Today, May 11, my eldest sister, Patsy, marks her 80th birthday. I am a year younger than her, born in 1944, and will celebrate my 80th on November 24, next year. I just called Patsy through Nene in Windsor to wish her a Happy Birthday. They were together celebrating her birthday with a Chinese dinner at the mall. We are looking forward to a happy sisters reunion in Windsor, Canada, with me, Patsy, Inday, and Nene in August this year 2023. Then we will drive to Brampton/Ontario on August 28th to attend the wedding of Jayvee, my brother Joey's only son, on Friday, Sept. 1. We plan to stay at least 8 days to have a reunion with my siblings and their families in Canada and visit Mama's grave in Scarborough. If Tina, eldest daughter of my brother Vinz, and her boy friend, Wilson, make it to Canada for a much-anticipated reconciliation reunion (after so many years of fighting and legal wranglings over the Fairview property in the Philipp
ines which went all the way to the Supreme Court), David and I will rent an Airbnb house big enough to accommodate Tina's family and ours, as well as Nene, Ruben, Patsy and Jess, etc. Otherwise we will stay with Junior and Adel in Mississuaga. This will be our first trip out of town since last year when we visited Roscoe in November in Salt Lake and Prose and Ruben Almanzan in Los Angeles. We will be away 16 days and have told Maya and Raki that they will need to take care of picking up their kids from school, etc. We also hope the
y will help with watering the yard and make sure our plants survive.
I should really try to take advantage of this space to write down my memories to preserve our family history instead of wasting so much time playing solitaire. I miss my old PC which enabled me to do a lot of desktop publishing including the Tambuli newsletter which I put out once a month for the Philippine community in metro Washington D.C. Now I am using an old hand me down Apple computer which has problems that I've had to call on David constantly to help me. He took it to a computer repair shop in Kapolei and for now, I'm able to write at least messages or emails and play solitaire.
But as a Ben Santos character likes to say, time is of the essence. And more and more I feel the pressure of my physical decline and forgetfulness -- missing names of once familiar people, places or things that I cannot pluck out of my brain), and the old heartache is back: I want to put together another publishing project - starting with the BGTS family Christmas memories book which I had planned to complete year before last, and gathering stories from my siblings and their children about growing up Filipino in our hometown Naga, or Manila, Philippines, and adopted second country, U.S./Canada. So far I've only got 2 interviews of Dylan and Malaya, essay contributions from Charis Geisinger and David Sindall, as well as my entry here about our European Christmas in 1982-83.
It's 12:21 p.m. David just reminded me we have the pork ribs/rice lunch that Raki made us. I also have some cauliflower to fix with cheese on top.
Oh, well, back to humdrum life then.
I contributed two Christmas interviews and posted to this blog! One with Eva and one with Kai. And I know Nick and I both wrote something when first assigned as well. And Uncle Rosc wrote something about trains! Check the blog and sort to Christmas! I’m glad you’re using the blog, Mommy. It’s like your texts to the family But formalized!
Very good to see you posting here, Noree. I'll show you how to attach photos to your posts.
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-dvd