OK! it's way past Christmas...so much to say. first of all,

BELATED MERRY CHRISTMAS!

i've holed myself in as of late (again)...kinda family time n stuff. the only person i actually spoke to since i've been here was cathy. other than that, i prolly talked to some ppl online...but the only ppl i remember talkin to are hija and thara. all good!

so anyways, let's talk about xmas. quite eventful. started out good, some bad shit in the middle, then ended out pretty well.

well this year, instead of just spending it with our family, we went to the OTHER family. the "in-laws"...exciting, isn't it??? we spent all of christmas eve with the in-laws! we got there around 6, ate some dinner (there was some GOOOOOOOOOOD-ASS meat there...i ferget what kind it was, but it was so tender and nice n pink in the middle...), watched spiderman twice (the second time with the pop-ups, but we only got like halfway through), then we took MAD pics. i was goin blind from all the flashes...our family, their family, just the kids, just the parents...all SORTS of combinations. man. i'm surprised we didn't take pictures of my sisters with justin's parents and justin and kuya dave with my parents. hahaha. that would be funny. it was about 9ish, and i thought we'd be leaving cuz they go to 10pm mass, and we usually go to midnight mass (we like to open gifts when we come back). dude, i had no clue wut was goin on, cuz we ended up goin to mass with them. oh, i didn't tell you did i! anita was there. she went to church with us to. odd, but hey that's cool. she's a good kid. anyways, we went to st. matthews and it's a pretty church...not a very long aisle, but we'll just walk really slow down it or something...hahaha. so i saw some cuties, saw my ading nate, sang some songs, got some communion (no wine ;)), and all that church hey God happy birthday Jesus stuff. it was nice, but as my sisters agree, we all missed goin to midnight mass. we thought we'd be able to make it, but we hung out at the estacio's fer a lil while longer. oh yeah...i had some sparkling wine (that justin offered me, so me justin and anita did a lil xmas toast) and i figured it'd be ok. it's not like i thought we were at wine night and drank half a bottle...i had like a third of those red plastic cups. and i figured, well i'm not gonna lie to my parents on christmas about drinking a lil wine. so i sit down and ask my dad if he wanted a sip...and he's like no it's ok. and then i saw claudine drinking, who was sitting by us, and i asked her wut she was drinking, and she said it was fruit punch and i said ohok. and my dad says to me, aren't you drinking fruit punch? and said no...and he said so you're drinking the wine? and i said yeah. then HE says, who gave you permission to drink wine? dammit. i think to myself, what the fuck?!?!? is he joking??? so i said, we'll i'm 22 and it's not alot. i still couldn't tell if he was joking. but he didn't really look at me after that. then i just leave to sit with justin and anita again. i can never win.

so we left at around 12, got home at around 12:45, picked up the presents and headed over next door to my cuzin's place.

fun times! as usual, we all get into one room and one of the titos starts handin out the gifts. this year, the gifts took up all the space under the tree, and started infultrating another room...:). only because there's 3 kids and a new baby...so they get the majority of the gifts. so when all the gifts and envelopes are handed out, we open our stuff all at once. it's tons of fun :D. i got some good stuff (a lotta "woohoo's!" from me). and after that, the cuzins played the boardgame cranium, which is actually pretty fun! we played that fer a while...and a couple times...then there was eating again, especially of the milk n cookies. well anyways, i slept at like 7am or something...there were only like 3 of us up at this point, playin trivia of pursuit 2002, and fer once i was actually winning! whoa.

i wake up at like 12:30ish, to find that my sister, christine, had a near-death experience. go to her page for the details. to make a long story short, my cuzins and her were all laughing. while she was laughing, she was swallowing a piece of her cookie and started chokin on it. then my cuzin the nurse (maui) gave her the heimlich and she threw up a lil on the hardwood floor. AND, it was maui's fault they were all laughing, too. so maui actually gave her 3 things for christmas, a near-death experience, a second chance at life, and a sweater from marshall field's. anyways, i start eating some brunch then go fer a lil desert. when i go to the desert table, lo and behold, there's baklavah. it's one of my most FAVORITE deserts. anyways, one of the lolas and a tita are in the room with me as i pick out pieces. i pick two, and i start thinkin about a 3rd...as i do, the lola says something in tagalog. now some of you know that i don't understand tagalog all that well, but when they talk about you, you just get this moment of clarity and you just KNOW wut they're sayin. she pretty much say don't take anymore because your fat already. you can imagine the pretty colorful words swirling in my head. after that, all i did was turn around and say, 'THANKS. THANKS ALOT.' in a very angry pissed off tone. as i left the room, i heard the tita say in tagalog, something to the effect of you should say that cuz you'll hurt her feelings. well a lil too late for that. to make it worse, i was pmsing. GREAT. so i had no control over my tearducts. me and the cuzins were playin cranium again, and i had to leave the room like 5 times. i even went back to my house to wash my face and get a hold of myself. man. that was the lowest point of my christmas. something bad always seems to happen. after that, things got a lil better, but not back to the level where it was before. playing games with the cuzins help. then me n christine watched amelie (cuz claudine was sleeping).

