mrs. patlv23-to-be no more

yes! it's official. i am now, mrs. patlv23. on march 18th, 2006 my biggest dream became a reality in a really small but utterly beautiful bride, oh no, i mean wedding ceremony. i married the love of my life and what a really great day it was. we exchanged our vows at the presentation of the child jesus parish. true to form, i was late for my own wedding. but the priest forgave me on the merits of face value. muahahhahahahahhaha!!!

i enjoyed every minute of our wedding. and of course the honeymoon afterward, but that's a different story altogether. *wink, wink!* i loved my dress, which was lovingly made for me by my grandmother's sister. you wouldn't believe that it only took her uhhm, maybe 2-3 days to finish the whole thing. i loved my make up, eventhough i had a derma disaster on my face, i must say, i looked quite the bride. the wedding ceremony was short and sweet, my maid-of-honor and his bestman did all of the things that needed to be done. my little sister who also just got married herself was invaluable. and we had a bonus, it was the first wedding ever for the priest who officiated for us. now, if that does not make for a memorable wedding, then i don't know what does.

so anyways, there was a reception. and the food was great(although i did'nt really eat all that well). i'm so thankful for my now mother-in-law and her mom for arranging that for us. they also made our wedding cake for us. we did not have a program during the reception anymore because we didn't really have time to prepare one, and we just weren't too comfortable with it yet.

and afterward, we got all of our wedding pictures. sooo glad we decided to get a photographer for it. i loooove looking at our wedding pictures. it brings me back to that day and all the happiness.

but lastly, i love my husband. the man God has chosen for me to spend the rest of my life with. i love this man with all of my heart, mind and body. he is just the most perfect husband a woman (oh, yes! i am all woman baby!) could ever hope for. he's just made my life so much more beautiful just by being in it. i can never ask for anything more than this man right here. so how does it feel to be mrs. patlv23 finally? just heavenly. it's like i found my own personal angel and he's here for keeps. i love my HUSBAND!!!

this is it!!!

finally, i am going to be mrs. patlv23 for real! after much consideration and deliberation (of ovulation cycles, monthsary dates, job opportunities-in-waiting, paydays and what have you), my best boyfriend in the world and i decided that i will be going home to the philippines on february 26th and we're going to get married within the first week. i used to think that the date of when we're going to say i do should be on one of the significant dates in our relationship like the day we first met (and he fell in love with me, aminin honey!), or maybe the day we became boyfriend and girlfriend or one of its monthsaries, or maybe the day we got engaged. but i have come to the realization that, the day we pledge our love for each other forever is a special day in itself and need not be dependent on some other significant day or the other. i love him!!! i'm going to be his wife soon, very soon!!!

the road to the decision was not easy, we originally planned for him to come here so we'd get married here. but that was just too much hassle with getting the visa and us not having a clue of what legal and other factors it entailed. so recently, he was convinced that the more (very much more) convenient option for us was for me to go home and we'll get married there. and i knew this was true forever, but i just had too many hang-ups in my world.

i am still waiting and hoping for a new job opportunity to come my way and i'm afraid that one of those would come along while i'm in the phil and so i won't be here to grab it. i'm afraid of going home, i feel like i've nothing to show (you know, materially) for the time that i've been away. and though my outlook about that has improved greatly, i must admit that there's still a part of me that is bothered by the thought. and i wanted to be able to concentrate on my honey and only him, and it tired me to think of all the friends i'll need to meet if i come home. not to mention my family. so i, who was very upset a few months ago because nothing was happening of our plans, couldn't really decide to go home to marry the man of my life. all this while, the love of my life was patient, supportive and was willing to accept whatever my decision would be.

stupid huh? i know!!! i agonized over it for a few days, good thing it didn't take long for me to realize that PATRICK IS MOST IMPORTANT IN MY LIFE. that i was very foolish to even let any of my hang-ups get in the way. there is no contest, i love him and marrying him as soon as possible is the best decision i can ever really make for myself. there will be other job opportunities, i will eventually make something out of myself out here, my husband (practice) will be there by my side to celebrate my friends and family, but there is only one patrick villacorta, boyfriend extraordinaire in my life and by his side as soon as i can is the only place that i really want to be in the world. i love you patrick edward lapus villacorta!!! and there's no greater gift on this earth than to become your wife.

my greatest miracle

God is truly an awesome God! He just gave me another miracle, and it would be too selfish to keep it to myself...

