On having a baby

When I got married, I never thought that I'd have trouble conceiving. But here we are, 3 years later and still no baby in sight. I don't know how I should feel about that. Sometimes, I think it's okay. I get to go out anytime I want, I can travel anywhere without having to worry about someone else whose life is totally dependent upon me (at least, when he/she is still a baby). I don't have many financial worries because it's just me and the hubby. And people do say that you can't miss what you've never had. However, I don't think it works quite that way. When I see pregnant woman or women with new born babies, I always feel a touch of envy. I would love to have a baby, why can't I have one? I can't say that I'm born to be a mother (some woman maybe, but not me) and I know that if I am lucky enough to have a baby one day, it's going to be one learning curve after another. But, I know that having a baby would change my life in ways that I cannot imagine right now and I know that all the change would be for the better. My hubby says he doesn't mind not having a baby or a child since we can travel to our heart's content with nary a care in the world, but, I'm afraid that one day, when all the travelling and the carefree lifestyle is done, he'll regret that we never had children. I am still hoping that in the next few years we will be blessed. In the meantime, I will try to enjoy everything life throws at me because life is too short to be anything but happy.

Tickets to Europe

Here it is finally! Today, my travel agent sent me our e-tickets and our insight tour voucher for our 13 day tour of Western Europe. My hubby and I have been looking forward to this trip for more than 3 months now and I can't believe that in less than a week, I will be boarding Emirates Airline for a dream vacation. I have been to Europe once before but never with my hubby, so I know that this time, it will definitely be more romantic (I've always wanted to have a baby conceived in Europe, hehehe!) According to our itinerary (which we have practically memorized) our meeting place will be at the Thistle Marble Arch Hotel in London at 5:45 am. This means that we would have to be ready to leave by 5:30 in the morning (I think a wake up call will be the way to go, unless, of course, we are too excited so we will be up anyway!) We'll meet our tour director to cross the dover channel into Amsterdam where we will stay for the night. After a day and night in Amsterdam, our next stop would be Heidelberg Germany (the birthplace, I think of hubby's Heidelberg printing presses). It's another one night stay because the next day we will be going to Innsbruck, Austria (my favorite European country when I went before). Next stop after Innsbruck would be romantic Venice ( I hope the gondola we get has the person who will serenade us!) We get to stay in Venice for two days. The next destination is still in Italy, we will now be going to Glorious Rome where we will stay for another two days (we will spend Christmas eve here) before we forge on for a one night stay in Florence. For the next stop, we leave Italy and enter Switzerland (chocolates and watches here we come). Happy New Year to all! We stay there for two nights before we move on to the piece de resistance...Paris! Instead of going back with the tour group to London, we will be staying in Paris for one more night before our flight back to Manila. Whew...it's gonna be a great Christmas and a Happy New Year! Looking forward to the Christmas markets!

Celebrating Our 3rd Anniversary

My hubby and I are celebrating our third wedding anniversary today (12/12- so hubby won't forget! hahaha). So, I thought that this would be the perfect time to be philosophical and wax poetic about love and fairy tale lives. NOT! I don't have the fairy tale life. I have the life with the ups and downs and everything else in between. Contrary to what I read in books, married life is NOT pure bliss. There are times when hubby and I fight over the big things but most often than not, it's the small things that we struggle against. My hubby is a very responsible person and well, I'm not! I'm more the happy go lucky type (maybe not a good thing all the time). I guess it's because there are a lot of things in my life that I have to worry about that sometimes I let other things slide just so I don't have to think about them anymore. For me, marriage is the beginning of a new life with someone always at your side. Most of the time, it can be fun, warm and exciting. There are days when we wake up cuddled against each other happily recounting good or bad or plainly weird dreams and that's one of the best perks of marriage. It's also nice to be able to say, "I belong with someone" (not that I lose my identity or anything like that, but it's still nice to feel a sense of belonging, a sense of home.) Yup, marriage can be very, very blissful most of the time. However, there are, of course, days when we don't wake up cuddling and we're just in a hurry to get the day started and to get other things done. We feel rushed but the feeling of intimacy can still remain if we remember to give each other a big smile. That said, there are moments when we fight at the top of our lungs or don't speak at all (after all, the silent treatment is the most effective way to show anger, at least for me) I don't think that fighting drives couples apart, I think it's more the unwillingness to listen to each other. I know couples who don't fight at all and sometimes I do envy them but I guess that won't work for us because we are the type of couple that need to vent or show the other exactly how we feel. After being married for three years, I have learned that sometimes it's just best to keep my mouth shut when hubby is angry or mad about something and I think he has learned to do that for me also. Another thing that I have learned is that sometimes, it's okay to go to bed angry with each other. It doesn't mean that the lines of communications are close but rather, we are able to give each other the time and space to think things through without being overly emotional about everything. It prevents us from saying things that we can never take back. I find that when we do that, we are able to step back from ourselves and see things while standing in the shoes of the other person. It makes it easier to communicate and be apologetic the next day. Marriage, my dear friends, is truly a bed of roses complete with thorns. But that's okay, I mean, how exciting can life be without a few thorns along the way?

