Killer Monay

I have missed my monthly period... twice.

I bought a pregnancy test stick last week. Negative.

I bought another one last Wednesday and you can tell by simply looking at the following picture

it is definitely a negative.

Still something tells me that there is something wrong "here". So I decided to visit the nearest laboratory.

I wore the oversized jacket that I got from Ateneo and pants that I can easily slip out of. It was a gloomy Friday - my kinda day. It has two of my favorite words: "gloomy" - my favorite type of weather and "Friday" - the day I am reborn weekly. I took a tricycle and plugged my ears with music. When the tricycle stopped in front of the lab, I felt nervous and at the same time fuzzy. I paid my bill and made myself comfy in the monoblock chair closest to the small TV. They were watching Bleach that time. I shut Adele and tried to watch but my mind kept wandering. Old ultrasound results. Maternity dresses. Getting doubly fat. Ugh.

"Ma...Mendoza?" the lab technician called cutting me off from my musings. "Mario Mendoza?" the lab tech repeated. "The frag...?" I thought to myself. "What are the odds?"

I went back to daydreaming but tried not to be too absorbed and then they called my name. I waited for a few minutes then a female lab tech asked me to get in. When the procedure began I was kinda jumpy. Not a good thing when you have something between your legs. "That's your uterus. It's clear." Yep! The PTs were accurate. I am not pregnant. "Okay, so negative talaga. ( it really is negative)". "Hold on. We haven't seen the rest yet." He said. Great! I'm not preggers!

I was watching the monitor until the sonographer froze the screen and talked to me again. "See those grape-like clusters? Your right ovary is polycystic." Cysts...

Ultrasound of my Polycystic Right Ovary

*********************************************************************************
Right ovary measures 3.25 x 12.3 x 1.54 cm with multiple cystic lesion noted which are arranged in the periphery, the widest diameter measures about .54 cm.

Diagnosis: 
NORMAL SIZE ANTEVERTED UTERUS WITH SLIGHTLY THICKENED ENDOMETRIUM .
POLYCYSTIC RIGHT OVARY.
NORMAL LEFT OVARY AND CERVIX.
*********************************************************************************

I couldn't see my face but if I could, I think a little bit of color must have escaped it. He didn't sound serious so I assumed it wasn't all that bad. I walked to the terminal and I can feel my weakening knees.

PCOS or Polycystic Ovary Syndrome isn't curable according to one website but a change in lifestyle might get things back where they should be. Dang...

I went to that lab to see if there's a spark of life in my womb only to find a speck of death in my ovaries. I really hope that the cysts were simply caused by my obesity and nothing more. Maybe I'm overreacting to my situation but still... It makes me worry for my husband and my son. And now you know that the title I chose is ironic.

It's been quite a while since I last posted here. So, I'll try my best to post something worth the waste of time.

It's November! English Month! We had lot's of fun-filled activities and opportunities to rediscover old habits.

It was also this November when I got a bit insulted by a co-teacher from a different department by telling my advisory class these words: "Pipiliin n'yo ang papaburituhin nyong teacher ah! Kung siya marunong mag-English, marunong din ako mag-English. Eh siya? Marunong ba siyang mag-drawing?" (Choose your favorite teacher well. If she knows how to speak in English, I know how to speak in English, too. But does she know how to draw?"

I may not be as good as he is but I did enjoy drawing. Here are some of the drawings I kept for more than a decade now.

Not so bad, right? Since then I've been thinking of ways to see if I still have that artistry. And then came... the COSPLAY! I'll tell you a little story on  something I did about a couple of years ago that I'm still proud of today. I introduced cosplaying in our school. They've been doing the "Parade of Characters" long before I arrived but it is just recently that they adopted the now more appropriate term "cosplay". Every year since then, we let the students have a cosplay. We teachers join them, too.

So back to showing the artistry. I grabbed the opportunity to rediscover my hidden talents (chos!) I decided to cosplay a popular DotA (Defense of the Ancients) Hero--- TRAXEX, the Drow Ranger!

Drow Ranger Fanart (Based on the first DotA)

Okay, let me make this clear. I am a 70+ -kilogram-woman and there is absolutely no way I will wear something that revealing for students to laugh at. So I chose the DotA 2 version of Traxex.

Drow Ranger (DotA 2)

It is less revealing and I can handle that arrow design better.

Miss Valerio, Miss Tordera, her mom and I visited Dubai(soria) * as Sheril always says instead of Divisoria *. We bought things that we needed for our costumes and let the creative juices flow.

I made wristbands, armbands, shoulder plates and the bow and arrow.

The Bow and the Frost Arrow

Last November 23, we had the Grade 7 Cosplay Finals and this is how I looked.

Me, Bulatski (Jasmine) , Ms. Valerio (Crystal Maiden) and Mrs. Nariz (Lady Chang)

It wasn't so good. We were all sweaty from the afternoon heat and my body paint just can't stay the way it should. By the end of the day, I looked as though somebody threw blueberry icings on my face.

See the smudge?

So, I promised myself that I'll have a better cosplay on the Grand Finals. And here are the pictures:

Ooopsie! The big unpainted arm is showing!

One of My Favorite Cosplayers of the Year---The Madhatter

Fourth Year Students asking for a picture with me

Wacky Shots with Fellow Cosplaying Teachers

Here are some that I edited to give it a more artistic feel.

Without the wig:

My Personal Favorite

And Bulatski's stolen shots while I'm shedding my alter-ego:

2008 and 2010 - a matter of two years

A drawing I made more than a decade ago.

