Crazy Week and My Last Peso Bill

This usually happens before Christmas time: work getting all crazy, computers konking out, etc. In our office, we are trying to come up with two 12-page bulletins and five journals before the holiday break. I am designing and laying out, at the minimum, 170 pages of journal complete with graphs, mathematical equations, and images that still need to be manipulated or enhanced. Multiply that by five and you can more or less imagine how harassed I am. No thanks to uncontrollable factors like people who couldn’t be harried with their corrections and contributions, cd writers not working at the last minute (I should get myself a flash drive!), colleagues who, instead of helping out, pass on some administrative stuff that even grade schoolers this day and age can already figure out, etc.
After office hours are being spent preparing my son for his endless long quizzes (his school decided to condense this particular grading period to just four weeks of lesson instead of the usual eight). The rest of the night I use to work on some moonlighting jobs.
With this crazy schedule, I have not been sleeping, nor eating, well lately. But it’s ok, I told myself, as the rewards would come later on. Well, one reward isn’t to be, as some other people’s idea foiled it. This caused my finances to dwindle rapidly and the last three days, I was holding on to my last P100. Two days ago, however, my son requested for pancakes at McDonald’s for his school “baon”. That cost me P26. Yesterday, he wanted the same, and there goes another P26. But when he received a very good mark yesterday at school, he reminded me of my promise to buy him the Chicken Little toy at McDo’s as reward, and I simply knew I wouldn’t be able to keep my promise, not with my last P48.
So I was anxious about going home yesterday. I didn’t want to break a promise and disappoint him. Bracing myself for his reproach, I told him the truth. My heart just melted when he said that it was ok, we can wait. He will wait, he said, till I come up with the rest of the money to afford his toy. That was the first time he has taken something like this this way. I expected him to shout, and cry, and bombard me with “but you promised!”
He’s growing up. And while I regret the fact that I couldn’t hug him and kiss him as often as I like now, I like the little man he is turning out to be. Witnessing changes in him everyday pushes work-related anxieties out the window. Besides, now that he’s older and getting taller, we get to do other things together like going around the neighborhood in bikes, or watching a movie.

He’s turning 7 in a few days’ time. Yup, that fast.