In search of a MESSiah

It takes hours (sometimes days) to clean the place but only seconds to mess it up. Mess always seems to catch up on me. Mess is always two steps ahead of me. I am losing the fight to MESS. BECAUSE THE MESS IS SMARTER THAN ME.

***
My C+ woes seems to creep up in unlikely places. Anyhow, spring cleaning continues. I am done with the bedroom, and not much else. The living room especially looks in dire straights. I can't believe the state of sameness our home is in even after hauling away some 32kgs of garbage. It took me four trips to throw all the garbage away. Despite this, the place still looks like a sty.

I have to outwit, outplay and outlast The Mess, somehow.

Spring Cleaning

I have been weeding the house of unwanted and superfluous things as part of the initial stages of deep house cleaning. Recycled some old clothes, stacks of magazine, and WestLaw/Lexis Nexis printouts. After a couple of weeks of weeding, I am ready to wrap it up. The goal is to have the house spic and span at the end of the day.

But first things first--Seinfeld reruns!

To the Rescue

It's February 17, 2011. I have been at school for nearly 14-hours. I was tired, hungry and angry. Husband was lost, again. But not wanting to be redundant, he added a special twist to his predicament--he also ran out of gas. I was seething!

And so he was sitting in the car waiting for AAA to come and refill the tank. Minor problem: they couldn't find him. He was parked on the side of the road of an exit ramp. And it could be any exit ramp as far as he's concerned because he couldn't narrow it down further. And why should he? If he could then he wouldn't be lost now would he?

Tired and sleepy, I decided to take the cab home. When the driver asked me where to, I resolutely gave our home address and immediately after I felt a pang of guilt and remorse. It's not his fault, really. Anyway, he's been sitting in the car for hours as well and he likewise had a long day. Plus, it was a particularly chilly night. I relented and asked the driver to make a U-turn with instructions of checking out every exit ramp within the vicinity in search of my husband.

Thank goodness the driver was up to it. God bless my harmless, juvenile look.

We sped into the night, experiencing a rush of thrill that only delivering a movie classic line "follow that car" can stir up. Only I modified it to a more adventurous "let's check every exit ramp!"

By the fourth ramp, we found him. He didn't see me initially but when he did, he knew everything will be alright.

I'm glad I didn't succumb to my anger. There are really more important things in life than feeding one's frustrations. Starring and successfully orchestrating a search and rescue, for instance.

In Memoriam

I stumbled across a blog whose owner tragically died. It is being kept alive as a virtual shrine to her once vibrant life. It is haunting--a digital burial ground. Unlike cemeteries, the hollow ring of "the end" is not as deafening. Because it is difficult to acknowledge someone's death while looking at that person's photos: grinning happily at the camera, caught in a fleeting moment of living.

It made me want to take photos of everything and everyone. To have a concrete guidepost to how things were. People disdainfully dismissed those who are fond of posting pictures on facebook detailing their every activity.

They are poseurs, it's just for show....

....attention-seeking behaviour...

But they might be onto something.

An Immigrant's Hymn

A resident of one country, a citizen of none;

Trudging along a path carved in a land not of his birth;

A second class citizen of a first world country--

the birthplace of liberty, freedom and democracy and the deathbed of idealism;

The American Dream for the un-American.

Restructuring of a caste system long condemned;

Upheld by a system that condones exploitation;

Blacks, whites, and browns; in a melting pot of supremacy and servitude;

One race will rule, the rest will succumb;

The equality of unequals;

The perpetuation of an ordered society no longer structured;

The land of the free and the lost.

Walls are thin

Our neighbor painfully reminded us that the apartment walls are thin by blasting foreign music/noise through their speakers at a time when peace and quiet were prefered. Reduced to juvenile logic, I tried to remind them as well of this apartment feature that we share. It didn't work, of course. If anything, it made matters worse. Decibel per decibel, our sound system is far superior. But I was fearing backlash from innocent neighbors, who I was hoping would have enough balls to confront the offending neighbor and tell them to pipe down the noise. Because if innocent neighbors would not have the balls, who would?

To the offending and offensive neighbor's credit, they don't sustain the ruckus past 10pm. But since I am a student trying to maintain a scholarship, this neigborly consideration means zilch. I need peace and quiet at all times that I am in the premises for God knows the scholarly inclination to read might strike me at any given moment. My innocent neighbors better gather their chutzpah and confront the offending neighbor sooner rather than later.

Freedom & Liberty

H: I didn't remove the plastic wrappings from the TV's side panels because I have always been told not to do so.
M: Yeah, I have been told the same thing.
--Pause--
M: So, let's remove them.
H: Yeah, it's...
--in unison--
...our house and we can do whatever we want.