Settling in...

Saturday, 11 September 2010

I still have no internet, so I can’t see what is going on in the States regarding the ninth anniversary of 9/11, but I expect there are memorial services all across the nation and perhaps even some protests. I hope those morons who are planning a Qur’an burning think better of their scheme, it will do nothing except create more resentment against Americans on the part of Muslims worldwide. How would they feel if a bunch of Iraqis, unhappy over the deaths of their compatriots in George Bush’s personal little vendetta, burned a few barrels of Bibles?

I am sleeping better here in the new house. I am not sure why except, perhaps, I feel more settled. We own the house and, despite the rude surprises we keep finding (newest surprise: the kitchen stove works erratically at best), the house is ours, we decide what to fix and when, and we should not have to pull up stakes and bugger off to parts unknown again, since Eskom now has Hubby in HQ and probably won’t change that anytime soon. They have nearly 20 years of new build projects ahead of them and his expertise is required on them all.

We are largely done with the unpacking. The study is still boxed up as is my sewing stuff, but the boxes are out of the cottage where we had them stored, so I will soon be able to photograph it and put ads on the internet to rent it out. Of course, I’ll need my internet connection back, but that is in the works. The pool guy has spent two days digging and laying pipe but still doesn’t have the pool working, and we are awaiting a quote from the handyman guy for the list of 30+ items that require his attention. The house was not left in the best condition, a victim of studied neglect and less-that-stellar housekeeping. I don’t profess to be the world’s most immaculate housekeeper, but in a country where every middle-class household has a maid and the supermarket bulletin boards are full of ads from women looking for maid work, there’s just no excuse for crusted crap under the stove knobs and on the switches on the wall behind the stove.

My maid, Thandiswe, is working overtime to help get this place in shape. Truth be told, she’s doing a lot more…and harder…work than I am. We are missing some stuff, but I expect it will turn up as we continue opening boxes and distributing their contents. The new dishwasher is here, but not connected yet, as we can’t find the drain connection, but hopefully the handyman will be able to help us with that.

The kitchen stove is a nightmare. First of all, it is one of those ceramic glass things, which I hate even more than I hate the electric plate-type stove. Secondly, it is grimy…I am afraid what we’ll find under it when it is removed. Third, it doesn’t work properly: when I tried to boil water last night to cook some pasta, every time the burner heated up to full heat, it turned itself off. There are no numbers on the knobs to let you know the level of heat you are calling up, but if you turn the knob all the way to the end of its travel, it shuts off the burner. Cooking on this thing is quite the challenge, as you can’t be sure the burner will stay hot or if it will decide it needs a rest and shut itself off. Hubby, however, has solved the problem for me…he bought me a gas stovetop (hob) and the installer is on his way to take a look at the job. This will be a vast improvement!!

Day 12: settling in

Well, nothing is fixed yet…the handyman, despite promises to send us a quote for the 33 items on my list plus a few more things, has not followed through. Nothing with this house seems easy, but somehow it isn’t demoralizing the way it was with Hell House.

To install the gas bottles for the new stove, we are going to have to build a little brick shelter for the bottles. Code requires that the bottles be located at least two meters away from a drain and not near windows, etc., which gives us little leeway for position. Apparently in some of the oldest parts of town underground gas lines still exist, but we aren’t there so we have to use bottled gas. But that’s OK…it’s what Gramma Violet had out on the farm when I was a kid and it is what I used very successfully in Cape Town. They install two 19 litre bottles with a switching mechanism so that when one goes empty, I can switch over to the other one, and have a virtually uninterrupted flow of gas. I still have to struggle with the stove-with-a-mind-of-its-own for the rest of the week, but the oven kinda works (it seems to run hot) so I can roast and broil most things. Cooking scrambled eggs this morning on a stove that shuts itself off when it feels like it was a true-to-life challenge!

Today is Sunday and the weather is lovely. We’ll probably go out for a while later, but Hubby’s gouty foot is still not well, so we’ll need to keep the hiking around to a minimum. We thought we’d go look at some nurseries and get a bead on prices…I need house plants (mine stayed in Cape Town) and we need a few things for the garden for screening along the boundary walls. I also have some outdoor pots that need plants. We live in Sandton, a pricey area, and we assume any nurseries we find here will reflect that fact. Witkoppen Road, near where we used to live, has mile after mile of nurseries, some of them with tea gardens, and we expect not only lower prices, but a welcome for the Yorkie, assuming we keep her in her pram. She hasn’t had an outing with us in ages, so this should excite and delight her.

A strange man came to the door yesterday, a black man with a couple of other men in a yellow bakkie (small pickup). He claimed to have been with the man who picked up a bunch of trash for me the other day…I don’t know what the other men were up to, but they were going to other houses…and asked me for money for petrol, saying he would carry away the compost heap the last owners left us! I didn’t recognize the guy and sent him away, but the experience was odd…do these people really expect complete strangers to just give them money…or even get close enough to the security gate to get grabbed? Crooks sometimes amaze me with their arrogance and stupidity…but I have to shake my head at some of the stuff victims fall for or things they do that make them targets. Do you put your handbag on the passenger seat beside you when you drive? Don’t be surprised when you become the victim of a “smash and grab,” where someone breaks your car window with a brick, rock, or hammer and grabs your handbag and runs while you are stuck at a traffic light. Happens all the time here, and you’d think by now women would know better.

