Holiday Pay and Travel Expenses

She tried to scam me!

A long while back in the spring, our housekeeper asked about her yearly holiday. I have no problems with giving a two week holiday, everyone deserves one. The problem I have is how she went about it.
Back then we'd discussed when would be a good time for it and we agreed that sometime in September would be good. At the time she told me it was because of her daughter's Coming Out party (yes, they still do that here). Fast forward to August and she asks for the last week of September and the first week of October, the "time of her province's fiesta". Again, that's fine. My schedule is filling up slowly but I've run a house before on my own, this is nothing new. Granted I've gotten lazy the past 18 months but I knew I'd cope just fine. Though now I knew that Laura's baby shower was going to be held smack in the middle of the housekeeper's vacation so that's quite a bit of work I hadn't anticipated. Again, no big deal. In the real world, it would be all my work anyhow prepping the house.
Fast forward again to last Wednesday. As I swing by the house to pick up something, she mentions that her last employers gave her a travel allowance during her holiday. She asked if I would do the same.
Huh?
Being a caught a little off guard, I told her that wasn't something I'd heard of before and that it was a little late to be asking seeing as she was off at the end of the week. I asked her how much the trip was. She didn't know! The only thing she said was that the rates were higher than last year. Not that she said what -those- rates were either. And then she changed her story. It was no longer fiesta time, it was the anniversary of her mother's death and she wanted to go back to her province for it.
Now, she had stated last year that once her mother died she had no more family in Leyte. Everyone else was in Manila. So in essence she was asking to go back to go to the cemetery? OK, I could see that, and yet if -this- story was true then she knew when her mother's death anniversary was and she should have prepared for it, right? Or am I just heartless?
Skip to Friday and she mentions that she's not going to Leyte because she can't afford it and if I need help for the baby shower then she can come. Oh, and that she'll just have to send up prayers for her mother and hope it's enough.
Can we say a poor attempt at a guilt trip? Ugh.

Is that a blowtorch?

Today I had a doctor's appointment at the clinic with Nurse Judy.

Last time she removed several moles from the right side of my back by using anaesthetic and then slicing them off, followed by a couple stitches in each. I went home wrapped up enough to feel like a mummy and the anaesthetic did weird things to me. I'm discovering I'm a little sensitive to drugs in any form.
Today she took off a bunch of oversized skin tags. I've never had skin tags removed so I wasn't quite prepared for it. Just as she was getting ready with the first one my phone rang and being the cell phone slave I am, I answered. Silly me figured she's hold off, but no. I was talking and she dove right in, grabbing tag after tag and snipping them off with scissors. Yowch. Why didn't I think to take tylenol beforehand? So as I made little gasps into the phone with each one and after hanging up she said "Well, I figurd you'd be distracted." I wish. I now had little bleeding wounds and the next step is cauterization. If you haven't had anything cauterized externally without anaesthetic before, it's not quite what you'd expect. Ian suggested it was very hot and felt like fire.
It's not. What it does feel like is quick repeated bursts of thousands of tiny needles simultaneously jabbing into an open wound. Of course a couple decided not to cooperate and kept bleeding anyway requiring more bursts of pain. I told the nurse the only saving grace was that the instant the cauterizer stopped, so did the pain. I had to look up and see what the machine looked like that caused that amount of pain and questioned whether it was just a miniature blowtorch. The nurses got a big kick out ouf of that. But wow. No wonder it took me so many months to go back and get this part done. It'll probably be a couple more months before I get the last portion completed.
At least I'm not loopy while recovering this time like I was last time. It's what I have to look forward to though.

Oh right, the birthday party.

So after the swim meet yesterday, we drove for an hour and a half back by home in the opposite direction, to Malikina.

There we went to a birthday party for a One Year Old.
Now, we had already discussed that we weren't going to go to any more of these parties. We've seen how they're run, they aren't generally that much fun because we don't know anyone but the hosts and really, it's usually far to go for Filipino food and entertainment. But we went to this one.
In Virginia, my parents manage/run/lead the choir and music program at St. Michael's Church in Annandale. A while back, a couple of the choir members started dating and eventually got married. He's American, she's Filipino. We went to their wedding. Then they had a little girl and we went to her baptism and her first birthday party. Another little girl came along and she just turned one. Her mother wanted Isabel to have a party with her Filipino side, so to Manila the family came, and last night was the party. Seeing as are here, we were invited.
There was a Faery theme with loads of entertainment and food and the entire evening was in Tagalog. Our family stuck out just a bit, but at least the kids made their mark. Katherine sang Happy Birthday while the clown held the microphone. Nicholas sang the ABC song into the same mic. An incredible feat, if I do say so. My usually shy boy sang the entire thing and perfectly clear. Rebecca sang Happy Birthday in Tagalog, and there was an audible gasp from the rest of the guests. I guess last year's ISM Filipiniana Week was all worthwhile! She received a hearty round of applause.
Rows of little plastic chairs had been set up so most of the time the kids were sitting watching the clown, a puppet show, and listening to fairy tales, all in Tagalog. It didn't bother them much. Ian and I kept our good humor as best we could as we'd all had a long day and the party ran four hours. Isabel slept for a good chunk of it and missed the dinner of lechon, baked macaroni and barbeque (meat on a stick). Oh wait, that wasn't dinner, it was merienda because it was only 5 p.m. though we had no intention of eating yet another meal later. Isabel also missed her cake. The kids were too tired to eat any cake so they collected their goodie bags and gathered some balloons and we said our goodbyes with the other guests who were streaming out at the end.
Thankfully the ride home was about 25 minutes and everyone was ready for sleep (except Jonathon who had taken a long nap in the car earlier).

