Katherine was gone all weekend to Mumbai with her volleyball team. She had a blast, just like last year. I kind of wish I'd gone to watch since it was my last chance to visit Mumbai (never been) and it would have been fun to watch her play. She really likes volleyball, so I'm glad she's signed up for a beginner/intermediate clinic this summer.
She was gone Thursday morning to Sunday afternoon. Saturday we did our normal Sparky's run for lunch, then had a good time at the Mexicali party that evening. A couple of our Consulate families, who luckily live in a duplex, do a yearly shindig right around Cinco de Mayo. It's adults only with the flowing liquor and blind-folded-manic-stick-waving drunk people attacking a pinata or two. The food was excellent and we left at 10, so it was all good.
The culling continues. Rebecca went through her clothes and gave away roughly 2/3 of them. Today I'll go through Jonathon's clothes. We'll be sure to dispense with all the size 6 clothes (the size 4s and 5s were given away in the fall even if they still fit him) and ensure room for the overalls he says he wants. Overalls? Katherine and Nicholas get a bit of a reprieve because they provide hand-me-downs, though we'll do a once-through anyway.
We've realized we need to buy bookshelves. Several of them.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
3 cats + 1 rat = ?
You'd think it would be pretty straight forward.
We're in heavy duty stuff-purging mode. The piles are growing. We've purged roughly 100 books, the same number of movies and slightly fewer video games. Trash is going out in bundles. A rather huge pile is forming for donation. Thom over at Sparky's is involved in several charities and is willing to send over his truck to pick up our donation items as well as all our leftover consumables.
Of course, to put things in order means creating a path of chaos. Our bedroom is always the dumping ground and the last place to get any attention. Suitcases from our trip, piles of clothing, rolled carpets, boxes and bags of, well, I'm not sure... but anyway, it's a veritable playground for all things small and furry aside from the fact that is probably all reeks of cat. Ian was in the bedroom yesterday afternoon and called me over. We had a mouse and it had just run into the bathroom. It came up through the drainage drain behind the toilet which Ian had now stuffed a toilet scrubber into until something more permanent could be arranged. Usually the drain has a metal sieve on top and it was neatly pushed aside. I didn't see the critter but had no doubts it was around.
This morning, we both saw it in the bedroom. It was no mouse but a rat easily 5 inches long, with another 6+ inches of tail.
Well, we knew what to do with that thing:
Shut the bathroom door
Shut bedroom door
Grab 1 cat... another cat.. a third cat...
Toss three cats in the room with the giant rodent.
Wait.
A couple hours later we checked on what was going on. We hadn't heard any meowing, no rat shrieks, nothing falling off counters, definitely no suggestion of a mighty chase.
The cats were all hiding under the bed. We gave them more time.
A couple hours later, one is still under the bed, another is warily sniffing around, and the other is sleeping on the dresser.
These felines would fail miserably in the wild. We released them back to the rest of the house, acquired a sticky pad mouse trap, placed it in the bathroom between the door and the drain and left.
Success. The rat had gotten itself so stuck it hardly seemed to be breathing, which was a good thing since the next step was to drown the poor thing. These sticky pads are roughly in the middle between a killing machine like a classic trap and a life preserving cage trap. They catch the animal in a thick sticky slimy goo that is impossible to remove without heavy doses of vegetable oil and a thorough scrubbing with soap. Needless to say, not going that far to rescue a rat that invaded the house. But it also doesn't kill them. So we're left with an alive creature that is impossible to release. Drowning is quicker than starving and it seemed that it had gotten so gooped up it didn't squeak once as it's head was stuck too.
Ian did the dirty deed. Now, we assume the critter hadn't already invited his family to move in.
We're in heavy duty stuff-purging mode. The piles are growing. We've purged roughly 100 books, the same number of movies and slightly fewer video games. Trash is going out in bundles. A rather huge pile is forming for donation. Thom over at Sparky's is involved in several charities and is willing to send over his truck to pick up our donation items as well as all our leftover consumables.