In Cape Town we constantly had “visitors” at the front door with scams and sad stories trying to pry me loose from some cash. And while I am sure some of the people were in desperate straits, a man in new Levis and Nikes doesn’t strike me as a guy whose fortunes have badly floundered. We have a rule in our household…we don’t give money…never. If a person is hungry and asks for food, we give food…always. But we don’t offer it. Seems that one of the common scams is to get money to feed a bad habit…like drugs or alcohol…by concocting a sob story and playing on the sympathies of affluent householders. Many people refuse to give money but offer food, only to find their kind offerings abandoned at the corner near their house, discarded because the drug dealer won’t trade tik for a half a loaf of bread and liquor stores demand cash. So, we don’t give cash and only food when it is requested.

But evidently enough people pass out cash that the scammers are encouraged to continue. This guy apparently observed my refuse removal because he referenced the “white bakkie” that was used and he claimed to have been the helper, but the helper was the brother of the driver, so surely he would know the driver’s name? I am thinking that the guy (or someone he knows) observed the hauling and decided to take a chance that I’d be sympathetic to his “situation” and give him money based on the idea that I should have recognized him and, not being able to, would be a bit ashamed of myself and give money to assuage that shame. I ain’t falling for it. It wasn’t Mike’s brother, he didn’t even know Mike was Kenyan!

We just got the quote from the handyman…Tuesday morning at 7 the work starts and with any luck, Thandiswe will be able to move into her own room no later than Wednesday. Since her satellite TV hookup will be installed Monday, this should make her a happy camper! She values her privacy such that she is bathing and cooking in the cottage rather than in the main house, so having her own private space should make her happy. This house has a really large staff room, bigger than my own bedroom. But, it has to serve as a studio flat, so it needs to be big. Other houses we looked at had a staff room barely big enough for a double bed, a fact Thandiswe discovered to her surprise when she met and visited with the maids on our street when we lived in Hell House. She came home and told me, the shock evident in her face and voice, that the maids she visited had rooms no bigger than my dressing room. I suspect she was subtly checking to see how big her room would be at the new house, and I assured her that her space would be generous and we’d see to it that it was comfortable.

So, Tuesday the handyman puts in her new toilet and will replace some damaged cornice, then she can finish her painting and get moved in. And I hope she is happier there…she’s already using her own wash lines to hang out her laundry, and has moved her dishes and other possessions in…I think she’s anxious to get her own space back, it’s been nearly a year that she’s had to share space with us.

4 PM
We’ve been out and about most of the day, Puddin' riding along in her pram or the baby sling Hubby got for her. It’s the longest outing she’s had since we moved up to Joburg and she had some great fun. Garden centres here often have tea gardens where you can have something to drink and a light snack, and we stopped at one where we had a sandwich and she, from her stroller, had a wonderful time barking at the chickens prowling about the place. Quite funny, considering that she loves chicken so much that if you so much as say the word in her presence, she pricks up her ears and starts looking for her share, and while we doubt she associates the chicken tidbits we feed her with the creatures prowling around the tea garden, she had a great time barking at them. Now, however, she is worn out, sprawled in my lap, her chin on my knee, snoozing it off.

We got the toilet for Thandiswe’s room and the cistern kits for the rest of the malfunctioning toilets, and six star jasmine plants to put in the flower beds in front of the cottage. When the damp-affected wall is repaired, we’ll be putting the cottage up for rent and a filled flower bed shows better than an empty one. So, tomorrow the pool guy returns, the alarm guys return, and the satellite TV guys come back to put in the HDTV decoder and the extra cabling. Tuesday the handyman starts his work and sometime in the undetermined future the phone company should come in and install the phone lines and the ADSL lines. Next Saturday the gas installers should be here to put in the new stove and then I should be able to start unpacking the study and the sewing and put the house finally to rights.

6 PM
Just found out that the lovely Jacuzzi tub doesn’t work. Got water, got plug, got tub…jets do not function. How much you wanna bet the Mr. Seller knew this and failed to mention it??

More stuff...and more unpacking...

Day 8: More unpacking, Manie the Handyman arrives, and even more unpacking
Well, ADT was supposed to be here tomorrow to set up the alarm but they rocked up this morning before I even had my shower. Seems Mr. Seller “didn’t know” his alarm code, which makes me wonder why he even had the ADT account, especially since the ADT guys discovered the contacts on the front door and the kitchen door are not functional. We know he had an active ADT account because he transferred it to his new address. How did he use it if he didn’t know the alarm code? Or is that just one more thing he withheld from us? Curiously, the installation team reprogrammed the box and installed a new box next to the alarm box, but they couldn’t fix the two non-functional contact sets. Huh? So, the alarm itself is working but because the front door and the kitchen door have faulty contacts, they aren’t covered…these are the two doors most accessible from the street! Go figure…

More unpacking…good thing I have a big free standing cabinet as the kitchen doesn’t have enough cupboards for pots, pans, dishes, glasses, and food. I need a pantry and that useless space Mr. and Mrs. Seller created out of the atrium (which I wish they had left!) is prime space for it. Eventually…but for now, my big double armoire is pressed into service for the dishes and serving ware.

1 PM
Manie looks like a good find…he worked for his brother-in-law in a landscape and irrigation business and should be able to take care of the irrigation, once the bees have buggered off (there are "foraging bees" here now to harvest the honey Henri couldn't get off the pipes and valves and such). He also has more than 20 years experience with construction, both large and small, and ordinary plumbing jobs don’t challenge him, so changing some washers and stopping the toilet leaks are within his scope of work. We have jobs large and small here, and he seems to be competent for them all. Let’s see what the quote comes in at…

Got a call a couple of hours ago that the dog house is on its way…YAY! It rains here in the summer and Nash and Candy need a place to be safe from the storms.

