Klassy came bearing pasalubong and stuff my boyfriend (♥) sent me.

From boyfriend (♥): Crest Whitestrips, gel things for the balls of my feet (so cute of him to send me this), Hanson’s Shout It Out + Tay’s Music Exchange DVD, and floral sunnies from UO! He didn’t have time to get me more tampons (I don’t like that the tampons I get in SM Watson’s have cardboard applicators =/) and hgh supplements (huhlolz) but that’s ok.

From Klassy (♥): the cutest compact mirror, a billfold/card keeper, Geo Plastic Ring Set in blue, and an animal print keyring. I was running late for work today so I just snapped photos of everything, stashed them back into the paper bag, and left.

Hee, so summery. I know, I know: the Philippine summer is over (or is it? It’s still been terribly hot in between typhoons/rainy days) but I don’t care.

Klassy flies back to the US early August and I already miss her =( I miss my boyfriend every day, of course.

Me: Oh. I need you to listen to Hanson songs cos my next tat is gonna be a line from one of their songs
Him: Ergh. Fine.
Me: Yup. So listen listen listen. They have … four studio albums: Middle of Nowhere, This Time Around, Underneath, The Walk. + a bunch of other songs
Him: I gotta stare at that shit the rest of my life? Really?
Me: WHY WONT YOU LOVE HANSON. WHY.
Him: It’s not like those fools write literature or spout compelling quotes that will empower me through the dark dayz of my lyf
Me: BUT THEY EMPOWERED ME WHEN I WAS AN AWKWARD SMALL TOWN GIRL DEALING WITH TROUBLED TIMES ETC SO I WIN
Him: Now I gotta fuckin carress your wrist with my sweet soft lips and fucken come across ‘mmmbob’

I’m not certain if I’ll be able to get my second tattoo in time for my birthday (the 31st) but I’ve already decided on what to get. I spent the afternoon checking out other Hanson fans’ tattoos (there are a good number out there and some of them aren’t so well-made =/) to get an idea of what not to get. I’m definitely avoiding the common ones (the Hanson symbol, headphones from Underneath, barcode scanners (wait, wut), MMMBop, Ngi Ne Themba, and the walking silhouettes from The Walk) and the freaky ones (their faces).

I can’t wait.

♥

Photos!:

Haha, the box was almost as tall as my body spray bottle.

Vadabear still in its plastic. It’s a small, cheapy bear, heh.

Excuse the face, I had just gotten home from work.

On Valentine’s Day itself, Alex, Penny, and I went to Bubble Tea in SM Megamall for some, well, bubble tea.

If you’re not familiar with Megamall and don’t know where Bubble Tea is, it’s near the event center, right beside California Berry.

Penny Pie!

Alex <3

Strawberry milk shake for Penny, Japanese green tea for me, and chocolate mint for Alex.

And because I am a bubble tea glutton, I got more.

Alex had to meet her guy to do some groceries so Penny and I went around. I needed some acne face wash but we ended up at Book Sale. I picked up a few new old (or is it old new) books.

Not exactly the best photo (I forgot to go a few f stops higher again). Second one from the top is a little book about Marmalade cats and the one under that is Beverly Cleary’s Henry and the Paper Route. I didn’t get to read enough of Beverly Cleary when I was a little girl, thus, the purchase.

Oh, and I got a tattoo last Saturday. More on that in a bit.

Guess who’s a happy kitty cat!

A little over a week ago, the boyfriend lovingly put together a bunch of stuff to send to me. This is the third package he’s sent and thankfully I didn’t have to wait months for it, which is what happens when you ship stuff via Balikbayan boxes. I got the stuff last Saturday, hurray!

Photos!:

Had a tough time opening the box because he had taped it closed several times. He kept forgetting stuff.

Tampons plus surprises (LOL) for a friend. The tampons were everywhere as he sent them without the box. Most of them were stuffed inside my shoes. Made me giggle. He forgot to send me the best eye cream in the world, though.

Bath & Body had a sale a couple of weeks ago and I asked him to get me a few bottles (from $10.50 to $4 each!). I wanted Sheer Freesia but they were out so I went with my current scent. It’s so clean and powdery <3

Summery dress from The Gap.

