“Returns lips to near virgin quality”

This lip balm is for the bigot who’s ultra nice in front of you, but has bad things to say when you turn your back. 

“For Liars, Cheaters, and Wrongdoers.”

“Formulated to soothe guilty conscience and kill sins on contact…

Save yourself, save others.  Blue Q is the World Leader in Sin Removal Products.”

Sinners are everywhere. This towellete’s sin-washing qualities will surely come in handy  for bigots who have appointed themselves to the position of assistant to the saviour .   Just one touch and BAM! We’re no longer scarlet but white as snow.

“Guaranteed to help you be worthy and get noticed by the king of kings.”

I want to give this to bigots who have an irrevocable reservation in the heavenly mansion.  Many are the times when I don’t feel so beautiful, but they need this more than I do.  This kit contains a mirror , lip balm, and hand cream - all the things needed to prettify themselves for that final trip to the kingdom.

This is for me. No, I’m not a bigot. I’m not even religious. I just feel that I need this one.  Too bad it’s a refrigerator magnet.  It’d be nice if  they had this design in pin-back buttons.  That way I can wear this around like an amulet to ward off the negative vibes that religious bigots exude.

The last item above is for the bigot who has taken on the task of vanquishing evil.  When the beast learns that he’s got a religious  bigot for a neighbor.. Pooff!  He’ll disappear in the wink of an eye. 

What should be the first thing to do  when you get a disturbing dream that features a killer and two dead bodies?

The morning after, before you even attempt to make a psychological analysis, you go to the lotto station or your local jueteng bookie and make a bet.  It is important that the dream is fresh when you do it.  Dreams that you feel are significant to you could be very lucky in the numbers game.

“Aunt Sally’s Policy Players’ Dream Book” (above) is an indispensable reference tool in this undertaking.  It contains a list of objects and situations that you might find in your dreams.  Each item has a corresponding number.  So if you see a killer and two dead bodies in your sleep, check out their numbers in the book and use them when you buy your lotto.

Back in Dumangas, when I was younger, a kubrador (bookie, bet collector) would stop by my grandmother’s bakery every afternoon.  She’d check to see if anybody wanted to play the Deely Dubul (Daily Double/local jueteng).  The employees would then start talking about the dreams they had the night before.  It could be anything from shit, teeth falling off, weddings, bagat (evil in the form of an animal), etc.  The kubrador always had a number for it.  Next they would talk about the recent winners who won by betting on their dream numbers.  I wonder why I never had the slightest interest in it before.

Last year was the first time I started playing the lotto (matindi ang pangangailangan). I did it everyday but never won a cent.  That was also when I began wishing that I had bought the dream book I had seen being sold on the sidewalk of De Leon St.  in downtown Iloilo. Just before I got married (OMG! ten years ago), I was on my way to Shanghai Store when I spotted a withered hag squatting beside a large kalalaw (woven square tray) full of strange and colorful wares. I stoped to look at them.  There were white, yellow, and black crystals; lapad (wide) bottles filled with tiny roots, oil, and colorful crosses; bronze amulets; tiny prayer booklets; and pamphlets on different topics.  Among those pamphlets was a dream book.  I thought to myself that this must be the kubrador’s bible. 

I should have bought that book ten years ago.  If I had, maybe I’d be a millionaire by now.  Lately I’ve been contemplating whether I should purchase  ”Aunt Sally’s Policy Players’ Dream Book”   over the internet.  I really really want to. However, there was something in the seller’s website  that held me back. The site was called “Hoodoo in Theory and Practice” . 

Hoodoo. Voodoo. Black Magic. Occult. That can be scary.   I don’t want to be in league with the forces of darkness. I will have to be content with my lot in life.  Me-not rich, not poor, just okey.

Back in 1996, when I started teaching at UPV, someone commented that I was the type who would stay in my job for a very long time.  In short, she saw me as a “lifer”. I suppose she thought that because I was reserved and timid-looking.  Can’t blame her. Vivacity has never been a major part of my personality, hence I could come across as a boring person. In fact, my sister once likened me to  ”Wednesday Addams” of the Addams Family movie.

Now I look back at that comment and think with a smirk, “You couldn’t have been more wrong! The person you thought would stay put for  ”life” has been taking a roller coaster ride for the past seven years. You couldn’t be more adventurous than that.”

I left the Philippines a dignified teacher.  When I got to the States I was down on my knees scrubbing bathtubs and picking up hairs from hotel bathroom floors. Housekeeping may be a low-esteem occupation, but I loved cleaning. It made me stronger physically and slimmer too. Then I worked as a nanny for several days. Couldn’t stay long because it painfully reminded me of the one-year-old son I left back home.  Searched the papers for another job and became an all-around helper at a bakery/restaurant.  Did a little cooking, manned the cash register, packed bread, washed dishes,  and scrubbed (not mopped) the floor.  Was also a caregiver and performed the usual caregiver stuff : lifting, feeding,  cleaning shit.  I felt empowered doing these things because I thought I’d know what to do when my mother would need this kind of care later on.  After that I was a salesperson at a store that sold expensive eyewear and watches. It was fun observing how my Egyptian boss, the store owner, would wait til his mistress, the store manager,  was busy and go to the stockroom to bang another salesgirl. With the urging of my mother I reluctantly went back to school. And voila! Now I’m a licensed vocational nurse.