2 PM
Something is leaking…I think it is the air conditioner. This house came with the cutest little old fashioned coal-burning iron stove set into a brick nook in the hallway, something I really looked over when we were here the first time. I do not recall seeing a large plastic jug secreted behind the stove but it was one of the first things I noticed when we moved into the house. I asked Hubby if he had any idea what it was…there was a black tube leading down the chimney space and into the jug…but he didn’t know either. Well, it seems it is for the purpose of collecting the condensation from the air conditioner…for some reason, instead of the tube leading outdoors where it could release the condensation onto the roof and into the gutters, it goes into the chimney and down into a jug hidden behind the stove. Ok, a rocket scientist I am not, but somehow I think a plastic jug behind a coal-burning stove is not the smartest choice one could make and…here’s the kicker…where was that jug when we viewed the house in March?? Had I seen it, surely I would have asked about it!

6 PM
Thandiswe and I unpacked the bathroom…this bathroom has not one single cupboard or cabinet…not one. No under-sink cupboards, not even a medicine cabinet! Fortunately we have a pair of large lined baskets that slide neatly under the sink counter and they will just have to do until the bathroom remodel brings us a real set of cupboards and some cabinets.

Hubby and I hit the supermarket…two of them to be exact…and between them there was but one sad, limp, wilted head of lettuce. Ordinarily the shelves are packed with bagged salads and fresh lettuces and other produce, but both stores were completely sold out! Never seen anything like it…oh, wait…I take that back…a couple of years ago Hubby and I must have gone to half a dozen markets looking for a bag of frozen peas and nobody had any…it was bizarre!

So, now it is time to make dinner…hopefully tomorrow will be a bit on the quiet side, with only the pool company scheduled to pitch up and disturb my peace. Time, of course, will tell…

It's starting to get ugly...

Day 7: Unpacking and fixing

Today is our seventh day in the house and repairs are soon under way. The wasps and bees will soon be history…Henri, the bee guy, is on his way to relieve us of our unwanted charges.

Later today the dishwasher should be delivered…hurrah, my first since leaving the US. After the refrigerator fiasco with DEFY, we popped for the extra money for the Bosch…we’ve had one service call on the Bosch washer in its almost seven years with us and the service was swift and sure: no calls in five years now. DEFY would have been cheaper in the initial outlay, but if the fridge is any indication of their build quality (we KNOW it is an indication of their service quality) it would be penny-wise but pound-foolish to buy one of their appliances again.

The dog house is delayed until later in the week, as is the pool repair, but today Manie, a professional handyman, should pitch up and take a look at the myriad of little things that need attention, from doors that won’t stay closed to a malfunctioning curtain rod to sticking drawers to a broken drawer slider.

We still don’t have telephone service and, therefore, no internet. Seems that we actually have to present a physical presence at the telephone company offices to place an order for service, even though the house has a phone line already installed…nothing like convenience to the customer, ya know? Small wonder more and more people are eschewing the phone company in favour of cell phones and wireless internet providers. Cell phone companies are in every mall, large and small, and the wireless internet guys come to you with their product and service. In a time when companies are seeking ways to boost their business, Telkom seems bent on diminishing theirs with crappy service and forcing customers to go through hoops. We will be considering the change to wireless…and the people who moved into Hell House are already wireless. That’s the way the world is moving anyway, and Telkom is giving South Africans a huge push in that direction with their cavalier attitude towards the convenience of the customers and their service delivery (it takes a personal visit to the phone company and then WEEKS of waiting to get your phone service turned on here, even if the house is already wired, as opposed to a single phone call and just HOURS for the service to be turned on in Silicon Valley).

So, Hubby is off to Telkom, to see if he can get our phone and internet turned on while I wait for the bee guy, the handyman, and my new dishwasher. While I wait, Thandiswe and I continue to unpack boxes, trying to figure out new places for all the old stuff. Soon the cottage will be empty and we’ll begin advertising it…the next phase of the move in will be getting tenants!

11 am
The previous owner did not pay his electricity account for the last three months and somehow the payment the attorneys were supposed to make to clear the account is lost in transit because Eskom just showed up and cut off the power for non-payment. Joy. When this happened at Hell House, it took 23 hours to get the account restored. We may be in for a dark night and more take out food.

5 pm
The power is back on, after Hubby made a trip to the electric company and made a fuss. He transferred the electricity account to our name but it seems the previous owner neglected to pay his bill for rather a long time since his past due balance was R107,000…yup, six figures!! Now, Hell House was shut off for a past due account of R3300, which probably represented between two and three months arrears, so you have to wonder how long Mr. Seller went without paying his electric bill!! According to the electric company, Mr. Seller went into their office last week and paid R50K to keep the lights on, so his complaint to Hubby that Eskom “overcharged” him would seem a bit hollow…who pays fifty thousand bucks in such a situation?

The bees are gone. Another mark against Mr. Seller here…Henri, the bee guy, says the nest has been there a very long time and it was a very big nest. The seller told us back in March, when we viewed the house for the first time, that the irrigation system was not working, so we expected a non-functional irrigation system. What he didn’t tell us was that it was not working because there was a big bee swarm inside the utility box that houses the valves and controls!! That I consider to be a definite deception on his part…Henri spent two hours here wearing a bee suit and carrying around a smoker, collecting what he termed “killer bees.” This is Africa, after all, and these are African honey bees. He also said this swarm was super aggressive: Thandiswe was standing well away from the box when Henri went to examine it and a bee flew right at her and stung her on the face!

