How does one open a complaint about the maid? Having only been one and never having had one before, even talking about "my maid" is an oddity. I'm not comfortable with the idea, the relationship, much less the language barrier. After four hours of sleep, I woke up and ran over to the school to draw the children's profiles. Each one sat pretty close to perfectly still in front of an overhead projector light while I sketched them. 10 yards away Mr. R was explaining radius, diameter, and how to calculate the length of one day on Mercury to a fairly enraptured group of 4th graders who struggled not to yell out answers.
I let myself out and walked the short distance home, marveling at how a typhoon had blown through here within the last 24 hours. The same flooding that had my neighbors washing their clothes, motorbike parts, and themselves in the raging river/road had somehow receded into business as usual with a scattering of hens between the ever-buzzing tricycle motorbike taxis and trash burning in the empty-ish field.
My two hour nap, however, was not to happen. Terry held up a bag of laundry detergent and expressed a need for more in her mix of Tagalog and English. Heaven forbid I try to explain that it looked like the afternoon might bring rain and there were easily four washes worth of soap there. I grabbed my orange umbrella and marched down to the local sari-sari at the end of my street clutching an assortment of peso coins. The proprietor of the shop was passing time with a deck of worn playing cards, sitting in the shadows of the "shop" - a barred window into a small room of their house crammed tight with all of the single-serving necessities of life here. Nescafe in assorted flavors, cheap cigarettes individually sold and carried by men everywhere for long stretches of time before being lit, and laundry detergent in 10 peso packs.
What should have been a simple exchange of peso for soap turned into a 20-minute description of how Iran is a great country, everyone thinks my Iranian sari-sari shop owner is a terrorist, how Islam is a peaceful religion, a run-down of every bombing in the last year, and ultimately how he hopes his daughter will finish her doctorate in America, find a nice guy, get married, and everyone can move to the US. When I asked where he would like to live, specifically, he said he didn't care.
I returned home, handed Terry handfuls of soap and went upstairs to bang out some of the work piling up into ever-tightening deadlines. When I signed off and locked up my valuables to go to the school, I had 10 minutes to make it to a free yoga class where half of the poses involve me wondering where my head goes because there suddenly seems to be a lack of room for all of my limbs and my skull. Oh yeah, and don't forget to breathe. I abandoned myself to the random thoughts that flitter through my mind, relaxing into the complaints my body was making, and amazement at how much I can sweat while barely moving.
By the time I got home again, I hit the computer again and was just sending the last email when Aaron came home. And that's when we realized that the gentle rain that had just started was raining on our newly laundered items hanging outside. And then it was the realization that the clothes were already soaking wet. The washing machine spin cycle was broken and our maid had just tossed the heavily dripping clothes on the rack and scooted before we were home again. Now this may not seem like a dire situation to some, but living in the tropics has different rules and getting things dry quickly is crucial for ensuring your things don't mold, rot, or stink. As Aaron tore into the washer with his leatherman and a few curse words, I discovered a pair of teal pants had bled teal into every article in that ill-fated washer. My favorite shorts were torn, Aaron's white work uniform shirt was a pale blue, and everything needed to be wrung until my aching forearms were only powered by my frustration.
The rest of the evening was Aaron reorganizing rooms and setting up a fan to dry clothes. We took turns mopping the floor and I parked myself in front of the iron and board in a desperate attempt to iron the water out of the huge pile. At some point we stopped talking to each other, at another point we shoveled pasta and heated up instant red sauce in our mouths, and I got in a scant 45 minute nap. When I woke, it was to Aaron ironing a fitted sheet, the last item in our laundry to get the iron. I made a cup of instant coffee and dove into a mammoth 90 minute meeting almost immediately. He passed me on his way to bed, and I muted the call a few minutes later to whisper good night and plant a kiss on his back in the dark bedroom.
The challenge will be to explain that doing laundry on rainy days is not okay. That the washer is broken and she has to wash everything by hand again, and further that she can't leave until it's all dry. My grasp of the language now includes the word for pillow and chicken. I'm not holding out hope, but spending another evening like this one makes having a maid a bad decision. In the meantime, I haven't exchanged 10 words with my partner that are worth repeating in the last 24 hours, my sleep deficit is spiking, and the to-do list is growing.
Speaking of which, it's time to sign off!