Make Love Not War

A dear blog-friend chatted with me yesterday and asked the most bizarre of questions, ‘do you still do laundry after midnight?’. I hated to disappoint her but my answer was a definite-firm-muktamad-saya-gandakan-wang-anda kind of NO. No, I don’t hang clothes after midnight. At least not anymore.

Since Ramadhan started, I do my laundry at a more decent hour i.e after sahur. And I have discovered that it IS the best time of the day to hang clothes. It gives me that wonderful nostalgic feeling of watching the school’s head boy raised the flag during assembly back in school. I have always longed to do it but they never made me the head or the boy. And so raising my many little flags with stripes, stars and polkadots and no less gemilang than our flag, certainly make me feel all patriotic. I will be awashed with a sense of accomplishment and so much pride. Yes, it doesnt take much to make me happy.

And after everything is securely and majestically flapping away, I will sit at the balcony, to admire my masterpiece and watch the birth of the day. Nothing beats the smell-sound-sight of early mornings, hazy or not.

Smell of coffee, and something garlicky or gingery or soysauce-y. Yumm.

And the greetings from birds hidden among the leaves of trees. Yes you birds, salaam to you too. And I wish you get many fat worms and bugs today too. And please don’t drop your chalks on our car! Just washed it yesterday! Too late you say? Oh well.

Watching the day yawn, stretch and unfold from the privacy of the balcony, hidden behind the laundered materials, I get to be a nosy neighbour too. I get to see who is tip-toe-ing back home. Careful, Romeo, you don’t want to wake HER! And who is about to leave too. That swagger might just mean the lucky fellow had a wild date that ended with a yahoo.com. You lucky sod!

And I just realised that one of my neighbours left for work very early. Before six! It makes me wonder just which estate does he work for. Maybe some estate in Perlis? To have to leave that early! And then I wonder if they wonder about me (us) too. We left for work quite late. Maybe they think we are estate owners. Or rubber millers. What they don’t know is, I work for a very small estate. We don’t have much trees to tap money from, and the trees are mostly old trees. Bent and ugly. Most of them are overworked, overtapped and very much undernourished. But despite all that, most are overweight too.

And mornings are best to do a lot of thinking too. I get ideas for my best-seller books (which I will never write), and I make mental sticky-note about friends that I must contact and chores that I must do (my mental sticky-notes don’t always stick).

Best of all, I get to have some selfish-me-me-me time for myself. The kids are asleep, no fighting no shouting no crying. Gencatan senjata is always good. The hubby is asleep too, no where’s-my-other-sock no you-should-have-watched-crouch’s-goal-last-night. I get to be my hippie self. Peace. And grin like a junkie.

All this to substantiate my claim that I DON’T HANG CLOTHES AT MIDNIGHT anymore.

Peace.