But they are gone now, along with their cousins the wasps and with any luck they will find a happy home with Henri in Pretoria. He carried away a big wooden box full of bees…with their “lovely queen”…and two big black bags full of honey and honey comb. Thank goodness they are all gone, and I wish Henri luck with them!

We are making headway with the unpacking. Hubby’s wardrobe is pretty much liberated, a good portion of mine found and hung in the closet, and today we pretty much unpacked the dining room, including the liquor cabinet and the wine stash. The parts I really want to tackle…the study and my sewing/craft area…will just have to wait until the necessary stuff is addressed.

Manie and I crossed wires and so he will be here tomorrow morning…just as well, since we found three more things to add to the list, a door that won’t lock, a window that won’t close, and a problem with the dishwasher…no place to drain it! Another deception on the part of the seller, since there was a dishwasher in the kitchen when we viewed the house and there is a tap to fill it and a plug in the wall to plug it in, but no drain!!

Poor Yorkie is having a fit…Hubby put up the second baby gate today so we can open the patio door for ventilation but she cannot sneak out into the patio. Until the pool is repaired and cleaned, I don’t want her out there…I need to take her in the pool and teach her how to get out if she ends up there accidentally and today the water is a lovely lime green with white foam spread across the surface like so much lace…not exactly something I am keen on leaping into, Yorkie in hand.

We are awaiting take away food yet again, the order placed before the power was restored. I tried cooking breakfast this morning, but it was not as successful as I would have liked since the stovetop seems to have a mind of its own and no markings on the knobs to tell me if the thing is hot, cold, or in-between. The ceramic stove top is made by DEFY as was the one at Hell House, so I assumed that the heating was done essentially the same way…the furthest you can turn the knob away from “off” is the hottest…it appears, however, that turning it all the way to the end of its travel actually shuts it off again! The soft boiled eggs first turned out raw (insufficient heat to the pan) then turned out hard cooked (too much heat). This is going to be a steep learning curve. The oven, however, seems to work and the bagels I baked the other morning came out quite nicely.

So, today rolls to a close with yet more evidence of deception and mean-spiritedness on the part of the seller, a triumph over the forces of nature as the bee swarm was relocated without sending me to the hospital, and another dozen or so boxes emptied and flattened.

Tomorrow we resume.

The surprises never end...

Days 5 and 6: Moving in and unpacking

Don’t you just love it when the left hand knows absolutely nothing about what the right hand is doing??

This house, unlike the house in Cape Town, does not have a securely covered patio to shelter doggies from rain, nor does it have a snug dog house like Hell House. We therefore ventured back to the wilds of Four Ways (the traffic was horrific even on Saturday) and bought a dog house, which was scheduled for delivery around 10 am Monday morning. Today is Monday and when the poochie palace hadn’t arrived by 2 this afternoon, I put in a call. “The delivery guys are running late,” the woman explained to me on the phone. “But you will have it this afternoon.” A few minutes later my phone rang…it was another person from the dog house place, calling to inform me that they didn’t have the house I wanted (and have already paid for) in stock, that it won’t be available until later in the week, perhaps not until Wednesday. When I asked about the delivery commitment made at the time of sale, I was told “she doesn’t work on the weekend, she doesn’t know.” Huh? Any way you slice it, no dog house today and there is apparently some serious miscommunication going on at the place that is now holding a big chunk of our money without having provided product in return.

Yesterday, Day 5, was spent running around collecting various bits and bobs necessary to make a life in this house: an extension for the baby gate so that the Yorkie (whom Hubby has recently nicknamed Chewbaba for her penchant for destroying a rawhide chew in short order) can’t slip out into the garden unnoticed. She’s not water safe yet and the pool is disgusting, so I can’t teach her, so the gates stay up. We had to return to the pharmacy because they forgot one of my prescriptions (how does that happen??), pick up a little something for dinner, and find a doorbell and a mailbox, since this house needs both.

The antiques business in this town seems better than in Cape Town: we went to the monthly antiques fair held at Sandton City and I saw some lovely European pieces, things we don’t often get in California and are in short supply in the Western Cape. Johannesburg, after all, was the centre of mining wealth and the gracious living it could provide, so many of the accoutrements of that lifestyle grace the antique fair tables. From Waterford crystal to Wedgwood jasperware to clamshell-shaped silver Victorian biscuit barrels to lovely Royal Albert porcelain tea services, it was all there, beautifully displayed to tempt one’s pocket.

We had lunch at a seafood restaurant called Montego Bay. I had hopes that the name reflected the menu choices, but no such luck. No conch chowder, no stone crab, no tropical fruit salads to appeal to the palate, but the Scottish salmon was tender and delicate, the mashed potatoes surprisingly tasty. I have to admit to being a bit of a Philistine in this regard, however, for as nice as the salmon was, I really couldn’t tell if it was from Scotland, Norway, Cape Town, or even off the Oregon coast. Perhaps because I am not a fish aficionado, they all taste the same to me? Ordinarily I detest fish, salmon being one of the notable exceptions. I grew up with fresh-caught (and subsequently home frozen or smoked) salmon from the Oregon coast and, frankly, this Scottish salmon tasted much the same to me.

Today, Day 6, was another day of unpacking. We have not fully unpacked the kitchen, but the necessity of finding Hubby’s work clothes overshadowed that. By the end of the day, however, we had pretty much located most of his wardrobe and, as a bonus, mine as well. After a few loads of laundry were run through the machine and attacked with an iron, we’re on our way back to normality, at least where the wardrobe is concerned.

