God Bless Our Home

The new house looks good and spotless. After a last few hour mad dash to clean up (aka “hide”) carpentry equipment, loose boxes and stray furniture, we managed to have the townhouse in tip top shape for the house blessing today. (Just don’t open any of the closets, please).

Presiding over the event was the kind priest who had been receiving all our clothes donations at the church: Father Ferdie Santos. We never recognized him as a priest mainly because he looked like he was about 15 years old and was always wearing civilian clothes. The blessing began outside the house, all family members were asked to hold lit candles and the priest sang And the blessing went off without a hitch. He said a few prayers, we responded accordingly that all activities in the house were to be done in the name of God, as witnessed by God. During the entire blessing, my two year old was playing with fire (literally) as he also demanded to hold a small candle. My heart nearly skipped a beat when out of the corner of my eye, he almost lit my brother’s hair on fire. But it was okey, he was under the watchful eye of Oma.

On the menu: Hungarian sausage and salami from Ricky, pancit bihon, lumpiang shanghai and barbecue, all courtesy of Three Sisters and blueberry cheesecake and cupcakes, courtesy of my sister, Rachel. Everything was good.

The only diversion of the day was when we discovered that two family members were sorely missed. Murphy, our black dachshund, had somehow managed to find us. We moved two blocks away and were keeping the dogs at the old house for protection until we install a proper doggie door at the new house. But Murphy managed to find the new home, using only her instinct and wit. This all baffled us because she had never been to the new house before. She was like Benjie! Meanwhile, Malcolm the brown dachshund, made a suicide attempt for attention by blocking one of the cars. The result was another mad dash to the veterinarian to be treated for flesh wounds. Up until then, we realized our townhouse would not be complete without their presence. Tomorrow, a doggie door will be installed and after a week the dogs will join us in our new hour. But until after a medicated flea bath!

Another univited guest came as well: the yellow butterfly. In fact, we already named her Lola. Whether that's Lola (like from Her name is Lola, she was a showgirl) or my Lola Barbara, we leave that up to you. But right now as I'm writing this, she is now perched outside the old white grills we had transferred to the house. Hi Lola.

Paparazzi

I watched a movie alone for the first time in a long time. It was directed by Mel Gibson and featured some good-looking unknown. Here’s a synopsis. One good actor gets into a Dianaeque accident, after being chansed down by 4 nasty evil paparazzi photographers. The accident results in a spleenless wife and a his 5 year old son in a coma (I know, I know, it’s serious) Eventually, he gets revenge he craves and the justice he deserves. The entire movie reeked of bad acting, campy scriptlines and celebrity cameos. Really, Mel. You shouldn’t have.

More Bubbles Please

“You’ve changed. You're less Bubbly.” Words told to me by a friend recently, whom I hadn’t seen in about two years. Sad thing, she’s probably right. Funny thing, I never thought I was bubbly, only bouncy and sarcastic.

My Rock Star Hair

In yet another effort to relax and unwind, I went to the beauty parlor with my sister for a few hours. My regular stylist had moved to the Megamall branch, which was known to be rowdy, chaotic and loud. I had followed him there several times before but the crowd always put me off. So instead, I decide to try a new stylist at the Podium brand. I ended up looking like that chick from the 80s glam rock band Heart. I'm not a happy camper. My hair is simply too thick and wavy to carry off the thinned out layered look. I’ve been wearing my hair in a ponytail every since. I need to get myself to my old stylist to rectify the situation (ouch, go even shorter) or have my hair chemically relaxed. The irony of it, get your hair relaxed to get totally relaxed about my hair!

The Human Pincushion

After months of complaining of rashes, asthma and insomnia, I finally found some time-out to visit my favorite doctor / accupuncturist at Healthdev in Ateneo. I like going to an accupuncturist because it's like a one-stop check-up. Otherwise, I'd have to go to a dermatologist, a psychiatrist and a lung doctor.

This visit was a bit different. I was diagnosed with both Kidney YIN and YANG deficiency. Then, doctor proceeded to put in a total of sixteen needles: (2) in my head, (2) in my neck (4) in my back (2) in my hands (2) in my arms and (4) in my ankles. When I got home, I did some research and found this definition of my prognosis.

"Kidney Yang is the foundation of body Yang Qi. It is responsible for warming, maintenance of the organs and tissues as well as organ function. Because both yin and yang are housed in the kidney, the ancient OM therapists considered it the “house of water and fire”.

Essence is yin known as Kidney yin and kidney Qi is kidney Yang. If kidney yin is deficient, it fails to harmonize yang and becomes excess. Symptoms are 5-palm heat (heat in the chest, palms and soles) afternoon fever, night sweats, and seminal emission in males and sexual dysfunction in females. When kidney Yang is deficient, symptoms include, coldness, pain in the lumbar region and knees, cold limbs, lack of spirit, impotence in men and frigidity and infertility in woman. If kidney deficiency is associated with cold it is known as deficiency of the kidney essence or Qi."

