fish

my FIL went fishing yesterday morning at Hermosa Beach and brought home almost half a pail of mackerels. and since no one knows how to clean and gut a fish, i had no choice but to do it.

then after cleaning them we couldn't decide how to cook it. choices were pinangat, paksiw, sarciado or escabeche. since i'm the one cooking i wanted the simplest dish possible - with less ingredients needed and less cooking time. i chose sarciado since i have all the ingredients needed.

but as i was deep frying them, i told my FIL that i'll cook them that way and i'll make ensalada as sawsawan and grill some eggplants.

that was our dinner last night and sad to say - the deep fried mackerels were gone in seconds.

here's a photo of Igi with some of the mackerels.

twice a week

that's the number of days i go to work and the owner agreed to it. until they have set up the office then i come to work Mondays and Wednesdays from 8am to 2pm. our initial agreement was to come everyday from 9am to 2pm but with their current set up, i am losing the drive to go to work. so i gathered my guts and told him what i think would work best for the company. i am not the type who would take advantage of the idle time and still get paid. i'd rather stay home and take care of my son than sit and do nothing while the rest of my co-workers tend to their FB profile and chat with their friends while there are no calls to answer.

surprisingly, he appreciated my being honest with him and agreed to my suggestion. so for now, i work 2x a week, get paid well and still get to enjoy the rest of the week.

GOD is good...

a productive weekend

this weekend was a very busy one. we cleaned and organized part of the house and i'm done decluttering the master's bedroom. well not totally but at least it now resembles a master bedroom. took out all the curtains, vacuumed the blinds and threw stuff that are not needed anymore.

then we started pulling out some of our things from the storage since the back house has now been emptied. we still can't proceed with our original plan to transform it into a guest house (due to budget issues) so we just stuffed most of our things there. it now saves us $100+ a month.

we still have some cleaning to do and hopefully by the end of the week, most of the trash are gone.

it's nice to have a house - the freedom of doing whatever you like, cooking danggit without worrying neighbors knocking at your door complaining about the stinky smell or singing your heart out with your magic mic till early morning. it's a step away from living the american dream. i just hate the part of maintaining it. it's tiring!

well, it's a start of a new week so i just hope this one turns out well.

back to being a working mom

i started work this Monday. it's only part time till i find a good sitter. the job is less toxic compared to my last job but it just requires us to be on the phone most of the time. that's fine since i love talking to customers.

the only thing i'm not liking so far is the fact that i work with Israelis. I have nothing against them but i just don't like it when they start talking in their language. it doesn't help when they're all laughing while i'm clueless of what they're talking about. i called up my friend who has vast experience working with Israelis and she assured me that it's ok and not to mind them. as long as i'm doing my job then i have nothing to worry about.

oh well, i hope she's right and that i learn to adjust to this new environment soon.

overall, it's still good and pays me well. i can't complain more.

another trip to the ER

we just got home from Kaiser's ER. we decided to bring igi since he's been having a hard time breathing accompanied by a wheezing sound. after the initial check ups by the ER doctors - he was just given 2 rounds of albuterol and a shot of steroids. the session was too long that he eventually fell asleep.

we are so proud of him because he was such a good boy. he didn't throw any tantrums and was courteously answering the doctors with yes, no, ok and be careful. and at the same time, i was cheering him on for being so behaved and to do what the doctors asks him to do so he could get better and we could go to our train ride later in the day.

after 3 hours, we were discharged and he's now soundly asleep...

thank GOD...praise GOD...

shameless plugging

for all the mommies out there...i just want to share with you the vitamins that my son has been taking for more than a year now. it's called Usanimals by Usana Health Sciences. and this vitamins has been rated #2 by Lyle MacWilliam, the person responsible for coming up with the Comparative Guide to Children's Nutritional. To learn more about the comparative guide, please click here.



going back, i know most of us are concerned on what kind of vitamins to give our children. i've tried so many vitamins (kirkland's chewable vitamins, kinderlove, enervon-c, ceelin) and still, i was not satisfied with the results. igi would still suffer from the common colds, would cough after running around for a few minutes and sometimes losses his appetite. my hunch is he might be suffering from primary complex which is very common to filipino children but his pedia would assure me that he is fine. i am still not convinced and most of the time bothered by the thought of my son having a weak immune system.

