Last Minute Chaos!

The last few days have been chaotic to say the least.  Planning last playdates and coordinating moving details.  And on top of everything else, our boiler exploded on Sunday.  This is the last thing we needed.  So while we now have water, we've had no hot water.  Good times.  

I've been working with my landlord to fix the boiler but as it broke on Sunday and Mon and Tuesday were holidays, there was no getting anyone out here until today, Wednesday.  Yes, that has meant a cold shower for me (only one so far... yeah you really don't want to be around me at the moment because it's been a bit) and none for the kids as I couldn't bring myself to torture them with the icy coldness.  

My landlord has been good about trying to get someone out here.  But this morning I had plans to meet a friend and her son, who is also Liam's friend.  We were meeting at 11 in another part of the city.  At 5 minutes until 11 I got a call from the repair people.  There was someone waiting at my house NOW waiting to fix the boiler.  I told them they gave me no notice and could they come back or wait 30-45 minutes for me to get there?  No, I needed to be back within 15 minutes.  That's right, they gave me no notice and weren't going to wait AND if I didn't get back they couldn't come until Tuesday.  Given we are in this apartment til Friday (with a hotel Friday night), that was not an option - I need to shower!!!!  

So as I waited for my friend to arrive to do an unfortunate drop and run with Liam and raced back here to meet the guy to fix the water heater.  He gave me the stink eye when I arrived.  Um, hello, perhaps if you had called in advance I would have been here when you arrived!!  

Anyways, he fixed the heater - I personally think he did the cheap job which is what the landlord wanted.  I heard him say something about dos mil (2000) and then something about 150.  And given I had to front the 150, I'm going with quick fix.  But to be honest, I don't care so long as I have hot water for at least one more shower before I go.  We had someone I've become friendly with look at the house on Tuesday and I've already given her the heads up on the water heater and beyond that, I can't be held responsible for what the landlord chooses to do.

I raced back to our playdate and made it in time to go to lunch.  The kids were tired, hungry and a bit punchy but we had a great pizza lunch.  I'm going to miss these guys, who also happen to be leaving. It's funny how you connect with certain people right when you are leaving.  Figures.  Liam gets to see Miles again Thursday when he goes to visit with another friend (and gets out of the house while the movers are here).  So it wasn't a total goodbye moment.

Liam and I had about 45 minutes at home before we had to head up to Sarria to get Aidan and his friend Max at Raul's house.  Not having a car sucks.  How I managed for 3 years is beyond me.  Raul doesn't live very close to public transit so yet another taxi.  And I had to bring Max home to Pedrables which is no where near us and no where near Raul.  And so another taxi for that and yet another to get us home (because even though Max lives near a metro it would have been another 45 minutes to get back home).  Bone tired, we made it home by around 6.  

The kids were totally up my butt despite the fact that I spent the ENTIRE day shuffling them around when I had 5 million things here that needed to be done.  They obviously don't care about that.  I will admit to going slightly ballistic on them for being so selfish when they could offer to help out a little here or there.  It wasn't pretty and I felt immediate regret for my words.  We made up but it was well after 9 before I got started on my work day.

But wait,  why haven't I started my work day yet??  Because I spent the whole day taking the kids to and from playdates.  I HAVE to get work done before we leave here.  I will be working in the States but given my crazy schedule, it will be on a reduced capacity and we have the 2 week cruise right before.  I had planned an all nighter, crazy I know, to get the stuff done. Thankfully by midnight I had a good chunk of things off my plate and felt pretty good about what I had accomplished.  

Anyways, that's a bit of our last minute chaos.  The movers come on Thursday and I can't wait to at least get this process started (they will finish on Fri).  Then it's off to a hotel starting on Friday.  We're not done here yet, still lots left to do.  Will write updates on the move!!!

Besos,

Julie

The Great Escape - Scaling Rooftops in Barcelona!

So our new apartment isn't perfect.  And I've got an entry in the hopper about renting here versus at home but just haven't gotten it up, maybe now will be the right time after the story I have to tell you.  We're really lucky to have a rooftop terrace all to ourselves - we just bought new furniture for up there so we can really enjoy the outdoor space.  The downstairs patio is for the kids and the roof is for the adults.  We've got a great outdoor couch, a bbq (still needs to be assembled), a swing (also needs to be assembled), table and chairs and some lounges.  The perfect getaway in the middle of the city.

Some of our new outdoor terrace furniture

But wait, I should backtrack to why the whole renting here versus at home applies.  Here, we are responsible for fixing most anything that goes wrong unless it's structural to the apartment.  We had 30 days (in which we weren't here for about 15 of them) to let the landlord know if there were any issues with the apartment and then it was all our responsibility.  Initially the door to the terrace worked, or worked well enough.  Then one day it didn't open so easily and then not at all.  A friend of mine managed to jimmie it open but then we closed it again.  A week or two later, Josh and I together (how many college educated people does it take to open a door???) managed to pry it open and agreed that until it was fixed, we would not close it all the way, just enough to make it appear to be closed. I should also mention that there is no handle on the outside of the door, so if it closes (hindsight now being 20/20) you should make sure you have a key since the only way in is thru using the keyhole.  Yes, this is a bit of foreshadowing for the evening ahead....