well, bein here isn't that great. home gets me down, not only because of the nagging, but also because of my mommy. not that she's bad, it's just that it hurts to see her sometimes...so some of you know that my mommy had breast cancer my freshman year...and now she has lung cancer. so she talks in this little voice, she's lost most of her hair, she can't do strenuous things like grip a pair of scissors and stuff...me and my sisters have to a lot of stuff for her, and it's not that i mind doing it...it's just that it hurts...knowing that your mom would but can't, and you know why she can't and you wonder if she'll ever be able to do things again. i have a vivid imagination, and the places it takes me or the events that unfold scare me sometimes. it can be a blessing to not have an imagination...

but i'm thankful for my sisters. and my friends. alot of you have gotten me through the day and night. i dunno wut i'd do without you.

yesterday me n christine went shopping at lincolnwood. man, ghetto. frickin teeny boppers in their little 'crews' or 'gangs' or wutever u call 'em. eh. but i made use of some express cards and bought myself some clothes! next, shoes and more clothes! yeahyeahyeah! :) oh yeah, claudine left for vegas with dan...she'll be back on the 29th.

today was a lazy day. :D but tonight...hopefully that'll get my spirits up. goin to Minx. if it's good, i'll write about it.

Whoa. so i'm in shock.

k, i can honestly say that i never really got good grades here at the uofi. you know, i just get by...sometimes barely. i think in my time here (about 8 semesters now), i've only gotten about 2 A's. one was because the teacher thought she fucked up alot cuz it was her first time teaching, and due to her mistakes (and due to her illness, causing us to have a a substitute teacher about half the semester who taught way too differently), she thought we all deserved A's. she practically hand-fed us our exams. the other time was this past summer...and usually summer session one classes are really hard here, but man, i got lucky. she was an awesome teacher that didn't believe in making things hard for us. awesome.

but now...shit man. i think i'm getting 2 A's this semester. this is freakin me out. it's freakin me out so much that i can't concentrate on doing my paper that i have to hand in real soon. i'm starting not to care about it. dude, that's half of my classes. and these weren't TOO easy. i seriously thought i was gonna get B+'s at the most, and that woulda been a miracle. fricken unbelievable. let's just see what my parent's say tho...cuz i'm not gettin all A's fer sure. and that'll prolly be the topic of conversation...'What is this C??? Why isn't it an A like those???' ughhhhhhh. wutever. they can't spoil my parade...too much ;).

ok...so here it is. my grand opening for you...i didn't get to talk at senior dinner, so here is my piece for you to all here (without me crying).

the first time i met...

pj: ok, he said i pulled him over to the PSA booth during quad day his 1st year, but i don't remember that. but this is what i DO remember: i'm at the cube for officer hours, and this guy comes up to me while i'm inside the cube. he was skinny and young lookin with braces...so i thought to myself, aw wut a cute lil freshman. he asked me where he can sign up for football...and somehow i ended up askin him his name...and i can't remember too well, but i think the first time he told me his name was penny, but i could be wrong. then i asked him, oh are you a freshman? oops. he's was like, um no, i'm a junior. that's when he said that he transfered from COD. after that, i prolly asked him if he wanted to do fashion show or something, but i can't remember ;)

romel: DANG. i was in math 116 cuz i did shitty on the placement tests cuz i was studying calculus and forgot my trig. and i didn't wanna take 116 in the summer before freshman year. it was in roger adams lab, across the street from noyes. the lecture hall had only entrance way, i would always get there early cuz i was paranoid and didn't like goin to class late. the door was at the side of the lecture room, in the front, so when you walked in, all of the seats were to your right. i would always sit closest to the door. romel would always sit in the far section of seats. so i'd be sitting in the first section, mindin my own business, watchin people walk by to their seats...and this GUY walks in all pouty. then he turns his head and looks at me as he walks by...you know that look...with his eyes kinda squinting...the look that says "who the fuck do you think you are?" MAYN! i prolly had this look of disgusted shock, thinkin to myself, "wut the FUCK is HIS problem?" i was just sittin there waitin for CLASS to start. GEEEEEEEEEZ romelama.