What does this mean? That's I'm cold, frigid and tired? I just hope I get better soon. I'm running on empty now. Now I'm in serach of Korean ginseng herbs. To be drunk every morning with hot water, no sugar. Hmm..I'm not excited about that.

Landslide

The song in my head.

exerpt from "Landslide" by Dixie Chicks

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Well, I’ve been afraid of changing cause i’ve
Built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m getting older, too

Disclaimer: I'm currently loving the Dixie Chicks version, not the one by Fleetwood Mac or Smashing Pumpkins. Am I going country? Yikes, perhaps I am getting older.

Who Lives in a Pineapple Under the Sea?

Sunday morning, I helped out my sister with a kiddie birthday cake order. I thought I would do some dumb stuff like chop nuts and grease the pans but my sister put her faith in me and let me sculpt some of the characters...Spongebob and Patrick!!! I thought they turned out pretty good! Me...a cake artist? Maybe I should help out my sister more! These cake toppers are made of fondant and are totally edible.

101 Dalmane

I'm finally sleeping. My doctor prescribed Dalmane for my chronic sleep problems. After initial hesitation, I am finally taking them and sleeping around 6 hours straight at night. Of course, a good friend of mine also told me her mom is performing pranic healing on me from BF Paranaque. So whether it's the pranic healing or the Dalmane that's working, I don't know. But to both the drugs and the healer, my sincerest thanks.

Garage Sale Aftermath

I get by with a little help from my friends. And sister (the quirk queen), and husband (cargador extrordinaire), and mother-in-law (saleswoman of the year), Jun (demolition man) Rakel (head accountant) and Lani (my PA-not production assistant, more like, Pa-linis, Pa-ligpit, Pa-tulong). And everyone else inbetween who wrapped, sold, showed off our wares - Tikoy, Tin, Mike, Miko, Jessica. Thanks. Meanwhile, I just ran around like a headless chicken trying to stay on top of it all.

These devil masks always scared me as a child, my hubby and MIL taking a much needed breather, and books at P5@

The garage sale last Saturday was a success. We got rid of perhaps 60% of the houseware items and about 50% of the bigger furniture. We are keeping the house open to friends and family, who want to drop by before calling in the hoardes. Total sales were a-ok. I can now buy my mom that Lazy-boy chair she's been haranguing me for ages.

Superman opted for a new fashion statement: white faux fur trim.

Most popular items were the laminate furniture (!) perhaps because they were cheap and in the P300-500 range. Some bongga clothes were sold but a majority remained untouched. A big hit among the mothers were the plates and glassware. We still got a lot of unique items left so we're just dealing with the aftermath now. But at least the urge to burn everything has gone away. My next step is to contact the antique shop dealer and get a consignment contract.

Things to do, things to do....

Moving Insanity

The setting: 2:15 AM and all I hear is the droning hum of the refrigerator and an occassional thump from upstairs. It's the seventh straight night where I can't fall asleep. I remember that tune in Shrek 2 by the Eels. It goes..."I need some sleep. Got to put the old horse down. I'm into deep but my head keeps spinning round."

What makes tonight different is that I can't breathe. I'm having a slight asthma attack but instead of reaching for my nebulizer, I find myself tapping away in front of Gandalf (the white, my iBook) to find relief. I can't find the Ventolin, which is already packed in a box somewhere in the new townhouse. Dangit.

It's been more than a week since our official move from Villa Barbara and now it's only me, my husband and son who remain in the house. We have been guarding the fort until the next big event, which is an open house slash sale on Saturday. And I can't begin to tell you how stressful this move has been. Anyone who does not sympathize has obviously never moved in their life. But add to the stress of moving: taking care of a toddler, a 70-year-old difficult mother, a depressive sister, an autistic brother, PLUS losing both a maid and yaya in the same month PLUS the stress of migration and you'll have me. A. nervous. wreck. Not only has the stress manifested asthma-wise, but I also have bad rashes on my legs, arms and chest. I've also developed a severe case of pre-mature Alzeihmer's. I can't remember anything so I write everything down on two legal pads, which incidentally I forgot where I put. Will look for it tomorrow.

This has been one of the longest weeks of my life. I need to attend to everything, because everything is equally important. But I can't and it's killing me and I just want to let off one blood-curdling scream. Which I did, by the way, the other night, it felt good but I had a sore throat the next morning.

I just want this to be over. Please be over. Please be over. Please be over. If all goes well, exactly two months from now, I'll be on a plane to San Francisco and this will all be over. You know movies where time passes by so fast, in a blink of an eye?

*blink*

Nope, doesn't work. I will type some more.