Of course, to put things in order means creating a path of chaos. Our bedroom is always the dumping ground and the last place to get any attention. Suitcases from our trip, piles of clothing, rolled carpets, boxes and bags of, well, I'm not sure... but anyway, it's a veritable playground for all things small and furry aside from the fact that is probably all reeks of cat. Ian was in the bedroom yesterday afternoon and called me over. We had a mouse and it had just run into the bathroom. It came up through the drainage drain behind the toilet which Ian had now stuffed a toilet scrubber into until something more permanent could be arranged. Usually the drain has a metal sieve on top and it was neatly pushed aside. I didn't see the critter but had no doubts it was around.
This morning, we both saw it in the bedroom. It was no mouse but a rat easily 5 inches long, with another 6+ inches of tail.
Well, we knew what to do with that thing:
Shut the bathroom door
Shut bedroom door
Grab 1 cat... another cat.. a third cat...
Toss three cats in the room with the giant rodent.
Wait.
A couple hours later we checked on what was going on. We hadn't heard any meowing, no rat shrieks, nothing falling off counters, definitely no suggestion of a mighty chase.
The cats were all hiding under the bed. We gave them more time.
A couple hours later, one is still under the bed, another is warily sniffing around, and the other is sleeping on the dresser.
These felines would fail miserably in the wild. We released them back to the rest of the house, acquired a sticky pad mouse trap, placed it in the bathroom between the door and the drain and left.
Success. The rat had gotten itself so stuck it hardly seemed to be breathing, which was a good thing since the next step was to drown the poor thing. These sticky pads are roughly in the middle between a killing machine like a classic trap and a life preserving cage trap. They catch the animal in a thick sticky slimy goo that is impossible to remove without heavy doses of vegetable oil and a thorough scrubbing with soap. Needless to say, not going that far to rescue a rat that invaded the house. But it also doesn't kill them. So we're left with an alive creature that is impossible to release. Drowning is quicker than starving and it seemed that it had gotten so gooped up it didn't squeak once as it's head was stuck too.
Ian did the dirty deed. Now, we assume the critter hadn't already invited his family to move in.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Another one bites the dust.
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned how Indian power killed a hand mixer and a toaster. One day they just didn't turn on. I also killed a large coffee maker that wasn't even ours by plugging it into a flat-pronged outlet in the kitchen, thinking it was 110 outlet. Came to learn that it's supposed to be 110, but all the kitchen outlets are wired (and some miswired) 220, no matter what they look like. I've also killed the power supply for the Roomba by plugging it into a power strip that was plugged into the wall, not into a transformer. Ian ordered a 110/220 replacement. Two XBox 360s have died here (another one died in Togo), but we can't figure if that's solely due to power issues or a combination of power and getting their innards shaken to death in transit from the States. Maybe you remember way far back when I mentioned that just about every box we receive has been well crushed in the pouch? A couple months ago the power brick for one of the laptops died. At least we're hoping it's just the power brick even though the local electrician couldn't make heads or tails of it. The laptop now sits on a dusty shelf, alone and neglected. The VCR died about 6 months back. The electrician couldn't figure that one out either, and it's only a VCR. I can see a Wii-mote confusing a local electrician, but a VCR? About the same time we noticed the buttons on the TV didn't do what they're supposed to anymore. Volume buttons might change the channel, for instance. I say "might" because we never really know what was going to happen each time. It doesn't really matter though, since the cable box went kaput this week so we can't watch regular TV anyway. Thank goodness for downloads (American Idol!) and DVDs.
Do I tempt fate by asking, "What next?"
Do I tempt fate by asking, "What next?"
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
A reprieve
Since we don't have Orders (sensing a theme?) our packout dates have been pushed back to the 1st and 2nd of June. Which is good because I'm spending all my quiet home time these days napping. See, I went to sleep around 11:30 last night and I'm up at 3:30 this morning, even with the help of Nyquil which I usually can't shake out of for 9-10 hours. I know the only way to get over this quick is to push through the nap wall, but I just can't do it. Today I will limit myself to a 2 hour nap, rather than the 3 I've been taking. Wish me luck.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Where to begin?
