Thursday, September 13, 2012

Kristen's beautiful smile

Okay. Y'all know I'm not a fan of Kristen Stewart. But she's been looking mighty fine since the cheating scandal a few weeks ago. She hid away from the world, and rightly so since the world just freaked out. Trampire, homewrecker, trailer trash, what-have-you.

I don't agree with the hate since I think she's young and everyone's done stupid things when they're young (although I have never ever gone out with a married man when I was a kid—even I wasn't that dumb). But the poor girl didn't deserve all that hate.

But hey, she comes out of hiding looking like this:

A lot thinner, her snobbish attitude gone, her I'm-too-good-for-this smirk gone. She looks fabulous! I love her super skinny body! And I love love love her smile! She's gorgeous!

Nothing like a big slice of humble pie, right? You look great, sweetheart. Keep smiling!


More photos of Kristen at Ocean Up and Just Jared.

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Never ever ever ever!!!

I like Taylor Swift's new song, "We are Never Ever Getting Back Together." At my age, of course I can't relate to it haha. But I like Taylor. She spills her guts all over her songs the way I spill mine all over my blogs. Plus, she can write really catchy tunes!

Here are two videos of her song. Here's the one starring her:


And here's the one that's just all words, which makes it really easy to sing along to:


I like the lyrics video better! I love words. Taylor is easy on the eyes but I like the way words look better.

Which one do you like?


UPDATE: This song is about Jake Gyllenhaal, y'all!!!

Sunday, September 02, 2012

Grief is a curious thing

It is September.

The Septembers now are strange. Back in the day, when I was young, Septembers meant cooler weather, a storm now and then, which meant thrilling scenes of trees flailing wildly about outside my bedroom windows. When I got frightened, my parents scared me even more with "Our roof might fly away! The avocado tree will fall! The water will get the rats to come out of hiding and they'll stay in your bed!"

Those never happened, by the way, but the roof did leak (every year, no fail), and the tree did lean terribly close to the house (so Papa chopped it down), and the basement did actually flood (but no rats came out thankfully). And that's what September has always been for me.


Now Septembers mean bigger, more terrible storms. The kind that lasts for days, whipping up winds and waves, flooding the land, disaster everywhere. Milenyo. Ondoy. September also means the biggest storm of my life—when Mama died. Four years ago this September.

Four years is a long time. If I had given birth when she'd died, I'd be mommy to a preschooler now. If I had been a freshman, I'd be graduating now. Most of the time, four years feels like a long time and that terrible day is just shadows and whispers. Some days, four years fall away and that terrible day is suddenly so very now.

Grief is a curious thing. You never truly understand it until it happens to you. And when it does, it is something you will never wish on anyone, not even your worst enemy.

It isn't your regular broken heart, which is insanely painful. But you get over a broken heart, believe it or not. And I do believe a broken heart is a good thing, a beautiful thing, because broken hearts are split open, allowing more love and understanding and compassion to come in, and the heart becomes bigger and stronger as it heals.

The grieving heart is also a broken heart but the heart that has lost someone to death, it never heals completely. You think it does, you think you're done, then one day, the strains of Moon River, a whiff of CK Euphoria, a scene from Dolphy's movies, the facade of Megamall A before that new parking building was (mercifully) built in front of it... A little thing, a big thing, they always sneak up on you and BOOM! You unravel.

One cruel day, I was walking along happily from the supermarket on my way home to the loves of my life, when across the street, I saw a woman who looked and walked like Mama. Before I knew it, I had crossed the street, running, dodging cars, calling, "Mama! Mama!" even as my brain screamed, "She's dead! She's dead!"

The woman turned. Of course she wasn't Mama. And I laughed, my hand on my suddenly hollow chest. "Sorry! I'm sorry, you look like my mother."

And she smiled, "Oh! Tell her I think she's beautiful!"

And I laughed again, a little too breathlessly, "I will. I will tell her."

But I don't. I can't.