This is the first day of my birth month. To be honest, I’m not as excited to have another birthday. Not anymore after I turned 50, and then later on, my birthday became a grim reminder of my mother’s death. In 2018, she died three days before my birthday after being in a coma for 15 days. I stayed with her every night, probably the longest time we stayed together in one place after I became a teen and her worst nightmare. We cremated her the day after I turned 55.

I do so much in a day but I think the thing I do the best is waste time. I play scrabble after every thing I do that I deem worthy of taking a break for. I stream shows on my device and, if I’m feeling too carefree, on the big screen TV.

Today, I woke up at 6:40 and did what I usually do. Drew my face on with tinted moisturizer and an eyebrow pencil. Turned on my plant light and fed the farm. The turtles, goldfish, parakeets, and two dogs. Made coffee and had it with an egg and buttered blueberry toast. Walked the dogs and made breakfast of fruits and ham and cheese sandwich for my remote-learning high school freshman. Then I embarked on grading papers. In between, I set up a doctor’s appointment for my child and appliance repair for our broken Electrolux dryer. This is the nth time since we bought it that we had had to get it fixed. Why they refuse to replace it when it’s the same damn issue frustrates me to no end. It’s like they’re waiting for the warranty to expire so we can just buy a new one or pay for repairs cost ourselves.

In the evening, I made Filipino paksiw na pata for the meat eaters and panang curry mung beans for the vegetarians. (I decided to be vegetarian with my 18-year old son three times a week!) I snuck in an episode of Law & Order as my husband rested in our room and then we all watched my daughter’s current obsession— 90 Day Fiancé. At least not Dr. Pill Popper or 600-Pound Life, thank God.

My son came home from work washing dishes at a chicken place bringing food that customers forgot to pick up. We’re getting a bit sick of it, really, but he’s so sweet to bring it home. Like most teens he rarely thinks outside his own needs and wants. I tried to finish my homework for my Linguistics class called First Language Acquisition. Truly fascinating how babies acquire language over a very short period of time. More about this later. I didn’t sleep til midnight but still didn’t finish my homework. I’m worse than my students sometimes!