come on, let's die until we live — part #445979

I wish I wasn't so tired from last week, but I am. I'm fine, nevertheless. But I'm feeling more & more irritable lately. Could be PMS again, or the Mercury retrograde unleashing its wrath before it finally ends this weekend. Despite a wonderful breakfast & a nice cold bath with great-smelling stuff this morning, I cried myself to sleep again. (Well, long story. It wasn't just something I did out of the blue. It's just too heart-wrenching to talk about in detail at this time.) Not even making a quick trip to our usual fantastic weekend market yesterday to have lunch with my Breakfast Club helped. I really need a break, & I can't wait for the next weekend.

(Anyway, I had shepherd's pie there in lieu of my staple lasagna, Chinese shrimp dumplings, & my favorite Wagyu beef shawarma, then washed it all down with cold Coke Zero. YUM! I was so full that I didn't eat until this morning, & I think I dozed off just before 9pm last night, hehe, yikes. Gott Sie Dank! It was also fun catching the cool resident saxophonist there, who played the Super Mario Brothers theme just before we left, whee! That so cracked me up.)

I'm also happy for the new sheer blue-&-gold starry pouch I got for my Mystic Faerie Tarot deck from my cute Breakfast Club cohort / mommy-figure Joy. :D The original orange organza pouch that came with the set was ripped & I keep forgetting to have it sewn back into place. I'm bad with needlework, as you may know. I'm a disgrace to the female species like that, hehe. I keep forgetting to pick up a nice pouch or two at this novelty store in the mall closest to our office. I forgot I left it in my locker at work along with my old Sacred Rose deck, & so while I was rearranging my cards in the pantry, & my friends had to pick me up to have our perpetual after-shift meal, she handed it to me, & she'll fix my other pouch when she gets the chance to do so, yay. Pardon the blurry shot yet again.



Remember how I wanted the Manga Tarot by Selena Lin & the Tarot of the Magical Forest for my birthday last year? That was also included in my wish list back then. Just when I thought it'd be impossible to score one for myself, my esoteric pal Francisbear was nice enough to tip me where to find one, & it was magically close to work even! I got it reserved, but the first deck I got had the Ace to the Eight of Pentacles missing (gadzooks!) & I demanded for a replacement. Good thing the bookstore was prompt with the response, & so on my actual birthday I went back & got my final set. :D

The Mystic Faerie Tarot deck is so light-hearted & easy on the eyes, & it's my other most popular deck, next to my Golden Tarot by Kat Black. The latter, however, is a more morose choice, but people seem to like it because of its golden edges & classic appeal. The former is good to use around teenagers (my youngest querent ever was 7 years old, though!) & girls/women in my age bracket. The last card I got from it earlier before putting it back in order was the Knight of Cups, which was surprisingly what the last card as well in the Sacred Rose deck. Too bad I can't find images of that anywhere, but oh, look, there's a 2009 Calendar for the deck from the illustrator. The Knights in the deck are female, btw, as are the Knaves. I like the Knight of Swords best, who looks prettiest, methinks, but the Knight of Cups was a welcome sight to behold just the same, if we were to consider its divinatory meaning.



Lo, & behold, the proverbial knight in shining armor, all dreamy, hopefully with love.
Taken from the Sacred Rose Tarot deck.

I hope it also means I could have a chance to visit Spain one day, haha, especially with this blurb I got in my e-mail. Madrid, here I come! Seriously, it's one of the least thought-of destinations I have in my list, as I'd rather bask in Iceland for the full exotic experience, but I can't help it. I wonder if I'll ever get to travel with a lover there, HAHA, or meet someone who could eventually sweep me off my feet when I least expect it again. Not that I really care. I still find romance & dating cheesy, even if what I feel now is like what Kristin Scott Thomas said in Four Weddings & A Funeral,

"Well, the truth is, I have met the right person, and he's not in love with me,
and until I stop loving him, no one else really has a chance."

Sigh. That's one quote from that movie that will forever be etched upon memory.

