Headaches and Highlights

What a week. A long week. An overwhelming week. A week filled with running around and waiting. Endless phone calls and e-mails. Minor irritations and frustrations. No work or school on Monday for Labor Day and Wednesday for Vinayakar Chathurthi.

Here is a brief recap of the week... I won't bore you with all the nitty gritty details, there's too much to write. But here are a few highlights:

After spending several hours last Saturday trying to remove the waxy outer coat of paint from the armoire we bought for Matt, I finally broke down and hired a carpenter to come over and sand it down. It took him an entire day to do it.... and it probably could have used another few hours. I have since primer-ed the inside of it, and am waiting for a break in the action to begin painting the outside. Hopefully I'll finish it tomorrow.

I met with the Head of School earlier this week to discuss the bus schedule; more specifically, the end of the day drop off. While the elementary school day ends at 3:15 pm, the middle school and high school doesn't get out until 3:40 pm. And as there are only 2 buses, the elementary kids have to wait for the middle school and high school kids before they can leave. So they sit with a monitor in the cafeteria and wait.... for at least 30 minutes, sometimes 40 minutes before they board their bus and head for home. On a good day Riley will be home by 4:35 pm. More often with traffic, she gets home closer to 5 pm. Call me crazy, but I think this is a very long day for a five year old. Now I could go and pick her up every day. However, she LOVES the bus. To her, taking the bus is what going to the "big school" is all about. In the end, my meeting went well, and the Head of School is looking at a few different options to see what he can do.

There are NO lack of work functions and events here. In fact, we went to two evening parties this week, one with kids and the other without. Last night, we had the maid (who on another note, will be starting to work for us in less than 4 weeks) babysit the girls. I'm thrilled I'm waiting for her. I think she's worth the wait!

We've had a lot of work done on our house this week. We had an air conditioning unit put into our kitchen, two air conditioning units fixed, weather stripping put in on all doors and screen doors, pictures and mirrors hung, measurements taken for new vanities in the bathrooms, and a new kitchen countertop. As excited as I am that they're so responsive to our maintenance requests, I do look forward to the day where I don't have anyone in my house... except the dog.

We received a notice that the electricity board of Tamil Nadu has announced a new schedule of "load shedding" for one and one half hours daily for the foreseeable future. That's right, our power will be shut off every-single-day for 1 1/2 hours. Now we do have generators, that take about ten seconds to kick on once the power goes out, to help deliver electricity to our houses during these times. But, when the power goes out it, it turns off all of the A/C units and the computer; neither of which switch back on by themselves once the generator is activated. Of course, these are just the power outages they TELL you about. This doesn't include the other 10 or so times a day that our power goes out.

The week ended on a high note, when at 4:15 pm yesterday, the movers pulled into my driveway and delivered my 34 boxes of consumables! Yeehaw! 1962 pounds of food, toiletries, and dog supplies made their way into my kitchen... only to be put completely away, in our walk-in air conditioned pantry, within a few hours. Yes, we're anal retentive that way. Our items are piled floor to ceiling, and all around in places I can't even photograph. You all asked where we were going to store it. Remember the before photo? Here's where we put it all away. Take a look...