Crest Whitestrips <3

Falsies, Lipglass, and Vicky’s lip glosses. Melontastic flavor <3

Guess jeggings. Size XS, ack. They surprisingly fit me but are skintight. I have to be careful.

His old 50mm 1.8f II lens. I can finally crazily bokeh the world! <3

Vicky’s bra lol.

Steve Madden shoes. He got me this pair ages ago.

The lipglass (in Cultured) against the sheepskin rug he sent me last year.

Random photos taken with my new lens!

Ack, I wish I had a (full) photo of my Saturday night outfit. My dress got a handful of compliments that night. Here’s my Saturday face instead, before putting my hair up.

The first photo I took with it. Terribly underexposed and messy makeup.

I’m looking forward to shooting non-Helga people and things!

My hair’s brown again and is obviously (:P) itching for some blonde highlights.

For the first half of this year, I’ve decided to grow my hair and keep my bangs. This isn’t as easy as it sounds as I have the tendency to ask for more inches off whenever I find myself on a salon chair. I guess I’ll have to learn how to say “Pa-trim ng bangs lang” and then restrain myself from saying anything else.

This is my ~*~dream hair~*~:

Emily from Skins! I don’t watch the show (I hear she’s a lesbian and she has a twin sister?) but I saw this photo on Tumblr a couple of weeks ago and fell in la-la-love with her hair. That’s such a nummy shade of red! I don’t think it will match my skin tone, though.

In other news, the lover is sending me a care love package! It ships out Friday PST and will travel the seas for seven days hrhrhr. I am so excited! In the package are: a lens for Baby Girl, Crest Whitestrips (we actually fought about this. My fault), a tube of Mac lipglass, a brochure for IT Jobs (loljk), jeggings (in XS/S, what the heck. I have 1.5 weeks to lose weight), and a bunch of other surprises. Kee, I can’t wait!

Last night, I asked the boyfriend what his favorite word is/favorite words are. I was playing with an idea for my 365 and I wanted something that didn’t seem very la-di-da and something I could easily turn into an image. As expected, his initial answers were of the lemme-think kind (I don’t know. Sex? Helga?).

So I told him my current favorite words: gossamer, scintillate, effulgent, and strident…and harlot. I like harlot. A lot. It also seemed like the perfect karma-bait question (I was wrong, I only got 16 replies) so I headed over to Plurk and asked my friends for their favorite words. I got brazened, unbridled, ramifications, ineffable, inevitable, etc etc. Finally, he answers :

I really should go ahead and create that My Boyfriend Says the Darndest Things blog.

…………………………………

This is a little late and is no way of any great importance but I would like to announce to the internets that at long last, I have figured out what my biggest turn on is. I used to think it was power and my dating history shows that I am drawn and tend to go for alpha males. Most of them were douchebags (unfortunately/naturally), but hey, they were powerful douchebags! This ruffled the boyfriend a whole lot, of course, as there is that possibility I may leave him for the next more powerful guy (never, I say. Never!).

…

Anyway, it’s romance. When I think about it, I’ve always been a sucker for romance (and the idea of love/falling in love and I’m really glad I’m not easily swept away). I’m just worried that I have a bit of twisted idea of romance— none of that wining and dining, courtship, flowers, and chocolates sort. At my worst, I’m of the metaphorical dragon-slaying and princess-saving kind. At my best, I’m fine with being cuddled like a kitty cat and being told I’m beautiful.

I sound emotionally easy, don’t I?

My biggest turn off? Unavailability. I find it quite amusing that nearly two years ago, the only reason I had agreed to meet up with the boyfriend was because I had deemed him to be emotionally-unavailable. Someone safe. We all know how that turned out ♥

…………………………………

I was re-reading my personal astrology portrait, trying to make more sense out of it. I say more because I’ve been reading the damn thing since 2006 and I still don’t completely get it. This is the gist of my personal astrology portrait aka who you are when you’re a female born in Manila, Philippines at 730am on May 31, 1985: Sun in Gemini, Moon in Libra, Ascendant in Cancer, Moon in the Fourth House, Saturn in the Fifth House, Neptune Opposition Ascendant, Venus in the Tenth House, Sun in the Twelfth House.

Eh?