See, no handle on the outside...so how are you supposed to get back in the house????

Because we didn't have a lot of space in our old apartment we didn't do a lot of entertaining, but now that we have this great terrace, we plan to change that.  And last night was our inaugural night for the roof and well, like any inauguration, there were a few bumps along the way.  Everything started off smoothly - it was a bit more effort bringing up bottles of wine and food up several flights of stairs, but all was good.  But then one of us said something to Liam, god knows what, that upset him and he ran to the door to go inside, slamming the door closed.  He's on the inside and we are all on the outside.  And within a moment, you could tell he knew the consequence of what had just happened - and he became hysterical.  And while we didn't become hysterical like Liam, we definitely had an "oh fuck" moment of what in the world are we going to do?  The inside of the door doesn't work so Liam certainly couldn't just open the door for us - after all, it took 2 adults to pry open that door, how is a 5 year old going to do it???

Stuck on the roof???  Good thing we have a few bottles of wine to keep us occupied while we 

wait for rescue!!

The next thought was, who has our house key and can they come over to open the door???  Great thought except my phone was in the house and Josh doesn't have their phone numbers in his phone.  I will be fixing that today.  Ok, so what's the next option???  I see Shawn looking over at the neighbor's roof and then down to our balcony on the next floor down.  It's too far to jump to our balcony.  So what to do???  He scales over the neighbor's roof and then climbs over the 4 foot gap from their roof to my balcony and goes in the house.  Josh, of course, follows suit... and as Josh is climbing over, Cristy whispers to me - "a fall like that you don't recover from".  Gee, thanks for that one!  However, on the flip side, Josh is planning on doing some cliff jumping in Menorca later this month that I was ambivalent about...I'm now feeling a little better about that since he managed this with no incident!

A view from the roof... Shawn and Josh climbed over from the right (the building next to us) to our balcony on the left.  It's a pretty big drop and while it doesn't look far, it's actually a good 4 feet between buildings.

So now Shawn and Josh are inside trying in vain to open this door.  Aidan has now decided that he needs to pee and of course, there is no where for him to go.  Cristy hands him an empty wine bottle to which he says, "what do I do with this?".  Cristy explained...only perhaps she missed one part.  He seemed to think that his penis actually had to go into the bottle, not just aiming for the opening.  Thankfully he didn't try to hard to get it in or the night would have ended with an ER trip and us trying to explain why our 8 year old has a wine bottle stuck on his penis.  Whew, got off easy on that one!!

Aidan ready to go with his wine bottle... and no, he's not actually peeing into it in the second picture...this is after he realized that he couldn't actually put it in the bottle and is just being silly.

Somewhere along the way, there was made mention of, is there any key???  But I think Josh and I were focused on the fact that the key doesn't work on the inside of the door and so we said no.  However, we didn't think about the fact that it might work on the OUTSIDE of the door.  That is til Shawn had been working for a good 20 minutes trying to get this door open.  Cristy and I, of course, took pictures through the window.  We were also plotting on what we would do if they in fact, can't open the door.  Do we call the police?  Nope??  What we would do is exactly what Shawn and Josh did and scale our way down, hand Aidan over the gap (and hope for the best) and let ourselves in the house that way.  Thankfully we didn't have to do that!!!

The boys trying to break us out!!!  Can you tell it's hot at the top of the building????

We did eventually have that ah-ha moment of "hey why don't you pass me the keys thru the window and I'll try it on this lock out here and see what happens?"  And of course, it worked.  After all that stress and damage to the door, all it took was passing the keys out the window.  Figures!!  Regardless, we all found humor in the situation and we laughed...hard!!  

And the keys worked!!!!

When everyone left last night, I was extra careful closing the door, making sure it wasn't closed the entire way.  WRONG!!  Turns out when Shawn and Josh were trying to get us out, they bent the door frame (they also broke the hammer) and so what I thought was partially closed was in fact entirely closed.  At least this time we were in the house safely!!  Of course, the keys were outside which wasn't going to do us a whole lot of good!

The hammer didn't make it through the lock out...

Our lonely keys outside instead of inside....now we've wizened up and one key is inside and 

one key is outside.  

