My Suds Story

There is something so utterly satisfying about doing the laundry.

I am normally not a lover of housework, and I only do the cleaning because it needs to get done. And because if there's something I hate more than housework, its dust. And dust bunnies. Ask Woogie, he has had the honor of clearing the room of dust bunnies during some of my cleaning sprees.

But talk to me about doing the laundry, and I can go on for hours.

Step One: Sort.

Sorting the whites from the medium-coloreds, and the medium-coloreds from the darks is a science in itself. Does the white shirt with the broad blue and red stripes count as a medium-colored item? Do Woog's mustard pair of shorts generously splattered with muddy chocolate milk stains count as a dark? What about Eli's collection of white cotton-weave snot cloths which on any given day collect a Jackon Pollock gallery of food stains and various body fluids? Much of the organizational skills I have are inspired from the sorting floor of our “backyard” laundry area.

Apart from unzipping the zippers and unbuttoning the bottons, turning out pockets are my particular favorite. I have a motley collection of coins, hair clips, candy wrappers, wads of tissue and various receipts. Once, even a dead spider. Unearthing this treasure trove twice a week brings out the pirate in me. Sometimes I am even secretively possessive of what I find, like the five hundred peso bill Atch left in the front pocket of one of his pants. Who knows one day I just might tell him. Maybe.

Step Two: Soak.

I prepare three huge soak tubs with water, throw in scoops of baking soda and half a packet of laundry powder. Here, my precious loads of laundry marinate, loosening the hold of dirt and grime, sweat and stains, while I am at the office, in a frenzy of anticipation to get home.

Step Three: First Wash.

While the first round of the wash churns in the disinfectant laundry bleach, I stare at the whirling vortex of the whirlpool, hypnotized. I am relaxed and unlimbered by the very swish and swirl of clothing, confident in my choice of laundry bleach (“guranteed to remove 99% of germs”), and at home in the acrid fumes of chlorine. In the whirr of the washing machine, I drift in daydreams, and the inklings of ideas are born.

My workshop

Step Four: Soap.

An end to the first wash comes and I lift the heavy water-logged pieces of clothing to change the water. This time around, the garments circle and brush against each other in a rink of soap bubbles (“whiter whites, brighter coloreds”). It is at this stage when I lift Atch's white t-shirts and sprinkle oxalic acid on the yellow deodorant stains at the armholes. I attack them with an old toothbrush, scrub against them with my water-wrinkled hands. “Why do your armpits get that way, 'Atch?” I asked him once. He only shrugged and reminded me to rub harder on the right-hand side, “I get darker stains there, “ he said. He is fortunate I am such a stickler for immaculate laundry.

Step Five: Rinse.

I unload the whites and manually rinse them through three tubs of water while the next load rolls around in the soapy wash. I could do the rinse cycle in the washing machine, of course, because denims are heavy and sheets even more so. But the sheer brute labor of manual rinsing is heaven-sent to flabby office-bound biceps and pecs (inhale while lifting one end of a blanket, exhale while slamming it down into the water. Repeat.). You can do squats while rinsing pants and bedsheets, too (stand while lifting clothing, squat down to bring item back into the tub. Repeat.). Great for glutes and quads. For best results, do manual rinsing when you're pissed at your husband. Beats taebo-ing a punching bag at the gym any time.

Step Six: Condition.

Finally, when all the suds have run out, a final rinse with fabric conditioner fills the air with sunshine fresh. Often, at this stage, one or another of the kids will stop by for a chat, a hug or a kiss. Sometimes the husband will drop by with a mug of coffee, or to grope and squeeze. Funny how fabric conditioner is right up there with the top comfort scents that always remind one of home. Or sex.

Step Seven. Hang Up To Dry.

The air is redolent with the scent of Downy, and the tropical sun beats heavily down on the clotheslines, sending smoky mists of evaporation up into the atmosphere. I take a step back and sigh in tired achy satisfaction: one line of whites, one line of coloreds, one of darks, and the rest decked out in sheets. All neatly waving in the wind.

I could hire my sister-in-law's laundrywoman, of course. Save me some time and the inevitable rough hands. But I get off on doing the laundry, just as 'Atch gets his kicks from washing the car spotless. And also because I am such a cheapskate. Let’s not forget that.

But most importantly, no one does this better than I do. No one.

In the afternoon, when the fresh clean and fragrant results are taken down, they are folded neatly into a hamper, ready for pressing.

But that is another story.

Running Late

Delays are a thing of my life. I remember being part of a team of fellow tardy students who scrubbed, swept and dusted the faculty room at my old high school. Our punishment for being perenially late for the 7 a.m. bell. I learned a thing or two about housework, though. Something no one taught me at home.