There's no sense starting at "the beginning" as that doesn't really exist, does it?
Months ago we decided we'd take a trip back to Virginia, just the 2 of us, to buy a house. We allotted 2 weeks, we'd stay with my parents, and thought we'd even get around to purchasing a car.
I have to say, things worked out pretty well.
We didn't go on the trip alone. While we left our kids behind, we took the neighbors' 10 month old baby from Chennai to Virginia. As good as she was, it's still exhausting traveling with a baby, let alone someone else's. For the first 15 hours, she slept a grand total of just under 3 hours. During the last 8 hours, she dozed through 7 of them, but since she didn't eat right before sleeping, she dozed in 20 minute spurts... drink from bottle for a minute, doze for 20 minutes... drink from bottle, doze for 20 minutes... pacifier, doze for 20 minutes... drink from bottle... you get the idea. During the last 15-20 minutes she was done with being cooped up and we were "those people" that everyone hates. All together, it made for a very tiring and extremely long day. I like to sleep on planes and that just didn't happen. The British Airways Chennai flight timings are better than Lufthansa though, as we had the chance to sleep about 6 hours before going to the airport (for a 5:30 a.m. flight), something we can't do with the 1:45 a.m. flight to Germany.
But we made it and handed the baby off to her mom who was waiting at the airport. My parents were there to pick us up.
You know what the best things in the world are? Hearing the "Welcome Home" from the immigration/homeland security guy (yes, it still makes me cry sometimes), and the smell of the air when you first step outside. I don't care that we're in the parking lot of the airport; there is no sweeter and fresher smell than that air after you've lived in someplace like Chennai where every street corner is a urinal or worse and the heavy blanket that settles over you when you leave the house smells like damp and sweat and body waste. It was very hard to return less than 14 days later. How odd to be enticed by the weather at home... what will it do today? 50 and rainy? 90 and sticky? Overcast? Breezy? Who knew?!? There's no question in Chennai. It's going to be smicky (sticky + mucky). Unless it's January, then it's nice. Don't leave Chennai in January.
But return we did. And our packout is scheduled for May 18th-20th. What better way to celebrate out Anniversary than to be hip deep in boxes and packing tape. Bring it on. We might even have Orders by then.
It's a little unnerving packing and giving an address to a home we're buying but haven't bought. What if the whole process falls through? I shudder to think about it. We'll all just cross out fingers and pray that all will go well. The folks we're buying from are selling out of convenience. The house was on the market for nearly a year and they wouldn't budge on anything regarding the sale which was quite the bummer. But it was the nicest house we saw, though a little on the small side until the basement is finished, and definitely in the nicest neighborhood. Montclair was a gated community when it was built 40 years ago, but the gates came down when the neighborhood decided they wanted the VDOT to maintain the roads. I think living in a gated community would have been a bit too much seeing as we lived in one in Manila, and have had high walls and guards since then. Let us out!! So... no gates. Instead we have a well-established community built around a man-made lake. Lake Montclair is built as a skinny lake with lots of fingerlings jutting off. Lots of lakefront properties that way, not that our house will be one of them, but hopefully we can find a quick walking path to one of the lakeside playgrounds and/or beaches. The neighborhood also houses a golf course, a swimming pool that is scheduled to be enclosed, and year round tennis. I'd already signed Rebecca up for the Dale City Frogs summer swim program, before learning that we'd be in Montclair and they have their own summer swim club. Ah well, at least we're not up to Amberjax speed yet. The lake has the aforementioned beaches along with boating and fishing. Playgrounds, walking/biking paths abound. There's a vet and a dentist in the neighborhood. There's a Target 5 minutes away. And a Panera. And... a drive-through Starbucks.