The quote from the plumber for replacing the staff quarters toilet and repairing four others was a shocker: R10,000!! That is a substantial sum of money…we are paying R2,000 to have the pool fixed, including digging up the lawn and removing and replacing some of the paving! And no quote for chasing down the electrical problems has even been submitted, so we still have that to deal with. Tomorrow a handyman is coming to assess a myriad of little problems, including the shelf runner that has fallen out of the cupboard wall, and installing the mailbox that seems to have disappeared from the front of the house. The law says you have to leave curtain rods and the sellers did…but apparently the law is silent on the condition of said rods and the rod above a large window is apparently non functional…I can’t even figure out how to hang a curtain on it, so either something is missing from the thing or…well, I dunno, but maybe this handyman fellow can figure it out for me.

And so Day 6 winds down, nothing dramatic to report except the effort to drag my eyebrows back into their normal position after hearing that plumbing quote…maybe the handyman can replace toilets at something more reasonable? Tomorrow, I suppose, will tell.

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.

More updates...

Surgery is over...for the first eye. Some discomfort but nothing to complain about, and when I remove the bandage to put in the prescription eye drops, the difference in the vision between the two eyes is amazing! My left eye looks like I am peering through a brownish-yellow filter, the right eye looks like somebody has over-used the "brightness," "contrast," and "sharpen" filters!!

Here's another installment of the Saga of the Move from Hell House:

Day 3: Moving in

Ah, things just cannot go smoothly for me…why do I keep expecting each problem to be the last? Poor Hubby woke up this morning with his left foot swollen and tender and gouty…now that is a truly painful condition, akin to my broken foot (but more easily resolved). So, he spent the morning in bed and the rest of the day hobbling about dealing with the horde of workmen who descended on the place.

The news is not good: the pool problem is major, serious, and very, very expensive to fix; the electrical problems are potentially a problem, and one of those toilets not only needs to be replaced, the seller knew it was a problem and concealed it from us by trying to glue together the crack in the toilet base!! The good news is, we’ve reported it to the law firm that handled the transfer of the deed and they apparently will be addressing the problem with the seller.

The pool has a “suction leak” which, to fix, necessitates taking up some of the brickwork around the pool and then digging a trench in the lawn back to the pool pump, and replacing the hose that runs from the pump to the pool. This is neither a cheap nor an easy fix, but it must be done. Did the seller really think he could get away with this? In this country, houses are sold voetstoots (FOOT stu its) or “as is.” What some sellers do not seem to understand is that the voetstoots door swings both ways…not only is the buyer obligated to accept the house in the same condition it was in at the time of sale (i.e., the condition it was in at the time the buyer viewed the house), the seller is obligated to deliver the house to the buyer in that same condition. The only exception to the voetstoots is intentionally concealed defects (like a cracked toilet glued together so it didn’t leak during the showing) and electrical faults.

At the time we viewed the house, none of the toilets were leaking…I suspect the seller turned off the water inlets to the toilets because they all leak noisily…had the water inlets been open, only a deaf person could have missed the sound. The pool was pristine and a pure crystalline blue…it is now not only green, but it has a nasty white foam floating on the top of it, a far cry from the beautiful pool we signed up for. But the electrical is a whole other ball of wax, and this one may come back to bite the seller in the butt.

Before transfer can be effected, the seller of a house must provide an electrical clearance certificate. It is a standardized form and a real, bona fide electrician must inspect the electrical system and certify it compliant with the law and codes. Anything that is not compliant must be replaced or repaired before the certificate is issued and transfer is delayed until the certificate is presented to the conveyancing attorneys. The seller of this house held off on getting the certificate until the last possible minute…we suspected it was because he didn’t want to pay occupational rent (once the certificate was in, transfer occurred within 48 hours, and he became our tenant) but now I am wondering if there was more to it than just that.

Yesterday we had a contractor come in to look at the plumbing and electrical problems. He was the one who discovered the glued toilet but more importantly, he says there is a problem with the electrical certificate: the electrician who issued the certificate obviously did not do what the law requires him to do and he certified the electrical system in this house without knowing if it is in proper operating condition or not. How do we know this? More than half of the light switches in the house do nothing and more than half of the light bulbs in the house are either burnt out or missing…how do you certify the electrical system operational if you flip a switch and it does nothing? How can you certify the electrical system operational if you cannot get a light to turn on?

While the contractor was here, Hubby called the conveyancing attorney and put him on the phone with her. She is not happy with what she heard and told Hubby that the seller was going to have to pay for the fix both to the pool and the electricals. We’ve had to sue a seller after purchase for this kind of shenanigan before and it was neither cheap nor pretty…I guess we’ll have to see what comes up with this one, eh?

The kitchen is almost unpacked. Thandiswe worked her butt off and has done a great job of getting it set up. Tomorrow we go to Makro for the monthly stocking up and we’re going to stop and get some vinyl flooring for her room and some paint so she can put it together. She’s staying in the guest room right now, I can’t expect her to live in a room with a bare cement floor, dirty walls and a leaking toilet…but we’ve got to get her space ready so that the guest room is available at the end of the month when my MIL comes to stay with us while I recuperate from the eye surgery. So, tired as we are, work continues apace…only Thandiswe gets the weekend off!

What I've been up to...

Today I go in for cataract surgery, the first of two. I probably won't be doing a lot of writing over the next couple of days or so, so I'll start publishing the things I wrote chronicling the move from Hell House to our new digs...herewith, installment 1:

Day 2: Moving in

Day 1 was simply unloading the truck…and what a job that was! But I’m gonna have to go on record here saying that if you are packing up a full household and moving anywhere, whether it’s across town or around the world, seriously consider Elliott International. If I ever have to move again, I promise you, I will give them my business. What was an endless nightmare with Biddulphs was almost a pleasure with these guys. So today, Day 2, we begin the task of opening hundreds (literally) of boxes and finding space for everything.

