In Labor on Labor Day

Not THAT kind of labor. It was literally Labor Day for my husband and me yesterday May 1 as we did a general clean-up of our apartment. Unfortunately, since we’re only renting the place for another year, we really can’t do some renovations or major sprucing up to make it picture pretty for Real Living magazine, just like my friend and former neighbor Frances’s pad. Oh but I don’t think I can ever keep a stylized pad like theirs. Hehe. We’re just simple folks.

Anyway, our place was already fully-furnished when we got it. We just brought in our LCD TV and some small kitchen appliances. We admit, our nest isn’t exactly best-dressed. But for now what’s more important is that it’s clean and organized enough that I can still navigate my kitchen even when I’m blindfolded. I’ve always been Ms. Tidy when it comes to housekeeping but lately due to tons of work, I’ve become sloppy. So yesterday, we did what we had to do – CLEAN THE HOUSE.

Our 80 square meter 2-BR loft-style condo now is more challenging to clean than my single-life abode which is about 30 sq. m smaller, but what I love about our new place is that I have a spacious kitchen/dining area to work in. The windows are large so there’s a flood of natural light in the room.



I love my new kitchen and all my prized gadgets. My favorite yellow Kitchenaid mixer obviously is the pièce de résistance of my “culinary playground” so the whole area is (almost) color coordinated around it. Then my mom recently gave us a new Cuisinart coffeemaker and that has been my hubby’s favorite toy in the kitchen. This is already our 3rd coffeemaker in just a year of being married. (Yes, we are coffee-holics!) And we swear by this brand’s brew! Now we know why it’s expensive. My husband and I say that it’s only a matter of time ‘til we purchase our first espresso machine.

Thanks to our family Wi-Fi, I don’t need a permanent work station for my laptop. I can blog from bed, from our black leather couch, but most of the time, I do my writing on the kitchen bar counter.

It’s really a delight for me to see my husband doing household chores. He’s not exactly the “homemaker” type, if you know what I mean. But that was before. He’s getting into the game now. :-) Before, I’d get worried every time I had to be out of town for a couple of days because I’m sure to be greeted by a dusty floor when I get home. My husband is such a klutz when it comes to household chores but I definitely give him the crown for ironing clothes. To be honest, I don’t do a lot of pressing. For my personal wardrobe, I’ve always leaned towards picking jersey and other non-wrinkly fabrics.

But that’s about it for him in the housekeeping turf. Everything else is my domain. For cleaning the bathroom, I swear by Mr. Muscle. It really melts the grime faster than all other brands I have ever tried. Since I’m in the cleaning mood, I’ve been poring over the pages of Martha Stewart’s Home Keeping Handbook – one of the very first things that my mom gave me before I got married last year. Speaking of Martha, I personally think she’s better in home keeping than in baking or cooking. She’s got that OC perfectionist personality in her that just screams like white ceramic tiles. Alderson Federal Prison sure was lucky to have the Queen of Clean scrubbing their toilets.



Cleaning by the way can be a nice bonding time for husbands and wives. Joseph and I really enjoyed our Labor Day date. But if cleaning’s not your thing you can always hire a professional cleaner. I hire my friend’s cleaning company to shampoo our mattresses and carpets because that’s something I can’t do. But for everything else, as long as there’s the vacuum cleaner, the mop, the duster, the broom, the rags, and all my favorite cleaning chemicals, it’s Mrs. Palarca literally in labor!

My Paradise in Pioneer Highlands

When I officially started working in 2000, I found my permanent address in Pioneer Street, Mandaluyong. From renting a “closet-sized” 20-sq. ft. studio apartment in Cityland to finally purchasing my very own 46 sq. ft. 1 BR condominium unit in Pioneer Highlands (popularly known as the Globe Tower). Both buildings were on the same street.

Actually, buying that condo unit was bit abrupt. I had a panic purchase after my Cityland room was broken in by robbers. The thieves got away with my precious wristwatch collection and some jewelry. The worse part was seeing my unit totally ransacked. I really felt violated. I just couldn’t see myself continuing my life in that building any longer. I had to leave. So in a matter of weeks, a real estate broker was lucky to find desperate me. At that time, I just wanted to find a SAFE place and true to form the security personnel at Pioneer Highlands were the strictest ones I have ever encountered. A deed of sale was inked without batting an eyelash.