But anyway, having my ascendant in Cancer (is that the proper term? My ascendant in Cancer?) apparently “gives the tendency to completely retreat when hurt or frightened of a situation”. Werd, berd. Staging distance is my defense mechanism. What’s yours?

Well, this entry was just all over the place, much like a drunken Helga on a weekend night.

Yay,discount furniture!

Today is a little bit of both and it’s no surprise that I’m feeling a little blue.

Or perhaps it’s just because I’m hungover. I really should learn how to control my Friday night alcohol intake but in the company of nutty friends, I tend to let go. I must have had ten beers last night on an almost empty stomach but I still had my wits with me when I cabbed it home at 4 in the morning. It’s hard to get drunk drunk when you’re always on your feet. The aftermath is always horrible, though, and I woke up with a beer gut that would put a college fratman to shame. I don’t regret the beer, I regret the meal I wolfed down before I went to bed. And the two meals I once again had, immediately after waking up. All I can do is sigh and make a half-empty promise to myself not to do it again. Right.

I haven’t been writing lately and it hurts me a little, I feel like my mind has been squeezed dry by the internet (of all things!). I hung out with an old friend from college the other night, Phil, who is one of the best and most versatile writers I know. I find it amazing how he never runs out of words and I actually asked him that “How come you never run out of words?” I had too-quickly drank two bottles of beer by then and his answer’s a bit fuzzy but I do remember him saying that writing is a challenge for (I’m sorry but this is so apropos: the universe seems to be in sync with me this afternoon; right after I typed that last sentence, Mikah sent me this link) him…something like that. I don’t do interesting conversations justice.

The lover says I am good at writing, that I inspire him but that I just don’t apply myself. I guess it’s because I get sidetracked too easily and this is one of my biggest flaws. There’s just too many interesting and trivial things grabbing for my attention and if the world would only stop being so fascinating to give me enough time to collect my thoughts. But that’s not how it works.

Lover: it’s like a huge part of what made me fall in love with you.
Lover: i love the written word, and you are a walking written word.

Yep, this is the hangover doing the writing. Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone, I’m off to look at computer desks before getting ready for tonight (which shall be spent in an office studio somewhere along Katipunan Avenue, playing with cameras and lights). I leave you with a quotation quite fitting for today:

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
-Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

You got it, boyfriend.

You see, save for that one time I dug my nails into the flesh of his back and scratched downwards (which freaked him out, by the way, because he felt I was treating him the way I treated my past men), I’m quite the boring one in bed. Theoretically, I like rough sex; I like the idea of biting and hair-pulling and wrestling and the occasional gentle slams against a wall as you hurriedly undress your partner. But once I find myself in the bedroom with the prospect of sex hanging heavy in the air, all porn-worthy ideas are discarded and end up in a heap on the floor, much like our underthings and those obstructive pair of jeans I’ve been dying to rip off his body the second after I kissed him hello. When in the moment, all I want is to make love to him. I guess it’s safe to say that my idea of hot, mind-blowing sex is that of married, good old vanilla sex.

Fantasies, especially those of the sexual kind, aren’t beyond me/us, though. Lover and I have had several conversations about this and amusingly enough, even our so-called wildest fantasies fall short of the debauchery category. Most are visual (cameras and the like) and I’ve been told I get frisky in the presence of mirrors. But start mentioning “whips and chains” and “spanking” and “golden showers” and “spider glue traps” and you’ll see us squirming or giggling to hide our discomfort. It’s not that we’re a couple of prudes or that we’re being children about it; it’s just not our proverbial cup of (sexual) tea.

I’m far from uptight in the bedroom so I guess I just like keeping things…sweet. My attempts at or ideas of naughty probably won’t make even the most junior of sexual outlaws nod in approval, which in a way disappoints me because I see it as a lack of imagination and creativity on my part. There was this one time, though, when I asked lover if he’d ever tried role-playing. Negative, but did I want to? “Yes! Let’s pretend to be poor people!” is what I said. I think. Poor people or farmers or maybe domestic helpers, I don’t recall.

I was obviously kidding, as the idea of role-play in the bedroom is silly to me. But all this doesn’t mean I’m completely ruling out taking a (sexual) walk on the wild side (with the exception of threesomes. No more threesomes. Unless the other girl is Veronica Mars WHO IS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER, everybody go w00t w00t). We all do get a little playful sometimes and I think it’s the greatest thing having a person you can totally be comfortable getting naughty with.