In college, I was housed in an in-campus dorm, about a couple of minutes away from most of the classrooms. I was late everyday, too. My thesis was late, and as a consequence, so was my graduation. It was the same for every job I held down, and I got by on the skin of my teeth. Must have very pretty teeth. Most people seemed disarmed by my smile (except Atch, he has bigger teeth than I do).

Life started to change after marriage, what with a seargent-at-arms of a husband harrying me through the day. Thanks to him, I cut a bathroom record for 3 minutes per bath. Shampooing and moisturizing included. I can sweep and wax the upstairs floors in 30 minutes flat, with him hollering nonstop for me to come down to breakfast. I am now an hour early for work each day, with enough time for me to put on my make-up, de-hair my armpits and legs, and get way way ahead of my workday schedule. He's been able to teach me some things in my old age, this man of mine.

But delays are making their intrusive way into the fabric of my existence once more, like an addiction worming its way back into my skin. Only it's not my skin I'm bothered about, its Eli's. I worry about the state of his development. That is, his lack of it.

Not that there's anything the matter with his physical growth, he's as sturdy as an ox and has a belly pushing out in front of him like Friar Tuck after downing a barrel of mead. His meaty arms often choke the breath from my stringy neck, and if the ceiling thunders overhead, one can be sure he is trotting on the floorboards upstairs on a quest for something or other.

Catching rain from the downspout

But still I worry. Eli is pushing two and has yet to conquer the language barrier. He says “up”, and “go”, and “car”, “piss” (please) and “ta-ta” (thank you), “kich” (kiss) and “ugg” (hug) and “ba-ba” (bye-bye), but that's about all there is to it. To get something he wants, he'll point to the object of desire and go “Mmmm?!”.

Parenting websites tell me that all babies develop at their own pace. But Woog's mouth was running on lispy sentence fragments at this stage. I know I shouldn't compare (Bad mommy! Bad mommy!) .... but still.

Also, for no reason in particular, he's developed a great dislike for his potty, and nothing we do will make him sit on it willingly. He's on XXL diapies now, but with the size of his butt and the volume of his expulsions, we'll have to think about getting him size small adult diapers soon.

Gathering leaves

Most toddlers his age are sleeping through the night. Not this little monster. In the dead of sleep, when we are well into r.e.m., he climbs into our bed: “Up!” he explains unapollogetically, “up!”, and he knees us on the belly and elbows us on the nose, until he has found that precise position between us, with his head against my ribs and his feet on his father's face. At around this time, we are groaning and cursing, while “Up...” he sighs blissfully, falling back to sleep.

We have tried plunking him back on his bed, he simply finds his way back up again. Rather than go through this exhausting repetitive cycle for the rest of the night, our sleep deprived selves have decided to let him be. Surely, he'll grow out of it. It's a decade or so before he becomes a teenager. Not too long a wait.

Too, at 20 months, his temper tantrums have reared their ugly head. Taking just one wheel off its axles from his offroader jeep isn't enough for him, no. He has to remove the remaining three tires, as well. And it's all our fault that the vehicle is a little too well made for him to discombobulate. So SCREAM, SCREECH, YOWL, SHRIEK you! Same goes for the square-block-that-won't-fit-into-the-round-hole puzzle box, or the plastic hanger that won't hook into the closet handle. HOOOWWWL!

What do you do about a toddler who insists on being carried, all 500 tons of him, until he warms up to the new day, or leaves whatever cobwebs he has woken up with behind? Or an almost two-year-old who shies away from new people, is terrified by the kiddie rides at the mall, and hollers blue murder at the modiste trying to take his barong measurement for his aunt's impending wedding (assuming he'd consent to wear one)?

Hiding inside Mom's closet

Except that at 5 A.M., before you even want to think of getting up, he is draping his heavy barrel chest on you, asking for his “kich”, and wetly smothering your face with a combination of “ooombwah's” and the new smacking sounds he has just recently learned to make. And after you'd make some sleepy grunt of acknowledgement, he'd press the point of his chin on your cheek or arm or shoulder, and dig and wiggle down until you are wide awake. Then and only then, will he demand an “ugg”, and give you one of his own without even waiting for your reply.

“Who's my sweet little fat little gwapo little baby?” I'd ask him. “'Ah-jah!” (Elijah) he'd squeal, tapping his chest proudly.

Delays? Was I talking about delays?

Love Ya, Hate Ya, Love Ya, Hate Ya...

My husband goes around telling people that writing is my hobby. It is. Well, it was. Now that I write part-time to earn some extra cash, it has become a giant millstone around this rather puny neck. Whoever said they didn't think of their job as work because they loved what they were doing was up to their own neck in mushi.

I love the money, though. There's that, at least.

A couple of years before this, I was surfing write-to-ean websites looking for a tried-and-true-this-is-not-a-scam writing opportunity Last year I found two, and now I am neck deep trying to keep everything afloat: my day job, my family, my household chores, this little sideline.