On airports, airplanes and immigration

I love to travel. Maybe not the packing and the unpacking but all the rest is just great. I'm one of the weird people who actually enjoy hanging out at the airport waiting for my flight to be called. I love to people watch at airports, I alway imagine that they are going to some exotic locale. I like to sit in airplanes and anticipate with glee airplane food (believe me, it takes me awhile to choose what to get, unless one of the choice is fish, then I automatically go for the other one!) Another thing that makes me really happy in airplanes is deciding what movie to watch. Even on the flights where there is only one movie being shown in the front screen, I try to stay up and watch. But on those flights were we get to choose which movies to watch and at what time, hooboy, I really really don't sleep at all (even if its a 12 hour flight). My hubby, who is the biggest sleeper in the world, would sometimes wake up and ask me if I'm crazy. My eyes are drooping and I think a little drool may be dripping from my mouth (lol) but still I refuse to just relax and fall asleep. I find sleep to be a waste of time. When I get to my place of destination, I get a little scared going through immigration thinking that I might have some contraband with me or that I answer the wrong thing and they send me back (my worst nightmare) hehehe. Once I'm through, HALLELUJAH!

scrapbooking

I love scrapbooking! It keeps me sane and it makes me happy. There's just something about patterned papers, flowers and embellishment that makes my heart go..."i want, i want" hehehe. Seriously, I scrapbook because I'm the type of person who like to look at pictures over and over again. I'm also married to a guy who gets sentimental about memories of travels who also likes to look at pictures over and over again (shhh, this is a secret, okay?). But it's not just the pictures I want to see, it's really the memories that I want to relive. Scrapbooking gives me that opportunity to remember the little details of the trip that I would otherwise have forgotten. I think my scrapbooking technique has evolved in the past 3 years that I have been scrapping, I want to say I'm good, but I'm really not. But that's okay, Kenn and I are the only ones who look through my albums anyway (well, aside from the people I force to look through them! haha) Scrapbooking has also given me some friends that I otherwise would not have met, which is a very cool thing!

A Little About Me..

after all, life is in the details. Well, let's see, I'm married with no children (yet!). I like to read (okay, I LOVE to read, love it to death!), my idea of shopping is staying in a bookstore the entire day. I love to scrapbook my life such as it is (and maybe, just maybe, I like to scrapshop a little bit more!). I enjoy watching movies with my friends (I fancy myself a critic, lol, although sometimes, I admit I like the really cheesy movies), I would love to be able to cook well but I really really can't (just don't have the talent for it), so I settle for reading books written about gourmet chefs and their restaurants and eating at restaurants of people with actual talents for this craft. I don't like to clean house but I don't have a maid so I gotta force myself to get out the dustpan once in a while (thank God for weekly maid service). I detest people who think too much of themselves and to some extent I don't like people who take life too seriously. I think calculus is the worst subject invented on the face of this earth! The biggest compliment you can give me (aside from you're the most beautiful, the most charming, the smartest, the luckiest, hehe) would be that I'm funny! (hmm, I think I just demonstrated that with the beautiful, charming lines hahaha). I don't have a thousand million friends but I do have a few that I know I can count on. My dream would be to travel at least once to the seven continents of the earth (5 down and 2 to go.. South America and Antarctica). Of course, I would love to have a baby soon, or maybe twins or triplets but I draw the line at quadruplets unless they're from different mothers hahahaha!!!! That's all i can think of about me now! Nothing philosophical, guess I'm not that deep hahahaha!