The Road to 40 Day 119/365: Football and Lasagna Friday

Two of the biggest highlights for this day were Vino’s football session and Che’s lasagna. Not the most exciting day, but maybe you haven’t tried Che’s lasagna yet.

It was difficult for Vino to wake up this day because we slept a bit late the night before. I let him sleep in a bit, but I guess I miscalculated the timing and the guards at the school were a bit more strict now with their schedule.

As a result, Vino got another blue slip, his second this term already. Che left for the office while I was on the way back home. She was set to go home early because we had a cleaner scheduled to come by.

Che said she’ll cook lasagna while waiting for us and asked me to buy her ingredients. I went to Holland Village to hit two birds with one stone – I wanted to check uniforms for Vino and get Che’s ingredients.

Unfortunately, the uniform was no longer available, and the hats were too big for Vino. I got all the ingredients I needed though, so at least I got a win on that end.

I took the train and the bus to Vino’s school. I got a couple of onigiris from 7-Eleven because I haven’t eaten lunch yet. Usually, I’m fine not eating lunch, but there are times now that I feel lightheaded when I don’t.

When I got to Vino, he was trying to add one of his friends on Facetime, and I just let them finish first before we walked out.

He said he was a bit hungry, and he needed some food before football training anyway. I got him to try Irvin’s salted egg instant noodles.

He enjoyed the salted egg fish skin when we went to Kidzania, so he is now keen on exploring what the brand had to offer.

It’s not healthy, but a little bit of it from time to time won’t hurt. I mean, I grew up with pancit canton or ramen flowing through my digestive system, and I’m still here.

Che arrived after we ate the noodles and she set up her laptop for some late work at home. Vino and I relaxed a bit before heading off to football practice.

We got to the training grounds a bit earlier than expected, but we were allowed to go in so we had a bit of time to play before training started.

I told Vino he could try to shoot balls while I play goalkeeper on the bigger goal. He liked it because he had a lot more room to shoot. Some of his friends arrived and wanted to shoot try as well.

Some of the kids were amazed that I was blocking some of their best shots, and one time, I even blocked two shots simultaneously. Honestly though, the corner shots were kinda hard for me to reach. I could feel a sharp pain on my knees when I tried to explode to the direction of their corner shots.

I wanted to show Vino how to chase corner shots like that but I had the wrong shoes and bad knees, so they had to settle for what this old man can do.

As they did their training, I went to shoot some hoops at the basketball court. I could still see their drills, but at least I get to practice my shots before I play with my basketball friends here.

After the training session and the game, Vino and his friend continued to play together. I was talking to his friend’s dad but had an eye out for when the boys’ ball would invade the pitch because there was a game going on already.

So talking had a mix of a workout also. It was super late by the time we got done, and Vino’s friend and his dad walked home. Meanwhile, we waited for our Grab as Che’s lasagna was ready.

When we got home, we cooled down for a bit before we dug into the lasagna.

Back then, Ate Jen did the Pinoy desserts and fish paksiw, Che did pastries and pastas, and I cooked everything else – from familiar to experiments. This trend continued, because knowing Ate Jen and Che had their areas of expertise, I didn’t want to compete anymore and would just rather enjoy what they did.

Che’s lasagna is one of my favorites. I love lasagna as much as Garfield does, and getting that cooked by my wife with generous ingredients is just heavenly. I always joke that I need three to four servings because I can’t taste it. Vino loved this one from the first bite.

Che’s lasagna has always been good enough to sell that at some point in the past, I offered it to a client who was looking for one.

Since our cleaner just came, the only thing left for me to clean were the dishes we ate on.

We had a bit of a movie night, and Vino was still being a bit playful on the bed. Che looked tired, so I asked Vino not to play too much anymore so she could rest.

Vino later snuggled up on my arm, and it didn’t take more than five minutes before I could feel that he was fast asleep already.

It was a good way to kick off the weekend.

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