Netnet Camomot
I’M still looking for Christmas gifts but with no time to wrap them. I guess this will continue till the next Christmas season which will start on—gasp!—Sept. 1, 2017. Ilang tulog na lang!
Anyway, it’s while you’re looking for a gift that you stumble on items that have these words: “I would like to go to the traveling who would like to go with me.” And here’s the grammar police itching to edit that.
It was a rainy first week of the year, right? Or was I merely dreaming it was rainy? Because I’m not sure if it rained the whole week, or only on Friday and Saturday. Gosh, senior moment na man gid ang minute brain.
But the sleepy weather seemed to agree with our denial in going back to work. Try waking up while it’s raining cows and carabaos, and it’s like, Puede ko matulog balik? Zzzzz.
Even writing this column amidst rainy weather requires jolts from the strongest coffee—zzzzzt!—to keep the eyelids alive and kicking. Staring at green trees from the window with a view on a rainy morning is a recipe for making muni-muni.
Now, what’s the best food for rainy weather. Hmmm. Let’s calculate the ways. Champorado with bulad. Hot choco and strawberry-jam-and-cheese sandwich. Or pair that hot choco with anything—Reuben sandwich, tocilog, longsilog, tapsilog, a breakfast of fried rice, sunny-side up egg and bulad. Obviously, bulad is the perfect pair for hot choco for that salty sweet taste. And there’s pork sinigang waiting downstairs for lunch right now. Perfect for the rainy weather. Yay!
The New Year’s resolution to go on a diet may—or may not—stop you from indulging in rainy diet, still, that other resolution to carpe diem should remind you to have that champorado with bulad already.
A strict diet is the kind prescribed by a doctor whose warning is for you not to eat anything that your heart desires. The word “anything” can be, well, anything. That thing throbbing and pulsating right in front of you, that can be an “anything.” Wink! Wink!
There are people who can follow a noice diet for years. I don’t know how that’s possible but it’s effective for them. There are vegans who have been eating sagbot for so long, they would puke if forced to eat red meat, chicken, fish, and seafood. And then, there’s me. I’ve been trying to lose weight since October 2015 and especially after the knee injury in January 2016. It has been more than a year, and I now realize that diet gurus are revealing the truth each time they say, Don’t treat it as a diet. Face it as a lifestyle change.
I now have three sizes of clothes in three closets. The first closet is for Small, the second for Medium, and the third for Large.
My stubborn don’t-wanna-diet gene organized a protest on Sept. 7, 2016. That was my first time to go out of the house after hibernating in my bedroom for two months post-arthroscopy, and was having dinner with high school friends at Maison de Bonbon. The stubborn gene believed it was time to celebrate my freedom from the bedroom, so it wanted to eat anything.
The newly opened Maison then was already becoming known for its yummy food, and there I was, forgetting the docs’ warnings against heavy body weight for the knee. The resto is located on the second floor of The Nest, this cozy place along Corrales Avenue, Cagayan de Oro, that also had Giuseppe then downstairs. Now, The Nest has added more places for your discriminating taste. You can stay there the whole day from breakfast up to late-night drinks. Yes, definitely the place to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow, you’ll eat, drink, and be merry again.
Several gastronomic places opened during my hibernation, with The Nest as one of them, and I was determined to visit each one. It’s difficult to maintain a diet if you’re eating out most of the time. And, so, there I was, hopping from Small, to Medium, and—que horror!—to Large. Clothes, that is.
Any fat person surely has the same habit as mine, of keeping all sizes of clothes in closets and the bodega. If the American needs clothes for all four seasons, the Miss Piggy needs clothes for her present and previous sizes—in case she gains weight again, in case she loses weight again. Saves her several thousands of pesos—hey, no need to buy new clothes, simply open the bodega or the other closet.
But the knee is here now to complain, to remind Miss Piggy aka moi that lesser pounds mean lesser knee pain. At our latest high school class reunion, at least four of us were complaining about our knees. Yup, senior moment pa more. We have more or less the same maintenance meds, as prescribed by our doctors. I still think we’re too young for knee problems. We should be dancing, exercising, traveling. But here we are, stuck with this, hmmm, condition.
When our chika morphed to New York, our first thought was, Oh, that means walking. A lot of walking. From one looooong block to another.
The moment I wake up in the morning and stand to rush to the bathroom, I can already feel the knee. It’s tight. The pain on its left side comes and goes. I’m hoping it will disappear once I’ve reached my ideal body weight. But when will that be? The way I’m eating now, hmmm, I’m counting years.
But I’ve learned to hide the pain. After sitting for long, I slowly stand up to gain balance before walking. I even traveled to Cebu in February for my favorite protein shake’s conference, then Manila for Madonna’s concert and went back there again for the Rotary WASH conference, then joined the Rotary convention in Seoul, South Korea last summer, and joined the practices and the dance performance for our Rotary club induction last June. Which was a big no-no—all that must have worsened the injury. Oh, well.
