Nevergirl's

Alex tells the most colorful stories. I’ve yet to make up my mind whether it’s lying or creativity but while I’m re-assessing my values, I play it safe by telling her to stick to fiction. Now we have a Ham Who Will Try to Steal Charlie and a group of imaginary friends who are trying to talk Alex into joining their fraternity. What fraternity? She’s 4 years old!

This reminds me of the last time she stayed up late enough to hear the hub and I discuss long-term plans. The very next day, she announced to the two help and her classmates we are moving to a house that is by the beach, has a bathtub in each room, and comes with elevators!

Did I really neglect this blog for almost a month? That’s what the date says, and it’s a lot more accurate than my memory.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an interesting excuse for not writing: I didn’t wrestle with yaks, didn’t get run over by an ice cream cart, didn’t save the world (or at least Sitio Univille), didn’t get trapped inside a coolant pump, didn’t move to another part of the globe, didn’t reinvent the wheel (or at least the trapeze dress), didn’t return from a near-death experience. There was work, and tons of it. There was also Charlie and Alex who sent us scampering to their pedia and the hospital twice this month (each child, imagine that!). Then, too, there was Christmas and the New Year and family to go home to. There were so many lunches and dinners you’d think I’d be bigger than a truck by now — and I am!

In between hospital runs, work, and feeding my addiction to Xbox, I read, plodded through paperwork, played with the kids, and cut my own hair. I also bought the hub a new laptop and I’m telling you about it because it’s a milestone – the first time ever that I plunked down cash for a hefty purchase. It’s MY declaration of independence from plastics, an affirmation that as frivolous and flighty as I am, I’m also capable of being financially responsible. I tell you, each time I snub my credit cards, I feel oh so sensible and mature! This feeling lasts well onto the ride home but leaves itself at the door because as adult as I’d love to be, I can’t NOT find my first Goofy Goober token and save Mr. Krabs and Bikini Bottom – I just can’t. Sometimes, I even skip meals to earn ‘manliness’ points as Patrick the starfish (The Spongebob Squarepants Movie is the most awesome Xbox game ever!).

So there, now you know why I haven’t been writing. I wasn’t out saving the world; I was out fighting Plankton, saving Bikini Bottom, and making 2am foodruns with co-players.

Starving console addicts

Alex cannot read but she likes to pretend she can, anyway.

“Ma, what does my cookie say?”

“The one on your hand? Nothing. There are no words on it.”

“There are uy!”

I was amused. The cookie in her hand has teensy grooves, not words. But she entertains me, this little’un, so I humored her. “Okay, what does your cookie say?”

“I’m delicious. Please eat me, Alex.”

She is amusing, this four-year-old. She’s such a drama queen, too. I don’t know where she learned the words she uses to such theatrical effect; I certainly didn’t teach her those. “You ruined my plans!” she shrieked when my foot bumped into some of the blocks she had painstakingly lined half the bed with.

“Ruined? What does that mean?”

“Guba ba. You guba my plans.”

“What plans?”

“My evil plans to rule the world!”

“With blocks?”

She had the grace to look embarrassed. She always does when we flag her wrong use of English words. “Um, forget it.”

“Brave girls get ice cream,” I told the little one gravely.

“Can it be strawberry ice cream?”

“Of course.”

“Chocolate?”

“Why not?”

“Okay, let’s do it.” She gave her hand to the doctor. He applied cream and sealed it in with gauzes. Twenty minutes later, he pried the gauzes off, injected her with anaesthesia twice, and proceeded to poke, pinch, and cauterize.

Alex screamed in an I’ll-die-from-this-pain-I’m-sure-of-it way for exactly two minutes. Minutes later, the wart came off – a sorry, shrivelled, yellow mass (oddly, it resembles a wasted duracell procell d) which the doctor somberly told my daughter he will throw into the bin where little men in funny little hats live.

Then it was time for wart number two to go, and this time around, she was ready. (The price of wart number two? Beads! Loads of them!) She started screaming long before the syringe touched her finger. “Hush,” said the poor doctor who, by then, had started sweating torrents. There was no way he could have a go at the wart with his thin, buzzing implement – not with her flailing like a drowning little person. Still, he persevered, we helped. An hour, several shattered eardrums, and PhP 1,500 later, the job was done. The doctor sat down – pale, sweaty, a broken man. “Please don’t grow any more warts until you’re 14,” he begged my daughter.

That was how Alex came to lose the two warts on her fingers that had grown to the size of Sibongga, and got two lightly-bandaged fingers with faces doodled on them in return. She calls the two “mummy kings” and has named them Amy and Nikola. But no, they’re not gay.