house hunting

Transferring to a new home is a tedious process. It’s all that work that sets me off actually, how I wish I could just rub a magic lamp and asks the genie to magically transport me to the new home, especially if you come from a flooded home.

You may think it’s supposed to be faster since most of your things, yup most not half, are considered trash. I think it’s the mentality we have called. You’d try to save anything salvageable or with sentimental value. When the water started to rise, the only things I was able to secure were the pictures and some stuff I couldn’t live without. So sorting thru the “trash” was a horrible experience. Another thing that made it harder was the fact that everyone, I mean everyone was also moving upward because of the flood, so rental fee went up, the house that went P5k before was being rented out between P7500 to P9500. So it was really hard.

The house we got is a miniature one, maybe by our standards. We are used to get a big rental house, probably because we are a big family. I am not really complaining, after looking for almost three weeks, it’s decent enough, but still, every time someone moves, they are bound to hit someone or something. Picture this, when you enter our place, the first thing you’ll see is the dining table and there’s that itsy bitsy space that you can pass thru (if you move sideways, it will be faster and you’ll not bump the wall or the table) so you’ll reach the bedroom door. The only plus thing about having a small house is we didn’t have much to put in it so it will do. But I still worry for the incoming future. You see my relatives from the states are coming, and I don’t have a clue where to put them, maybe I’ll suggest camping under the stars for a day, the kids would have a good time, imagining them all in the house makes me really smile, it would be nice to have them over, cause its been awhile, but I think the house would whine. Gotta make a plan soon, I don’t see my siblings/hubby being comfortable in my place. But I would guarantee the talk we would share about the house. If there’s one thing about my siblings, they are as opinionated as me; I can picture it now, BIG MABELLE in tiny house, hahaha!

Mud and clothes don’t really mesh well. You would realized that all that hype about detergent soaps on TV would ease some of the burden, but I gotta tell you, its all b*ll. Words like “ultra”, “with bleach”, “sunshine white”, “lemon scent”, “power cleanser”, “anti-stain formula” or any other b.s. won’t make that stinky-muddy-brown-water-log-shirt into the once white shirt you’ve always loved. Believe me, I REALLY tried, really hard.

Books? We got a million of them, courtesy of my daughters and sister. We save only a few of them, novels, magazines (my mags!!!!!), school/text books, etc., all gone in an instance. The house seems naked without them, but I figured, if we had saved them all, my kids won’t have places on top of the cabinets where we perched along side with the couple of valuables we saved. And don’t try to save the books by drying them under the sun, some Einstein told us it works, and stupid me actually followed the neighbor who I’ve seen trying to talk to a rock (which the neighbors said was the house of the black dwarves). Go figure. I can guarantee you that all the pages will stick, so wet books + sun = a hard object to throw on stupid people, specially the ones who talk to odd looking rocks.

Furniture, wahhhhh! Wooden Shoe rack – gone, Leather couch – something pointed had ripped it during the onslaught of the flood, center table - firewood, dining table – huhuhuhu! Still can be used but needs a new coat of paint plus we need to repair them it wobbles now. Let’s just say, we transferred to the new home lighter than before.

And don’t get me started on the appliances. We had two television sets, now we got one, the other one couldn’t be repaired. The repairman also told me to throw away the washer, it may work sometimes and often times it won’t, plus it might electrocute someone. I test that theory everyday here, sometimes it works, often times it doesn’t, and yes I get a boost of electric ever so often. My husband whines about this, but I hate doing the laundry using my hands, I just joke to him that the electricity makes my blood younger, which makes him madder. But what I am supposed to do, kids makes a mountain of laundry every single day. The desktop computer works even with a virus in it, although the keyboard didn’t. It was fun watching my eldest trying to go online using the onscreen keyboard. I eventually gave in and bought a cheap keyboard, we still don’t got cable and the kids are really whining, specially the little ones, at least this way they can still watch cartoons. The 3 refrigerators I got, only 2 could be repaired. They have to change a part of the motor or something. Other small appliance didn’t survive, coffeemakers, waffle makers, etc. little things we slowly bought.

It sucks. But amazingly, I learn something new every single day and still can see something funny or serious about the situation. Nowadays, my family hates me, you see after the flood, they are required to swim every 4pm. Fifty laps for the older kids, and five for my youngest daughter, for my youngest son, he is just learning, but still comments on how he hates to swim. With my hubby, it’s a little bit harder to badger him to swim everyday, “its not gonna be good if the flood comes and I have to send our youngest to save you” speech gets him to go. They all whine a lot and says I’m overdoing it, and maybe I am overdoing it when I said, next time, we all are going to practice swimming in mud. Call me hyper or crazy, im just making sure that if another flood does come and I won’t be there to save them, at least they would have a fighting chance.