Yes, finally, finally, I have done it. It. 

I have paid my house bills! *insert evil laugh here* Something finally hit me over the head last Monday morning and before I knew it, I was on my way out of the house, for the first time in 9 days, mind you, and riding that god-awful noisy tricycles outta here. 

My little bubble of happiness was dampened by the sunlight. You know, the incredibly scorching one? After a few days of rain, I sure appreciate some calm weather but damn, those UV rays would give you skin cancer faster than you can say ‘sun burnt’. 

Silly me, procrastinating this long. It’s already the 23rd, the due date of our electric bill, so it really shouldn’t have surprised me as much to see the whole building filled with people. It was sorta like a slap in the face; it brought me back to the reality that what I was about to embark on is very much reminiscent of what I did (way more often than I should have) in college: fall in lines. 

There were at least seven teller booths open, but the place was so swamped that they decided to have three different lines per booth. It was unnerving, really. That amount of people in one place reduced the air conditioning’s power to do its job and still there was silence. Everybody looked as though they’d rather they were somewhere else (as they probably did) and didn’t acknowledge the fact that some random guy was a only a couple of inches away from his backside. The silence was eerie; even the children weren’t running around as much. I popped my Ipod earbuds on and tapped my feet to the sounds of The Black Parade just to lessen my fidgeting. 

I was uncomfortable enough as it was when I noticed that the people beside me were only crunching a handful of hundred-peso bills each. The most amount of money I had seen out there was a thousand bucks, but the owner had three electric bills in her hand. Suddenly I was overcome with shame, shame for my family –mine’s basically– wastefulness, as proven by the whopping 5352 peso printed in the amount due box. I surreptitiously crumpled the envelope containing both the bill and the money and stood there, waiting for my turn. 

It was a little less then twenty minutes before the pregnant (well after the fifth month, I’d guess; she was grimacing quite a lot) even acknowledged my existence by glancing at me. After putting my stuff together, I walked out onto the heat, with a little more gusto actually, and caught the first jeepney that would take me to the nearest Hypermart so I could pay the other bills.

As I handed the fare for the (ultra) short ride to the old lady right by the driver, I felt that giddy feeling one gets when one accomplishes a task. As more passengers got on, that old lady and I got into a routine — I hand the money over, she passes it onto the driver — as we were the only ones in the jeepney who didn’t pretend everybody else didn’t exist. And then, as she passed me my change, something weird happened. She smiled at me. A total stranger (who, arguably, could be suffering from age related dementia already) smiled at me. For no apparent reason. She gestured something that I didn’t quite get so I shot out an unsure smile and pulled out an earbud. She repeated the gesture, which, again, was lost to me. There was an awkward moment right there. I now feel quite embarrassed to say that I looked away first. 

Apparently this mini-vacation of mine had turned my mind into sludge so much that I even forgot the proper Pinoy way of hollering “Para pooooo~” to the driver when you reach your stop. Awkwardly I got off the jeep and burnt my way inside the mall. The mall bank was a brand new arena for me; I didn’t know what to do first or which line to fall into. All I knew was that I had to fill a form. Luckily for me, the old security guard was kind enough to point me in the right direction and thank God, I thought, the lines in this one are short and you can actually feel the a/c’s efforts. 

So I fell into that short line, comprised of only five people in front of me, and was quickly reminded that bank tellers in this bank moved at a snail’s pace. The Black Parade had ended and had restarted, and not until it was halfway through did I get to sit in one of those blue cushy chairs in front of a teller, who, now that I think about it, looked incredibly just like the manager sipping his coffee inside the offices. I even heard her call out “Tay” to the dude when he came out. Hmm…nepotism, anyone?

At effin’ last, I only had one bill to go. But an hour and a half’s worth of lines made me antsy so I headed off to the bookstore in front of the bank. I browsed through the selections but didn’t buy anything; my book lag is already high enough as it is. After finding a couple of books to my liking, I crossed the mall to the supermarket, where I thought I could pay off our internet bill. 

Unfortunately the Bayad Center there doesn’t to the internet company so what did I do next? Duck into the supermarket of course! I grabbed a basket and began piling up. It was a bad thing, to be in a supermarket with the shopping tingles. The basket was about half full when I realized that I still had an afternoon’s worth of lines before me so quickly I returned the items back to the shelf. It wasn’t a total loss though, I even got hit on, I think. 

Killing time while reading tea on a busy food court was an experience I’ve actually had before, way back in my high school years when my mother would sequester me off to the bookstore or to the food court. It was kind of freeing, in that weird way that being alone does. Halfway through reading, I realized that I had in my hands the exact same book I had when I was in junior high reading in that stuffy food court in Makati. And thus, it had been proven: my life has finally finished that 360 degree turn.

People looked at me weirdly so I got out of there once the clock hit 1.15 and made my way down to the LTO (I still don’t know what this stands for; although T has to be for transportation, right?) right next to the hypermart. 

And wouldn’t you know it, that was the precise moment this whole procrastination thing bit me right back in the butt. If only I had done this whole thing Wednesday last week, as planned, I wouldn’t have had the chance to let the storm pass. No storm equals no fuck-ups in the phone line which inevitably equals an open-line for the LTO. Karma blows. So yeah, basically, I didn’t get to renew my driver’s license but the people there advised me to just get the whole urine sample thing for the drug test done so it’d go over quicker when they’re systems are up and running. So I did.

And then I got flustered. Really, really flustered. In my haste to pull out my expired license I didn’t notice that one of my friend’s graduation pictures fell onto the ground, only to be returned to me by a fixer (I’d guess) when I was already inside the office. There was just something about the way he said “Miss, boyfriend mo?” with that weird smile that got to me. Serves me right for putting graduation pictures in any nook and cranny that I can shove them inside of. 

So there. Hopefully this burst of energy will give me enough to complete my list of tasks.