Not all of us parents are comfortable tutoring our kids. I remember the time I spent tutoring my kids. While they were away at school, I was making reviewers for them to answer as part of their daily practice. Math was one of the hardest to make reviewers for. Making Math problems took twice as long because I needed to think up different Math problems, then solve them to make sure the solutions would actually work. It was exhausting work!
Last June 30, 2021, President Duterte signed Republic Act (R.A.) No. 11569, extending the estate tax amnesty (RA 11213) by another two years till June 14, 2023. The news was received with a collective sigh of relief. Many who had been working on their amnesty application but were affected by the pandemic were given a new opportunity to do so.
The original deadline based on the Tax Amnesty Act (RA 11213) was June 14, 2021 but the pandemic resulted in a low turnout of people availing of the amnesty. Rep. Joey Salceda, chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, noted that out of the targeted PhP 6 billion in taxes from the amnesty program, only about PhP 1.362 billion was collected.
I’m already a mom of 4 adults who are almost independent of us. I’ve also worked on corporate strategies in the past. But guess what. I never thought of combining mommyhood with visioning and coming up with a statement on life for myself. I guess I really never had the time back then, what with 4 kids to raise.
I can relate when young Moms share that their waking hours are for the kids, the hubby and the home and very little of it is for themselves. In fact, as a young Mom then, I learned to sleep late because that was my ME time (a book, a facial, watching a rerun of the night’s news on TV, — when all the kids, including the hubby, were already asleep.
I had been thinking for a while about how to usher in 2015. I wanted something that would make next year even more meaningful and have more purpose. And I wanted it to be centered on gratitude.
Isn’t that so true? We wrack our brains sometimes thinking of what to be thankful for and yet if we really became aware and mindful, we’d see the little blessings that come our way each day.
We spent Christmas Day 2011 in the hospital with our youngest son. The ordeal started out with excruciating pain. When M pointed out where his pain was coming from, I had a bad feeling it would be kidney stones. I knew. Because years ago, I also had the same pain. In that same area. I felt so helpless seeing him writhing in pain in the emergency room, knowing exactly what kind of pain he was going through. I wouldn’t wish it on my enemy.
Hospital personnel who attended to my son often had the same reaction upon finding out he was just a teen. “Ang bata pa!” (“So young!”). And I would agree because during my time, only people past their prime and approaching senior years were diagnosed with kidney stones.
To make the long story short, M had a stent placed inside him for months. His physical activities in school were cut down to barest minimum. We had to finish his graduation and summer classes before going for a procedure called Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy (ESWL) which used sound waves to blast the stones lodged in his ureter. A month later, he underwent another ESWL – this time to target the 2 stones in his kidney.