Back then, Pioneer Street was merely part of a warehouse-village. There was nothing chic about it. My new condominium building which allegedly is also home to a lot of celebrities was the only pillar of posh-ness in that area. It’s amazing how Pioneer has grown to be a business/commercial district. Now, right across my condominium building, a cluster of Robinsons Realty properties have mushroomed for the past 2 years making the street one of the busiest areas during rush hour.

Pioneer Highlands was home to me for about 6 years. I nested in it. When I was still at Cityland, I just had a sofa bed and a personal ref. I started purchasing furniture, appliances and collected a lot of “abubut” when I finally got my own place. That’s why when I got married and my husband and I moved out, he was appalled that we actually brought out 36 boxes of “stuff” despite the fact that we didn’t take out the furniture and major appliances. Ang dami mong gamit! My husband exclaimed in disbelief. Clothes… CDs… DVDs… books… cooking ware… Kean’s toys/clothes… etc…

To make things worse, I wasn’t even able to help him because I got really sick that day when we were moving out. I had cramps, migraine, fever and asthma. My husband told me it must be a case of separation anxiety. He was probably right. As much as I was excited to move out and start a new life with him, I guess part of me didn’t want to leave yet.

Let me explain why we had to move out in the first place. First… with Kean still under my wing, my 1-bedroom condominium would not be appropriate anymore for the three of us. We had to find another place where Kean can have his own bedroom. Second… maintaining a condominium unit proved to be expensive, especially for Joseph’s standards. He and I wanted to adopt a much simpler lifestyle now that we’re Mr. and Mrs. Palarca. Third, we really wanted a place that's much closer to our church so we opted to move to Quezon City. And fourth… Joseph said that it was just right for us to begin our new life away from anything that would remind us of my past. Not that he couldn’t accept my so-called “past”, it was more about helping me to move on. Leaving my single-life abode was a perfect rite of passage for my new life as a wife.

Now that we’re in Quezon City, I sometimes miss my Pioneer condo – my 26th floor sunset view… the free gym (which I seldom use, hehe)… the pool… the 24 hour maintenance services… the generator that automatically works when there’s a black-out in the area… the security… Getting our groceries and catching the last full show was just a stroll away, with the mall right beside our building. If I was on tipid mode, the MRT station was just right across. Living there was really convenient.

However, I don’t regret renting it out. Leasing it out now actually augments our income. After some time finding the right tenants, our unit is now being rented by a nice couple; an Australian guy and a Filipino woman – newlyweds too who also got married last April, same month Joseph and I did. Talk about coincidence. They said they’ve been looking around for quite a while but the moment they saw my unit, they immediately felt that it was “home”. The guy said there was a certain cheerfulness to it. I thought maybe it was due to my Mediterranean yellow walls. And his wife even said that she has been dreaming about an ube-colored room, and lo and behold when she saw my bedroom. It was lavender.


We rented out the condo as a fully-furnished unit. It was a blessing to have this couple as our tenants because they were neat. Hehe. I was able to visit them a couple of times and I have to say that they kept the place in tip-top shape. They never ran out of good things to say about their stay in my place. In fact, they even called me the other day to announce that they’re already expecting a baby. The woman was ecstatic because as she is heading for her 40s, a pregnancy was definitely something they weren’t counting on. They said that the house must have been brimming with blessings when they came in and they got a whiff of it. Whoa, that made my heart swell. I did have both happy and sorrowful memories in that house but I have never looked at it that way. It has gone through seasons of melancholy and mirth but I have never ever thought that God was there.

Looking back now, it’s true that I did receive a lot of blessings while I was living there. The fact that I was able to acquire that unit was a miracle in itself plus a whole gamut of career opportunities and colorful experiences that knocked on my door. It just didn’t occur to me that they were “blessings”. I thought every accomplishment that I ever had was due to my own efforts.

"Everything comes from God alone. Everything lives by His power and everything is for His glory." ~Romans 11:36

So I guess my tenants were right. My house was indeed brimming with God’s blessings. I had a lot of hurt staining the walls of that place but God’s grace always painted it over with goodness. I just never bothered to acknowledge God’s splendid interior design in my house and in my heart.


I left everything for the tenant's use
except for "Lucy" my favorite yellow
Kitchenaid Mixer :-)