before was fun. I learned a lot and I experienced things I never imagined I would. It's one for the books. 

#BeKind #StaySafe