It's Atay Balun-balunan! And an Afternoon with Dr. Dockers.

Slap me if I'm dreaming: "The Cat Painter" won a National Book Award in a tie with Gilda Cordero-Fernando's "The Bad Kings" today. I got a flood of messages on my phone starting at around six in the evening and up until half past nine. And where was I? In the middle of Edsa with my mother, driving home from a doctor's appointment. I wasn't expecting to win, so I skipped the ceremonies and went to have my ankle checked instead (Doc Nikki, if you're reading this, it is not true that I am pregnant with Jon Heder's baby). I could kick myself for not having any faith in my book, but my regrets are not quite as deep as they should be. If I had cancelled my appointment at the clinic, then I would have missed having my foot rotated by the antithesis of Dr. Acidwash -- Dr. Levi's Dockers. No Nora Aunor mole this time, no snide remarks about staying away from the mall, and no leery smiles that would make your skin crawl. Holy cow, this doctor was actually good-looking, and too bad I'm not enough of a lunatic to sprain my other ankle just to have a reason to go back there. Dr. Dockers gets full pogi points for explaining to me, in laymans's terms, what happens when one has a sprain, and illustrated the arrangement of my ligaments with the use of interlaced fingers. I listened like a good patient, while simultaneously checking whether he was wearing a ring. Looked and saw none, but then I remembered that my mother was sitting right outside the door, so I mentally slapped my inner bimbo and decided to rein her in before she made me do anything pervy with my toes. Ugh! My toes! Good thing I had the good sense to attack them with a foot brush this morning or it would have been a nightmare when Dr. D asked to see both my feet and found them looking like I had just been to a rice field with a carabao. I was horrified to see that my toes were purple from the airconditioning, but at least they were clean.
Not a bad day at all, even if I didn't get to shuffle up to center stage to accept my award. Not every day you get to be named a National Book Awardee in absentia AND get to play footsie with a cute ortho...free of charge.