by The Happy WAHM
My favorite firstborn turned 15 today, and the whole family spent the day at a crochet workshop. I really thought she was going to be an only child, but my story has been written long before I was born, so I’m just glad I didn’t dare attempt to edit it.
Isabel. We named her after my grandmother. I never knew my lola, as she went home early, so I respectfully asked my husband if we could name the baby after her. My husband’s family seemed to have a penchant for at least three names. In fact, only one of the eight siblings was lucky enough to have just two names. He is the youngest, so maybe my parents-in-law simply ran out of names to give. The other seven had three names each. So to be in a better position to get him to approve my lola’s name, I said he could take care of the second name. But in the end, he told me that I could take care of that, too. So I chose to give her the name of a teacher/fashion model who bravely fought cancer, and was gracious and faithful until the time that she no longer needed to fight.
The dynamics of my relationship with my firstborn is quite different from my relationship with the two younger kids. Maybe because she’s a teenager now, and I still try to treat her like my baby. Plus, I was late in forming a bond with her, for which I will forever be regretful. She was born at a time that I was still fighting my way up the corporate ladder in a male dominated workplace, and so parenthood was more focused on securing a better career position than in the actual mothering. I became a mother before I was ready, so my idea of motherhood was a bit twisted. Working hard, earning more so I could provide for the needs of my baby. I was still reading books on corporate dynamics, instead of how to form relationships with children.
While I considered myself a hands-on mom at that time, it was not really enough. She was a picky eater, and it would take her hours to finish her meal, so I would end up leaving her with the yaya to wait for her to finish her food, while I go on ahead with all the other things that I needed to do. I lacked the patience to wait up for her, and it did not occur to me to learn why she was being picky, and do something about it.
She was almost 7 when I became a WAHM, and even at that time, I still shortchanged her. I was pre-occupied with my newborn, and I just assumed that because she’s older, she was better at coping without me hovering over her all the time. Big mistake. A child will forever need her mother whatever age she’s in.
I can write a whole book on all the things I regret of not doing for my firstborn, but she’s fifteen now, and I really can’t turn back time. So all I can do is move forward from here. I thank God for the opportunity of homeschooling her before she grew up to be a teenager. Those years at least gave me time to get closer to her and get to know her more as a person.
These days, she has friends in school and she has activities that moms are no longer welcome to take part of. I still try to encourage her to invite friends to our home and be a cool mom, but those days are few and far between. As her mom, all I can do is be supportive of her passions, the latest of which is crocheting. I was surprised when she asked for crochet hooks and yarns last Christmas. And last month, when I told her about the crochet workshop that I saw posted on Facebook, she asked if she could attend. And so we celebrated her 15th birthday at a crochet workshop today, in full force.
I think I should consider giving her a bigger space for this newfound passion, because now that she has a better understanding of the different yarns and hook sizes, I’m afraid that her plastic box will no longer be enough.
Add to that that she also has a growing book collection, a bigger space is indeed in order. I guess I have just written down my 2015 goal here. Save up for a room renovation so the girls will have a bigger room. A mom’s gotta do what she gotta do, yeah?
Special thanks to my good friend, Patty Cuyugan of Mrs. C’s Sugarcoated Life for posting the workshop schedule on Facebook, as I would never have found out about it had she not shared it. And to the Gantsilyo Guru herself, Trey Ajusto, for her patience with my daughter during the workshop. I’m now seriously considering learning the craft myself, as it may be another great opportunity to further form a bond with my daughter.
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by The Happy WAHM
Have I ever mentioned here that I sit on the board of a Science High School in our town?
Well, I do. And about two weeks ago, I was asked by the Chairman of the Board to review a proposal by a contractor for the maintenance and upgrade of the units in our Computer Laboratory. The proposal was for the upgrade of the RAM, replacement of the CMOS battery and installation of Windows OS, among others. Apparently, more than half of the units have been corrupted and the solution they were looking at was to reformat the corrupted units. That means having to re-install the OS.
But the process will be costly. And when I asked the technician if the OS he was going to install was licensed, he could not give me a straight answer. So suffice it to say that he was going to give us a cracked OS, which did not sit right with me since we are an educational institution.
Budget being tight for an enterprise license of Windows, we decided to look at open source alternatives. Husband found Ubuntu, and decided to try it out first with our kids’ PC at home. They do have their own PC for their homeschool because it has been a sacred rule in our home that Mommy’s home office is hers alone, and that no other person can use Mommy’s PC. It’s exclusive for Mommy’s work. 🙂
So husband downloaded Ubuntu and installed it in the other PC, and we have been all agog about it since.
The Office Productivity Suite
My first concern was, how will the kids create documents? My PC will continue to run on Windows, of course, so how are we going to exchange documents? Is it compatible with MS Office?
Well, it is. It has a complete suite of office counterpart, called the LibreOffice. Microsoft Word is called the LibreOffice Writer, Excel is LibreOffice Calc and PowerPoint is LibreOffice Impress. You can create a document and save it with .odt extension, and your Windows-based PC will open it in WordPad, then you can save it as .docx. Or you can simply save it as .docx with LibreOffice. Why make life complicated? 🙂
Then there’s LibreOffice Draw, which I assumed is the counterpart of Paint, but I’m finding it a lot better. It can produce technical drawings, posters, etc. Making a flow chart using Draw is easy-peasy! It also allows you to manipulate pictures and images in many ways and save them in a range of image and document formats.
