halo-halo

Today is gloomy, rainy and cold. Not my kind of day. But it’s a good thing that the rains came since the area had been experiencing droughts for weeks now. And thinking about the fires ravaging Southern California, I wish it were raining there, too. I was watching the movie The Holiday on HBO earlier this week, and the Santa Ana was mentioned. And then, the next day the wildfires started, fueled by the unusually fierce Santa Ana winds. When you agitate your mind with all the calamities going on in the world, you’re bound to just perish miserably. This is added stress. What to do, what to do?

Anyway, we bought half a gallon of Selecta halo-halo ice cream from the Filipino store this week. Too pricey at $10, but too mouthwatering to dismiss. I love it. Buko salad next time?

About the movie The Holiday, I liked it for its simplicity and agreeableness. It wasn’t explosive or massively tear jerking, but I found a lot of kilig and funny scenes. This kind of movies should be in my must list- I don’t need maddeningly passionate love stories or sappy, sappy love songs to make me smile. On hectic days and weeks, sometimes funny videos or a nice warm meal or photos, and nice pleasant movies are enough to ease up the crunch of daily life. Last night, I watched the movie Happy Feet in between cooking for dinner and dinner, and chores afterwards. It was so cute. So we’re planning to watch it again tonight on HBO.

While I was flooded with paperwork today, (and in fact, I’m bringing some work home tonight), I was thinking how glum today was. It’s now 5:30 pm and outside it’s already too dark. Definitely, not my kind of day. Summers are better. But I thought about the meeting that I conducted today, and how it went really smoothly, and at the end of the hour, one staff exclaimed “it was really a good meeting!” I realized, heck, it was so much better than whining that life sucks. I remember a clinician, who always seemed to find ways to complain about the cases that I assign to her, grumbled again to me last Tuesday. As I listened to her irate litany, I looked at her and was astounded. Here she was, just a couple of years older than me, and looking like she could already be my aunt. Holy crap.

So take it easy. Take time to think, that no matter how mad the day was, it will always be better tomorrow.