Katherine is ill.

After her swim meet and the birthday party yesterday, Katherine came down with a 101 fever last night. Today it's up to 103. I don't know if she'll be off to school tomorrow, but I already gave her a break from her swim lesson today and her swim practice after school tomorrow. If she wakes up without a fever I think she'll be good to go, but we'll see.

Quick post because I'm too tired to write more

Katherine had her first ISM Sailfish swim meet (held at Brent, along with the Brent, British, Manila Japanese and European International teams) this morning and did her very best.

She had four events, 25m in each stroke. For a kid who wasn't swimming any stroke 3 months ago, she did amazing. The biggest surprise for me was her butterfly and how well she's progressed since even a few weeks ago when she hit the flags and basically stopped moving. Oh her arms were going but her forward motion stopped, she was too tired. Not today, today she did great.
I only know her ranking for the first two events so far, the 25m Free (32/41) and the 25m Back (27/31). She had a goal for each race... overall it was "don't get disqualified". And she didn't! For breast stroke it was to touch the wall with both hands... and she did. For butterfly it was to finish... and she did. For backstroke it was to not be last... and she wasn't.
We were very proud of her effort, sending her loads of encouragements as she worked herself into a nervous tizzy before the first event. But 5 hours later she was a successful swim meet survivor. Not the best, but far from last place as well.

The 300th entry.

This is our 300th entry since starting this blog. Most of the entries by yours truly, though the funny ones are almost always guaranteed to be Ian's doing. Since this is me, I'll just give you a run down of what's coming up with us, in case you were wondering.

25 September: Katherine's first swim meet with the ISM sailfish. We get up well before 6 in order for her to catch the team bus at 6:30. We'll follow in our car since the meet is supposed to last until 2 or 3 in the afternoon but if she's done with her races we can leave early, because...
Tomorrow afternoon we have a birthday party to go to in the opposite direction of the swim meet. It's for a 1yo, which at this point I would skip, only the parents are friends of ours from Virginia. They attend my parents' church and her family is here in Manila. They're coming here to have the party and we're invited, so it's not something we can miss.
26 September: Church, swim lesson, letter writing/e-mail/package prep.
The rest is a quick overview -
All Next Week: Preparing for Laura's baby shower. She's due sometime near the end of November and is having the baby here. I get to see and hopefully hold a newborn again! I'm so excited.
27 September: Scheduled to have the rest of mylarge moles removed. Yay. Yuck. Mail everything I prepped Sunday.
28 September: Take Christine to pick up the pictures/paintings I dropped off for framing last week. It was fun deciding how to frame everything, when I got home I was looking around to see what else I could bring in. Definitely affordable.
29 September: Order the cake and balloons for the party. Pick up last minute non-food items.
30 September: Do the rest of the food shopping and prep foods that can be refrigerated overnight. Hope the fridge is large enough, we're expecting anywhere from 25-40 people.
1 October: Pick up cake, etc. Clean house, finish prep. The shower is at 6 p.m.
2 October: Shopper's Day! Shopping shopping shopping. Thank goodness Thursday is payday because I want to buy some quilts. And other stuff.
3 October: Church, swim lesson, letters etc.
7 October: Ryan's birthday dinner at their house. Hmm, need childcare, it's for the adults.
9 October: Palawan for the long weekend!!
Jovy is on vacation for the next two weeks but will come in this Friday to help with the baby shower. We're still going to be using a lot of disposable stuff. It's not going to be a game centered party, but a couples get-together to share the joy of expentant parents. I'm looking forward to it. I'm just such a lousy guesser of how much food is enough (I'm always underestimating for my own family) that I hope I go overboard instead. Wish me luck. Any suggestions on what we should have/do?

Eerie

A long while ago we had some photos developed off a CD and while we were there the counter girls had all the kids get in front of the screen and took their picture. Of course some of the counter girls got in there too.

It's odd enough that the kids are fawned over, but that was a little more weird.
Fast forward to yesterday and I had photos to pick up again. They recognized the boys and asked where their ates (big sisters) were. Here comes the eerie part. One of them opens up her own wallet and pulls out the printed image taken months earlier.
Our kids are in someone else's wallet. I guess it's no weirder than the folks in Hong Kong who would sidle up to Jonathon while he was eating an ice cream on a bench and have a friend take a picture. But maybe it is weirder because we actually see these ladies in the kodak shop over and over again.
Even the boys seemed embarrassed.