jeff dayson: hahaha...he hung out with dave camit, dinna yap and roshni thakker. the first time they went to a psa event, him and dave were all ghettofied. i felt really bad cuz everyone called them the "uic boys". i didn't really talk to him until i started hangin out and studyin at weston (weston love!)...and he's SUCH a sweetheart :)

karen padua: the first time i met this girl...i saw the x-files movie with my sister and her boyfriend (now fiance ;)) at the theater by glendale heights...i don't remember wut it was...i think it starts with an m or something...anyways, karen was working there and sold us the tickets. and dave recognized her as one of justin's friends (so i met her before i met justin...hehehe) and i think karen recognized dave too. so we watched the movie, but the projector kinda messed up in the beginning, so when we saw karen on our way out, she was like, "gimme your tickets and i can get your money back...i'll just tell them that you were unhappy that the movie projector wasn't fixed quick enough." well that wasn't word for word, but essentially she got our money back. :)

mikey caamic: :) he was one of the first new people i met on campus. it was a sunday...me and my cousin marlon, who was also a frosh at the time, were walkin to the union for the all-nighter thing. we both lived at allen hall, so when u walk to the union, u have to walk all the way up the quad by flb then davenport and so on...so when we were in one of the x cross walks, we saw a big group of about 7 or 8 filipinos walkin towards us (jason, leslie, mikey, mike, chris, nut, eric,...?) ...and i was gettin kinda nervous...but it so happened that marlon knew mikey through one of his friends that went to lane tech. i wondered if he was a fob the first time we met...soorie mikey! so we went to go to a lil party at bromley (thrown by laarni, marlene, vivian and their other roomie). but some of us were hesitant on goin since we didn't know them, so we hung out in eric's single at bromley...which leads me to my next story...

justin estacio: rewind! my sister and dave estacio had been goin out for about a year before my freshman year. during that time, i had been to his house at least SIX times with my sister, and i never even met justin...well, i think i saw him leave the house once...he was always out galabanting galabanting. ;) so back to my other story...me, marlon, nut and eric were all in eric's room at bromley while leslie, mikey, chris, mike and jason were in marlene's room. chris comes back to eric's room and tried to get us to go to the party and he was describing new people...'yeah you guys should come! there's this really cool guy over there named justin over there, he's fuckin hilarious!' ...me and marlon look at each other... me: "do you know his last name? is it estacio?" chris: "man i dunno...maybe..." so we checked out the party, and lo and behold, it's him. man, and when i saw him, i was like, "hi i'm fatima! my sister is goin out with your brother! nice to meet you!" hahahaha...


so, it's hard. it's been really hard. everyone says "don't cry, don't be sad, you know you'll see them again and hang out." but that's not the point. that's not the point at all. see, i have abandonment issues. i'm the youngest of 3 girls, and i was never really alone...the first time i was alone was when my sisters were both at college for a year. and that was really hard for me. see, the 4.5ers are leaving me behind. and last year, they left me behind. now there is only 3 of us left. and you might think to yourself, "well you still have us...what are we, chopped liver???" but it's not like that. i love you guys. you make me happy...i'm grateful that you are here with me and keeping me company. but you see, these are the first people i met in my college career that didn't think of me as claudine and christine's little sister. they were my own...they ARE my own. to them, christine and claudine are referred to as FATIMA's sisters. i grew up with them for FOUR years. that may seem like a short time...and it is...but here when you're tucked away far from home, these people are all you have to keep you sane, or make you insane. and now they're leaving me. my brothers and sisters are leaving me again. and i know i'll see them again, i know that. but they aren't gonna be down the street for me to play with or hang out with...i can't walk over to their places and hang out till the wee hours of the morning and pass out. for a semester i'll be without the people i first knew, that i grew up, that i had all my first memories of this campus with. and that's why i cried. i hope you understand...just let me cry. i don't do it often enough.

to the class of '98 - i love you guys. and i'll see you again. but i'll just miss you for now, ok?

i am soooooo procrastinating. i have a final at 1pm tomorrow and i'm doing this. dang wut is wrong with me??? hehehe... ...mayn! my study buddies are passin out on me. geez. all good. we all need a lil sleep, right? even though there's no such thing as sleep in college! well, except on the weekends ;) ... k...it's not like anybody is gonna read this until i'm satisfied with how my blog looks. eh. it'll be alright...in about 4 days, i can relax...then i have to do a 10 page paper, but that's besides the point.

so i've crumbled. i gave in. i have a blog now. i figured, well, soon, i won't have an outlet for my thoughts that everyone can see...like pico .plan. oh telnet...so i'll be using this now. i was gonna get a subprofile for aim, but eh. this would be better...accessible to all at all times :). ok, i should go and study for finals now...GREAT.