Unfortunately, trees cannot be bought in bouquets or put in vases to stand on windowsills and bedside tables. And even if you plant them in your own garden, trees have a different kind of independence. They belong to one but to earth. You can never really fully own a tree. Humans are just like trees.
But what hideousness the world would be without trees. I love them so much, but I can never own them. But that’s much better than having to lose them. We don’t have to own what we love.
Trees are beautiful. We can never own them. We can only love them and admire them, sometimes from afar.
10am
I actually had a lot of free time this weekend. Graduate school was still suspended due to the heavy rains the previous week. I’ve heard the vicinity of our school had been greatly affected by the floods. Though offices have already resumed there so I suppose it’s not that bad anymore. Still, too bad. I was really looking forward to school. It seems to be my only break from mundane life. At least I still get to do something I really love; studying psychology, aside from photography and poetry as hobbies on my free time. Plus, my classmates are really fun people. We’re always laughing. As far as I know, we also won’t have any core Psychology classes next week because our Psychology professors would attend the Psychological Association of the Philippines 49th Convention that week on Cebu. That means I’d only have my Research Seminar class for that day. Not exactly that exciting….. But since we haven’t been meeting for two weeks already, we’d have a lot to catch up on, especially with reporting. Just how can we condense everything with just two and a half months more before the semester ends?
It seems like I’m not used to having too much free time anymore because usually my free day is only on Sundays, which I just spend on sleeping. Hahahaha! How typical of me. I spent my weekend sleeping, eating, watching TV, watching the movie version of Dorian Gray, and finishing reading Invincible Louisa. How very productive, right? I know. I also still have to do those six journal entries on six psychologists for Theories of Personality class, and my critical analysis essay report on the movie I am Sam in relation to autism for Abnormal Psychology class, plus reviewing for our supposed exam on our next meeting. And I remember my mother telling me to clean my room. See how productively I spent my weekend instead of doing all these more necessary things? But sleeping and eating are also very important physiological needs, right? And we’d die if we don’t respond to these needs. Hahahaha!
Since I had more free time, there was time to grab my camera and just snap a shot of everything.
Food! One of our most important physiological needs, refer to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. 
Left-over beans I toasted with some left-over buns. Hehehehe.
Fish (Tilapia) for dinner, though with that I also had some noodles, rice, and two glasses of mocha shake. Calories! They’re all homemade, though, so that ought to cut down all the unnecessary calories and fat as compared to when they came from fast foods, right? I think…. Hahahaha! Just trying to justify. Calories from fast food, which was where I’d been eating often the previous week as part of indulging myself as I had been feeling negative emotionally, just seem to pop up like magic. Even the smallest and simplest serving seems to have double the count of what you would actually assume there is. Where do they actually come from?
Peanut butter, my favorite snack for the weekend!
Fried tofu with soy sauce diluted in chili powder. Hahahaha! My all-time favorite!
Moving on, Friday night I passed by the grocery before I went home just to get some milk supplies. Yes, milk. I love dairy products! I stopped making and drinking smoothies about a month ago since I lacked supplies and I haven’t been able to replenish them since. I wasn’t able to get milk from the grocery nor to get fruits from the organic market where I usually buy them. Main reason was because I was too lazy to run these errands (going to the organic market entails waking up really early since they only hold it really early on Sunday mornings) so I just ate whatever my mother prepared for me and my healthy-lifestyle-by-eating-more-fruits-through-smoothies was disrupted. Or ruined, shall I say? Hahahaha!
Anyway, I got some milk and chocolate powder so I can make chocolate smoothies instead. Plus, since we already have coffee at home, anyway, I can make mocha smoothies too! Yay!
Basically, you need crushed ice, milk, and chocolate and you throw them all at once in a blender. Ta-dah! Done! Yes, I skip the sugars but you can add some if you want it sweeter. You can also add some coffee is you want a mocha-ish flavor.
Vanity. My report on Erich Fromm covered his theory of Malignant Narcissism. Hahahaha! My narcissism (which is a common phenomenon on every single one of us, anyway) is not on that extent, I think….. Hahahaha! But, you know who’s really cute… and sexy? My dog, Cola! 
I ought to call her Baby Cola, but she’s not a baby anymore. She has really grown a lot in just four months!
I want one of those “paint me like one of your French girls” pose but she didn’t pose like that. 
And just because I love nature so much, especially its green side (plants).
