Have you ever wished there was an easy solution for life’s discomforts? While I can’t promise that all pain will disappear from your life (unless there is some special spell that works!), I can share with you some daily relief methods that may ease those bothersome aches and pains. After all, I know what pain feels like. I suffered from severe back pains for two years during the pandemic. I was living in Cagayan de Oro at that time and I had this on and off terrible pain on my back that radiated to the right side of my groin. I had myself checked; even had my OB looked into my girl parts down there (I had a transvaginal ultrasound) just to be sure but she couldn’t find anything. So I endured… again, as I said, for two years.
I posted this mini vlog on my social media accounts last Monday and I wanted to share it here too. As I’ve said before, I’m such an introverted person that I really seldom talk to people, but when I do, we get deep into conversations and I notice that most, if not all all of the people I speak with, get surprised when they find out my real age. I’m 45 years old but they all say I look so much younger for my age. Thank you! Sometimes that’s a good thing; sometimes, not so much. I say not so much coz like when I was 25 years old and was earning like P250k/month, no one believed me. Everyone thought I was using my ex’s money when it was the other way around. Lol! Actually, even with Mahal in my late 30’s, I had a feeling his family didn’t believe I am financially independent and can take care of myself. I even supported Mahal during our first few years together. I didn’t mind. We are life partners and I love him! He took care of me and Tuz while I was busy working and that, to me, was priceless. Even now that he’s taking care of us financially, he never stopped taking care of us emotionally and in all the important ways. He’s our hero! Anyway, back to my “baby face”, because I don’t look like my age, I have this feeling that people think and feel that I’m not financially responsible enough. Well, sorry to burst their bubble, but this girl boss here, right now, is set for life… a simple life that is. 😉 Anyhoo, I don’t have any special skincare regimen (although I did experiment on A LOT OF EXPENSIVE SKINCARE PRODUCTS IN THE PAST BUT THE GOOD EFFECTS DIDN’T LAST LONG) but I may have a secret that could be contributing to my seemingly younger-looking skin… younger than 45 at least, from what they say. And if you want to know what this secret is, watch my mini vlog to learn more about it. Let me know if it somehow makes sense. Here it is… 🙂
It’s going to be Christmas soon, then New Year, and I still haven’t blogged about the things I’ve always wanted to blog about (like the happiest Halloween we’ve ever had)! As usual, so many joyful and exciting things have happened and continue to happen in my life for which I am very much thankful! I’m living my dream beach life and each and every day I try my best to spend it as if it were my last but without sacrificing my health too much this time around (hence, I’m not forcing myself to stay awake and do more than what my 16 waking hours would permit) coz health is one thing that we really treasure the most these days plus, at this day and age, it could really be our last with Covid around and this endless pandemic!
Anyway, it’s a blessing in disguise that Facebook disabled my account last Friday night just because I was posting photos of Mahal and Tuz in a five-star resort bathtub! They weren’t fully naked and I didn’t know bathtub photos were not allowed so I immediately deleted the post only to be disabled afterward. I can’t post, I can’t comment, I can’t react… and it’s going to be for a week! Argh! Has this happened to you before? What did you do?
When I think about what 2020 has been for us, I have nothing but prayer of thanks.
Though this pandemic did affect some aspects of our business, we were able to pivot, adjust, and not only survive but thrive. Truth is, in the 3 years that we’ve lived in Cagayan de Oro, 2020 has been our most successful year. And for that, THANK YOU, GOD!
A huge part is because living and working from home is not new to us. We’ve always been the introverted type and my work has always been online, so it didn’t really change our routine much. And because most of the world turned online, business has never been better. It also helped that we got out of our tiny pad. Since travel was restricted, our original plan of living somewhere half the time and living in the tiny pad the other half of the time was no longer possible. I needed space to breathe and just be and I’m so happy we got to experience living in a cozy house here in Cagayan de Oro City. Before the year approached its end, we even got to host online and overnight parties.
But don’t get me wrong… There were dark days, yes. Days when I felt like the world was going to end as if we’re entering the era of zombie apocalypse…
I must admit that the previously growing anxiety inside of me since the emergence of Coronavirus has hampered my productivity and creativity levels. I mean aside from my own work, motherly tasks and house chores which are the only productive things I do these days, I haven’t done anything else. Before, I was also busy with other things like:
– continuous marketing for Tuscany Highlands and Training Workshops CDO.
– I was actively reading my books and attending online courses I bought.
– I blogged and I did my journal
– I did creative things like making designs for our future home.
– I concocted marketing strategies for Tuscany Highlands
– I planned future family travels, family projects and what-not.
But since this deadly coronavirus emerged and wreaked havoc on every nation, I found myself operating on survival mode: WORK. TAKE CARE OF TUZ. DO HOUSE CHORES. REPEAT. WORK. TAKE CARE OF TUZ. DO HOUSE CHORES. REPEAT.