This morning I was all stressed about what to do about the door.  But then while checking my email I saw that Dominic, our handyman, who was supposed to be on vacation, happened to email late last night about some projects we were looking to do on the roof.  I immediately called him this morning and said, not only do I need a quote, but I need you to help me open the door to my terrace!!  And so he came this morning...and of course, he opened the door in less than 2.3 seconds.  Figures right???  Ahhhh Spain :)

To Chris and Elaine who are coming over next week...make sure to wear rooftop scaling footwear just in case...you never know what may happen when you come to dinner at the Marcus' ;)

Besos,
Julie

"Slug"ging Along...

In recent weeks we have been experiencing a strange phenomenon in our back patio.  Slugs.  Lots of them.  I'd say at least a hundred a night when they are there.  They are only there at night and by morning they are gone.  And while you would think a slug would be a slow mover, apparently they are not since as recently as last night we had a few that made it thru the open slider door (screens are not common in Barcelona since we "supposedly" don't have mosquitos to worry about) and about halfway across our living room floor before we noticed them!  This was the night after one had managed to climb up to the door handle and when I went to close the door at night accidentally had it in my hand - you may have heard the scream back there in the States!

It appears they show up more often after it rains - similar to the earthworms we get at home in the driveway and streets after a good rainstorm.  The only difference here is that we don't know where they come from! 

We know the earthworms are aptly named because they come from the earth.  The grass and soil absorb so much water in a decent rain storm that they are forced to come up for air above the surface.  But here in Barcelona, in our apartment in particular, we have no grass.  We have some fake turf that we put on top of some wooden planks but not that these slugs are bright by any means but I'm going to guess they know the difference between turf and actual grass and soil.

So we have a few questions about these slugs:

Where are they coming from?  According to the website I just checked out - it appears that most slugs are your garden variety.  I don't have a garden, I don't have grass, so I'm not sure why they are attracted to our patio.  The 2 likely places they are coming from is our drain and from under the wooden planks we put down over the rocks so the kids would have more play area (you cannot pay me to look under there - perhaps we will send Josh out later!).  Apparently they thrive in high moisture.  I find that very interesting that they would even be here in Barcelona - we get maybe 40-60 days of rain per year and the air is more dry than humid - so how did they end up here? 

Where do they go when they aren't infesting our patio?  Are they coming from the drain that is in the middle of our patio and being forced up when it rains not unlike the earthworm from his home?  They are noctural (fun fact for you Aidan) and come out to feed at night.  But they go to their "home" to sleep all that food off when they aren't here I guess.

And finally what good are slugs?  We know that the earthworms help to cultivate the soil and are good for grass and crops.  Slugs are absolutely no good, destroying crops by eating roots, leaves, stems and fruits - and I should have no problems with my conscience if I get rid of them.  They do not eat bugs or help the environment according to what I have just read.  All I need are some toads, snakes, ducks, chickens and raccoons which some of the most common predators of slugs.  Those should be pretty easy to find here ;)  Until then I guess we'll just have to deal with our little nocturnal guests and keep our doors closed at night!

Just a few fun facts I found out:
*  Slugs are hermaphrodites, having both female and male reproductive organs.   Apophallation allows the slugs to separate themselves by one or both of the slugs chewing off the other's penis. Once its penis has been removed, the slug is still able to mate using only the female parts of its reproductive system.  (Men reading this be thankful we don't do that to you after mating!).
*  They actually have two pairs of antenae on their head - the top is for sensing light and the bottom for sensing smell.

They seem to gravitate to the food and water bowls which now need to be rinsed daily!  Disgusting!!!!

Julie

TGIF!

Another new day and a slightly better night of sleep. Sort of. Kids slept in my bed – I slept in their freezing cold room and Josh on the couch. I think the kids were comfy though. I got up around 8 again – still dark out. Didn’t go for a run again because I was … Well, I guess just lazy. So there!

I will admit that last night, I didn’t get to #8 – rosetta stone kept giving me an error – waiting on the rosetta stone people to get back to me.

It’s not raining today (though still very cloudy and chilly – upper 40s perhaps?) and so I had hope that I would leave the house today!!!!

I woke the kids around 8:30 – trying to get them up a little earlier each day. Tried to give Liam a tub this AM – should be simple right? How many tubs have I given over the years? Except that even though it had been an hour since my shower, it wasn’t long enough for the water to reheat and so ½ way thru his tub the water was freezing. You probably heard his screams in the US as I rinsed his hair with freezing cold water. Aidan wasn’t much better and though you might not have heard his screams in the US, you definitely could hear quite a distance away! And I waited a ½ hr for his shower after I finished with Liam – he had luke warm water and that was it. From what I can gather, the Spaniards are pretty eco friendly and so I’m not sure if I just have some super duper eco friendly hot water heater that takes a long time to reheat? At least when it is hot, it’s got great water pressure! Much better than the US!

