Sleep, VCDs, Lulu and my boyfriend

…were the common themes running through the past weekend, which i more or less sleepwalked (sleptwalked?) through.

brace yourself, this is a long post.


friday

woke up in that strange, sluggish, groggy mood and with that heavy-headed feeling you get after way too much sleep. my first action was to immediately justify the non-performance of the day’s errands in favor of watching the motorcycle diaries, in the mood for love, and season 5 of sex in the city all in a row, using lulu of course.

ooh-ed and aah-ed over maggie cheung’s killer silhouette and marveled over the countless times she changed her cheongsams – the costume mistress must have gotten them on sale.

talked to my boyfriend on the phone. drifted off to sleep at the ungodly hour of 3:30 a.m.


saturday

emerged from my slumber at 2 p.m. and decided to fend off aforementioned strange, sluggish groggy mood and heavy-headed feeling with errands, dinner and girl talk. said errands included the purchase of mouse traps (don’t ask – but i can recommend the good ones), this month’s preview, and bringing five pairs of favorite shoes to mr. quickie after my last remaining favorite pair died on me.

was prevented from leaving the house early due to a text from the friend i was supposed to meet, whom i hadn’t had a good long talk with in over a year.

“uy sana ok lang, sama ofismates ko.”

which straightaway drove me to bitch long-distance to marlon for half an hour. i love this friend, she’s like a sister to me, but i hate it when this happens.

you haven’t seen a good friend in a year and agree to meet up for dinner. you build up a healthy reservoir of girl talk – for her ears only – and then she decides to drag along complete strangers who you have to be nice to. what if you don’t want to be nice? what if you don’t want to make the effort to make sure the strangers are included in the conversation? what if you don’t want to explain the whole back story of he-who-must-not-be-named, zuma and why you lived in singapore for a month?

come to think of it, the last time this happened to me, it was the same friend! only the inestimable value of our decade-long friendship prevented me from texting her back a big fat HELL NO! that, and i was out of prepaid credits.

instead, as a form of silent rebellion, i tied my hair back in a tight bun, pinned my bangs out of sight with plain black hair pins, and donned baggy khaki pants, a black hooded sweatshirt, and a pink t-shirt with an inkstain on the neckline. except for the pink, people who know me will know that the entire getup was so not me.

naturally, both tagalong officemates turned out to be males. normal, straight, fun males. one was a process manager who just happened to be looking for someone to edit an ISO manual. good thing i’m permanently on raket alert, as halfway through kung pao chicken i had to field such tough questions as whether my “rates” included headers and footers.

the other was a tall moreno guy with dimples and a cute smile. (they still exist! hallelujah!) he was so nice that i immediately wanted to set him up with my sister. unfortunately for her, he was exactly my age.

(pause. yes i have blinders, and his name is marlon.)

so the evening didn’t turn out so bad, after all. at least until the killer coffee from gloria jean’s.


limbo between saturday and sunday -- or so it seemed to me
(approximately 2am to 7am)

flouting my regular bedtime of 2am, i found myself popping in disc after disc of sex and the city, season six, until 4am.

then i had some brilliant ideas and wrote a bit.

then i tossed and turned.

then i read the august preview, which is so me – it prominently features bollywood and landmark.

then i tried to sleep.

then i tossed and turned some more.

then i tried to ignore the sunrise, and the jeeps roaring to life, and the neighbor’s alarm clock ringing, and the smell of their breakfast cooking, and – just when i was about to fall asleep – the sound of workmen sawing and hammering a brand new wooden cabinet. or wall panels, or a dumbwaiter, or railroad tracks. whatever. i don’t know what it was, only that it was being made at six freaking thirty a.m. right in front of our house.

all this while being totally not sleepy, a.k.a. wired beyond belief.

i am never, ever having hot coffee from gloria jean’s ever again.


sunday

forced myself out of bed at 9am for my first voice lesson in almost two months. since my teacher is also a friend, i felt duty-bound to warn him that i was so sleepy it wasn’t even funny, and that it might result in my being extra slow for today. naturally his solution was to ply me with more coffee. just what i needed, right?

blundered through the lesson, home for a fitful power nap, to ateneo for choir rehearsal, and sleepwalked back home to bulldoze through the final two episodes of sex and the city. i sniffled all throughout the series ender, although the tears might have been from my grotesque headache or the inner torment of having to choose between blessed sleep and staying up to finally set my nocturnal lifestyle right.

(wait, i almost left out the cabbie who was evidently so happy to drive on a traffic-less sunday afternoon that he got me from mandaluyong to ateneo in ten minutes flat. i’m so not exaggerating. either he sensed that i was late to rehearsal or that i was way too out of it to care about his driving. at any rate, i left the house fifteen minutes before rehearsal and still had time to grab lunch at kfc across ateneo. in fact, queueing up at kfc took longer than my cab ride.)

had a conversation with my boyfriend, which mostly consisted of me nonsensically phonating (look it up here) and him being very wonderful and patient.

watched mean girls while drinking numerous glasses of water to flush mean old gloria jean out of my system.

you know what? i think its finally working. this weekend, thankfully, is over.

*yawn* good night.