2016's Christmas card loot

The season's over, and I have to stash away my increasingly paltry collection of hard-copy Christmas cards. In my computer hard drive and Google Drive, I've saved the letters and cards sent by email.

I sent out over 20 cards and postcards by what's known as "happy mail," complete with stamps, as early as the first week of December. The addressees acknowledged my letters by email and text. I'm almost tempted to enclose a SASE, remember those? SASE stands for self-addressed stamped envelope.

Handwriting allows me to slow down. I guess it also brings down my blood pressure. It calms me. I'm able to reflect, rue, remember, regret, rejoice on paper. Not unlike keeping a journal only this time there is someone at the other end of the conversation. A friend asked me to send her a private message via her Facebook, which is faster, because she's "poor in snail mail." I assured her that sending mail by snail or donkey delights me so much so she needn't worry if my message is delayed by a week, 10 days or a month. She lives over in Western Australia and comes home twice a year at the most.

Here's the last year's mail, the last hand-delivered by the sister concerned.

Handmade's the best. This one's the handiwork of three-year-old Sophia, daughter of Liwa Araos and Archie Espanola. Made of dried leaves and shiny stickers. I like Liwa's penmanship--it indicates her lightness of being and overall cheerfulness.

Cousin Tess Lolarga Romero in Chicago is religious about her cards. They arrive as early as November. Perhaps she knows my husband is a stamp collector so she sticks assorted stamps on the envelop.

Beth Quirino Lahoz, president of the Technological Institute of the Philippines, unfailingly sends a yearly card. Sometimes, when I respond in kind, she emails quickly back upon receiving my card: "Despite the distance (not seeing each other), the connection thrives because you have also worked at it with your gracious letters."

Coming home from Baguio via Subic on New Year's Day, I found this on my desk--a card from my sister Gigi and inside were crisp 20-peso bills. She and our adopted sister Ruth Terania know my prepaid phone's limits and how I direly need the gadget for text blasts when supporting assorted causes. Thanks, baby sisters.

Bruno, the youngest senior citizen

It's fit to be consumed by people like me, a butter-frosted chocolate cake with Bruno's portrait baked by Classic Confections on Brixton street, Barangay Kapitolyo, Pasig City. Giveaways are some sugar cookies.

My student once asked me during an interviewing exercise in class: "Teach, are you a dog or a cat person?"

My answer was diplomatic: "I live with dogs, but I love cats."

Our neighbors in Baguio are cat people whose pets sometimes run wild and upset plants in my granddaughter's secret garden, to my husband's mortification. Still I admire the grace and independence of cats. Their scavenging instincts are still strong, the call of the wild still present. And they have such dignity.

Dogs are different. They need their human master's attention and companionship.

Our dogs in Pasig are the family's babies. The first one is a mini pin, the other a mini pug. The older one is Bogart, the younger Bruno. Bogart is fierce, the perfect guard dog, scandalous in his barking. Bruno is gentle and quiet when awake and a loud snorer when asleep. He is one of those creatures who lives to eat, not eats to live.

In dog years, he's slightly older than me. I will become a senior citizen this year. But in human years, Bruno is only seven.

The works! A tarp, balloons and human-friendly cookies

So his humans, my kid sis Gigi and our adopted sister Ruth, decided to throw a party for him today, complete with balloons, birthday cake, party favors, a pabitin for the tots, our grandnephew Jared and grandniece Machiko, who'll be dropping by.

I'm excited. I have rehearsed my number for the short program. I'll serenade Bruno with "My Funny Valentine."

Excuse me while switch to my blue and yellow costume. I'll be the biggest minion in the world!

Blue and yellow are the colors of the day.