In a few years, it will look like this.

In the years of being employed full time, this is the first time I filed for a vacation leave coinciding Valentine's Day. Besides going on a doctor's appointment and obtaining a CTC from the municipal hall, nothing is really special about this VL. And in the week anticipating my leave, I only prayed to God to make my Valentine's Day meaningful-- according to His plans. I did not give specifics as I really don't have anything planned for myself.

Yesterday, I received a copy of this book, Love Handles by Kerygma editor-in-chief Rissa Singson- Kawpeng. I have known her and even had the opportunity to meet her when I attended one of the seminars she and Catholic preacher Bo Sanchez organized two years ago. A week after the said seminar, I remember sending an email to Rissa about one of the things discussed in the said seminar. She replied back and even politely asked my permission if she can peruse my letter (and that my name will be changed for the sake of my privacy). Unfortunately, I forgot to respond to that email.

I don't know what hit me but when I got hold of this book, there was this little voice that suddenly reminded me of that email. And while I have yet to read this book (as I still have an unfinished business with David Levithan's How They Met and Other Stories), I had flipped into its pages and lo and behold, it confirmed my haunch.

The letter I wrote to Rissa two years ago was included in the book (and true to her words, she had used a pseudonym in place of my own name). It took time for things to sink in, but when I saw it there, I could not control it, I just let tears well up.

A Catholic priest once said that God knows how to create things that could surprise us, and so we need to be prepared. While I was not really expecting, waiting and decided to just be lighthearted today, on the other hand, God took my request seriously.

And a lot of you may be wondering how I knew the letter was mine. Well, I still have the email (and Rissa's response) preserved in my mailbox. :-)

But one of the reasons why we were here besides the food and celebrating was to spend some time for RnR. And what a good partner to laid back conversations is a cup of coffee. Yet, in the case of Ma'am Len, she preferred it to be hot chocolate.

This is me wearing the glasses on New Year's Eve :-)

Aside from New Year's Day, one of the things I look forward to at the start of the year is Papa and Mama's wedding anniversary. They got married two days after New Year's. But this year, I find it significant as they are have been together for 30 years.

In my job, I tend to juggle with different tasks every single day. And I deal with all of those side-by-side my own personal agendas outside work. And given these activities, a planner is a must especially that I tend to be forgetful at times when workload piles up.

I have been familiar with the planners offered by coffee shops for quite some time. Given that I have been a lady whose workplace is a city near these kinds of establishments, I have seen how people literally go too enticed (if not obsessed) to complete stickers in order to get a planner good to be used for a year. But despite of this planner phenomenon, I never dared to join the bandwagon and kept my loyalty with the generic planner in bookstores (well, save for that Paulo Coelho planner I bought last year).

When I got my first sticker for the Starbucks 2014 planner, I simply found it a common thing. I was not really planning to take it seriously because I knew, it's going to be a long shot at best to complete all those 18 stickers (and I'm not out of my mind to spend a couple of thousand bucks for coffee).  But as days went on, I just realized the sticker booklet that started with one sticker had 15 stickers in it.

Sue me now, but I won't deny that I was also secretly desiring a planner even just for once and the feeling aggravated as the deadline for this approached.

Funny but I cannot say my office mates' obsession for a Starbucks planner is a mere craze because at a certain point, the spirit of camaraderie suddenly becomes alive (without having to force someone to do it, ha?) in a crazy way possible; in 2012 I helped my office mate, Mommy P, get her planner by contributing 4 stickers to her booklet (which meant 4 cups of coffee on four different days). This year, the "contribution"system was at it again, from a supervisor donating his booklet (with 9 stickers in it) to office mates contributing a cup of coffee so that someone in need gets entitled to a sticker on his/her booklet.

In the end, I got my "secret desire". Thank you to Mommy P, who, volunteered to contribute two stickers so that I'll hop out of the coffee shop with this planner in my mom's favorite color -- YELLOW. And while some people might even cringe, if not raise eyebrows on what I've written and tell me it's downright frivolous, I'd like to look at the positive thing that it has caused especially to some of us -- that even with craziness for things like this, the spirit of TEAMWORK is alive and working.

Reading this still makes my eyes well up as I type this entry right now.

Took this photo using Instagram.