Letters to Marge & Maddie: Chapter 48 (Well, hello there...)

Good morning, my dear girls.

When i started writing this, it's almost 10am here in Baguio on a gloomy, rainy, grey Saturday morning. i wake up with the usual slight groin discomfort which seems to be more commonplace lately. But your mom and i have our regular annual-bi-annual check-up coming up in a week or so. So hopefully, we will get the usual news that everything's normal as normal can be considering the circumstances.

To the left of this photograph is the group of jars for my morning drink: coffee, brown sugar, and Milo. Those are two boiled eggs which i suddenly decided i would like to have this morning.

Now it's a quarter to 11 and i'm already at the store. i expect to hopefully finish by 11am to do some rounds and earn my keep, so to speak.

i slept at a wee bit past 3am earlier today/last night because i had so much work to do, and i sort of ended the evening/early morning with fixing more of the literally thousands of photographs im going through for printing. Your mother is old-fashioned and still wants prints of our family and vacation photos. i'm not objecting at all. But it IS a lot of work.

I was hoping to sleep in 'til about 9am to hopefully get around 6 hours of sleep at least. It is a Saturday after all, and your grandmother is supposedly on her merry way down to one of her beach houses. So since she's the main focus and reason of having to be at the store early, i guess i COULD sleep in a bit, right? But... as luck would have it, she rings me up at exactly 7:28am. Surprisingly, i also your grandfather on call-waiting during the tail-end of this phone call.

me getting this blog post started.

this is what those eggs looked like before i ate them

Your grandmother was calling to tell me that it was raining bad, and that i need not trouble myself with visiting her down there tonight for dinner, and that she would need one of the househelps to stay at her house since was dragging every one of her own helps down with her. And also to ask me (again) if i can take care of myself lunch-wise. (Update: your Uncle Wilson just called telling me they are going to country club for lunch and was inviting me. i hate going to the country club. Every so often i agree to the invitation, but today i happily declined.)

Your grandfather was calling about a piece of property that her sister (your great aunt) is selling, and about who was buying it, how much it was worth, etc. etc... He also called to tell me that his prostate biopsy was going to be this coming Wednesday. He sounded all like his jolly self, but not quite. Hell, the word "biopsy" is scary for anyone. Hopefully, i wont be writing here again anytime soon about that. No news is good news, guys.

Then the phone call barrage continues in the form of your very own mom who is bemoaning the basement water pumps which suddenly decided to conk out in unison. So your mom is stressed out with visions of a flooded basement, and she is calling me to tell me just because. Yep, just because.
This was followed by a couple more phone calls from your mother again about things i have absolutely no power over. But anyways...

Another couple of phone calls from your grandmother later, your mother calls again telling me that its 9am and that i should forget any notion of any further sleeping. So i do get up, and proceed to start off this gloomy weekend.

Point of this story? Always take the phone calls from people you love. Many times, we don't feel like making that phone call. But at the very least, let's pick them up. Not because you we need them. But more importantly, because THEY might need US. And yes, your mom and i WILL call you from time to time. DO pick up.


'Catch you later.

Love you both so much.

Dad

No connection to the above story. Just a gratuitous family photo from our East Coast vacation. This was the Niagara Falls leg. But i guess you guys know that from the view of the background, right?