Woe-man of the house

Whoever said that women don’t need men should think again. I had been a proponent of this school of thought for way too long until two weeks ago when, literally, crucial things in my life started breaking down.

 I grew up with a father and brothers who are mechanically inclined, all around Mr. Fix-it men, so I never once had to worry about logistics of maintaining the physical aspects and assets of a household.

 Lately, I find myself having to face quotidian tasks meant for male heads of households, I am convinced, because of the sheer incomprehensibility of the territory. It started with the dining room buffet console, which at the outset seemed a simple enough matter, but I couldn’t have been more clueless.

 A while back we started noticing a trickle of ever-so-fine brown droppings on the floor, directly below one corner of the console. We made nothing of it, swept it away from sight until it became too copious to ignore. So Yaya and I, probably the only two beings on this planet with zero spatial ability, set about investigating the cause of the debris. After much crouching and contorting beneath and inside the console, we found the cause — massive termite infestation. Yes, “Eeew.” I’m talking an Amanpulo-esque colony set-up with what looked like a main club house with satellite villas surrounding it. I’m sure if I had a microscope I could spot those little pests sipping mojitos and reclining on lounge chairs by the plunge pools.

 There was no I way I was going to deal with that problem so, with the touch of a finger on a keypad (simple enough), enter a professional exterminator.

 I was in the kitchen making lunch the day he arrived, thick of middle-aged build and thick of spectacles. Close behind were his masked and geared-up men (they had what looked like mini scuba tanks strapped on their backs like rucksacks). I showed them my very own miniature Amanpulo colony. After thorough inspection and some tongue clucking, he said with much conviction and enthusiasm, “This will all be over in an hour or so.”

 After about half an hour, he stuck his head in the kitchen to update me on his mission. “Oh, but the problem is much bigger than I expected. There is nothing left of the wooden console. It’s just a brittle shell now. The anay ate it all. And it’s not just ordinary anay, it’s imported anay from New Zealand.”

 Huh? Imported? Could anything be more surreal? In an effort to dispel my growing fear, I cracked a joke. “Wow, how do you think they got here? By plane or ship?”

 “It could be either,” he said with a straight face. “But one thing’s for sure, some tourist or balikbayan smuggled maybe a plant from New Zealand with some anay in it and they propagated when they were replanted in Philippine soil.”

 Clearly, his sense of humor was on vacation that day, or it could be that for this enthusiastic exterminator, the issue of anay is nothing to joke about, which is just as well but he didn’t stop there. “Just a minute,” he said and left the kitchen. He was back in a flash holding out his right palm just inches away from my face. “Here,” he said. “Have a look. This is your anay from New Zealand. It’s the mother.” 

 At first glance it seemed like a mound of sawdust on his palm, but upon closer inspection, wiggling in and out of it was what looked like a pasty white baby maggot — fat and gooey.

 “Back off!” was my knee-jerk reaction, pointing my nine-inch chef’s knife a few inches from his face. So there we were, at a standoff in my kitchen: he, threatening me with his killer anay Mom and me, with my shiny knife poised at the ready. I wasn’t going to stand down so he, the overly enthusiastic exterminator that he was, stood down. Thank heavens.

 I haven’t heard of women exterminators, have you?  Now I know the reason for that.

 But my household maintenance saga didn’t end there — oh, woe! Next was the clothes dryer. Manang Nancy, the laundry woman, told me that our dryer conked out, so down I trooped to the laundry area. I don’t know why my first instinct was to open the dang machine and peer down into its abyss, maybe because I always see men in movies and TV shows look under the hood of a stalled car, touching stuff, scratching their jaws. Hello — it’s the loading hatch where the clothes are dried! I should have been looking at the motor (I have that info now from a well-intentioned friend). But who the heck knows where that thing is anyway, really?

 So, guess what? A desperate call to Mr. Dryer-fixer man solved that.

 The very next day, we all woke up to a flooded dirty kitchen. Cook called me in distress. I ran down and saw her standing in about an inch of water on the floor. “It’s the sink drain, I think. It’s clogged.”