(Random Musing #3957493876)

2. Have you ever felt like petting someone’s heart? It seems to be such an apt thing to do to his.

3. I came home last night to the smell of toaster oven butterscotch brownies my mom “made” and I thought: “That’s not the way you do it”. I haven’t baked anything since high school and I’m itching to do something domestic. I’ve been browsing cake and casserole recipes today. When I have the time, I will clean our oven and make a delicious mess in our kitchen.

4. The cats will probably go crazy and will most likely drive me crazy.

5. I’ve had this nasty cough for almost a week and it’s the most unpleasant thing ever; my throat hurts at certain angles, like when I tilt my head back a bit. If only I could detach my whole respiratory system from the rest of my body…

6. I’m going apartment-hunting this Sunday with my folks and brother. Wish me luck. I don’t think I’m ready to start paying for rent again since I’ve been having such a grand time spending my money on necessary things, but I miss my independence.

7. I need to write two more blog entries, lulz. Deadlines deadlines.

For a 23-year old, I’ve had a pretty interesting dating career. Unfortunately (and I say this with no trace of bitterness at all, just how I see it in hindsight), most of the guys I’ve ever involved myself with proved to be bad choices and— to a certain extent— wastes of time. I do have questionable taste in men, I admit to that. Fortunately, I didn’t end up with any of them.

These days, it feels like I’ve reached the end of the road and I mean that in the loveliest, most optimistic, and most satisfying way possible. It hasn’t particularly been a long time— just a little over a year (and I must say: there’s this pair of jeans I’ve had longer…), but it’s been a sweet journey culminating in the realization and the hope that he is The One, the last lover, and the only person I would ever want to wake up next to every morning (and please forgive me for the cheesiness) forever.

As much as I try not to, I have always had this tendency to romanticize even the most mundane of things. Everything seems prettier when written down and thought of in big, fancy words; the scenes and stories, as they play out in my mind, are always duplicated, layered, blending set to screen with 60% opacity, and topped off with 2 pixel Gaussian blur filter. It’s easy to lose myself in this little world of mine (and I often do) so I compensate (usually guiltily) by attacking life in the shrewdest and harshest way I can.

Un-romanticization #1: There are no great forces that brought us together. The universe did not see two stranger hearts seeking each other and decide to have them meet.

Following the trail of e-breadcrumbs I left, I have come to see that one major factor that brought our relationship out of the carnal stage and into that level of having actual, deep feelings for each other was my unconsciously understanding what it was that I wanted. You know how it is when you’re young, pretty, and have people left and right telling you you can basically get anything and anyone you want: you turn ruthless and obsess about objects (ideas and people included) that don’t easily fall onto your lap. You seek and are always up for a challenge; the main goal is to figure out how something or someone works to own them. Embarrassingly, that was how I was. Coupled with my former inclination to go after assholes, it’s no surprise I never formed anything lasting up until he came along.

And so I realized that I was looking for a connection, not a challenge. I got it right, this time around.

Un-romanticization #2: My heart has never been more honest with my mind.

I love how my body fits into his perfectly— like a Matryoshka doll, how in sync our movements in bed are (with only the slightest blunders caused by emotional highs), and how attuned he is to my thoughts and emotions. It’s not hard to forget the rest of the world and its complexities and totally immerse myself in just us. It’s the scariest thing ever.

Un-romanticization #3: But not as scary as us not working out.

Before he left, he told me that he fears I’d be hating him two years from now because our plans didn’t fall through. Each day is geared towards making us work. The distance is frustrating and so am I, when I demand, dwell, and let my immaturities get the best of me.

For the past several weeks, I’ve been feeling bad about not having ever received flowers for him. It’s a barrel of silly, really, wanting a bouquet of roses simply because it’s what boyfriends give to their girlfriends as a romantic gesture. I have yet to get my flowers but I’ve stopped complaining and giving him grief for it. If he’s willing to let me hold his hand while I fall asleep or while we make love; if he’s there in bed beside me when I wake up, ready to be assaulted with my good morning kisses; if he’s working his damn hardest for our future because he wants nothing more than to settle down and start a family with me, that’s pretty romantic.

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