I’m starting to think mosses look cute, as least on photographs. How weird! Hahahaha! But I think the mosses on this photo made the stone look pretty well. Hahahaha!
I spent Sunday afternoon taking a walk, with my camera, of course. I’d post the photos next time.
10am
I’m in the company of people everyday; at work and at home, and when I get the time to be alone at night, I’m just too tired already I’d rather just sleep. But sometimes I really need to be alone, you know, talk to myself, calm my overthinking, overworrying mind, organize my thoughts, read, write, catch up on myself, get my creative juices flowing. That’s just typically me. I love meeting people, I especially love going out with my friends, but I’m an introvert and being alone is how I recharge my energy. I get really uneasy and pretty cranky when I don’t get to be alone, when I don’t get my quiet “me” time, in a long time. And I’ve just realized lately that this might also be a cause of my major mood swings, my sadness and depression.
These past days I have been feeling really down, I need something new. It’s been a habit for me to do physical activities whenever I’m overwhelmed with negative emotions. I need to keep my adrenaline running or it’d get stuck and would just feed my negativity. I usually walk, but since time and distance constraints wouldn’t allow me, I decided to just take the stairs of our building instead of the elevator. I have also just found out that our building has a rooftop! I never really thought we had one since the last floor on the elevator is a penthouse, but we have a rooftop! Seems like no one ever comes in there, anyway. Which is good, I can have my own secret sanctuary! No one really uses the stairs and you could only access the rooftop using the stairs, you could use the elevator until the last floor but you’d still have to go use the stairs to get to the rooftop. Well, the stairs is really the most unexplored part of the building, seems like only the maintenance people use it. I blame it on people’s laziness, please, the building isn’t even that high! Sadly, though, I think they lock the rooftop door as early as late in the afternoon so though I would love to photograph the sunset from there, I don’t think I could.
Upon realizing the existence of our rooftop I immediately visited it and was hooked with how I can clearly see the beautiful vast sky from there. That’s what I love about it, the building’s not that tall yet I can clearly see the sky because there are no skyscrapers around us unlike in business districts where buildings seem to have a race of their own, trying to see which could stand taller, so when you look out the window, or from anywhere, you’d see another building. It makes me feel restrained, contained, caged, it makes me feel sad. Anyway, I brought my camera the next day and decided to be alone in the company of it and the photos I’m going to take. I spent my lunch break there alone, along with a book and a pen and paper, though I wasn’t able to read a lot or even write at all because I was busy taking pictures and looking up the clear sky. No worries, some other lunch break.
My current read; Invincible Louisa, a biography of Louisa Alcott, the author of the classic Little Women. I bought this last year but only got around to reading it now.
There was a cage full of doves at the rooftop. The personnel that I talked to said that they usually close the rooftop because of the doves, though I wasn’t exactly what about them it was.
Yours truly, the wandering little girl who was hopping around the rooftop upon her first visit there, too happy and thrilled. It doesn’t have to be a big thing, it’s the little things like finding out your building has a rooftop after months of working there, that would make you happy and would make a difference in you. Happiness is a choice, choose to see it in these little things.
I confess, I have never been on a plane.
The building nearby, it’s not exactly a skyscraper and it’s not blocking the view a lot so it’s okay.
I spent the hour walking here and there looking over the balcony railings, photographing everything, I actually spent ninety percent of it under the scorching sun, may I remind you that it was my lunch break, noon. I decided the photos were enough and I’ve already took in enough view for a day, I sat down under a tree shade and read a few pages of my book.
From where I was sitting, this was the view when I look up,
And this was the view when I look down. It was really nice.
The hour was done, I went back to our office, but what greeted me was the beautiful spilling sunlight from the window blinds. The kind that I’ve been imagining for months that would be great for a photo. I consider it as one of the gifts from the heavens, along with my opportunity to find out about our rooftop.
That’s muzcovado sugar, my daily dose of caffeine’s companion.
You might be wondering what’s the big deal about this rooftop, anyway? Why am I so happy and thrilled? It’s just a rooftop. I say because that’s it, it’s no big deal, and I try to see and find happiness in these little normal everyday things.
I consider my sadness the previous days as the key to this. Had I not been sad, I wouldn’t have been interested at all to find out about our rooftop, I would have just gone straight to our office using the elevator, not caring about everything around me. See, believe that everything happens for a reason, even the seemingly bad things, they happen for a good reason. Have faith. 
You can see the whole album on my Flickr.
10am