The Montclair elementary school is a 3 minute walk from the house. The middle school is the farthest away at roughly 10 minutes drive, the highschool we haven't figured out yet as there are 2 nearby but each high school in Price William County offers a special program, so if you're interested in one (say, Environmental Sciences) you can apply to a different school than the one you're zoned for. If accepted, they'll bus you over to the chosen school. The two nearest schools to us have an IT program and an IB program. Thank goodness we'll have 6 months or so to decide what to do. These schools are no slouches, and the application process is competitive.
We hunted through a bunch of houses before coming back to this one. The house is OK, the neighborhood is what I really wanted and I think you can see why.
We ate out a lot during our visit, had dinner with 3 other former Chennaites at Harry's Tap Room at Pentagon City, another dinner out with our long-time friend Jeff to Outback, plenty of fast food from Chik-Fil-A/Wendy's/Arby's/Taco Bell, meals with my folks... it was all a bit much, but what else is there to do than indulge? Five more weeks in Chennai then we buckle down to real-life living in the States.
We didn't buy a car. With the house financing, and an offer from my mom to use her car in June, we decided to hold off. What we do know is Ian will get himself a Prius. It's a sweet set of wheels filled with gadgety things we had to avoid drooling over as they could have shorted out the car. Kidding, of course, but I enjoyed driving it as much as he did. We haven't decided what to do about a family car though we're leaning heaving towards a Sienna. I wanted a hybrid Highlander, but remembering back to the Highlanders we saw last time, and with bigger kids now, that third row is just too tight. I have no qualms about driving a minivan, and in fact like them quite a bit. Just do me a favor and call me a swim mom or a volleyball mom, not a soccer mom. A Sienna can come with us to our next post too, a hybrid of any sort most likely cannot. Quick kudos to the rental people at Tysons Koons Toyota dealership. We rented the Prius for 2 weeks what it would have costed for 1 week from a typical rental place, and the process was painless and the people nice. The only catch is that they don't deliver the car to you, but my parents brought us over so it worked for us.
Oh, speaking of volleyball, Katherine had her last practice this morning. Tomorrow she flies off to Mumbai for her tournament and will return on Sunday. She's actually a pretty good player, I was impressed watching yesterday afternoon. I don't know why there isn't more discipline with the sports here (no mandatory uniform for practices, not even mandatory shoe-wearing?) but she's enjoying herself and made the team without any issues. Remember last year? OK, let's not remember last year.
Quick updates on the other kids... Nicholas's hair is growing growing growing. It really needs a trim in the front. He looks really cute. For his birthday, the day before we left, Ian bought him a soccer jersey/shorts/shin guards/cleats set and he wore it that afternoon at soccer practice. My shaggy haired boy was all tucked in on the field. It's not surprise that the gifts with the biggest punch after the soccer outfit were the 2 dress shirts and matching ties from the grandparents.
Rebecca held it together while we were gone. She actually e-mailed us, so we brought her back some really green pairs of shorts which she was thrilled about, a sunscreen stick and High School Musical 3. Anyone know where to get the colored sunscreen sticks? I looked and couldn't find any of the fun sticks in purple, green or blue. Weird, but then it was a little early for the swim season. I bought the shorts at Justice, formerly Limited Too from what I gather. The clothing is bright and mostly respectable, I was impressed.
Jonathon looks a bit like a gopher. He has his two adult middle bottom teeth, but has lost the next ones out, along with the top two front teeth. Two came out normally, one got knocked out when he was playing with his brother, and the other he forcefully wiggled to death. The one that got knocked out caused one of the neighbor's kids to freak and call Brian with "an emergency" which led him to leave us a message about an emergency, with no details. Do you know how nerve-racking it is to get an e-mail when you're eating in Panera 8000 miles away that there's an emergency back home? We didn't know if it had to do with work or the kids. If the kids, which kid (though we guessed it involved Jonathon)? And then, about what? I immediately envision a kid with a deadly snake bite, someone with a broken arm, head trauma from falling down the stairs, expulsion from school, drowning. I asked my mom to call India when she went home for lunch to find out what was going on since we were 30 minutes away and heading back to Woodbridge.