My sister and I have dubbed the process "Operation Purge." We have a complete action plan, which spans two months. We are in the final 2 weeks of implementation and things are getting crazy. My sister has resorted to breaking plaster statues to deal with the stress. I have to fight this urge to put everything in a pile and have a great huge bonfire. *evil glint in eye*

One of the hardest parts is sorting out three generations of junk. We're taking three generations, not spared by the packrat chromozome. I have no problem with my own junk. I've adopted a highly sophisticated system in determining whether a thing should be discarded. I simply ask myself, "Is this essential to my existence and being?" If the answer is no, it gets tossed in a bin, which will later be sorted into DONATION box and GARAGE SALE box. Lately I've been throwing more things into the donation box because I just don't want to see the blasted thing again. Also, I hate being asked to put a price tag on something I own because I just might break down at seeing something so valuable to me being sold for a measly five pesos. The things I keep get divided into: LUGGAGE and BOXES, which will go into storage for later shipping.

I've always loved boxes. Once my husband was asked what I like and he said, "Oh, she likes boxes." I have all kinds of boxes, rattan ones for my artsy craft stuff, cardboard ones for my important files, decorative ones for crap, archival ones for photos. You would think that now my house is now totally overrun by boxes, I'd be happy. But nooooo.

This house has a lot of keys. I've been placing all old "unknown" keys in a mason jar over the years. We keep them because hey, maybe one day...we'll find a lock/key match. I'm about ready to throw out the jar. Only my mother refuses to add hers to the bunch.
Me: Mom, there are about 20 loose keys here.
Mom: Yes, they are mine. Don't throw them away.
Me: Do you know what they are for?
Mom: Yes, of course!
Me: Okey let's sort them and label them properly.
Mom: I know what they are for, I just don't know what doors they open.

This old house also has a lot of towels. Over the 50 years that my family has lived here, I don't think a single towel has been discarded. I figure that for a family of five, it would be safe to own maybe 15 towels for the entire household. That already includes the towel buffer for out of town guests. I want to donate the rest of the towels, which are various states of decay: decent and slightly used, rough but still absorbent and the downright barethread and pathetic. My mom's attitde? Keep everything because you might need a basahan one day. We have enough towels to make basahans for the entire Philippine army.

And those are the items we're non-emotional about. My sister and I have to sort my mother's junk as well. She has a large spacious room which was hers since her college days. And we have to force her to get rid of her stuff, enough to fit in a small room with only 2 cabinets for storage. We've disposed of fake eyelashes from the 60s (made from real hair!), wigs, plastic gloves that come with hairdye (you can never have enough), a million tiny medicine vials (will come in handy for storing little things) and about a hundred small boxes (for future gift wrapping purposes). Some items she refuses to let go off: packets of human hair (she can't remember to whom they belong to), a piece of her wedding cake from 1965 which has been stored in her drawer and human teeth (again she can't remember if they are hers or ours). The wedding cake is a wet soggy mess, wrapped in plastic. You can't recognize it as cake because it's black and looks like something dredged from the bottom of a swamp. The yellow stinky teeth are stored in a small jewel box which I hope I will never see again. It smells like death, I swear. My dentist says it's fine to hold on to teeth as keepsakes but please, soak it in some ammonia first.

Then, there are my grandmother's items. We got rid her stale perfume and moth-infested ternos years ago, but we were still confronted with her furniture and photo albums. Furniture will be sold in a garage sale or antique dealers. So that was an easy decision to make, unlike the photo albums. We needed hours and hours to sort over 80 photo albums which documented all family events: major and mundane. If she can hear me, I just want to thank her for being a great family archivist. Sorting them brought about a complete range of emotions because every bit revealed something to me about our family history. And while we were able to sort the items without over-the-shoulder verbal protest, it hasn't been without some melancholy drama. Three days after we moved out of the house, we hear sounds of moving furniture (an attempt to return things as they were?) and thumps coming from my grandmother's old room and sala. We believe it might be my grandmother, whispering disapproval at what we've done. Lola Barbara always had a flair for the dramatic. For damage control, my sister came over to talk to the "spirits of the house" to explain the situation. And on the same day, a yellow moth appeared. It's been sticking around for the past couple of days and is currently hovering over me since I started blogging and has already attempted to enter my husband and son's room. I don't know what to believe but I do know that the furniture dragging stopped. All I hear is the occasional thump. And of course, the hovering of the moth overhead continues. Reading the computer screen over my shoulder, Lola?

Okey, it's 3:11 AM now. I'm getting sleepy and the wheezing has abated a bit.

*blink* *blink* Nope, still here.

Beyond Exhausted

October 31 marked the "New Moon" and the first day of our official move from our old house to the new townhouse - exactly one block away. 4 days later, and still with more than half our our stuff to haul, I am exhausted. Beyond exhausted.

I'm pooped,
tired,
done in,
bushed,
fatigued,
worn out.

When I have more strength in my fingertips, I'll write about it.