Thursday, December 10, 2009

So... where have you been anyway?

I have to apologize for my lengthy departure from the blogosphere. (Interjection: I love that blogosphere doesn't come up on the spell-check.) November was a really rocky month here for a variety of reasons. As those of you who are connected to me through Facebook (I think that's all of you) know, Nick's grandma broke her legs some weeks ago. What happened was that her dogs, who are completely out of control, were playing in the garden near her when they ran into her and knocked her over. No one else was around to say exactly what happened and I think she was too upset to remember exactly, but what we do know is that the leg she broke was NOT the one that she fell on, so it must have been a hard hit from the dogs.

What ensued after that was nothing less than mayhem. We went to the hospital around 8 in the evening, and stayed until she was in her room and had seen a doctor, which was around 1am. The next day we found out that she had been really upset and disoriented overnight, so we pondered what to do. Here it is evidently relatively common to hire an overnight nurse to stay in the room (and it's much less expensive than it would be in the US), so after consulting with other friends and family, we chose that option. But, the next day was the same report-- she had barely slept and had been very upset all night.

The next choice was for us to stay in the hospital, too, and that's what we did. I think we spent 3 or 4 nights in a row in a fairly restless slumber-- hospitals are not restful places at all. Gratefully that particular hospital made it much easier for us to stay: They made us a bed in the room each night, and the cafeteria-cum-restaurant was manageable. But regardless, staying at the hospital was hard. We were exhausted.

Right in the middle of all this, our ship came in. (I've been waiting for months to say that, by the way!) By which I mean all of our belongings, not, alas, a magical ship full of gold. It could not have come at a worse time. But we were desperate by this point to have a little bit of our own space, and we worked harder to get the apartment finished for when the movers came. They came and luckily they unpack all of our things and remove the packaging, but that still left us with the daunting task of putting everything away and trying to figure out what we were missing to get organized.

After that, we pretty much crashed. I think that I slept for 2 or 3 days straight. I barely got out of bed and gave up entirely on fishing the apartment for the time being. That was around Thanksgiving. Finally, though, we got things to the point in the apartment that we could actually live here (we had to buy appliances, lights, FOOD... all sorts of things you kind of take for granted as just being there), and last Friday was our first night here.

I can't even express how it feels to have our own space again after 2 months living in someone else's home. Even with the most congenial host, one still has a craving for one's own things. Finally I feel at rest again and in charge of my life. Aside from being dead tired for the whole month of November, I didn't want to write much because I felt so out of control of my own day-to-day life that it left me without words.

And of course, in just over a week, we leave here! For the holidays only, of course, but never did I think it would take this entire span to get settled. I think the timing is good, though, to have a break because we can come back and start fresh. That said, I forsee not a wink of rest in the next several months! I look forward to spending every waking moment in the US with my friends and family, whom I miss dearly and cannot wait to see. When we return here, many family will be in town throughout January and February. We still have to buy sheep to bring back here to revitalize the stock, and don't forget that we have a house that still needs to be built! Although it is great to have my bed here again, looks like I won't be seeing much of it soon--but that means plenty of blog fodder and lots of stories and pictures in the future.

So, in short, I apologize for my absence, but I'm looking toward the future with the expectation that November was the yuckiest of what we have to go through in the short-term future. Coming up, I will be posting before and after pics of the apartment! We did lots of renovation before our things arrived-- some with the help of contractors, but lots of work ourselves. I need to finish cleaning this joint, though, before I take the final "after" pics :)

1 comment:

Hanna said...

I can't wait to see pictures!