unknown to everyone except my fiance/bestfriend/confidant/pillar of strength/God's gift/hunkydoodles, i have been going through what seems to me like depression. i have had a hard life, but i have been blessed, so i never known anything quite like this. i came here with very high hopes and expectations. right now, what I have falls way short of all of them. I work at a call centre, which is not all that bad. It's just that being in IT fulfills me, knowing that i can do a job as well as anyone else maybe even better and that you could be doing so much more than what you actually are doing really makes me just want to go ahead and kick my head in. being in a different environment, and not having the comfort of having my loved ones near added to this, made me really unhappy and made me second-guess my decision to come here.


so anyways, over the past few months, i have an ongoing application with a small IT firm based in the city that seemed really promising. I made it up to the final interview and afterward they sent me to a client (a major telecomm company in the province) for a possible placement which got me really excited. the interview with the client didn't go too well by my standards, and right afterward, my hopes started to plummet. it has been two weeks since, and i actually assumed that the application's done for after a week of not hearing from them (how very optimistic of me!).


earlier today, i decided on just going ahead and working my ass off at the call centre. the chance is available, at the moment, we had unlimited overtime. i can work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week if i wanted. that way, i'll have more money and less time to think about what a failure i was. and that was what i honestly have been thinking of myself for a time, a stinking failure.


over the weekend, my friend allen, volunteered to lend me his favorite book: the greates miracle in the world by og mandino. i wasn't really interested, i have a prejudice against the self-help-slash-inspirational genre. it's just not my cup of tea. (no offense to all of my friends who do like them, love ko kayong lahat! :) ) i had a choice between that and my java book and obviously, i leaned towards my java book. but God had other plans, i picked the greatest... up instead and then He SPOKE to ME. it's a fairly short book, but i took half a day to finish it. there were just times when i had to put the book down. i was too overwhelmed at how accurately God could address what was going on inside of me, or i was crying (which is not too unusual for me though).


after i put the book down, i prayed and cried. during that time, i knew God was holding me in His arms. comforting me. i thanked Him for answering my prayers, for His oh so perfect timing, for just showing me once again How much he loved me, for not even letting me imprison myself for a little while. i asked for forgiveness for even thinking about giving up, for demeaning myself, His wonderful miracle, to a stinking failure, for having so little faith when i can't think of a time in my life when He has failed me.


through a book, God renewed my hope. He's never done that with me before, He usually works through you, my dearest friends and family. i wish i was ending this on the note that i did get the job and that i was obssessing over nothing. but i think the realization that this is not the ending of my story, and knowing that God has so much more in store for me is way better than what i wish for.


to allen, thank you for being sensitive to God and lending me the book. i'm not quite sure what you'd think of me over this, but it would not be fair to you or God to not let you know. :)

my bf is the best!!!

my family has a one-day millionaire thing going on. my dad got some commission off a house he sold a couple of months ago and boy, are they living the life! they got themselves a new refrigerator, a big one that they've been dreaming of. they even got themselves a new computer table. and the computer is kinda new too. they got a load of thingamajigs to come with it i lost count. and it's great, i'm not able to give them the "life" just yet so it's really nice when they get to enjoy things like this once in a while.

so anyway. i was chatting online with my brother dearest about the "life" when out of nowhere, he goes: "your bf is the best". and of course i was surprised to hear it from him. not that my bf is not the best, he truly is! there's no doubt to it. but i guess i never really expected it to come from him. so naturally, i basked in it. i asked him why, eventhough i already knew in so many ways. and he said that he would never be able to do for his girlfriend's family what patrick does for them. and it's true, patrick is one in a million. and i am the luckiest girl in the world to have found him. i love my family with everything that i am and it's very important to me that my husband-to-be will be able to genuinely love my family and vice-versa. when patrick and i got together, i had no way of knowing if he would be able to do that. but i had a feeling in my heart he would. and as always, i was right and so much more. :P

honestly, i am at the time in my life when i love patrick more than anyone, and i love that he loves the rest of the people closest to my heart too (and that makes me love him even more!). what can i say, my bf is the best!!!

what makes a life special?

i shared a cab ride with my friend tonight. on the way home, the topic of the moment was living a life that was special. back when she was in high school, one of her teachers said that the worst thing that you could ever have in the world is an average life. and so she decided that she will go and live in australia for a year so that her life won't be so average. i guess she wants to be able to see another country and culture.

and this got me thinking, what does it take to make life special? and moreso, is my life special? yikes! do i really want to go there? but i've no choice. i started thinking, and it just won't stop. and here's what i think:

what makes for a special life? well, there's fame and fortune and power. like maybe when you become the president of say, the US or of any other countr, period. your life can't help but be special, try as you might to keep it ordinary. you can be the pope, bill gates, prince william, paris hilton, jennifer aniston or some other. but i wonder, do they think their lives are special? i guess so. teeheeheehee.