The backside of the drawing containing the date I drew it and the names of my friends. From top to bottom, left to right: Marichu Montarial, Marilou Lopez, Isabel Catubig, Rachel Ablan, Mailyn Mabbayad, Vincent and Alfred (imaginary friends), Melanie Santos, Eugene (imaginary friend), Cristy Mante, ME, Dennis (imaginary friend), Janet Rellosa, Mary Jane, Shirley Rotoni and Rosemary Nabua. Then, there's the nearest yet farthest - Jerrylou Cernechez. I could walk to her place right now but I don't want to go there just to know that she hasn't come home from work.  I miss the way she giggles whenever she sees "Oni", her ten-year secret crush. She helped me appreciate the simplest joys of life. We would eat at Jollibee when something special came up. We would buy black shirts from tiangge despite her mother's criticism of our fashion statement. We never hated carbonated drinks. We even had a recurring hypothetical situation about us deciding whether to save the guy we  most admire or the last bottle of Coke in the world.    I miss her resounding laughter that seems to fill the room with her happy, contagious thoughts. I miss sleeping over their house, sitting on their roof top and not caring about anything in the world. We even let the mosquitoes bite us.. We simply talk about our past and wonder what we would be ten years from that time. I was Ryouko... She was Sailor Moon... She's the best of the best.  I also miss my group back in the last two years of college. Some call our group "Powerhouse Cast", and "Tropang Nomu" but we never really came up with an official name for our group. It was actually a coalition of separate groups. There were Alpha Females: Ate Rinette and Ate Jen, Alpha Male: Kuya Chad (he will kill me for calling him 'kuya'); the "Resident Pregnant Drunkard", "Buto", Verger, Bessie Basu(rah), the Gigantic Gay Ryan, the Lesbian-Struggling-To-Look-Like-A-Real-Girl Marilou Lopez, and some whose face I will never forget but whose name escaped my coffee-infused brain.  That group brought me to the "dark side". I'm happy for it. At least I am no longer so naive and painfully destitute of experience. Despite all the bad influences I got from them, the differences in their views gave me inspiration, new insight and a better point-of-view. They helped crack my 19-year-old safety shell. And since the day I went out of my comfort zone, I bloomed and flourished... In this tapestry of personalities, I was well-woven with two of the most interesting strands: Janice Lubay and Napoleon Nayra. Janice was red, vibrant, warm and perky. She's the life of our trio. She's my exact opposite. Surprisingly, I can stand being alone with her more than Nayra. Whenever, I was alone with him, I couldn't remember a time when we didn't have an awkward silence looming above us. Nayra, "the green one", (we prefer to call him by his surname as it sounds more feminine than Napoleon) was the neutral force of our triad. He was neither too dispirited nor too nice. Among us three, he was the most talented. He might not have known it but I did look up to him for intellectual sustenance.  This is Nayra's concept of how I would have been if I were an anime (Moiras). These are some of the people that I am afraid I have lost on the way to the street called Adulthood. But, someday, I'm sure there's a crossroad somewhere where our paths will meet.

Dear Youko,

I was barely done saying good bye to III-Chromium when two smiling faces gave me my daily warning signal to leave Room 412 and head on to Room 418.

Feeling happy and enthusiastic to teach and remembering they still don't know the story behind the diary, I went to my last class today. I met other students from that class on the way. I even mocked the way their section name has been spelled in their attendance sheet folder. F-L-O-U-R-I-N-E... Makes them sound like a baking ingredient.

I was welcomed by their greeting which was well-practiced and was learned the hard way. I checked their attendance, gave them their daily doze of preaching and voila! We were off to discuss on the topic which, I can safely say, took the heart and the interest of III-Beryllium, III-Barium and III-Chromium. I was so excited to see the same looks on the faces, same gasps, same disgust, same awww's and aaahhh's in the students of Fluorine. But just as the rainy month of August is popular for its magnificent meteor showers, my class made a little nimbus cloud and covered the skies of knowledge. The boys were shrieking and screaming like little girls being pinched on their hineys. I caught their attention and gave a warning. I went on with the lesson but they still shrieked. I gave my second warning. I think I made a third warning, too. I just can't remember well. But some students just seem to enjoy acting stupid... They shrieked again.

That was it! I reached my boiling point! I was eyeing on the misbehaving students and my vision was starting to blur. My head was nagging me with questions: "One and a half months without salary and yet we are expected to teach these multitude of students? Did I spend almost my whole day preparing for tomorrow's lesson just to be insulted? Must I use up the quality time I should spend with my own baby to care for someone else's teenager? Should I be blamed by a parent whose child cuts classes, drinks in his classmates' house, spends his parents' money on DOTA, and sleeps in the classroom? Is it worth it?"

I could feel the urge to break their noses but I resisted. I saw my green plastic chalk box and... THUD! It lay broken on the floor surrounded by the pandemonium of chalk, board eraser, keys, pens, and dust. There was silence in the classroom.

I went out of Room 418. A student ran after me asking me to return to their room but I didn't listen.

I sat staring at the piles of paper to be checked and recorded and the number 18 and 19 on the calendar. My broken chalk box was asking me for consolation. "Better a broken chalk box than a student"s broken face... It's easier to replace a box but a student's face can't be bought..." I told myself while inspecting the damaged hinge of the box.

My head was throbbing and my heart started skipping beats again. I seriously think that I'll meet my death inside the school.

Theirs truly,