Never-ending story

  

Will this ever end? Just when we had all the house problems under control; back they came, with a vengeance.

Let’s take it room by room shall we?

Master bathroom - major issues. After the geyser issue on Halloween weekend we haven’t dared use the bath tub (see previous post “Butt naked”).As of now, when we use the shower, the toilet is making a blubb, blubb, blubb sound and water is coming up. The toilet doesn’t flush and the shower floods and both sinks are clogged. On one of the landlady’s representatives visits (and there has been many) she explained to me (while chuckling; almost laughing) that the shower, the massive bath and the two sinks share one pipe leading to the toilet (!) and from there to the drain. And the pipes are really small, she says while continuing to smile and showing me exactly how small with her hands. Now, this lady travels by bus from the city, most likely for at least two (2!) hours to stand in my bathroom and snicker about the appalling plumbing in the house that she is responsible for.  

The children’s bathroom – working surprisingly well…except for the sinks, again. What a surprise. The water runs so slowly the kids can brush their teeth, go to school, and come back again before all the water is gone.

And the kitchen - ahh, the kitchen. Our house has the smallest kitchen we’ve ever had; it is even smaller than the Annecy kitchen which was tiny. I’ve bought two new cabinets for our dishes only as there is almost no cabinet space at all. And what there is; is either very high up or in the corner, impossible to reach and will be used for items not very often used. The” beautiful” laminate on the cabinet to the right of the oven (which is fitted with a strange wire structure to be used for …I have no fucking idea...) has started to peel. Most probably the glue used (on a kitchen cabinet next to an oven) isn’t heat proof.

The pipes (again the pipes) are teeny tiny and clog up. What was fixed when we had first moved in (involving some kind of drilling wire construction when the kitchen kept flooding every day) has now returned and while the water has been running slowly down the drain; now it doesn’t run at all. And what happens then? Somehow it ends up on the floor, under the “beautiful” bar coming out from…somewhere. Seriously, I don’t know. Under the sink it’s dry and the dishwasher doesn’t leak so I have no idea! But yet, somehow, brownish tinted water with coffee specks smelling of the bad wine I poured out this morning seeped out making Xiu (who was over cleaning the house at the moment) simply shake her head. “Bu hao”, she simply exclaimed, no good house.

While the management workers were here I simply left them with Xiu. She just can make them work harder than I can. They asked me for a step ladder and she fired off in vicious Mandarin: “She doesn’t have any furniture, do you really think she would have a ladder?”  I took Amanda with me and went to Stacy for coffee and the high-end Nestle chocolate she got for Christmas from Paul’s office.

“I’m amazed” she said, “I’m amazed that you are neither hooked on drugs nor a raging alcoholic by now, considering all that you’ve been through”. What can I say? There’s not a question of giving up. It’s like having a baby. You cannot not get up in the middle of the night to feed it, change it, and make sure that it is still breathing. You just have to get through it. And once you are over the hard part, the baby years, it will all be good. Or so I hope.

Ulf has been reading my posts and complained that I’m complaining too much. “People will think we are miserable!” Miserable we are not, I like it here, but as I told him that in this house there are not many things going right, right now, and a lot of complaining is justified he simply said: “Well, that is true.”

Now let’s just see if we will get our container next week when we have a semi-promise of delivery. Who is to know that they pulled the right one from that warehouse in Mesa where it was stored for two months?