Thursday, January 31, 2008

A little frustration to welcome us home.

There's nothing quite like coming home to a laundry list of To Do-s.

Getting the a/c fixed in the kitchen cause it started to leak everywhere.
Clean up the cat pee that seems to be in most rooms... either out of malice or boredom from our time away.
Remind the housekeeper about using veg/fruit wash for the raw foods... and if it's run out that rinsing in tap water then distilled water is NOT acceptable. I bought bleach and told her to use that. No wonder my tummy is a little upset.
Get cooking gas for the stove before we're reduced to microwave and toaster meals.
Continue to clean mold out of the pantry, realize much of the packaged foods are going stale if they aren't moldy, consider alternative recipes for taco shells.
Learned 100th day of school was Tuesday and projects were due for 1st grade. Thank goodness for legos.
Realize India Week at school is next week, all the handwashable outfits I didn't do before the trip now need to be washed and ironed pronto for wearing next week.
Rebecca needs a ghagra choli for a dance presentation for India Week. Need to look up what a ghagra choli is. Ok, a quick search shows it's a dressy floor length skirt with a short top of any design and color. Thank goodness, she has one of those.
The suitcases are all unpacked, except one I've been dumping all the newly laundered clothes into. It's still sitting on the bedroom floor. Plus the 2 laundry baskets are full of clean clothes.
Iron. A lot.
Deal with freaking out housekeeper when we asked her to cook chicken. Bird flu has reared its head again, so no one (apart from us apparently) is eating chicken or even eggs and the prices at the fish market have skyrocketed.
And this week I had to pay for cooking gas, afterschool tennis for Rebecca, afterschool yoga for Jonathon, January salaries for our 3 househelp people, two phone bills, school lunches for all 4 kids for the next 2 weeks (only 2 meals each a week, thank goodness), tennis lessons this weekend for four of us, Madras Kids for at least one kid (sorry neighbor... I'm a little strapped right now, hope to get the other one next week).
Rebecca needs to finish her home country project. She's not presenting until Leap Day, so thankfully we have a month to pull things together. She's got a good start on it and she's working in a group, but she's needing some home help too. She's behind in math, but is staying in for recesses until she catches up. Why didn't we get her math assignments before we left? I don't know.
Nicholas is catching up on homework too. Spelling lists galore. Math pages out the wazoo.
Report cards came back for the younger three. All improved. We've agreed to pay Rs100 per A (for the girls) or per E (for the boys) at the end of the school year. We are not above bribery. Katherine can't seem to track hers down though so she may not get anything. This is the same girls who lost her camera on the 1 hour flight from Frankfurt to Belgium, lost her scarf in the Da Vinci exhibit in Belgium and lost one of her gold earrings (yeah... the new ones from Christmas) in Malaysia.
I'm going to get her a tshirt that says "Future ACS Case."
I still haven't finished the consumables survey, the hardship differential survey, taking any photos off the cameras from this trip or setting up new piano lessons (now that Madras Kids takes up all Saturday mornings for them).
I'm back on the fingerprinting line at work.
Oh, and lice is floating around the school again.

No comments:

Post a Comment