What a journey! I wonder what else I may do in another seven years.  As I told a friend before: “My life here has never been all that comfortable, but it sure has never been boring.”

While some might go on and on about how cool their ipods, iphones, or imacs are,  the thing that I really want to sing my praises to is not that sophisticated.  I just love it so much and use it all the time.  It’s a large, blue, flexible, plastic container that I got for five dollars at Target.  How homey and unexciting! (Yes, I suppose I need to go out more.)

Whenever I grip its two handles,  I feel at peace with myself. (You might say –What a load of crap!)  I know I sound pathetic, but it’s true.  In my mind I have this unspoken thought –I’m glad I bought this thing. It’s money well-spent.  I use it as a laundry basket.  And I never leave it unattended at the public  laundry room of our apartment.  It’s the best looking laundry basket that I’ve seen so far. Someone might steal it. My husband tells me in exasperation, “Who’s going to steal a laundry basket?!” You never know.

I use it as a bathtub for my two year old little girl.    She likes to splash and play with bubbles.  Now she can do it without having to use  the regular tub that needs too much water. 

It was an ice bucket for cold drinks when my son had a birthday party.

When I’m not using it, my children pile their toys in it and take it whereever they want to play.

Sometimes it’s a basket for carrying groceries out of the car to our apartment in the fourth floor.

It can be a train.  My baby would take my hand and  say,  ”Mami, too too.”  It means that she wants to play Choo choo train.  I put her inside and pull the thing around the living room while singing “All aboard the choo choo train. All aboard. All aboard.”

It’s also a boat. Baby girl points to it and say, “Mami, Meemoe.”  In she goes again while I get down on my tummy and start swimming on the floor.  I become a shark who wants to eat her up. (She calls all big fishes Meemoe, after Nemo the cartoon character.)

When baby’s being a bug and I want to make her disappear,  I turn it upside down and put it over her head. She transforms into a hermit crab and goes around the room saying, “Mami, whey aah you? Whey aah you, mami?” (Mommy, where are you? Where are you, mommy?)

Come June 17 our landlord will fix the waterpipes. There’ll be no water for a week from 9AM-5PM.  This fills me with dread.  We used to get into loud shouting matches with our previous landlord over unannounced water service interruptions.  It wouldn’t be so bad if my husband doesn’t need a ton of water to take a bath.  I need to prepare for this one. I need containers for storing water.  Wait, I already have one.

There were five kids in our household, but only four of us were into the selling craze. Our eldest, a full-fledged teenager, was detached from us all. She was forever daydreaming about her boyfriend, writing in her diary, reading Sweet Dreams Romance, and listening to Air Supply. I was second in line and resisting the idea of puberty with every fiber of my being.

My younger sister was selling her services as a portrait artist. She’d pretend to take pictures of us and our dolls. Then she would draw it and frame it using cardboard and felt paper. Her business was called - Dreamer’s Crafts.

Not to be outdone, my one and only brother, who was seven years old, put up his own. He named it - Loglog Shop. On Sundays he would go to the market to buy Tagalog komiks, which he would rent out to us for 25 or 50 cents.

Our youngest was three years old. She didn’t know anything about competition so she was only a customer. Neither did she know anything about money nor did she have any allowance, so we just gave her our stuff for free.

Few years later I lost interest in selling my usual wares, but I had compiled a bunch of small brown notebooks that served as my journal. Needing cash, I decided to rent out my journals (to my siblings of course). I thought it would be a lucrative venture since one thing we all enjoyed doing was going through our eldest sister’s closet for her diaries. Charging one peso to read a page and five pesos to read a whole notebook (a real bargain for something so private), there were no takers. Even if I left my journals lying around in our bedroom, nobody read them. I know because nobody taunted me by reciting their contents out loud. That’s one thing we liked to do when we wanted to torment our eldest sister.

Looking back now, I understand why my venture didn’t click. Nobody wanted to read my journals because I had no boyfriend when I wrote them. My siblings probably thought they were not juicy enough to read.That was more than twenty years ago.

I have reached my middle adulthood stage. I’m still scribbling my random thoughts on pieces of paper that get tucked away in piles of books and bills. This online journal is an attempt to put them all together and see if the puzzle pieces of my life fit well enough to form a picture that is pleasing to myself and others. So I’m resurrecting Chiq Boutique from the dusty recesses of my memory box. Here’s hoping that life has given me a richer material to draw from so that this time, when I peddle the contents of my head, there would finally be some takers.