It's been rather hot these days. I guess it's nowhere near how it will be in a few months, but to me and the kids it's already feeling rather warm. It is ok to be outside before 11am and after 5pm, but in between we are just cooking. I refuse to use the aircon more than absolutely necessary, and when I do switch them on, it's at 28 degrees. It already feels much cooler than the temperature outside.
I discovered that some “important” stuff was left behind, and that made me quite sad. I am missing my whole jewelry box. I also packed a “crafts” box for the kids with playdough, paint and other stuff that never made it here. And most importantly, our little pool never came either. I am rather upset about all this. I guess it's also everything combined, so I am bit more fragile, but just writing about this makes me cry. Stupid.
Our flat is coming along nicely. We rearranged the kids' room and the office. We got rid of a bunch of furniture that we took down to the empty flat on the ground floor. Now it's starting to feel a bit “home”. I am still missing a bunch of stuff that V hasn't brought home from his office, such as books.
The one issue about our flat is that it is horribly filthy. I think it's a combination of two factors beside the natural dust problem: it was empty for a long time and the people living here before were just pigs. Sorry to be a bit rude here, but I can't describe it in any other way. Both the kettle and the toaster had a thick layer of grease sticking to them. While I can kind of relate to grease on the stove, I cannot for thelife of me picture how you'd get that quantity of goo on a kettle?!?! Surely it's never been wiped or washed in its life. And that's just one example. We've been introduced to “Flush” which is supposed to be a toilet cleaner, but it cleans pretty much anything. It took off a thick layer of dirt and limescale from the bathroom tiles within seconds. I don't even want to know what's in it... It's probably killing all living organisms in the groundwater. But it is very efficient. So I've been walking around armed with a rag and have been wiping random things, such as light switches, shelves, grouts, plugs etc. Now that the furniture and stuff is mostly sorted (not quite, but we're getting there), I can make a plan for some more organized scrubbing. All the grouts are either dark brown or black. It's totally gross. But then it will take a lot of time and lot of scrubbing to clean them one by one. All the kitchen cabinets must be emptied out as well. I discovered that the walls can be washed relatively easily, so I've already cleaned a bunch of black marks off them. I also washed the covers on our chairs. Some moron thought it was a good idea to buy white chairs for Sudan. You can see every fingerprint on them. They were grey by the time they went into the washing machine, and I am not kidding myself, they won't be white for very long. But we have no other option right now.
Talking about the washing machine... what a carve up... The washing machine stopped working after the first load I put in there. The pump gacked out. We called the people in charge, they took the machine away to get fixed. That was probably Monday. On Wednesday, they brought it back, saying that it had been repaired. Still not pumping. Take it back down. (We live on the third floor, no elevator). They wanted to give us the one from downstairs, but there was some issue, so they couldn't. Anyways. Machine comes back on Thursday. We try it out, it works. People leave. Throw a load in, it doesn't work. Call people again. They take it away once again, but this time they brought the machine from downstairs. Finally. They also told us that our machine worked fine downstairs. Good on them.
1 comment:
Oh, the good old days. I miss them.
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