Go North

Netnet Camomot

IT could have been the best Valentine’s Day ever–a Sunday, with Friday night and the whole day of Saturday spent indoors, in bed, with the one she loves.

Instead, Friday evening was for Lourdes College High School’s “Hali Na Mo Night 2016.” And of course there was the post-“Hali Na Mo” feast with high school friends: the yummiest pizza–Al Prosciutto–at Dave’s Beanery Cafe. Upon arriving home, had to keep herself awake till 2 a.m. to be able to email details and logos for tarpaulins, certificates, and mugs.

For Saturday, there was the cleft surgical mission’s registration day, and the Cagayan de Oro Press Club’s election, and a Rotary club’s 46th anniversary.

Sunday morning was for listening to old love songs while having breakfast, no thanks to the househelp whose music preference seemed to have aged overnight. Had to ask them to switch to other radio stations but it seemed like that was it for the day of hearts.

The rest of that Sunday was for Rotary work, and copying the phone’s photo albums to the laptop.

Then, there was the family’s traditional Valentine dinner. For this year, it was at youngest bro’s place on Sunday evening, with Barney’s burgers paired with Greenwich lasagna, topped with the usual jokes and laughter for dessert, and a movie–“Creed”–for the post-dinner ritual.

But she had to skip the movie and went back home early to work again, only to find a laptop that refused to work. The blood pressure was already complaining by then, wanting to rest. It was the conked-out laptop that finally convinced her to rest already.

That’s the Valentine weekend for the gurs, the young once, the young at heart. Ho-hum. Another day in paradise. Zzzzz.

The technician’s advice was to buy a new one months ago when she had the laptop repaired. When it conked out last Sunday night, a friend asked how old it is, and her reply was, As old as me. In other words, Jurassic galore.

The low-tech doesn’t care much about hardware and software, may not even know the diff between hardware and software although she may know when a thingie is hard or soft.

This is the low-tech whose desktop monitor went black way back in 2003, resulting to panic and SOS texts to the youngest bro who texted back with, Turn it on. She replied, Turn what on? He: The monitor. She: How?

That youngest bro is now telling her to buy a desktop if ever the technician’s advice is to replace the laptop, now na. But she can’t bring that desktop to wherever she wants to write this column, like as if she still uses the laptop to write this.

The phone is doing almost everything for her now, including this column, and even wakes her up every morning at 5 a.m. But the conked-out laptop provided a convenient excuse not to start working early, so the alarm was off on Monday morning, but she still woke up way before 5 a.m., anyway, at the ungodly hour of 3:16 a.m. Which makes her suspect old age is controlling her nocturnal habits nowadays, with this belief that old people tend to sleep less.

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Hmmm. Estoryahe! But it’s true, isn’t it? There’s this need to sleep for at least seven or eight hours to keep the cells alive. That’s probably the reason why the nutrition club is called Healthy Cells.

How to be healthy amidst all the work? To be or not to be. Stressed, that is. Thanks to a friend’s incessant advice on focusing on attitude towards the work, she can now relax, treat the non-working laptop as a sign to stop working for a while, let it be, let it go.

Deadlines are looming overhead, but there’s this need to stare at the trees while having breakfast of aloe, tea, and protein shake. That breakfast used to be bacon, fried eggs, and fried rice, complete with decaf coffee sweetened by honey and loaded with creamer. Well, some rituals have changed.

Birds are chirping, the househelp are laughing while doing the laundry, and, despite the heart’s many unanswered queries, there’s this resolve to keep a relationship afloat and make it go North. Nope, no going South for that one. Unless South means… Oops. Censored!

But then, it takes two. Oh, well.