until his ate introduced us to this product. and he's been using this since then and we've noticed tremendous improvement on his health. he's not as sickly anymore, hardly coughs after running and horseplaying with his sisters and has a great appetite now.

so for you moms out there who wants to give your children the optimum care that you find in children's vitamins - Usanimals is the best choice.

this retails for $16.63 but we can get it for you for #12.50 (excluing s&h and tax).

let me know if you guys are interested...

when there's smoke, there's fire...

at 2am, a fire started at the Angeles National Forest and the firefighters are still trying to contain it. then at 10:30am another fire started somewhere in Porter Ranch, a high end residential and just few miles away from where we live.

firetruck sirens are what we have been hearing since then and it's really giving me a headache right now. of course it doesn't help that the Santa Ana wind is starting to make her presence felt all over the valley. with winds gusting up to 60 mph the firefighters are really working double time to contain the fire.

and not only that, the LAPD are doing their investigation and have said that the fire started suspiciously. i hope it's not done by another stupid soul who had nothing better to do than put other people lives in danger.

Lord, bless those firefigthers and give them the strength to finish their job...

now, time to look for my allergy pill =(

last night

i had 2 weird dreams - the first one about my laundry. you see, i did the laundry yesterday even if it's not my schedule day because we will be gone for the weekend. at least that's one chore done and have nothing major to worry about. then in my sleep, i dreamed seeing all our clothes messed up because i used the wrong bleach. duh?

then my second dream was about him...



boyfriend ko daw siya....wtf?!?!?!

off for the weekend...

we will be in Fullerton this weekend to attend the Super Saturday celebration of USANA. And since we have a friend who works for Marriott, he hooked us up at Fullerton Marriott for $60 a night...not bad eh?

anyways, i will bring my naghihingalong laptop so i could check my email and do some surfing. other than that i would definitely be snoozing off the moment i see the bed.

so we're now planning some family trips since we know we would be getting good deals in marriott, residence inn and ritz carlton.

have a good weekend...

life goes on

i can't believe that we're already in the "ber" months (duh! last month pa kaya) and we all know what that means - christmas is just around the corner. time to do our shopping list and set a budget. but before i worry about that, let me just share with you some things that's kept me busy for the past weeks.

we've been pre-occupied with our home-based business. we have been holding spa parties and business presentation every weekend to introduce the product and the business to our friends. so far we have been getting positive feedbacks and have started to build our preferred customers and our team by signing up new business associates. we now see that our hard work is slowly paying off. though we still get some rejections from people, we don't let this slow us down. the only thing that will make us a failure is if we quit. so if you have time please visit our website at www.healthy40s.usana.com and take a look at the products we carry. we guarantee you that we only sell the best and we have proof to support that.

next, i should have blogged about this a long time ago and i feel bad for not doing it earlier. this is a milestone for us as parents - we've toilet trained our son in 3 days. this was before he turned 3 y/o. i believe that children learn things visually so when he sees us using the bathroom, he would follow us and ask us what we were doing in the bathroom and we would explain to him that this is where we pee and do #2. and surprisingly, he just started using his potty without us pushing him to use it. no more diapers and wipes - inigo is no longer a baby!

and something interesting just happened few days ago - a mysterious caller called and texted D's number pretending to be his girlfriend. at first i was furious but later on calmed down and did my research with the help of some friends. and my hunch was proven right - the caller was a woman named "May Roan" who has been checking out my profile in multiply. i remember the same name asking D to be her friend in FB but D rejected it because he can't remember her name. then a friend of mine called the number and pretended to be a wrong number. the stupidest thing she did was to call the number back. my friend who has a caller ID was able to get the name where that number was registered to. it's registered to a "March Angela Roan" and from there, we were able to put the pieces together. whatever she's up to, we don't know and we don't care...i hope she knows who she's messing up with.

and on a lighter note - life is good. D and I are celebrating our 4th year next month and thinking of going out of town...probably LV.