Maybe I should just really get more sleep to prepare for the whole new week ahead. I love what Tarot.com has to say about what's in store for me this season:

In your 9th House of Expansion, the Sun stirs up your desire to step outside your comfort zone and explore new territory. Unplug from the busyness of daily life to travel, meditate, and get a higher perspective on ordinary reality. The Super-Conjunction helps you identify what you need to release to free up more space for fun, romance and creative pursuits. Take the risk of making your happiness a top priority.

So dead-on, I tell you. I'm revisiting yoga & food trips like what I keep babbling in my older posts. I'm also focusing on my Warbook mage (Level 46 FTW!) especially with all these other empires to pillage, hehe. I'll just make do further with what I have & try not to kill myself during off-peak hours. My horoscope was so accurate, too, for yesterday:

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 -- You may be tired of always being the one who's nice to others while they don't even notice much of what you do. This is tricky ground, for part of your graciousness comes from the fact that it really makes you feel good. If you're doing things for social approval, however, then your frustration can grow when you're not being appreciated. Instead of harboring any resentment today, just retreat a bit until you are in better spirits.

Yeah, I'm taking a long break, lest I'd snap again & totally lose it. Which brings me to my actual topic in mind, but I guess that will have to wait until tomorrow.

For now, let me just note how this is an interesting take on clutter:

The location of clutter in an environment, reveals the content of a person's inner struggle. The absence of disorder empowers us. As we are connected by energy to everything in our environment...you might want to review the following and check to see where you may be struggling in your life:

Entrance door = Fear of relationships
Inside closets = Unwilling to examine emotions
In Kitchen = Resenting/overwhelmed by caretaking
Next to Bed = Desire for change or escape
On Desk = Frustration, fear of letting go, or need to control
In a corner or behind a door = Detachment from others
Under a piece of furniture = Importance of appearances
In a cellar = Procrastination
In an attic = Living in the past
In a garage = Inability to actualize
All over = Lack of self-love or anger and self-loathing

Oh, heavens, no. :))

thanking my lucky stars before catching some shut-eye

Despite my sleeplessness & other problems, I still have a lot to be thankful about. I've been thinking about it everyday, trying to focus on what I have more than on what I lack, which is inevitable, I'm afraid, especially during my supposed waking hours at my day job. But I honestly love my life right now, no matter how everything looks bleak.

So, yeah. I love it when people open doors for me. When cab drivers get me to my destination quickly without overcharging. When strangers hail the bus for me. When people say they like my nail polish & how it makes my hands & feet look nice (I'm sporting blood-red again now, just when I'm about to keep my nails bare for a while) even if my hair's unkempt & my fashion sense's disastrous just the same & my skin's breaking out, no thanks to PMS. When our household help gets the job done efficiently (i.e. cooks, cleans, launders, irons, & picks up after our junk) because she can be quite unaccommodating & snarky. When people think I'm "cute" because I don't look, sound, or act my age (which I think is to my great disadvantage sometimes) despite my deepening facial lines from all that scowling & crying & skipping sunblock, hehe. When my customers thank me profusely for my assistance. When I get high scores for just about everything, whether at work or in Warbook (Level 46, FTW!) When salespeople take time to check if I can order or reserve my choice picks (I'm getting my 3rd Mythic Tarot deck & the Vertigo Tarot reprint soon, hopefully). Whenever a friendly neighborhood hairstylist brings life back to my hopeless coif when I least expect it. Whenever virtual friends strike up nice lengthy conversations. Whenever I meet up with smart, sophisticated querents. Whenever I get to hitch a ride home. Whenever there's papaya with coconut yogurt (trust me, it's one of the best things I've tasted this year!) Whenever I get my cheap French vanilla coffee fix. Whenever people make me jump the queue, because I'm forever in a hurry. Whenever people are sympathetic to my plight du jour. Whenever I can get to see the crush at/from a safe distance, haha. Whenever I can read noteworthy online articles from Time Magazine or BNet, et al (with a dependable internet connection!) Whenever my adorable brother decides to hang out with his klutzy blah big sister & looks after me like no other. Whenever I get a good night's sleep (which I hardly ever do now!) especially after a nice soothing full-body massage (I need to get more, seriously!) & a nice long cool bath. Whenever I can see blue skies & fluffy white clouds, with the cool breeze lulling me to Zen amidst the scorching sunshine. Whenever my trips back to & fro home take less time than expected. Whenever I get special treatment, because I hardly get any to begin with & I'd end up being taken advantage of more often than not. >:( So everything nice's a big deal like that.