A knocked out tooth? Whatever.
I'm glad to be home.
Months ago we decided we'd take a trip back to Virginia, just the 2 of us, to buy a house. We allotted 2 weeks, we'd stay with my parents, and thought we'd even get around to purchasing a car.
I have to say, things worked out pretty well.
We didn't go on the trip alone. While we left our kids behind, we took the neighbors' 10 month old baby from Chennai to Virginia. As good as she was, it's still exhausting traveling with a baby, let alone someone else's. For the first 15 hours, she slept a grand total of just under 3 hours. During the last 8 hours, she dozed through 7 of them, but since she didn't eat right before sleeping, she dozed in 20 minute spurts... drink from bottle for a minute, doze for 20 minutes... drink from bottle, doze for 20 minutes... pacifier, doze for 20 minutes... drink from bottle... you get the idea. During the last 15-20 minutes she was done with being cooped up and we were "those people" that everyone hates. All together, it made for a very tiring and extremely long day. I like to sleep on planes and that just didn't happen. The British Airways Chennai flight timings are better than Lufthansa though, as we had the chance to sleep about 6 hours before going to the airport (for a 5:30 a.m. flight), something we can't do with the 1:45 a.m. flight to Germany.
But we made it and handed the baby off to her mom who was waiting at the airport. My parents were there to pick us up.
You know what the best things in the world are? Hearing the "Welcome Home" from the immigration/homeland security guy (yes, it still makes me cry sometimes), and the smell of the air when you first step outside. I don't care that we're in the parking lot of the airport; there is no sweeter and fresher smell than that air after you've lived in someplace like Chennai where every street corner is a urinal or worse and the heavy blanket that settles over you when you leave the house smells like damp and sweat and body waste. It was very hard to return less than 14 days later. How odd to be enticed by the weather at home... what will it do today? 50 and rainy? 90 and sticky? Overcast? Breezy? Who knew?!? There's no question in Chennai. It's going to be smicky (sticky + mucky). Unless it's January, then it's nice. Don't leave Chennai in January.
But return we did. And our packout is scheduled for May 18th-20th. What better way to celebrate out Anniversary than to be hip deep in boxes and packing tape. Bring it on. We might even have Orders by then.
It's a little unnerving packing and giving an address to a home we're buying but haven't bought. What if the whole process falls through? I shudder to think about it. We'll all just cross out fingers and pray that all will go well. The folks we're buying from are selling out of convenience. The house was on the market for nearly a year and they wouldn't budge on anything regarding the sale which was quite the bummer. But it was the nicest house we saw, though a little on the small side until the basement is finished, and definitely in the nicest neighborhood. Montclair was a gated community when it was built 40 years ago, but the gates came down when the neighborhood decided they wanted the VDOT to maintain the roads. I think living in a gated community would have been a bit too much seeing as we lived in one in Manila, and have had high walls and guards since then. Let us out!! So... no gates. Instead we have a well-established community built around a man-made lake. Lake Montclair is built as a skinny lake with lots of fingerlings jutting off. Lots of lakefront properties that way, not that our house will be one of them, but hopefully we can find a quick walking path to one of the lakeside playgrounds and/or beaches. The neighborhood also houses a golf course, a swimming pool that is scheduled to be enclosed, and year round tennis. I'd already signed Rebecca up for the Dale City Frogs summer swim program, before learning that we'd be in Montclair and they have their own summer swim club. Ah well, at least we're not up to Amberjax speed yet. The lake has the aforementioned beaches along with boating and fishing. Playgrounds, walking/biking paths abound. There's a vet and a dentist in the neighborhood. There's a Target 5 minutes away. And a Panera. And... a drive-through Starbucks.
