Ma's Moving Mode

I'm afflicted with a severe case of susunitis; it's a terrible ailment for which there is no known cure, unless the family can consider making some big sacrifices in their daily lives for my sake. I know they won't and I don't blame them because if I were them, I won't either!

Susunitis is an appalling disease; its victims doomed to live out their days with an acute, irritating need to arrange and rearrange household things, especially furniture.

One of the ways to curb this distressing affliction is for the victim's family to opt for a furnitureless existence, perhaps like a Bedouin in a desert tent, with carpets and rugs and throw cushions spread all over.

But if you are looking for sympathy, or for some kind of understanding, or if you as much as think they will willingly cater to your abnormal urges, perish the thought.

I can bet my bottom dollar that they couldn't care less about Arabian-style living, because they know darn too well there is no guarantee you aren't going to shift the carpets and rugs around to satisfy that bizzare craving of yours.

In reality, your spouse and kids would probably look squarely into your eyes and say; "Not on your life"! (my sentiment exactly if I were in their shoes), which of course is no help at all.

The most frequently moved pieces of furniture in my household used to be the living room sofa and the armchairs. I note with sorrow that I have not been able to shift the three-seater 'creatively' since moving into this bandanna-sized condo unit. Sigh....

In another lifetime, my ex told his mother once that each time he got home he would have to check the living room's seating arrangement first, to avoid sitting on a sofa that was no longer where it was when he left for work earlier in the day.

This comment, by the way, came about following an incident where the poor man arrived home and tossed his jacket onto the nearest sofa, only to have the jacket settling into a pile on the floor. Needless to say, the sofa had found another nook to rest.

Because the living room size doesn't meet the full cravings of a susunitis sufferer, the next target is the bedroom. The bed frame, heavy as it were sans mattress and beddings, would be dragged around and repositioned at the opposite end of the room.

Whatever other pieces of furniture in the room would then be rearranged accordingly (before the next urge to shift them all over again, in all likelihood to the very same position prior to the oh-so-satisfying move!)

Once the bedroom is taken care of, it would be time to rearrange the contents of the kitchen cabinet. The susunitis victim experiences total fulfilment in doing this, the joy doubling for two reasons;

(1) when every item is successfully transported to and rearranged inside another cabinet, and (2) when the kids reach up onto a familiar shelf to pick up something, only to find it is no longer there, and have to hunt for it all over, yanking open one door after another.

Even the pantry isn't spared. Since pantries are for storing non-perishable food, one would assume there isn't much that could be done apart from moving the containers around.

But to a susunitis sufferer, rearranging the contents of a pantry is a challenge unto itself. The possibilities are endless - one can go with type of containers (plastic, glass, tin), shape (square, round, oblong, rectangular, angular), packaging colours etc.

In the worst-case scenario, the susunitis sufferer finds simple pleasure in just being able to move bottles of ketchup and soy sauce and cans of evaporated milk from the middle to the top shelf, and shifting the position of the rice bucket from left to right.

Other peculiarities would be aligning everything that could be aligned so that they face only one direction, for example, all the remote control panels should be laid side by side on the coffee table, and pointing towards the TV.

The laptop you are working on should have a half-inch margin from the worktable's edge and should never ever 'spill' over, all house slippers should bear the proud look of soldiers in formation, all towels should hang evenly on the racks, darker colours at the back and lighter ones to the front, books should be arranged according to height...

Someone please tell me I still have it altogether...


PS:
I seem to have found a kindred spirit in Kak Teh, who is down with kemasitis, an affliction involving drapes, drawings (especially those in 'senget' frames) and drawers (no, not the ones you wriggle into to snugly cover your ample bottom, but the kind you keep your undies in). I wonder if we share another same-vintage disease - leteritis - for this usually goes hand-in-hand with two mentioned above. Hmm.......