Insanity

This was an absolutely insane day. Just thinking about it kept me up from 5 a.m. on this morning. I should have just jumped out of bed and started on my list, but it's hard to do that without waking all the kids right now.

After the kids left for school, I made dinner to put in the fridge for later, and got myself and the girls ready. We stopped by a friend's house to pick up her steam cleaner and vacuum, and then headed over to the house. When we got there, I went in to get the Windex and paper towels I had left there the day before. I needed them to clean the car. They, along with the rest of my cleaning supplies, were gone. I looked everywhere- all over the house. Initially, I thought my cleaning lady had just put them away in a different cupboard, although I couldn't imagine why. Then, I noticed a partially smoked cigarette on my back patio, and saw that the storm shutters at the landlord's cottage were closed, when they had previously been open. I called Tim immediately: "Our landlords took all our cleaning supplies, and I can't imagine why."

Tim, being the wonderful husband that he is, volunteered to call our landlord. Can you imagine the conversation? "Uh, hi. This is your tenant. Did you let yourself into our house (for which we have paid rent through the 14th) and take all our cleaning supplies?" Yeah- I'm glad HE called. The landlord said that they had taken the supplies, because they were afraid the movers would pack them. Yeah, right. The problem with that story, besides the fact that it had NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM, is that they didn't take everything- just the good stuff. They even took my mop bucket. An even bigger problem presented itself when I realized that they had taken the fire extinguisher and CO2 detector that was supposed to be picked up a few minutes later. I was so ticked off.

Luckily, (and this is where you hear the awesome part about my landlords), they had let Mom and Dad stay in their cottage next door while they were here visiting- for free. I still had the keys, so I let myself in to their house and found part of my stuff- like the extinguisher, the detector, and all of my electrical outlet adapters. Apparently they have the rest of my stuff in the trunk of their car. Supposedly, they will bring it back tomorrow. They better, because I still have to clean the whole house, and I'm NOT buying new supplies.

The day was not over yet. We passed our furniture inspection (all the stuff we had borrowed from the base while here) easily, thanks to Karla. While we waited around for the moving guys to come and get it all, I worked on the car. I got the carpets steam cleaned, and the interior clean, and decided I'd better check on the underside of the car. U.S. Customs requires an extremely thorough job of cleaning, to avoid bringing foreign pests and seeds into the country. Well, manure is one of the worst carriers of these things, and guess what we drive through just about every day, as cows are driven from one field to another? Yep- really, really gross, nasty cow poop. Now imagine what tires do when they drive through the stuff and fling it up into the wheel wells. Now imagine 9 months worth of the stuff, hardened and crusted on. Next, if you're not sick yet, imagine me, scrub brush, bucket of soapy water and hose in hand, spending two hours trying to clean the wheel wells. It was very probably the grossest thing I have ever done. And that includes 13 years of changing dirty diapers. Absolutely disgusting.

Well, the movers finally came (late), and took an hour to do a half hour job (they took 2- 15 minute breaks. Seriously). When I finally got back to the TLF, I just had time to take a much needed shower and leave for the port, where we had an appointment to have our car inspected so we can ship it back to the States. We made it in time, but guess what: the car didn't pass. Want to know what the problem was? Yep, the wheel wells. Apparently my two hours of scrubbing was not enough. Tim gets to finish the job. I'm not touching another stinky wheel well. The good news, though, is that we get to keep our car until Tuesday, which means we don't have to borrow our friends' car. It all works out.

The next thing on the agenda today was Lajes High School graduation. Tim was the speaker! He did an amazing job- I love listening to my husband speak, and I especially like all the compliments I get to receive for Tim afterwards. He's wonderful.

I'm glad today is over. Hopefully, that will end up being the most stressful of our moving days. I don't think I could take more than that.