The Montclair elementary school is a 3 minute walk from the house. The middle school is the farthest away at roughly 10 minutes drive, the highschool we haven't figured out yet as there are 2 nearby but each high school in Price William County offers a special program, so if you're interested in one (say, Environmental Sciences) you can apply to a different school than the one you're zoned for. If accepted, they'll bus you over to the chosen school. The two nearest schools to us have an IT program and an IB program. Thank goodness we'll have 6 months or so to decide what to do. These schools are no slouches, and the application process is competitive.
We hunted through a bunch of houses before coming back to this one. The house is OK, the neighborhood is what I really wanted and I think you can see why.
We ate out a lot during our visit, had dinner with 3 other former Chennaites at Harry's Tap Room at Pentagon City, another dinner out with our long-time friend Jeff to Outback, plenty of fast food from Chik-Fil-A/Wendy's/Arby's/Taco Bell, meals with my folks... it was all a bit much, but what else is there to do than indulge? Five more weeks in Chennai then we buckle down to real-life living in the States.
We didn't buy a car. With the house financing, and an offer from my mom to use her car in June, we decided to hold off. What we do know is Ian will get himself a Prius. It's a sweet set of wheels filled with gadgety things we had to avoid drooling over as they could have shorted out the car. Kidding, of course, but I enjoyed driving it as much as he did. We haven't decided what to do about a family car though we're leaning heaving towards a Sienna. I wanted a hybrid Highlander, but remembering back to the Highlanders we saw last time, and with bigger kids now, that third row is just too tight. I have no qualms about driving a minivan, and in fact like them quite a bit. Just do me a favor and call me a swim mom or a volleyball mom, not a soccer mom. A Sienna can come with us to our next post too, a hybrid of any sort most likely cannot. Quick kudos to the rental people at Tysons Koons Toyota dealership. We rented the Prius for 2 weeks what it would have costed for 1 week from a typical rental place, and the process was painless and the people nice. The only catch is that they don't deliver the car to you, but my parents brought us over so it worked for us.
Oh, speaking of volleyball, Katherine had her last practice this morning. Tomorrow she flies off to Mumbai for her tournament and will return on Sunday. She's actually a pretty good player, I was impressed watching yesterday afternoon. I don't know why there isn't more discipline with the sports here (no mandatory uniform for practices, not even mandatory shoe-wearing?) but she's enjoying herself and made the team without any issues. Remember last year? OK, let's not remember last year.
Quick updates on the other kids... Nicholas's hair is growing growing growing. It really needs a trim in the front. He looks really cute. For his birthday, the day before we left, Ian bought him a soccer jersey/shorts/shin guards/cleats set and he wore it that afternoon at soccer practice. My shaggy haired boy was all tucked in on the field. It's not surprise that the gifts with the biggest punch after the soccer outfit were the 2 dress shirts and matching ties from the grandparents.
Rebecca held it together while we were gone. She actually e-mailed us, so we brought her back some really green pairs of shorts which she was thrilled about, a sunscreen stick and High School Musical 3. Anyone know where to get the colored sunscreen sticks? I looked and couldn't find any of the fun sticks in purple, green or blue. Weird, but then it was a little early for the swim season. I bought the shorts at Justice, formerly Limited Too from what I gather. The clothing is bright and mostly respectable, I was impressed.
Jonathon looks a bit like a gopher. He has his two adult middle bottom teeth, but has lost the next ones out, along with the top two front teeth. Two came out normally, one got knocked out when he was playing with his brother, and the other he forcefully wiggled to death. The one that got knocked out caused one of the neighbor's kids to freak and call Brian with "an emergency" which led him to leave us a message about an emergency, with no details. Do you know how nerve-racking it is to get an e-mail when you're eating in Panera 8000 miles away that there's an emergency back home? We didn't know if it had to do with work or the kids. If the kids, which kid (though we guessed it involved Jonathon)? And then, about what? I immediately envision a kid with a deadly snake bite, someone with a broken arm, head trauma from falling down the stairs, expulsion from school, drowning. I asked my mom to call India when she went home for lunch to find out what was going on since we were 30 minutes away and heading back to Woodbridge.
A knocked out tooth? Whatever.
I'm glad to be home.
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