Day six of life after we kicked out the maid. What is it, what is it that my wife and I keep doing recently? Oh chores. Wait. My back is telling me something. Oh, that it hurts. Househelp, I tell you, needs to be replaced, like used-up batteries, every so often. Every three months would be good. Polite and effortful they come to you. Then the weeks go by and their annoying habits and ways of taking over your lives begin to surface. And you want to kill them. They want to squeeze every little thing out of their stay in your house--food, television, salary advances, time off, more food, avoiding chores or doing them late, bad cooking, taking too long in the bathroom, sleeping in the afternoon.

When you tell them, the first time you meet them, that you are willing to pay for their service, you should make it clear you don't want to put up with a moodswinging always pouting Eat Bulaga-zealous person who can't understand your intstructions, despite your sharing the same language, nevermind that you sequence your orders and use simple declarative sentences. Always, you are threatened by the onslaught of domestic wrinkles. Often, you simmer into a rage and when you tame that temper, you are still in a foul mood, and that's inside you own house, which should be your sanctuary from the absurd world. (Insert groan here.)

Haaaay.... at least the maid is gone. And the more we take over the chores and rediscover where all our things are, the more we have control over our domestic lives.

I am actually writing a science fiction story set in the near future when maids are drugged every three months in order to forget the last three months. Their bank accounts of course don't lie and they and their families do get the money sent to them. But the fresh start is there. The chores they have forgotten to be aware of, their bodies still remember, and will remember again. But it's back to the getting-to-know you stage again--and they are all polite and effortful just like the first time. The moment they hint that they want to remember the last three months, or that they wish not to forget the next three months, you fire them, and get a new maid. Or you forcibly inject them with the reboot drug. What? Oh, my wife is calling me. She's done with the laundry. I'm going to hang them all to dry. Tsk. Someone's gotta do it. I'm forgetting something, what is it what is it? Oh, I have to cook rice.