The Road to 40 Day 66/365: Errands and reunions

We started this day late, but we got a lot of things done, all things considered.

I woke up kinda early, but I couldn’t move much because Vino was still sleeping.

While it’s easy enough to escape from him, he usually gets up if he feels there’s no one beside him anymore. If he sleeps late, I want him to get more sleep, so I stay on just so he feels a warm body beside him.

The cuddling part is ok, but sometimes, he also hogs the space and pushes me to the side of the bed.

I went down to eat breakfast. While I love cooking, there are things I don’t bother to learn how to make but I immensely enjoy – pinangat and kandingga. The dinuguan is probably doable, but I only eat what my dad brings. The Bicol Express, I can cook, but there’s a specific ingredient my dad can source out in the province that I can’t get in SG.

It’s not a typical breakfast food, but whatever food is on the table is what I eat.

I saw some bacon and had that cooked for Vino’s breakfast. He went down at 11am – not ideal, but my dude is on vacation, so it’s fine.

My dad planned on visiting my uncle today in Pasig. It wasn’t part of my day’s plan, but I only thought of buying tires for the car as the day’s activity.

For the first time in years, I saw my uncle in his own home. He was incarcerated for about three years with his brother for what I would describe as political persecution.

Last time we were here, I visited him in prison because it’s been a couple of years since I last saw him. They were thankfully in good spirits back then, but I’m more thankful seeing him out here.

They were released on my birthday – something purely coincidental, but I personally took it as a gift from God and an answered prayer.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to snap a photo of us together, but we had a good time catching up.

Since we were in the same village, I took a detour to Che’s old house so that I could show Vino. When it was sold, the buyers said the structure would be demolished anyway, so they asked for a cheaper price.

Yet the structure is still there, albeit more painted outside. Hopefully, they already addressed the structural concerns inside the house.

We went on to the tire shop owned by a former neighbor of ours that my dad knows. Our car had older tires that needed replacement, so I decided to just replace all four so that I know that they are all the same age and condition.

Vino was a bit bothered by the loud pops the tires made when they were newly inflated, so he didn’t care much about what was happening.

We went home late afternoon and got a bit of rest before my aunt came by for dinner. We fondly call her Ninang Baby, even if she’s not really my ninang.

She was one of our closest neighbors from our old house back in Marikina. She’s my sister’s godmother, and I guess I grew up hearing her called ninang and it just stuck.

She is one of the first great home cooks I knew. For a time, her kare-kare was the only kare-kare I ate.

On this day, she brought some food over for everyone to share as an early celebration for my sister’s birthday.

We had home-made baked sushi, adobo, pancit, and some of the Bicol goodies my dad brought.

Vino had the adobo, of course, and later proceeded to do his own thing while the adults had a chat.

He went upstairs for a bit, but later went down to do bottle flips.

At a certain age, adults are adults. We were kids for them before, but now that we sit at one table, it’s fun to speak with them as fellow adults.

We got a quick call with Che, who was in a timezone of about 2 hours ahead. It was super late for her, but at least she had dinner and was getting ready to rest.

We had lights out early, but Vino still slept late. He found Sam and Cat on YouTube Kids, and now he’s binge-watching it on Netflix. He’s asking me to catch up, so we watched a couple of episodes before he went to sleep.

Not sure if the series aged well, but at least he found something new on his own.

Field trip day tomorrow, so I told Vino he should wake up at around 9 or 10am.

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