I would have said before then that I loooved to write. My blog attested to this fact, and I filled pages upon pages of this and that. I wrote my husband's job applications, my supervisor's memos, my colleague's school papers (he's graduated, thank God!), my mother's office correspondence. Now, I am hard pressed to even document my own sons' lives.

But the money comes in, and that makes it ok, right?

I am way way way behind. I have missed several movies I've wanted to see. The downstairs blinds have gone a week without a dusting. I have cheated on my obsessive scrubbing of the toilet bowl. I may have added a couple of millenia to my sleep debt, as well.

Still.

Doing what I believe I do reasonably well has its perks. Apart from the moolah, that is. I may have had to conform the way I write to the client's standards, or ruthlessly edit an article to the barest 200 words (Oh paaaain!....oh agon-neee!), or type at harrassed red-eyed caffeine-loaded speed to meet a deadline. But the research I've been required to do for the pieces I've submitted have been toothpicks to prop up these weary eyelids.

I now know how I can “cheat” U.K. banks from levying bank charges. I am conversant on the properties of several Ayurvedic herbal cures. I will never willingly expose my skn to the sun again for fear of acquiring solar keratoses. Ask me about Medroxyprogesterone, Colorectal cancer, and Oral chelation, or about content management, Peritonitis and online speed dating. I can, in actual fact, hire myself out as a property manager in the state of Illinois. I know everything I need to know, truly. All I need now is a license. Hire me?

*Sigh*

I'm going to check my two email accounts in a while, and I know I will get off on the thrill of the feeling of dread that the presence of writing assignments glaring at me from my inbox gives. Am I making any sense? I love it, but I hate it.

I am a candidate for a bipolar disorder assessment, truly I am.

I have a goal, though: my sons are going to have their long delayed, long overdue kickass birthday party in two months. With a clown. And magic tricks. And fireworks (if Atch will let me). Ha. Send those assignments in, dusty blinds and late blog entries and scummy toilet bowl be damned.

Right Here Right Now

It is a Saturday afternoon and I am busy on the computer. The graphics program I am working on is defying my powers of manipulation and I sigh in impatience as I wait for each picture to load.

I have finally found a sliver of time to work on something that has been much delayed and much put aside: updating my children's pictures for printing at the developers. While Woog has three full albums dating from a much simpler, less hectic time in our lives, Eli has not a single printed photo to his name. My poor deprived second-born.

Outside, the late afternoon sun is preparing to set and the muggy air squeezes itself like heavy syrup through the blinds. The boys are in the courtyard, slathered within an inch of their lives in insect repellent, making the most of the remaining daylight like all little boys under the age of 60.

I can see that Woog is finally getting up the gumption to give his bike another try. His Tatay has removed the training wheels almost a year ago, and after one nasty near-spill, my nervous balance-challenged son declared himself officially unfit for his scarily unfamiliar two-wheeled contraption.

Apparently the humidity is starting to affect his brain somewhat, for he is enthusiastically mounting upon his monster, giving it another chance. My breath hitches in my throat the first few times he tilts alarmingly from side to side, but the last several months have seen his spindly legs lengthen and his reflexes improve. He jumps away agilely just as the bike falls on its side. After this happens several times in succession, I relax and return to my work.

I am carefully editing an image when Woog shrieks, “Mom! Mom! Look at me!” causing my mouse hand to jerk and sharpen a photo all the way to white noise land. After a quick irate glance out the window to reassure myself that his knees are still completely covered in unbroken skin, I call out a cursory “Yes, Woog, ok.” before returning to a shot of him and Eli wrestling with each other on the big bed.

He keeps up a loud and steady litany of “Mom! Mom! Look!” until the sound fades away in my ears like so much background noise, and I lose myself in billions of pixels and RGB adjustments.

A little while later, he decides to pump up the volume: “Mom! Mom! Look! Look!” I sigh in resignation and prepare to tell him off for bothering me. But as I stand up to do so, I catch a gloriously heartbreaking sight of Woog pedalling a few unsteady meters before losing his balance, jumping off and landing like a cat. Eli is cheering him on, laughing and skipping dangerously close to his wobbly bicycle-bound brother.

Oh, Woog.

I run outside just in time to see him do it again. “Mom!” He laughs excitedly. “I know how to ride my bike!” And the wide wonderful smile on his sweaty face is an accomplishment in itself.

He shows me, again and again and again. And I clap my hands each time he manages to stay on a little longer. Here is a milestone happening right before my eyes, and I am a nincompoop for nearly missing it.

“Great job, Woog!” I salute my budding cyclist. He is tired and streaks of dirt are smeared where he has swiped away at his sweaty skin. But he is insanely happy, and I am intensely proud.

Collating my children's pictures suddenly seems so trivial. And I feel the urge to hit myself on the head for placing more importance on preserving memories over a more vivid present happening right in front of my nose.

Lord, may I remember this lesson each time. Amen.