What I've Been Doing, Part 1

I'm having a bit of a problem uploading photos today. Hope this eventually works!! Very frustrating, to say the least.

Oh my - 10 days without blogging. Yikes! And I'm not even in the States playing with my grandkids. I think I need to post a whole lot of photos, not just the ones I was originally going to post. Oh well - we'll see what happens.

I've been busy. Busy working on this room. I totally rearranged it, except for the desk. I'm going to keep this desk so I can look out the window at the trees and sky and birds and clouds. Don't want to look at the wall. Don't want to look at the rest of the room. I want to look 'free'!!

I left the shkaf where it is - it's too heavy to even consider moving unless I totally empty it and have Mel move it in pieces. So, it stays where it's at. However, I did clean it out again. Seems like I'm always cleaning it out.

Well "always" is too broad of a term. It's more like "whenever we get ready to go home, I clean out the shkaf" in this room. I seldom put anything in the cupboards and on the shelves any more, so I don't know why it always needs to be cleaned - but there you have it.

But I moved the bed, and I moved the table, and I moved the empty and full of winter clothes now suitcases and I moved the empty boxes. And I threw away 2 full boxes of old video cassettes that we don't watch anymore, but kept another box full of ones we might watch again. The throw-aways were recorded off of tv - Columbo, Murder She Wrote and Diagnosis Murder. Kind of sad to see them go - but I needed the room!

We are downsizing. The greater team is downsizing. We are letting the office lease go. That means that all of Mel's books, and anything else we have downstairs in that room, need to come up here and go into storage here.

Ei Yi Yi. We do NOT live in a large flat to start with, so I needed to make room. I'm going to have to go through boxes and shelves of books next and get rid of books. Many books. Books that are so-so but I might read them again will go. I'm not sure where they will go, but they are going. Probably in bags out by the dumpster to someone can haul them off and sell them as used books in the market. That's fine with me. I will tear apart any that I don't want sold (we've been given a few books that are questionable - and I've bought a few that looked good, but when I started reading them, I ended up knowing that I won't share them with anyone, so into the trash they will go. Unfortunately, sometimes I just set them aside later to rip them apart and they end up getting shuffled back into the mix....) So, I need to go through at least 2 boxes of books and a whole bookcase and discard with a fury. Then, I'll have room for Mel's books - seminary books, theology books, study books, just for fun books that he has.

We like books.
haha

So, it took me at least 3 days to get the room where I have it now. And it will take a few more days for me to get inspired to do the books next. But in the process, I also weeded out old papers. I killed the shredder by plugging it into an extension cord without a transformer. Whew! The room stank for days! It sure did work really fast until I got it unplugged, however - like a chainsaw roaring away over there on the table! Poor thing. But I killed it in the process. 220v does not do good things to 110v electrical appliances and machines. So, all of the stuff I weeded out I had to shred by hand. Some I just tore into pieces, but names, addresses, dollar amounts, receipts no longer needed, etc. all got cut into tiny pieces and thrown out. Of course, two bags out in the dumpster were very appealing to someone who tore them open, rummaged through them and then left them for the garbage men to scatter all over the place when the dumpster emptied into the garbage truck. :( sigh. Looking out there and seeing that bright neon pink paper in the middle of scattered tiny pieces and knowing it was mine was not encouraging, but embarrassing. Should have taken a photo but didn't think of it, so here's a photo of what's out there right now (not ours!).
On Monday this week, Mel and I went over to Nova Linea. As you can see from this photo, we've had some dark, gray clouds recently and a couple of very heavy rainstorms. There was a little lightning and thunder, but not much. Mostly heavy rains. We really needed that rain, tho - it's been very dry. Fortunately, the temps also dropped, way down into the low '60's. Unheard of for summer here! :) I'm glad they dropped. It's been wonderful.

Along with other things, I bought a new fountain at Nova Linea. It's not as pretty as my blue jug fountain, but it has a light! and that is something I was trying to figure out - how to get a light to shine down into the pond so I can see the fish some day when I get fish again.

Mel helped me fill it with filtered water and in the process we discovered that the room is not level. Really? A room not level? Here in Ukraine? Wow. I'm shocked. Not. No, not shocked, just very sarcastic. :P How did we find this out, you ask? Well, we were filling it to the top so that the water would be deep enough for the fountain to circulate the pond water, not just the fountain bowl water - and the close side is apparently about an inch lower than the far side. Good grief. Water everywhere cuz we were watching the far side, not the near side. :) (Sounds like a comic strip or something.) I plan to get a couple guppies or maybe 3 or 4 goldfish to put in it on Friday or Saturday. Right now the water is sitting, recycling through the fountain and de-gassing or whatever it does while it conditions for fish. I'm hoping that whatever was left on the sides of the pond and on the rocks of the algea and stuff that fish need will "come back to life" and grow again and make it ready faster than if it was all brand new or freshly scrubbed (I didn't scrub any of it for that reason). We'll see.

And what else have I been doing? Well, that's for another post!

Have been busy lately. Not the kind of 'run around town and get lots of errands done' kind of busy. No, just the kind where I do stuff all day long and then wonder where the time went and why didn't I ever take time to write on my blog?