This is a strange house. When we first saw it, we were impressed with the size of it and its open, airy quality. This is a tough market in which to sell a house and this house had two offers on its first open house (show house), despite the fact that from the street it is kind of an ugly house and built of exposed brick, something about 30 years out of fashion here. So, when we got here and looked at the empty rooms, both Hubby and I remarked on how it seemed smaller than we remembered. And yet, yesterday, when Hubby got home from work and walked into a furnished house, he said he thought it was strange because the house now seemed bigger with furniture in it…and I have to agree.

I have yet to figure out what the last owners had against us, but obviously there was something going on in their heads…the house was in considerably less than prime condition and we are going to be spending rather a large amount of money of fixing urgent problems. For example, I don’t know what they did, but all of the toilets leak. I would have noticed toilets running like a full-on faucet when we came through, so either they shut off the water to the toilets while the house was being shown, or they have managed to damage five out of six toilets since March. The toilet in the maid’s quarters actually is leaking onto the floor, and the four toilets in the house run constantly…only the toilet in the cottage seems to be in decent order.

The kitchen has its problems, too…the fridge doesn’t fit the fridge hole, to it’s sitting in the dinette, and the sink was installed backwards (the built-in drain board on the wrong side). Also, there is a cupboard with pull out baskets for potatoes and onions and such, and one of the rails has pulled loose from the side wall of the cupboard. Rather than repair it, the basket was simply removed and put on the bottom of the cupboard. Since we are planning to do an extensive remodel of the kitchen, that’s not so much a problem in and of itself…it is simply evidence of the kinds of neglect and…I dunno…disregard?...the sellers have demonstrated.

For example, three rooms of the house come with “under-carpet” heating. Now, this consists of a felted pad with heated wires running through it, rather like an electric blanket, that goes under the room carpet. This does not plug into the wall, this is hard wired into the house’s electrical system and it is therefore considered a “fixture.” Because the carpets were not installed wall-to-wall carpets, however, because they were cut to fit the under-carpet heating pad, edge-bound, and then laid over the heating pads, apparently the seller did not consider these carpets to be fixtures, they rolled them up and took them away, leaving me with big ugly carpet pads where the carpets should be. Now, I must go have carpets cut and bound to cover the pads because the pads cannot be simply disconnected, rolled up and stored: either I get new carpets to cover them or I cut the wires…thereby destroying one of the house assets. Why couldn’t they have just left the carpets? Taking those carpets is like taking the drawers out of the kitchen because they are not fixed to the wall like the cupboards!!

It gets better. I don’t think I have ever seen so many light switches (78 of them!!) in a single house in my life, light switches (46 of them) that seem to do absolutely nothing. Truth is, more than half the light bulbs in the house are dead, so we cannot figure out which switch goes to which light because more than half of them are dead!

I pride myself on being both practical and prepared, so in packing up for the move, I had T pack a box with paper towels, toilet paper, and other such necessities. Sure enough, we got here and out of six bathrooms, there was a grand total of one…just one!...roll of paper and it was less than half full! Now, I didn’t find empty tubes, indicating the paper had been used and not replaced…no, I found bare spindles, indicating someone had gone around to every bathroom in the house except the guest loo (which was probably being used by the moving crew) and literally removed the toilet paper rolls from the bathrooms! By contrast, I went around Hell House before we left and made sure there was paper in each of the three bathrooms so that the new tenants weren’t grossly inconvenienced by a lack of loo paper during the stressful, tiring process of moving in. How petty can you be, to remove the toilet paper from a house as you move out??

We are going to have to call a pool company, which is not going to be cheap…that glorious sparkling blue pool that invited us to buy the house is now a turgid green stretch of water outside my bedroom window. The pool cleaner doesn’t seem to want to work, the water is green and dirt covers the bottom. We knew the irrigation system was non functional, but we really DID expect the pool to be clean and for the pump and pool cleaner to work.

The beautiful garden is dry and brown and littered with at least a month’s worth of unraked leaves. There are supposed to be garden lights, but we can’t find them…hopefully the sellers didn’t think THOSE were not fixtures and absconded with them, considering they have proven themselves to be the kind of people who will make off with custom cut carpets and toilet paper rolls!

The white wall-to-wall carpets are still wet…they shampooed them the day before we were to move in…they KNEW there would be a horde of men in dirty boots hauling furniture into the rooms, but chose to shampoo the white bedroom carpets the very night before anyway. I don’t understand why these people left everything to the last bloody minute. They have known since March that they were moving, and they have known since June that they had to be out 1 September. So, what made them think that they could wait and, just weeks before The Date, ask for a 3 day extension? Did it not occur to them that WE had made plans for moving, that our landlord might have found new tenants, that there is a whole world out there that spins on its axis and gets on with its business despite their own personal disorganization? The secured driveway for the cottage on the property was full of their potted plants and garden furniture when we arrived, so they weren’t even fully moved out when we started moving in!

Hubby is dealing with the alarm system now. The house has a fully fitted alarm, but we can’t use it because we don’t have the alarm code…and Mr. Seller claims to have forgotten it. This means the alarm company must do something to reset the code…at a cost of R385…and even though the seller is the one who “forgot” the code, WE are the ones who have to fork over the bucks to get the code reset so that we can activate the alarm. Seems like he should be the one to pony up the bucks, but this is the guy who steals away with the toilet paper, remember?

