breaKing bread..

today at church the pastor talked about the table and its importance. that the table experience & breaking bread is essential to connection. just this week i was talking to mark about eating at the table with my family and how it usually is a must. in high school, my curfew was ... six oclock. yup..good ol six oclock. even the HELLA cool folks i'd kick it with at the library (gellert .. just to be exact .. haha) knew i had to be home by 6 in order to eat dinner with my fam.

and yes in high school i considered it to be the main murderer of my so called social life (yes again at the library) to sit down with my mom, dad, grandma and random family member that decided to drop by that day .. even if i wasn't hungry .. even if i had eaten .. even if i was in trouble .. that was the rule .. i had to be there.

i hated it. i hated being called out while doing homework or talking to my current *special friend* to eat fish (haha that was grandmas favorite thing to cook) .. but when i went to college and started creating a family of my own ..i realized how important and meaningful it was. how rare it was for fams to still eat together. and like most things i hated as a "pinay pride in teenage angst" (ha)..i have realized the importance of my beloved curfew and i thank my parents for it ..

and for the purpose of dinner time or "KAIN NA!!!!!!!" (my mom screams from the kitchen ... although now she just calls me on my cell .. yes .. from downstairs .. haha) i begin to remember .. solidify .. and share stories from my table. im really unsure of why .. especially here .. i guess i've always wanted to share my dads stories (if you know me .. you'd know i love telling stories about my dad) .. i've always wanted to write them down ... so .. might as well do it now and share it with the world :)

so..here goes :) enJOY the bread :)

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an easy one. and if anyone reads this .. im sure you've got your own. the table with my cousins. damn .. me, jill, jordan, and dan .. either at jills house in vallejo .. or at natoris (a japanese buffet where we used to pretend the battered shrimp were free willys...and where jordan was told to stop going to the buffet .. hahahahha).. or at any other restaurant .. we were infamous for not acting correctly .. if you can really define incorrect manners. but what i do remember was that not matter what we had to finish our food. and THIS was the bane of our existence ..the thorn of our flesh .. so in turn, we invented creative ways to respond....

FAMOUS CLARIZA TABLE TECHNIQUES

1. "JUST CHILL." chili from tlc was one of jills nicknames back then..and this is what we did at the table when we didn't want to eat anymore and our parents said we couldn't leave til we finished ... in our own little distorted way ..we thought that if we just waited long enough .. they'd forget we had to finish our food, receive a magical dose of compassino for their poor kids and let us gO!!!!


this technique never worked.

2. THE SPREAD AND SMILE. haha .. this is where we only had rice left on the plate sooo ..we perfectly spread out the rice left on our plate. hahaha .. not too much on any side of the plate but evenly enough so it appeared as if it was just scraps left. haha we were EXPERTS at this .. and YES! we did this without any previous training or teaching from each other ..it was as if ..it was in us..included in the fabric of our design ... PRAISE GOD! because this, worked wonders..

but not all the time .. so the times we just had too much rice left .. we had to pull out the acting skills.

3. COUGH AND GO. heheheh ... this was when (omgoodness i can't believe we did this) .. me and jill would stuff our faces with rice. like foreal. just put hella rice in our mouths and then cause ourselves to gag and "cough" up what we "couldn't" swallow. and the trick was to cough just enough for the parents to acknowledge that we couldn't swallow our food but not too much to make the parents come and take care of you. after the coughing, we'd then proceed to spit it out into a napkin, wait til their attention wasn't on us .. and run to the bathroom to drop it into the toilet. hahaha .. hella slick right!?! hahaha ... this was the hardest operation of them all ..but it got rid of the rice fast and efficiently plus a lil sympathy from our parents .. hahahah

i remember hiting the beaded curtain at jills old house trying not to trip or fall with all that rice .. oh the things we did! (now i can't stop eatting! haha) i even think one time the toilet didn't work or we forgot to flush and my cousin dan saw .. he threatened to tell on us .. but thankfully he didn't .. what a kind soul that man..haha

and so it was .. our techniques at the table helped us each and every time .. and recently we were all laughing about it (the cousins) and the parents over heard us ..and surprisingly they didn't even know! haha .. thats JUST HOW WE DO! haha...

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haha .. well dont know how to end one of these blog things .. but maybe with a question? what if we compiled all our secrets @ the dinner table and sold it as a book to becoming parents? eh? eh? haha .. do yall have any to share?? does anyone even read this? haha .. well we'll see ..

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til more stories invade my fingers ..

God bless .. ingat ..
`bienOwie