Several days a week, my mom lives with me (this is me trying and failing not to acknowledge the existence of a brother whose room is right next to mine in the Anonas apartment that I help pay the monthly rent and internet bill for). It’s an odd setup that I’m only starting to— for the lack of other options, at least for the time being— accept. There are times I am unable to wrap my head around my situation: to be 24, paying to live independently of my folks, yet still thinking “I can’t wait to move out”.

But I don’t want to sound ungrateful. It’s great having my mom around and it amuses me how nothing I do weirds her out (i.e. I’m one of those annoying people who has taken to speaking LOLcat in real life. Some time ago, I was mildly surprised when my mom, having just woken up, gave me a little-girl smile and said “I has a headache!”). I have all these stupid habits (washing my underwear in one go, usually during the weekend), routines that can’t not be followed (cigarettes and two mugs of coffee for breakfast; a cigarette or two before bed), and senseless things I need to get done (my Project365). In the company of my former housemates (two nutty girl friends), I had no qualms doing whatever the heck I wanted and needed to do (sometimes in my underwear, sometimes in their underwear…no, I’m kidding).

Naturally, things are a little different around my mom. While I can’t smoke around her wearing nothing but a towel and my fuzzy pink house slippers (and raving about weight loss pills that work), I’ve managed to sneak in a few cigarettes while hanging out in the apartment’s smoking areas (the balcony and the little corner I have on the second floor). I can still scamper around half-naked (yeah…you needed to know that) and it seems that my mom no longer finds it unusual to see a funnily-dressed me, walking about with my camera and tripod.

Last Saturday, it rained. I had been waiting for the sky to come crashing down and I was sitting in front of my laptop, telling the internets how I wanted it soooo badly to rain, when it happened. Like a kitty suddenly snapping out of a shallow sleep at the sound of a scurrying cockroach somewhere, I perked up, sat up straight, and then ran to my room. I quickly put on a bikini top and my ugly yellow (because you know…Cory Aquino had just died and it was the simplest, most honest tribute I could think of) jumpskirt, grabbed my camera and tripod, found a plastic bag to wrap my remote in, and merrily skipped down the stairs. I think my mom paused from her cleaning to look at me, I didn’t bother to check because I was a little embarrassed with how I was dressed.

Like the idiot I make myself to be for this little project of mine, I started playing in the rain and snapping photo after photo of myself. Sometimes I’d run to adjust my camera settings. The door to my apartment (and the neighbor’s) stayed comfortably closed. Then my mom stuck half her body out to dust a rag, right while I was making a “dreary yet attractive” face at the camera. I froze, stopped what I was doing, and gave her a sheepish grin. She jumped in front of the camera and flashed a huge smile. I shoo-ed her away. She went back in and I continued with my silliness.

That night, when my dad came to pick her up, she told him about how I wouldn’t take her picture. A few hours later when he was up, I told the lover how my mom wanted me to take her photo. Cute, we thought.