MS Access is LibreOffice Base, but I have not explored it yet, as I have somehow developed an allergy for the words query, MySQL and Dbase.
LibreOffice Math is equations and formula editor. Really neat, as it allows you to perfectly format mathematical and scientific formulas, from fractions, exponents, integrals and mathematical functions, to inequalities and systems of equations. And what’s neater is you can use it as standalone, or you can use it with Writer, Calc or Impress.
I have not tried it yet, but I believe that the counterpart of Outlook is Thunderbird.
The Software Center
This is the part where I really fell totally in love. It’s overflowing with apps for office and homeschool use! It’s great that they have categorized the apps, since there are literally hundreds of them, into education, books and magazines, fonts, games, business, graphics, etc. Among the apps that we have so far installed are the Periodic Table, Stellarium, GeoGebra, KAlgebra and Scratch. There are also educational application bundles categorized into Pre-School, Primary, Secondary and Tertiary, so you get most of the apps you need according to the level you prefer in just one click. 🙂
I have barely scratched the surface of the features here, and I’m sure you are going to find something for your personal needs. The RedNotebook for journaling, KMyMoney or sKrooge as your personal finance manager, FreeMind for mindmapping… the list is long!
I believe Ubuntu is a great alternative for homeschooling families and work-at-home professionals who simply cannot afford the expensive license for Windows and Mac OS. We buy laptops and desktop PCs at such a high price because vendors make the installed OS part of the selling point. But you can actually build you own desktop PC at a fraction of a branded PC’s cost and simply install this open source OS. And get a lot of free apps to go with it, too!
I’m now so envious of my kids for having all these cool features in their PC, I’m seriously considering installing Ubuntu in my tablet.
[Photos from ubuntu.com and ubuntuhandbook.org]
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by The Happy WAHM
Inbound Marketing. In my eight years as a work-at-home mom doing mostly virtual assistance, I have not given this a thought. At all. At least, not for my own websites. I’ve been like, okay, this is my work, I have my goals, and the goal is to have my client’s pages appear on page 1 of Google.
In the early days of my online career, I worked with a UK-based Internet Marketer. His business was all about designing profitable websites, search engine optimization, email marketing and social marketing. He builds really attractive websites for clients, with the goal of engaging visitors and converting those visitors into customers. But before a website gets visited, the site needs to be optimized so that people will find it in searches. That’s where SEO or search engine optimization comes in. We try to study search behaviors of a particular target market. We find out what are the keywords our target market is using when they do a search for a particular product. Then we use those keywords in our meta data and content. When visitors land on the site, we try to engage them with a call-to-action button, convincing them to leave their email addresses so we can do our email marketing. It was fascinating at best, boring at worst. My tasks included creating wireframes, researching keywords, writing content, creating links, watching over analytics…and just about any activity that would put our sites on page 1, and have them stay there. We tweak strategies when the graphs are showing a dip, and remain aggressive when the graph is on an uptrend.
Then I built my own business site, and set up my own blog, and conveniently forgot to apply the wealth of information I learned. I was like, okay, I need a domain that will represent who I am, and it will be my brand. I’ll set up my meta title, meta description and meta tags. And I did. I researched for my domain name, checked out competition, decided on my keywords, and set them all up. The sites went live, and I went my merry way to work on another stranger’s SEO, leaving my own sites without much content, hoping that by some miracle, people will find me.
Sadly, it doesn’t work that way. And it never will.
I did not even have my own analytics on my blog, until about two weeks ago. In my mind, what do I need it for? I am gainfully engaged with a client. I don’t have to stress about people finding me.
Fast forward to August 30, 2014. Thank goodness for one Martine de Luna, who invited me to attend the Spiralytics workshop on inbound marketing. Listening to the speakers awakened a desire that I’ve been trying to keep a lid on for the longest time. The desire to write.
I mean, they were talking about how powerful content can be. And I know I can put out content on any given day.
Yes, I’ve been writing. But am I being read? I don’t think so. So now, I want people to find me. And maybe inspire them with my content that they will come back and regularly visit. And I’ll be the world’s biggest hypocrite if I just don’t say it straight here: I want to monetize my blog.
So, with my stock knowledge on SEO and email marketing, I’m now making it my goal to apply what I have learned about inbound marketing. It’s going to be a challenge, and it will be a slow process as I still have to prioritize my virtual work as operations manager for some guy’s business in the land of stars and stripes, but I can make it happen. I will make it happen.
First stop: the 46%. According to Jimmy Cassells, 46% of online audience would likely follow a site with customized design. And my site? It sat on a free template since the day I built it. So my fist mission has been to finally act on my dream of getting it professionally-designed, and it can’t get any more professional than Fancy Girl Designs, so I went to her.