Hubby says it doesn’t matter, but I am a person who is needs to have reasons for things…especially if something doesn’t make sense. I’ve been trying to make sense of this guy and his apparent antipathy towards us for a couple of months now…when Hubby’s family came to visit we wanted to show them the house and the seller refused to make an appointment with us to show them…not only did he refuse to allow us to come over, according to the estate agent, his refusal was none too polite. No reason for the refusal was offered, even though such a request is not uncommon and is generally accommodated.

When we bought our rental property in Cape Town we went through a similar situation, but it was, we believe, in retaliation for Hubby refusing to give the Seller the wendy houses (wooden garden sheds) that were on the property. We wrote them into the contract and, because the house had no garage, they were essential for storage. The Seller agreed to the contract, but later changed her mind and was extremely unhappy that we would not just hand them over to her. So, she did damage to the property, stopped watering the garden, neglected the pool, actually dug up trees and other plants and carried them off to her new house and, during the 6 weeks or so that this was going on, refused to allow us on the property (so we couldn’t see what she was up to). Since there has been no such failed “negotiation” in this instance, we are baffled, especially since the estate agent told me, by his standards we were being extremely forbearing and accommodation and the Seller was one of the most difficult he had ever encountered.

I really hate it when people play the race card, but in the absence of everything else, I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that the Sellers are not happy about their house being sold to a mixed couple. Sadly, that kind of attitude has not died out here…you can mandate changes in law, but you can’t mandate changes in people's hearts…we actually experienced an egregious display of blatant racism directed against us a couple of years ago when we had to engage workmen to do repairs caused by a burst hot water heater (geyser) and one company demanded full payment in advance because, in their own words, “we know what you people are like.” The Sellers of this house are white Zimbabweans (formerly Rhodesia) who were amongst those driven out by Mad Bob Mugabe. South Africa offered them refuge and a chance to start over, which they did. Unfortunately, like many older white people of this region, they may not have adjusted their thinking about race relations as they adjusted to their new lives here. I hesitate to accuse them of being difficult because we are a mixed-race couple and they feel they had to sell to a less than optimal buyer, but at this stage, I’m not finding any other rational explanation, particularly in view of their attitude that their wants supersede both common courtesy and their contractual obligations.

All things considered, though, it wasn’t a bad move and so far nothing wrong with the house is a train smash, but it’s gonna be a truckload of work to get this place in shape.

---I'll have more tomorrow, I hope.

Augh! Moving!

My faith in the rightness of our decision to leave this neighbourhood was reinforced in spades yesterday...two power failures before noon, and it was a Sunday! We moved boxes and small items for two days, completely filling the lounge (living room) of the cottage attached to the house. Today the moving company is supposed to arrive...in about an hour...and start packing up the furniture. They are supposed to finish tomorrow and deliver the stuff to the new house on Wednesday.

So far, it has gone smoothly. Nothing lost or broken, no lollygagging workers, just schlepping boxes to the trailer, taking them to the house and schlepping them inside the cottage. No tempers, no huge stress, just fatigue and a completely freaked Yorkie.

The bad news, however, is that our seller (now our tenant) is being a prick. We were supposed to have access to the cottage for our boxes and he locked both the bedroom and the bathroom and the kitchen was littered with crap so we couldn't use it, either. He lied to the estate agent, saying he would be out of town this weekend while we were shifting boxes when, in fact he was actually home...Hubby saw him in the back garden momentarily. When Hubby rang the bell to the main house to ask the man to unlock the bathroom, they refused to answer.

We got a glimpse of the back garden and it is a disaster. The pool is green and full of dirt, the plants have brown tips (means they haven't been watered in ages), the flower beds and paving is littered with leaves, indicating no raking or sweeping has been done for weeks, maybe even months. When Hubby gets the house keys Tuesday, I am hoping he will have some sharp words for the man. The guy acts like we screwed him out of his house and he can only get satisfaction by being passively aggressive towards us by neglecting the property and obstructing us at every turn, but the truth is, the price we offered just squeaked past the appraisal...had we offered any more, the house would not have appraised high enough to secure the loan. In other words...we offered what the house was worth, he didn't get screwed on the price.

So, I have to get going now, get ready for the moving van that should be here any time now, and start packing my life up yet again. I moved only twice in 26 years in California...this is my fourth move since 2003. Hope it is the last for a very, very long time!

Time to move on...

The house in Cape Town has sold, just as we are about to move into our new house in Joburg. It is a bittersweet moment for me, as it was costing us R12K month to make the monthly payments on it while it sat empty and forlorn, so we needed to sell it. But it also marks the death of that faint flicker of hope that we may someday return to Cape Town. Cape Town, in terms of property prices, is a lot like Silicon Valley...if you manage to be lucky enough to buy a property there, once you sell and move away, you are unlikely to ever be able to afford to move back.

It has been an eventful...not happily so...winter. I have learned I have cataracts and must have surgery on both eyes, I am diabetic and so far, that is not going very well. Saturday (two days from now) we begin moving into the new house, but the seller is being difficult...we still don't have keys...even though the transfer is complete and we now own the house.

I am just getting over a stomach bug and, of course, there was my foot giving me fits and bed rest until I thought I would go stir crazy. I'm trying to find the upside, but so far it eludes me.

I have been here just under nine months. I am sorry, but Joburg does not touch me the way Cape Town did. I've found little positive and tons negative...and it's not that I'm look for itm either, it just comes up and slaps me in the face. Like potholes in the road that are so bad they rip the front license plate off an SUV and that was in one of the expensive, "up market" neighbourhoods.

