Week-ender

Within the Filipino community, a "weekender" is often understood as a caregiver or a nanny who has Canadian live-in caregiver status and who spends her weekends away from the employer, usually, either in rented room or with relatives and friends.

Because of such a market's need for weekend homes, some enterprising individuals started to rent out rooms in their houses.

Filipinos who are hospitable most of the time, have been, one time or another, hosts to a weekender. For instance, I personally know of someone who welcomes an assortment of weekenders into her home in Vancouver out of the pure goodness of her heart.

Just recently though, there was news about a Caucasian Canadian couple who had been accused by the municipality where they reside for taking in Filipino weekenders.

According to this couple, who lives outside the metropolis, they did not take any payment from these women; it all started innocently when they befriended one of the nannies, and then, they became acquainted with this woman's other nanny- friends. They offered free use of a spare bedroom in their large house, and even provided a stove so the women could cook their Filipino cuisine.

But when the municipality found about it , the couple was cited for violation of a by-law and were told that the extra stove could be a fire hazard.

Another type of a "weekender" is the "off and on again weekender." Obviously, I just coined this word; it describes not a particular person but the way I feel about certain situations regarding weekends.

Yes, weekend is a big deal, especially long weekends, because it is a respite from the weekly grind; it is also a time for doing boring chores such as laundry and groceries.

I like my weekends to be lazy. I do not like planning it. I just want to wake up late, and let the day unfold. If it's really special, then that's the time that I would plan.

I do not like to do any thinking on weekends; but sometimes weekend can just be it - a time to ponder on one's state of being , one's present or future existence.

I like weekends where there's dancing, when there's nice musical shows to be watched on PBS, when there's long driving to be done, when there's lots of pancakes to be eaten.

Weekend activities change with the seasons. Winter weekends mean staying at home when roads are snowed in; you get to watch movies, then. Or play bowling because it's indoors.

Spring weekend is doing spring cleaning, preparing the lawn for summer and throwing out stuff and stuffing winter clothes. Fall weekends signal football watching.

With weekend spring- cleaning, I like finding old stuff in the house, like old photographs taken when one did not have any beard, or old Time Magazine, and the assortment of garbage one has kept through years of living.

Things I should throw out or start using, but have kept for so long: a sound system with the old phonograph in it, two, with cassette players, one portable purchased in Jersey City and now used by the birds, old diskettes with back up files of who knows what, unused CDs and DVD-Rs, old belts, t-shirts and polo shirts which have gone out of style, packaged-underwear never been opened, old watches, forgotten purchases or gifts, which sometimes surprise me when I find them. Donate them; yes I have donated stuff through the years, but some things I don't want to part with.

But summer weekends are the best. There's always not enough of them. It becomes the shortest season - you just cannot cram all the things and activities you want to do in such a short period of time. With summer weekends, it's like being young again. You discover new avenues, you linger, you stay. You may return or not.

Have a good weekend. Whatever it is you're doing, wherever it is being done. I want my weekend, too.