I think the design process was my biggest stumbling block. I see beauty in everything around me. A blogger friend launches a site, I go ooooh wow! And I kind of dream, I want something like that. And then another blogger friend announces a re-design oh her site, and I go oh, this is what I want my site to look like!
Same thing with the color palette. I just like each and every palette that I see on my newsfeed every day. So it really was a monumental task, creating a mood board for the designer to have an idea on the look that I want to have for my site.
But as you now know, I did it! Here, let me share my mood board with you…
I was a zombie for two days for pulling an all-nighter for this mood board.
Errrr… I didn’t actually work on this one for two nights. Truth is, there was another mood board which I worked on the first night, but it was totally scrapped. Not worthy of sharing here.
But back to inbound marketing…
I’m really looking forward to becoming a more productive blogger in the coming days and applying the fresh knowledge that I have learned from Rhiza and Jimmy. And between you and me, I’m realizing that it really helps when you’re happy with your site. You tend to write more. 🙂
‘Til my next ramblings!
by The Happy WAHM
It used to be M/V Doulos that my husband and I would look forward to each year. Both voracious readers, we consider trips to the bookstore a date, and going to wherever M/V Doulos would be anchored a special occasion. Then the ship ended its voyage, and we discovered the Manila International Book Fair. This year is our third.
For the past two years, I’ve only taken the girls with me. Husband is not really keen on taking our kids on long trips with anticipated long walks. He says it’s not wise for the kids to get tired when the parents are more likely to be tired also. And I get that, totally. This year, since we agreed that I should go on a weekday to avoid the crowd, I was just going to take Bea. Jude was to stay behind with his Dad, while Xia has school. But when Jude learned about the plan, he was teary-eyed. He wanted to go. He was going to look for books about the Titanic and the World Trade Center, two of his latest interests. His Dad tried to explain that Mommy cannot take both him and Bea because Mommy has not been feeling well. He said, okay. Then went to the room and stayed there.
It worked.
So we tweaked our plan. Dad and Jude would go, too. But we’d have to leave really early so we could be home before Ate Xia gets home. But when Xia learned about this, she, too, wanted to go. So a pink slip was requested. 🙂
We got there before opening time. We had our game figured out. Daddy and Jude would go their way; Xia and Bea would go theirs, and Mommy… well, she’s going to talk to her colleagues at the Filway booth, go around on her own, and would be summoned when either of the two teams need to pay already. Mommy was the banker.
Xia came prepared. She knew what she wanted and was done with her shopping in less than an hour. Bea was a bit slow, always looking at the price tags. She’s very concerned about the budget. Jude was relentless in his search for his books, but was not getting any headway. So we re-grouped, literally. Mommy went to accompany Jude, and Daddy went to look for Jude’s books, too. Finally, he found an only copy, a 2014 print of the Titanic from a UK publisher. And of course, it was not on sale. 🙁
Bea finally decided on this set. Expect some posts on Bea’s culinary sojourn here. 🙂
Part of Xia’s loot.
A few of the other items that the kids are sharing. They share the love for Pokemon. Actually, an argument ensued over these. Jude wanted the Character Guide 2, but Bea said to get get the Character Guide 1 because it doesn’t make sense to skip it. But Jude, thinking that he could only get one, wanted the later version. Good thing that the sales assistant was very helpful, and pointed out that getting both copies would save us money, so we did. Bleach and Naruto are also part of their growing collections.
But the biggest, and priciest, find is the Sacred Geometry. Really excited to start reading this with the kids!
For myself, I wanted to get a sewing book, or any craft book that I could really use for my goal of learning some crafts this year, and I found Sewtionary. It’s pricey, so I put it back on the shelf, thinking that I’d go back to it when all the others were done shopping. But alas, my brain conveniently forgot about going back after all the receipts have made their way to me. My eyes saw the bags of books, and the brain registered something like, there’s no more room for one more book. Enough!
I think I’ll just put it in my Wishlist. Someone might take pity and make it my Christmas gift. 🙂
by The Happy WAHM
Just a couple more nights and it will be the day of the Blogapalooza!
To say that I’m excited is an understatement. It’s going to be a first for me, attending a blogger event. I have no idea what goes on in such gatherings, but I know that I’ll be in good company, as I’ll be with other members of the WAHM community who have become real friends already. I did say that I’m going to get serious with my blogging, didn’t I? So I’ll be off to a good start, meeting seasoned bloggers.
So what is Blogapalooza?
According to its founder, Vince Golanco, who also happens to be the man behind When In Manila:
Blogapalooza is a community. It’s a link between big and small businesses who have something cool to share and the online community of people who love to share. Blogapalooza is a blogger event on crack!
Happy to be part of the online community of people who love to share. 🙂 The essence of my blogging is to share ideas, experiences, best practices and yes, products that I find may be beneficial to people who are reading me.
So yeah, I’m excited and looking forward to meeting and making new friends, too! I’m calling this my great day out. 🙂
Thanks to Rikka Redrico, I’m not going there totally blind. She wrote some cool tips on how to prepare for the event. I already have event buddies, I have my notebook and my beloved orange mechanical pencil all ready to go, and hopefully, I can bring calling cards, too.
Now, how about that suit?