I love Dove's Night Calming Bar, Lush's Porridge soap, Victoria Secret's Pure Seduction body wash, this limited edition Sunsilk Summer Fresh shampoo, my warm toasted bagel with cream cheese & cheap-ass Caesar salad fix, Orly nail polish (in Enchanting or Monroe's Red; cheaper & longer-lasting & more textured than Essie lacquer!), non-cloying perfume, & my staple Uni Pin drawing pens, .08, hehe. Not to mention my silver + lilac badass SkullCandy headphones (I hope they won't break, though!), & my four-post bed, & airconditioner, & our black digicams that I've yet to learn how to work properly. There's a whole lot more, of course, but for now, I better go back to sleep, even if only for a few more hours.

How about you? What little things in life are you grateful for today?

so do you like my sense of style? :P

Hello again. Time for the requisite update. I keep getting distracted, though, especially now that I'm not feeling too well. I think I'm coming down with a cold after undergoing my 4th physical therapy for my back, enduring lack of sleep these past few weeks ever since I got sick, & struggling to get home from a late lunch yesterday with my wonderful Breakfast Club cohort Rache. All's well, though, even if I'm feeling rather glum again. Whether this is PMS or not, I'm rather having a hard time shaking it off. But maybe another long snooze should cure this. Plus I'm doing my best to be amused with music I so love from my youth, like Towa Tei's:

Butterfly.mp3 - featuring Ayumi Tanabe

Towa Tei's brand of Shibuya-kei = FTW. ♥

I love his collaborations with Kylie Minogue (for German Bold Italic) & Miho Hatori (of Cibo Matto & Gorillaz fame, for Mind Wall). Both videos are irreverently superb, & I get a kick out of avant-garde kimonos & surreal animation every damn time. I also love Kylie Minogue (who's a Gemini, with her birthday coming up on the 28th, no wonder!) & Miho Hatori (I wonder what her sign is?), but not as much as I adore the guy's music. Now I'm off to have his blog translated, hehe. Check out his hilarious Mars video, too. He's Virgo, btw, yikes. :D My brother's already complaining how I'm playing all of his stuff I like out loud on loop, but I don't care, haha. He used to be a huge drum & bass fan like me. I'm so getting a kick out of Mind Wall & Milkyway (with a fresh, happy video!) & Taste of You, which greeted me from Towa Tei's official website. I swear when I get the chance, I'll have him over to play for my party someday. It'll be colossal. Haha, a girl can dream, can't she?

So, yeah, I'm really not your average tarot reader, & speaking of surreal, I want new tarot decks again. There's the Deviant Moon Tarot, that I found out from Tarot Dame's blog (check out all her comprehensive posts about it), & there's the Phantasmagoric Theater Tarot, that I espied at Tarot.com a while back. Fucking amazing decks, if you ask me. I want them STAT. Before my birthday at the most! This year's theme seems to be running on macabre, no thanks to my El Gran Tarot Esoterico deck, but I also would like to have Corinne Kenner's delightful-looking Epicurean Tarot Recipe Cards for kicks. :D I like food & cooking, too, even if I really don't do the latter much now.

