The updates continue...

Doc is scheduling my second surgery for next Wednesday, so a week from today I will be restored to perfect vision, something I have not had since my grade school years. If my right eye's visual acuity is any indication of what it is going to be like, I am wondering why this is not offered as a remedy for plain old near-sightedness, the change is SO dramatic!

Herewith, more of the move:

Day 4: Moving in

A.M.
Today is Saturday. Thandiswe has the weekend off, but we are headed to Makro (Costco clone) and she’s coming with us so that she can stock up on her staples. The pool looks nasty, white foam floating on the top of green water…and we are discovering that Mr. and Mrs. Seller might not have been the tidiest of householders, that pool being only the tip of the iceberg.

Having found a few pots and pans yesterday, I endeavoured to do a wee bit of cooking at breakfast time, only to discover that the kitchen stove…a fairly new ceramic job…is something less than clean. When cleaning the stove prior to moving out, the knobs on the stove were not removed to clean under them. So, when I turned the stove on, I felt and heard a kind of grittiness that, when I removed a knob to check, revealed a thick build up of brown, sticky, grainy debris…a build up of long standing caused by things overflowed during cooking and not quickly (or thoroughly) cleaned up.

P.M.
We ran about this morning, got our monthly Makro purchasing done and took a tour through the massive Pick n Pay Hypermart (supermarket on steroids) both to show Thandiswe what it was about and to spend a little money. I got the sheet vinyl for her floor and she picked out a paint colour for her room then, while Hubby lingered in the pharmacy, waiting for them to fill some prescriptions, T and I moseyed over to the appliances section. Yow! The Bosch dishwasher I have been coveting was on sale and Hubby said “use your credit card and buy it.” So, Tuesday, a brand new dishwasher will grace my kitchen, my first since I left the US.

Our new house does not have a securely covered patio like the house in Cape Town nor is there a dog house like Hell House, so we have to provide the Maltese Mafia with some kind of protection from the weather. So, off to a lumber yard in the old neighbourhood which is reputed to carry a well-made line of wood dog houses. Monday, Nash and Candy will have a new house, snug and dry, to protect them from the elements.

This house is flush with windows…the main bedroom and the study have sliding glass doors that lead to the terrace, the lounge (living room) has a sliding glass door that leads to the sunroom which boasts TWO sets of sliding glass doors to the terrace. The sunken lounge has three large windows and the guest bedroom has two and I have no curtains for any of them except the guest room…and for it I don’t have enough! The TV room gets some ferocious sun in the afternoon, so today I bought some draperies for the room, only to discover that, while the sellers left the curtain rods (as required by law…they are a fixture), the one above the largest window is damaged and I can’t hang a curtain from it. Grrr…this gets SO aggravating!

The doorbell doesn’t work, the remote control for the bedroom air conditioner didn’t work until we replaced the battery (so how did the electrician certify the wiring to THAT as being functional??), but the good news is that the ceiling fan in the TV room worked fine, and the batteries for its remote were not corroded and leaking inside their bay like the ones for the ac.

Poor Thandiswe can’t move into her room until we have done the work to it, but the empty rental cottage is turning out to be a blessing. We have given her leave to use the bathroom there (she prefers a tub and the guest room bathroom has only a shower) and the kitchen so that she can resume doing her own cooking (her preference). Yorkie is getting used to the new house, still sniffing and exploring every nook and cranny she can fit her tiny self into, and Nash and Candy seem to like their new quarters…I caught Nash rolling on his back on the grass out there, luxuriating in the warmth of the sun and the cushy surface beneath him.

More work…and purchasing…tomorrow, but if you don’t count the leaking toilets, the green and foamy pool, and the cranky door locks on the Mercedes, today was a pretty good day.