Have finished part of what I had set as my goal on the blanket I'm cross-stitching. It goes really fast when I set small goals and work toward them. I don't feel so overwhelmed by the whole project. I finish the little section, or the item (like a flower, or the stems of several, or a butterfly) and then I put it all down some place where I can just look at it. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed with the individual stitches - and especially the ones that aren't "perfect" - that I can't see the overall blanket. That's why I do the 'setting apart' exercise. After an hour or so, whenever I pass it and see it, all I see is the completed whole, not the individual stitches.

Does that make sense? :-)

I like what I'm seeing in the completed whole. The good news, too, is that I'm well over half-way finished now. It needs to be done by the end of the month, according to what I heard on Sunday, but that's not going to happen. If everything goes as planned, I may have to mail it rather than give it to the person I'm making it for. If that's the case, that's ok. Not my first choice, but ... many things in life are not first choices.

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Wow, my typing this morning is really weird - I keep transposing letters and making new words, or wrong words. :-)

I decided on the spurr of the moment yesterday to go out and clean our section of the stairwell. It's been driving me crazy. Every time I go out there all I see is all the stuff spilled on the walls. It has never been like that before, in all of the 12 years we've lived here, I've never seen stuff spilled on the walls.

Now that makes me wonder - what the heck went on while we were gone?? Most of it looked like coffee or hot chocolate. In America it is common to see people walking around with cups of liquid, sipping from them, possibly splashing a bit here or there as they walk, etc. But not here. No, here you might see someone with a bottle of beer or a bottle of water. Very rarely do you see someone drinking a bottle of soda (most soda is sold in 2 liter bottles, not smaller). But coffee? No way! Coffee is drunk after a meal and maybe for breakfast and that's about it.

So, what was that stuff on the walls, spilled here and there for 3 or 4 flights of stairs in our stairwell, starting about shoulder height? I have no idea.

I started by going out and sweeping all of the stairs from the landing above us (dirt comes down as people come down) to the landing below us (dirt comes up as people come up). There was a lot of dirt, even though I swept all of this a month ago (apparently I'm the only one sweeping them).

Then I came back in the flat, put on one latex glove (the kind used by doctors), got a bowl of cool water with some Mr. Proper in it :-), grabbed a rag made out of one of Mel's old sport socks, and went out and washed 3 flights worth of walls. You know, our walls are lime green and white - only the lime green is washable. The white is whitewash and just comes off with water - not good. I also washed the brown paint on each side of each step. I did not wash the brown paint that encircles each landing - I need a mop for that due to all the bending over.

The water was filthy. I figure that is the first time those walls have ever been washed since the building was built. Since they were painted a few years ago (I think I wrote about that, but I'm not going to go looking for that post right now), there was only a few years worth of dirt and grime on them.

When I come up the steps I always lightly touch the wall with my right hand since my left hand has my purse in it and the left is where the banister is at. That light touch just kind of steadies me on my way up. Then I come in and immediately wash my hands. Well, last night we went out to find the lunar eclipse and when coming back up later, I could feel the difference immediately when I got to the part I'd washed. It was slick and smooth - and clean! :) :) :)

This makes me happy.
Now - if I could just feel that happy about dusting, mopping and vacuuming here in our flat.........

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Yes, we went out and walked around in the mostly dark for awhile until we found the eclipse of the moon. Finally found it just a couple doors down our own building. Figures. The street view was too bright due to street lights (would rather have the lights than the eclipse), there were too many 5 and 9 story buidlings in the way or there were too many trees with lots of leaves on their branches to see the sky. Just down the walkway in front of our building, tho, just a few meters away, was a clear view of the sky.

The moon was really tiny, way up there in the sky. Tiny and very orangish red. I was disappointed. After seeing the eclipse in Colorado last December, this one was hardly worth looking at. Teeny tiny moon, not so good view, hot and humid air. We went back inside.

Finally, just 15 minutes before it was all over, I discovered a link to a live view of the eclipse. I clicked on it and watched the end of the eclipse. That was as good as what I watched in Colorado last December! Bigger moon here on my computer than up there in the sky - and even here on the computer it was, what?, 3 inches across at most? :) :) :) But it was way too cool watching the sunlight come back there on the far left side, turning the moon from dull copperish-red back to brilliant white.

By the way, this eclipse, viewed from the Southern Hemisphere, was 'blood red' due to the ash in the upper atmosphere from two volcanoes erupting. Hmmm - I need to write about that, too, but it's going to have to wait. Anyway, there are End Times implications for that, according to several websites I've read. More about that later, too.

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And now, I must go get dressed, make a couple phone calls and get busy with my day. What I do is going to depend on what I learn from the phone calls.

Bye.

Clean, Clean, Clean!

Tanya just left. I hired her to come and deep clean my kitchen. I can't get up on a stool any longer - well, maybe I could, but I'm afraid to even try. My knees, my weight, my fear of heights - all conspire to keep my feet firmly planted on the floor.