Learning to wash dishes by hand. Yes, I have a dishwasher (see yesterday’s entry) but I also only have 3 cabinets that need to hold all dishes and food. So we brought very little silverware, dishes, cups. Often times we need to use them again before we can run the dishwasher so most stuff is done by hand. Pain in my ass. I spoke to our landlord about it today and apparently I was NOT using it correctly – close but not quite. Because of the water here, which I guess isn’t great??? They add salt to their dishwasher – there is actually a salt holder in the base of the dishwasher that I guess you just add salt into this holder until the water and salt rise to the top of the holder and then you stop. Interesting…

The landlord came today to bring us our spaceheater. And she’s very nice. She lived in the US so her English is really good though she doesn’t agree with me there. She brought us the space heater to use for the boys’ room til they can fix it on Wed (when she called yesterday it was Mon or Tues…now Wed. I expect this trend to continue.). I asked her about fire hazards, you know, because often times space heaters are considered that. I asked her about the lack of fire alarms. This is not something I normally concern myself with. If I were to buy a house in the US I would never check to make sure there are fire alarms – it’s a given they will be there. Apparently no one here has them. Unless you are on the 10th floor or higher. Given we are on the ground and 2nd floors of this place, apparently there is no need. Very Darwin of the Spanish as my friend Cristy commented – I have to agree.

Cristy was running a little late so I decided to take the kids and find the dumpster. I know, very adventurous. It was just up the block and they are all marked for what they are for and have nice little handles. They are all closed so they don’t smell which is nice. Cristy mentioned to me that there are grey ones in certain parts of the city that are like chutes and suck your trash into the netherlands of the city. Hmmm…sounds healthy! Anyways, it’s not that far from us which is good because who wants to carry a bag or bags of trash all that far? Not I…

Cristy came and brought lunch. Buitoni pasta!!! Something familiar and yummy! Thanks Cristy! It’s nice to have something I know I’m not scared of to eat! The kids were absolutely stir crazy so we took them for a walk. Because on the first day here Josh bought Aidan a little Rayman (very big here along with Simpsons and Looney Toons) toy at a newspaper stand, Aidan now associates EVERY stand with toys. And wants to stop at EVERY stand. It’s rather annoying. So we looked at the stand and in fact they had Rayman toys and something Spongebob. And he wanted one. To which I answered no – his reply being a tantrum and refusing to walk with us. This lasted on and off until we got to the playground – maybe 4 blocks away. The only incident we had was Liam stepping in a pile of poop. Oh so fabulous! Cristy thank you again for helping to scrape it off… you’ll make a great mom someday!! I’m sure she thinks my kids are wild and crazy and I don’t blame her!!

Oh and we stopped at an ATM which I used successfully. I guess because our La Caixa bank account was set up in English they have it as our primary language for our ATM because the menu automatically came up in English – nice feature! One of the things we’ve noticed here is that you don’t use checks AT ALL. Everyone transfers money. So we know our landlord’s bank account number and we transfer the funds to her each month. Many transactions are done like that or with a debit/credit card. You cannot transfer without a special code – which apparently prevents people from stealing your bank info.

A little note on food since today has been a relatively quiet day. First off, I’m picky… super picky. I was iffy on my survival here but I may be able to make it. I also stocked up at home on shelf stable items and shipped a bunch of stuff here. Hey, at least it gets me started – I need to acclimate slowly. Tonight I’m going to attempt cookies, from a mix. This is a Betty Crocker mix I brought from home. Only need a stick of butter and an egg. Egg, check. Stick of butter… kind of check. These come in blocks and it’s 250g with no markings. So I’m going to have to take a guess on that. Also, my oven is in Celsius. And yes, I had to take out the instruction manual because it has several settings – all done with pictures. If I had my printer/scanner I would scan and include image with this entry but I don’t have that yet. But anyways, there are 5 different functions of this oven – Alton Brown (Of Good Eats fame) would be proud of this multi-tasker! I, on the other hand, am hoping these cookies come out at least halfway decent. FYI, 350F is 176C in case you ever need that info (thanks google). The dough seems to taste good. I have the oven set to conventional with fan setting. The oven smells a bit odd to me – like it’s burning but let’s see what happens… Ok I did the conventional with fan which states that it is appropriate for roasts and cakes. The fan spreads the heat uniformly inside the oven. That sounds better to me than grill or grill with lower element or just lower element which is for heating dishes and raising pastry. Hmmm… but my cookies look cooked on the top but raw on the bottom. Ok, now switching to lower element. This is going to be interesting. First batch…not so good looking. Second batch, much more like normal and they taste great. Ah cookies…they fix everything!

The rest of the day has been pretty uneventful. I’m hoping the weather is decent on Sat as I’d like to actually go on that run (in the daylight) and perhaps do a little wandering around the neighborhood (maybe even without kids so I can focus on my surroundings). I’m sure there will be an adventure or two thrown in as well…

Buenas noche!
 
Julie