Giving up Cheesecake

At two early this morning, we rushed our mom to the hospital because of her elevated blood pressure, which failed to stabilize even after taking her anti-hypertensive drugs.

As I filled up the information sheet in the ER, a female resident tended to my mother. She assessed her condition, took the bp, gave her meds and instructed the nurses to prepare the ECG. I thought, that's something I could probably do. I could even bet that I know better about the exact mechanisms of action of those blockers and enzyme inhibitors. (Yabang. Maybe I'm being bitter.)

So I moved away from the gurneys. Stop the unhealthy thoughts. I gave it up, so stop the unhealthy thoughts. I just joked with my brother about racing the wheelchairs around the ER.


It's like cheesecake.

My expensive, dangerous guilty pleasure-cum-obsession. Despite the euphoric feeling of being one of few to taste the pricey indulgence, the saturated fats and harmful lipoproteins will come to bite you in the ass.

Cheesecake is bad for me. Hospitals are bad for me.

Oddities

I realized there are a lot of ways to prove how strange my household really is.

–A conversation, around 9PM–

Me: Naghuhugas ako ng dishes. Ikaw na lang mag-alis nyan.

Bro: Ano ka ba, di ako humahawak ng ganyan! Normally, I don’t touch frogs!

Me: What, you think I do?!

Bro: You have a naked frog swimming in formalin in your room! Biochem major ka diba? Kinakalikot nyo pa nga yan eh.

Me: FYI, that was years ago. (Binigay ko na kay Faye yung skinless frog.) Besides, my frogs were sedated. I don’t necessarily chase them around. Minsan lang.

Bro: Whatever, you do it. I’m not touching a frog. Nakakadiri yan eh.

The Mom: Anong klase ba naman yang kuya mo?!

 
–The Story–

During the recent rains, we discovered a frog living in our front yard. It was average-sized, wasn’t that much of an eyesore and it wasn’t destroying the plants so we didn’t mind.

One night, however, I was washing the dishes in the kitchen when my brother was suddenly yelling for me to come. Startled, I rushed to the living room thinking that something horrible had happened. I actually had a bunch of theories in my head: that maybe there was something unbelievable on TV, that he broke some stuff, or worse, that it was something electrical. It turned out that the harmless frog had entered the house as my brother came back from his yosi break outside. My brother was screaming and telling me to pick the frog up and throw it back outside ’because HE DIDN’T WANT TO TOUCH A FROG.

Let me explain this further. My 25-year old older brother is a straight, grown-up, normally adventurous male with long hair up to his shoulders, tan skin, broad shoulders and a stocky built to match… but he didn’t want to pick up a frog.

I told him I was busy washing dishes but he insisted I remove the frog before it goes any deeper under our furniture. I asked him why he can’t just do it himself; and he told me that he doesn’t normally touch frogs. (Like I do?) My mother overheard the argument and was irritated at first, but then started laughing as she took over the dishes I left in the kitchen. Anyway, in fear of the creature possibly having poisonous skin, I got an old pair of latex gloves before doing anything. To my brother’s happiness and amazement, I caught the frog easily in one grasp. He instructed me to throw it out the gate. I might have thrown it a little too far as I saw it fly towards the other side of our street. It was a just a few inches from my neighbor’s property, who almost woke up to find a smashed amphibian at their gate.

I really didn’t mind having to get rid of that frog, except that some kind of sticky, icky, yucky mucus got stuck in my gloves and my brother didn’t want to clean it either.

Oh well, LIFE IS ODD. Nowadays, baby sisters get to save their brothers from little harmless amphibians.

(Just don't tell my bro that I've been blogging about it. Hehe.)

Safe trip, my S630.

Sira ang camera ko. The one my cousin and her fiance gave me last Christmas.

After the Eastwood gimmick last Wednesday, I tried taking pictures of the people as they went home but I noticed my pictures were always out of focus. They were all blurred, distorted and looked like the captured vision of someone who forgot his/her glasses. As soon as I got home, I searched the net for a solution only to discover that my problem was a common defect of that cheap Samsung model... along with many other mysterious defects. The easiest solution is to have it fixed at a service center. But since the camera was bought in the US and the receipts are with my cousin, I'm sending the camera with my aunt so my cousin could have it fixed there under the warranty.

My S630 is traveling tomorrow. It's stopping over in Korea and arriving in Chicago Saturday morning. Ingat sana sya. Lol.

... so I can sell it afterwards.