I also cannot get down on my knees any longer due to my knee replacements. Titanium knee bones on plastic knee caps, full weight on the floor = broken knee caps that must be replaced surgically. So, I can't get down on the floor to get behind and inbetween cabinets. It's been several years since everything was deep cleaned, cabinets emptied and shelves washed down. I've done the lower cabinets as far as I can reach, but not the high ones.

Today Tanya even pulled the stove out and oh. my. gosh. I could not believe it. I don't think it has ever, in 11 years, been pulled out away from the wall and the floor under it cleaned. As I wrote: oh. my. gosh.

Can you say: embarrassed? (Can I spell it??)

I tried to explain that we've been gone most of the past 2 years, plus I can't get down/up due to my knees... But still. Why didn't I hire her a long time ago to do this cleaning? Sheesh. She did not get all of the cabinets cleaned, but the one I was most concerned about, yes. It has my spices and herbs in it, plus Mel's coffee, the teas, etc. Everything is in containers, but a couple of years ago now (time does fly!), the gal who was staying here broke the glass door and it's been without a door this whole time. Needless to say - those shelves must have been filthy. Tanya will do the cabinet beside it next week.

And then she will help me strip the wallpaper off the walls in the livingroom and get them ready for me to paint. I've also asked her if she would paint the ceilings (actually they are whitewashed with good old fashioned whitewash stuff). I can paint the walls myself, I just need help getting them prepped.

Yes, I did the bedroom and the little hallway all by myself, but it took days and even weeks. And I had help in the entry area - and that took days and days, too! But I think the livingroom will actually be easier. And if Mel will help me get some stuff moved into our bedroom (yikes! not much room in there!) and into the office room (also not much room) before she arrives, then it should go a lot faster. I'd cross my fingers, but what good would that do? :-)

I'm also hoping to move the furniture around a bit in the livingroom. We'll see if that will work - it may not fit any other way than it is now. But if I can move it, I'm going to try and get the rug cleaned. There are "Kemcheesties" here that do dry cleaning type stuff and I've heard that they will do rugs like our big one. I just don't know how much it will cost. At this point though, the cost is worth it!

While Tanya was doing the kitchen, I shredded a bunch of papers (addresses off envelopes, letters, receipts we don't need, etc). I fried the shredder in the process - plugged it directly into 220v and it's from the States. Stank up the office room pretty bad for awhile. So, I now have a blister on my right ring finger from the scissors. Will have to either buy a local shredder (best idea) or use the scissors more often and not let so much stuff pile up. Now there is an idea.....! ha!

I also cleaned our bedroom, at least partially. The window has been driving me nuts. When we got back in January I washed the inside of the inside window, but did not open it due to the styrofoam insulation Mel had put in there before we left. He used a sheet of styrofoam about 2 inches thick, cut the pieces to fit between the two windows all along the edges, bottom and top and kind of stuffed them in there so they wouldn't all fall down.

The space between the inside window and the outside window was filthy with dirt that came in through the cracks between the fortichka and other windows, and with spider webs. Yuck. YUCK. I've been keeping the shades down so I wouldn't have to see bits of styrofoam, and now elm tree seeds, sticking to the spiderwebs halfway up the window. Oh double yuck!!!

Also, even though I washed the inside of the inside window (and the rag came away black with sooty-type of pollution (we breathe that stuff!!!)), the outside of the inside window and both sides of the outside windows were still filthy. I clean my windows 6 or more times a year, usually. I do NOT like dirty windows! (Even though the kitchen was dirty, the kitchen window, on the other hand, was/is clean!! - but then, I don't look through the kitchen to see other things, just the window. sigh)

When I washed the inside of the bedroom window, the rag came away black again. This fact really bothers me. It bothers me that I'm not sure where all that black stuff comes from. If it came from all the trucks and cars going by on the major street on that side of the building, wouldn't the other sides of the windows be that black, too?? But they aren't. Yes, they are dirty, but they are dirty with dust and dirt and raindrop marks, only a fraction of the amount of black stuff. I washed the glass on some photos in the livingroom, too, and the rag came away black there, too, so it's not just on that side of the building. As I said, this bothers me. Where does it come from? What is it (other than "pollution")? Is it going to give us Black Lung Disease? :-) Or cancer? Well, we've lived with it now for 12 years, so... probably not good questions at this point - what IS the point?

Anyway, I washed all 4 sides of the windows: inside/outside of inside and inside/outside of outside and it is amazing how much brighter the room looks! Mel will need to put in more styrofoam this fall if we're still here after the 21st of May, of course, but that is more than doable. I wish we could afford to get new windows installed - Western European style windows that have just ONE inside and ONE outside - but as this is not our flat, we don't want to pay for them.

So, parts of the livingroom are cleaner due to my dusting and washing while Tanya was here. At least for a couple days any way - everything will be covered in dust by the middle of tomorrow again. And the bedroom is much cleaner. And I love clean windows! even more than a super clean kitchen. ("Are my priorities wrong?" she asks herself.)

I hardly recognize the kitchen. Will have to go and check it all out and make sure it's still 'my kitchen'.

:-) :-)