While most of you have probably been in quarantine / lockdown for about a month or so now, I’ve been imposing it on and off upon myself and my family since I first heard about the coronavirus in the news the last week of January. We were preparing for another batch of Hands-On Mushroom Training at that time when the Coronavirus Outbreak began circulating in the media. My “prepper” instinct tingled and I started having worst-case scenario visions in my head. (“prepper” is a person who believes a catastrophic disaster or emergency is likely to occur in the future and makes active preparations for it, typically by stockpiling food, ammunition, and other supplies.) That was the time I started buying a little bit more than the usual number of masks and alcohol bottles we use for mushroom training just in case the outbreak becomes an epidemic, or worse, a pandemic. And because we had plans of going back to Cebu to set up another Mushroom farm, I almost decided not to go for fear of contracting the virus during our travel. This was around Jan. 25-28 when the rest of the world didn’t care much about the Coronavirus yet, and much less about preparing for it.
This is probably the longest I haven’t blogged. It’s been so long that I have to read what I wrote last time coz I don’t remember anymore, lol. And it made me cringe a bit that my last post before this was about my health and my suspicion of having Dengue which happened before all this Novel Corona Virus, now called Covid-19, started hitting the news.
Anyway, as an OC person, I want to have some semblance of chronology about what has been happening to me the past several months so this long overdue blog update might be a bit long. Just bear with me. I’ll try to only give you the summaries and I’ll just write more about them, one topic at a time, on my next blog posts. For now, here are the abridged versions: Continue reading →
It’s a week into the new year and boy oh boy what a crazy schedule it has been!
I’m actually under the weather right now, not because I’ve not been taking care of myself. On the contrary, this time around, I’ve been sleeping 8-12 hours a day since the new year (except the other night when I only had 5 hours of sleep because Tuz won’t let me sleep…) It is because I am suspecting myself to have contracted Dengue because I caught a mosquito with black and white stripes as I was brushing my teeth last night! Prior to that, in the afternoon, I started feeling joint pains and aches. I thought it was because of the chicken I ate (I avoid chicken and other meat as much as I can but Mahal brought home some so I ate.. it has high uric acid content that’s why the doctor advised me before not eat meat anymore, tsk, tsk.) Then I had a mild fever. I thought that maybe I was just feeling sick because Tuz also has cough and colds and his temperature the other day was higher than usual (about 88-95 degrees Fahrenheit which is not considered fever yet but his skin was just a little bit hot to touch). I was just feeling so tired and achy all over so I tried to rest. But when I caught that black and white mosquito last night, my suspicion grew so we immediately decided to go to the hospital so I can have myself tested. That was 9:30 PM. We were supposed to come back after 3 hours but the moment I hit the bed after our little hospital trip, I felt so tired again that I woke up in the morning. I still couldn’t do my usual tasks except for a couple of social media posts and rested until this afternoon. I plan to get the blood test results this evening so as to avoid the crowd and I can head to the emergency doctor instead of lining up to go see one of the regular doctors in one of the clinics. At least I can rest some more at home and do some social media tasks for work, and yes, blog, lol.
I paid P2,178 to have the following lab tests last night: Continue reading →
At last, the Ber months are here — my favorite last few months of the year because it means that Christmas is just around the corner, Jose Mari Chan’s Christmas in Our Hearts has started playing in the radio again, and of course, my most favorite holiday, Halloween, is happening before all the pre-Christmas and New Year hullabaloo! In short, I’m just in a very festive mood! Weeeee!!!
And because of these blessings and the overwhelming gratitude I am feeling towards God and our life in general, I am also inspired to give back. We don’t have many material things as we have been living sort of a semi-minimalist lifestyle since I exchanged my big Alabang townhouse lifestyle to tiny pad living in Cagayan de Oro City, but we can definitely give some things to people, albeit strangers, we consider important to us, and these “some things” are no other than our farm products, for our precious target market, the very people we would like to keep serving through our organic mushroom food product offerings.
Since we got back from our very long road trip, it’s just been work, work, work! Aside from taking care of all my client tasks, Mahal and I have also been busy getting ready for this weekend’s bazaar in Cagayan de Oro — La Fiesta Grande Bazaar to be held at Ayala Centrio Mall in the downtown area. The bazaar will be from August 23, Friday, until August 25, Sunday.
We received 100% positive reviews from our customers in terms of the taste, but a few suggested that maybe we can improve on our label. Our very first label looked like this:
It’s July 1 and I can feel it! I’ve been working my ass off (pardon the term) since I woke up at 1am EST (it’s now 12:32 PM EST) and I still have lots of client tasks to finish. But before I forget, I need to blog. I said I will blog every day and so just like any committed human being, I am showing up here on my blog and writing down my thoughts.
Again, it’s July 1 and I can really, REALLY feel that the first half of the year is over! So many things have happened, both good and bad but I sometimes do feel that the bad outweighed the good ones because of the magnitude of emotions that came with it. I don’t like to dwell on these things much, but it’s also good to not forget them because they did come with lessons learned.
So before I resume with my VERY busy MomTraNeur life, let me just jot down below what those things are so I can finally let them go:
MomTraNeur 