 I stood there paralyzed and close to tears because of another breakdown. Where to even begin to look? It was the drain so there was no hood to lift like in cars nor was there a door to open and peer through like in dryers, so how could I even go through the motions of assessing what was wrong?

 Of course, with a phone call, Mr. Plumber came to the rescue. Have you ever met a female plumber — for real?

 And then there were kids’ bikes. My children recently received bicycles as presents and we had to install ringers and lights for safety. I jumped right at it.  Safety measures like that should never be delayed for a second. 

 I unpacked the bike lights and ringers from the packaging and read the instructions. Hello! They were in Chinese characters — made in China, duh! I barely lived through assembling my Ikea furniture in college with the how-to manual written in English. How could I possibly decode Chinese instructions? I sat there frustrated because the writing looked to me like a taunt in indecipherable code, something like, “You could stare at this all day but there’s no way you can install those lights and ringer.”

 Really? Let’s see! My IQ numbers are decent, I was sure I could wing it. How hard could it be? I pried one ringer open, wanting to mount it on the handlebar, and looked at the attachment. It was a rubber ring with a screw on it. Okay, I thought, pretty straightforward. I just need to unscrew it first, clasp the ring around the handlebar and then screw it back on. 

 Wait, I don’t have a screwdriver. I looked around the house harassing everybody for one and came up with nothing until I remembered: toolbox. Cars have them, at least in the movies. Off to the garage I went and straight for the BMW. It’s a pricey car; it’s got to have a screwdriver. C’mon! 

 What do you know? It had an uber-flashy early warning device thingy — all neon and sparkly in a color that would really look good in shoes but not what I needed just yet. Then I found — wow! — a super-cool first aid kit, much like the type you see paramedics carry in those medical dramas on primetime TV. It looked like a mobile OR with all the gadgets in there. 

 Anyway, the screwdriver. You know what? If you’re contemplating buying a BMW, think again. It doesn’t come with a screwdriver.

 Screw that! I went back in and stared at the bikes for a while figuring what to do instead. Voila! I decided to lower the seat post for my nine-year-old. Good idea, I patted myself on the back. I knelt down to look under the seat and saw two bolts that held it secure. Okay, easy enough. I just need to find a wrench, right? But then I quickly remembered: there was no wrench in the house, or in that expensive car when I went about searching for a screwdriver.

I collapsed to the floor in utter frustration, when in walked Mr. Aircon man with a gargantuan black tool box that looked like a coffin. He was scheduled that day to fix a busted unit in the room (yes, busted aircon on top of everything else).

“You have a screwdriver?” I asked him instantly.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he said, smiling, as he set down his little black coffin. “What kind, Ma’am?” he asked as he dug in. “I have flat, slotted, hex allen, torx, round nut, square Robertson, snake eyes, Phillips cross, Phillips cross tamperproof, pozidriv?” It wasn’t enough that it all sounded Greek to me. With his Visayan accent, it seemed like Greek spoken by a Russian. Go figure!

 “Any,” I said. He looked at me as though I had just sprouted another head, so I said, “Just kidding.” 

 I checked the ringer screw again and it was star-shaped so he said, “Ah, Phillips.” Whatever, McGyver, I thought, just hand it over. With a few flicks of the wrist, I did it! Hurray! I sounded the ringer to signal a feat well managed. Insert audience applause here.

 Truly elated and ready for the next task, I turned to him and asked, “Wrench meron ka?”

 “What kind, Ma’am? Box end, open end, combination, socket, adjustable, allen, or pipe?”

 I felt like jumping him and doing a chokehold until he turned blue in the face but — not. Like a good Christian, I simply snatched the mini black coffin from him and said, fighting to keep my dignity intact, “Ako na lang. Alam ko.”

 It wasn’t too hard. With some trial and error, several grunts and some major bearing down trying to twist the bolts off, and two sweat-drenched T-shirt changes later, I managed to lower the bicycle seat.

 Now, I can say that not only do I know what a screwdriver and a wrench look like, but I actually can use them as well. But really, why go through all the trouble when you can call a man with exceptional spatial ability and mechanical skills to rescue you from the fires of hell?

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Thank you for your letters. You may reach me at cecilelilles@yahoo.com.