and then i think to myself, that can't be all there is to it! if it is, then my life's a total waste of time. i need to find something to turn this around in my favor. so i've decided that what makes your life special is totally up to you. you don't have to be known throughout the whole world, to be in the history books or something to have a special life. i do believe that i'm leading a special life. and if you're patient, i'll explain to you why.

on the surface, my life is as average as it gets. i go to work, get paid, spend my money. actually, i once told my to-be-hubby that the highest point of my life comes every two weeks: when i get my paycheck. fun huh? i have no real hobbies, i'd much rather stay home and sleep/mope. but if you scratch a little further. yeeesss, you really need to make an effort here. :P i'm not your average girl at all.

i am, in an amazing relationship with the most amazing man in the whole world (this is my blog, if you think otherwise, go get your own blog!). my loveydovey and i have been miles and miles apart for a few months now and we're still as much in love with each other like day one. judging from the pain in my gut from missing him, i'm so much more in love with him now than when we saw each other everyday. and i know in my heart that this is the kind of love that one can find only once in a lifetime, for some maybe not even once. and i don't know how to explain how special this love that we have for each other is, so i'm just going to go ahead use the cliché: it just is.

i have a very special family who supports me. my family isn't perfect, we have more than our share of quirks and we probably (or maybe surely) won't get an award for family of the year. but we love each other fiercely and i miss my family soooo much. my family and i have been through life together, and we stayed together through all of its ups and downs. there have been times and there still are times when it feels like it's mostly downs, but i know in the end we'll rise above it all. victorious despite everything else. hell, someone once told my parents that they'll never be able to put their kids through school but through sheer determination, there's two out of five so far. soon to be three out of five. :)

and lastly, but not at all the least. i know that God loves me. and nothing could be more special than that. 'nuff said. :)

BNZ files

BNZ stands for Biktima Ng Zombie translated it means zombie victim. this was a "tag" coined by a friend of mine for a group of us girls who were quite forgetful and disorganized. when i came to canada, i hoped that i would be leaving this tag behind me as well. but i guess there's really no escaping destiny, i may have been destined to be BNZ for life.

i work in a call centre here, i work the evening shift. i usually work either 5-130 or 6-230. this week, i work from 6-230, last week, i started at 5. last night, i was feeling a bit under the weather. i had a cold which was probably a delayed reaction from last week's snowstorm (it snowed tons!). i was running a fever too, so i was a bit anxious for my shift to end so i could go home.

so anyways. at 1:23AM, i got a call. thinking that this was my last one for the day, i said a silent prayer that it won't take too long so i don't have to work overtime. thank heavens (or not) the call lasted for a just a few minutes and i got to logout by 1:30. honestly thinking it was already 2:30.

i get a free cab ride home if i work after 12midnight. we send a request for in for a cab slip via one of the tools we have at work. i usually send a request in right at the start of my shift, but that night i forgot and i had to log back into a workstation to send one in. had i sent one in earlier, the guy who made them out would have noticed that i was leaving early. the nice man that he was, he made it out while i sent my request in and didn't really check the time on it anymore. and while i was waiting there, he asked one of the people waiting with me what theme he got off work. and he replied 1:30. i thought to myself, man! what a really long call he's had. i'm so glad i didn't get that one.

i got home, prepared myself a snack. i distinctly remember checking the time on the stove top and read 2:06 or something but thought nothing of it. i started the pc up, got online like i usually do when i get home. and then i noticed that the time on my pc read 2:11. i thought to myself, that's odd. it's late by an hour, and then adjusted it.i talked to my GG/boyfriend/fiance/love of my life/hunkydoodles for a bit and went to bed like normal.

i checked my mails this afternoon and discovered that the pc time was ahead by an hour. and then it hit me. i'm so going to be in trouble. :P

snow!!!

i saw my first major snowstorm a few days ago. and boy, was it major! it was the first one winnipeg had this year, and it almost hit record accumulation levels. it was just starting to fall when i left for work and by the time i got home, it was almost a foot high. the next day, more of it fell. in some places, it got to up to a foot and a half high!

i like looking out the window watching it fall. it's so white and the kind that fell was very fine, almost like really fine white sand. it's a lot of fun to be sinking into the snow while walking (although i could imagine it going from fun to wretched after a few blocks...). it just fascinates me to no end.

i haven't played in it though. i'm not that white just yet. or maybe because i have nobody to play in it with. i miss my boyfriend!