What A Chore

When I was younger I was fortunate to live in a household with househelp (parang may redundant dito.hehe). My mother was the queen of cleanliness, the OC kind. Weekdays were money-generating days. Sundays were for Church and family lunches. While the dreaded Saturdays was for her general house cleaning. Our help would wipe the whole house ceiling to floor, under her supervision of course, then minutes after everything is done she'll do it all over. My siblings and I would always tell her "Mom bakit pa tayo may katulong uulitin mo lang din ginagawa nya??" So basically I grew up not knowing what "chores" really mean (the perks of having a supermom). On weekends I was a free-spirited girl waking up an hour or two before lunch time, sitting in front of the tv watching cartoons, crosstitching and reading Archie's and Sweet Valley Kids.

During high school, my parents stopped hiring househelp as we (my sister and  brothers) were already old enough to be left in the house. Or as my mom sees it, we were already old enough to do the chores ourselves. So my Saturdays began earlier, with my mom screaming to get my a** downstairs to help clean the house. It was not something big or heavy. It was just washing the dishes and sweeping the floors.  My mom sweeps the floor of the entire house 10x a day so "sweeping the floors" is not an ordinary task. Months  later, I was forced to help prepare meals in the kitchen. Take note: forced. With a lot of moaning and complaining, I became the master of cooking instant noodles, frying fish, hotdogs, longganisa, etc. You name it I can fry it!

Buttercup says it best. Lol

After I bravely left our family home and went to live solo in the Metro, I managed on fastfood take-outs, resto's and my all-time-favorite tinapay. And yes I learned to eat comfortably in restaurants by myself. :) I stayed in a dormitory so cleaning (toilet and bath.. ewwww!) wasn't my responsibility.

Marrying J brought doing chores to a whole new level. During our first year we lived comfortably because we had yaya at home. But after we celebrated our first wedding anniversary our yaya bid farewell and J and I were left to fend for ourselves. Tsk. There was this one night I came home exhausted from the office. After dinner I started doing the laundry. While waiting for the machine to finish washing, I sat on the sofa and dozed off. I woke up two hours later alarmed that I fell asleep. Seeing me in a panic J chuckled and told me that he had already finished the laundry for me. He tucked me into bed and calmly said not to worry for Marley's clothes were already hanging in the clothespin. I am so so blessed J has stepped up to it. He is totally great with Marley so he spends most of the time playing with her while I do all the chores. Yes, you heard me right. Me. Chores. Just last week I found myself teaching J how to properly mop the floor. You know the sweep-mop-sweep drill. Strange that I can remember this specially that I was only half listening to my mom while she was telling me this back in the day. Even stranger, I realized I was becoming as OC as my mom when it came to cleaning the house. I'd see a fleck of dirt in the kitchen floor and I'll sweep the whole house. I'd squint and brush my finger on the tv stand to see if dirt is already accumulating. Haaaay..

The circle of life. I give thanks to my mom. Happy Mother's Day!