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.