In order to cheer myself up further, I'm just thinking about learning how to make aromatherapy oils & scented candles for my own consumption soon. My favorite place to avail of those is rather hard to go to, especially during scorching weekends, & I'm getting frustrated. Hopefully I can start by the end of the month, & the Breakfast Club can go someplace interesting (READ: away from our usual haunts!) again. There's organic food, & liquid nitrogen ice cream, & maybe even a Hong Kong teahouse-style luncheon that I'm interested to check out. Yes, I am THAT bored with my life, & maybe it has something to do with Saturn finally turning direct. Hooray for my horoscope taken from Astrocenter.com:

Week of May 18, 2009 — You're on a quest to reinvent yourself this week, Libra. However, the question you should be asking yourself is why. Yes, you want to change your life, but you don't need to completely revamp your personality. On Wednesday, Venus, your ruling planet, is quincunx stern Saturn and your sense of personal dissatisfaction may accelerate. Remind yourself that you're OK as you are. You may decide to jazz up your daily routine on Thursday and seek new diversions. You have a tremendous gift for art and music and you might join an art guild or choral group.

Hehe, yikes. I know I'm still a long way off from improving my actual physical appearance, but I really do need a drastic break from everything. Changing our karma does take a lot of work, however, but it's more often than not fun. For this, I bring you the card for the day (actually, there's 2 of them):

Three of Wands
You may need to take the lead, or assume responsibility for keeping your vision in motion, and while it may become tempting to rest on the laurels of your initial success, this will be merely a milestone on the way to greater manifestations of your goals. Enjoy the early fruits of your labors, even as you may begin experiencing a sort of nervous excitement, or anticipation building as things start to fall into place. Your motivation is internal, your energy, dynamic. Use your powers of intuition, premonition and foresight to keep you from prematurely jumping into the next phase of your plans. Success is in sight, but you will need to stifle any impatience, or any tendency towards overconfidence, or arrogance, or by the same token, any unconscious fears of success, as this may delay or set you back. You will be entering the homestretch, and you can expect long-term approval, reward, or perhaps even a vacation or trip that can further validate your thriving enterprise.

Oh, remember how in my previous post I just mused on random things seem to magically make themselves known quickly right after you'd think about them? Well, aside from that Vietnamese place that I got to check out (& I'm coming back for the weekend brunch specials), here's another thing I've been complaining about to myself, then voila! I know I would like to have a traditional wedding someday at some point, but I can certainly do away with the bouquet-tossing & the garter-tugging rites, thank you. Instead of rice grains being thrown at me, I would prefer rose petals, hehe. Or maybe instead of expecting a poor single gal pal to lose face while trying to grab a bouquet thrown their way, I can just raffle away the damn thing! Now all I have to do is get fit enough for a decent gown, & inform my groom-to-be about my decision to get wed. That is, if I can find one. :P I blew all my chances almost 2 years ago, after getting engaged for 3 years before it, so there. Watching Four Weddings & a Funeral again has just made me feel worse. I love the Funeral Blues poem very much, though.

I thought that love would last forever... I was wrong.
But I've always thought it wouldn't! At least, prior to my said engagement.

I might as well leave you with the 2nd card of the day, that wonderfully complements the first one:

Eight of Cups
How you respond to your situation or crisis can be a turning point. Refocus your perspective or re-examine your needs. At worst, you could be experiencing depression resulting from stress or burnout. You may have an opportunity to release old patterns, secrets, or guilt by taking up a spiritual quest in an effort to discover a deeper truth or meaning to your life. Don’t be afraid to move on when you recognize the natural conclusion of a phase or state. Be ready to turn away from the familiar, put the past behind you in search of opportunities that are in line with your heart's desires. Don't allow yourself to settle for mediocrity. If you find yourself asking "Is this all there is to my life?" then the time has come.

Yep, both card images taken from the Phantasmagoric Theater Tarot. Le sigh. ♥ LOL, I like the circus act take on the 3 of Wands, & the figure in the 8 of Cups looks more like it's happy to be going out into the world for a splendid vacation! I'll probably look like that on my next getaway!

So please bear with me if readings for this week until the end of the month will have to be done only on Saturdays, starting from 1pm, until further notice. I need to get a hold of myself & take care of my runny nose. Send me some love by voting for my blog & giving me feedback.
Thanks so much. :*