Hubby's car is hanging in the balance...the insurance company wants to scrap it and pay us out R164,000 even though it would cost only R100,000 to fix it and it is fixable. How's that? They want to spend more to scrap a car that can be repaired? How does that work? We don't want to scrap it...I feel like I have fallen down the rabbit hole or have stepped through the Looking Glass. Since when to the insured have argue against more money from the insurance company?

Final packing surge tomorrow...kitchen, bathroom, closets...they've been reduced to bare essentials, now it is time to empty them out. Saturday the move starts, it will take five days (two days of us moving boxes, two days of the moving company loading the furniture, one day for delivery). By this time next week I'll be in my new house, but since the telephone company around here is best known for its indolence and incompetence, it will be as much as a month before I have an internet connection again.

So, keep well all of you, and I'll try to steal a bit of Hubby's cell-phone connection to the web if I can, otherwise, see ya when we get back on line!

It’s kinda like having a baby…

Nine months after leaving Cape Town, I will be moving into my own home again. Not the same house, sadly, as the Evil Employer has not transferred us back home, but into a house Hubby and I own rather than this pit of a rental owned by a landlord who may well be related to EE, given his propensity for ignoring the pain of his victims in favour of his own self-serving agenda.

The whole process has taken more than nine months, of course, but even having a baby sometimes takes a while longer than that if you factor in the time it takes to conceive. We learned in mid-November that we had to move, it took two months of effort to get everything rolling and now, nine months later, it is about to come to a close. And this last nine months of living in a rental house at the mercy of someone who literally does not care about our well-being as long as he gets what he needs is uncomfortably akin to gestation.

Yesterday we got confirmation from the moving company that our move is booked, in twenty short days they will begin packing up our belongings, and shortly thereafter, we will be delivered. It is a bit like those last few weeks of pregnancy when you begin packing your hospital bag, make weekly instead of monthly trips to the doctor, and start making lists of the last-minute things you must do. And, since my birth experiences were all Caesarean deliveries, the opportunity to plan and coordinate things for the upcoming event feels familiar, too.

Pregnancy, for those of you who have not had the questionable pleasure, involves a lot of discomfort, unexpected experiences, and an endlessly growing sense of wanting to get it over with. Things happen that you want to have un-happen, like stretch marks on your stomach and invisible (but unbelievably swollen) feet. And backaches. And nothing fits, including your shoes and underwear. As time crawls on, you become more and more focussed on that delivery date, both in anticipation of the new leaf your life is overturning and a desire to be done with the temporary state that has taken over your life. Living in a rented house is a lot like being pregnant…lots of things happen over which you have no control and which you wish would un-happen, from being ignored by the landlord while the hot water heater overflows to being ignored by the landlord while the house is invaded by hordes of biting insects that find your flesh a particularly delectable variety, to being subjected to inconveniences large and small over which you have no control nor the right to change simply because you are not in control. Nine months of living like this is enough to make even an ordinarily laid-back person anxiously anticipate that magical day of deliverance…moving day.

Delivery is tough…preparation for it is no picnic, either. Pregnant women go to classes, re-learn how to breathe, and swallow tons of bullsh!t about how it won’t hurt if you will just follow these instructions. They spend hours practicing, weeks preparing…how is it so different from the weeks of packing and labelling and lugging and dragging and stacking and all the grunt work that goes into getting ready to move? Already my garage is full of boxes…literally hundreds of them…and the cupboards, closets, dressers, armoires, nooks and crannies of the house have not yet been fully emptied. And I’ve swallowed my share of bull these last few weeks, from movers so eager to get the work…actually, our money…that they would say anything just to get the nod. Painless, they promise, we’ll empty your overstuffed four bedroom house in three hours with a crew of two and a donkey cart…but it will cost you double if you want us to keep your stuff on the cart overnight…

In the end, however, if luck is even a little bit on your side, you come away relieved the ordeal is over and smugly proud of your prize. For me it will be a house that is big enough, with a garden safe for my little dogs, and the power to call an exterminator, dig a hole, hang a picture, paint a wall, screen a window, park where I want…even to move walls and change the tiles and fixtures if I am not thrilled with the ones that are already there. Just as a new mum can buy tons of cute clothes and blankets and booties and bibs and change her new arrival’s appearance as often as she likes, so I will be empowered to paint a wall pink or take up an ugly carpet or redress the landscaping. I need please only myself and my husband.

Like most people, I hate to move. I hate the disruption, the inability to use things I want because they are packed up in preparation for the move, the inability to find things I want because nobody knows where they are after the move. I hate the micro-coordination necessary and, in this case, the nine months of living in temporary quarters owned by someone whose only focus is to get his rent on time and screw everything else. But one thing this nine month journey has given me is an eager anticipation for something I would ordinarily dread: just as no one but a card-carrying masochist would ordinarily look forward to hours and hours of pain, no sane person looks forward to moving…unless that pain is the gateway to ending an experience that has grown lumberingly burdensome and unless the agony of the move is the first step out of the greater hell of living in inadequate quarters and into a more satisfactory place.

Oddly enough, most people on walking into our rented house, are positively impressed. It’s a pretty house on a well-maintained street full of pretty houses in a pricey neighbourhood in a good part of town. One would expect to be comfortable here, comfortable and secure. But nine months of intermittent water and power interruptions, insect attacks and rodent infestation, a fire in the field behind the house, security gate failures, obnoxious, noisy and unsupervised kids, and breakdowns of the house mechanicals (can’t light the gas fire, water leaks at the washing machine, broken hot water heater, doors and windows that stick so badly they can’t be used) have left me jaded, disgusted, and embarrassingly eager to move out.

And now I am counting down the days…