Progress Report

I am happy to report that the main floor of our house is almost entirely unpacked! (I know you all are probably saying, "it's about time!") I spent a couple hours Friday night cleaning and straightening up the living room, dining room, and kitchen, pretending (as I had for a while) that the large boxes that lined the perimeter of our living room and dining room did not exist...I went to bed happy that we could start the weekend off with at least a clean main area. James got up Saturday morning and I figured it was OK if I slept in an hour since I had cleaned the night before. Unbeknownst to me, James had other plans... to my horror, when I came down the stairs James had emptied--I don't know how many boxes! There wasn't an inch of space unoccupied...the table and all of the chairs, the kitchen counters, he had even thrown a box of coats and jackets on the living room floor, oh, I don't know exactly why...but I was not happy in the least! At this point, I was feeling so angry and overwhelmed at the same time, I just wanted to flee for the day...but I had no where to go so I had to face the mess that was before me.

After the argument that of course he knew would be a result of his actions, James went outside to start trimming the tall shrubs behind and to the side of our house. These needed to be trimmed since the day we moved here. The landlord should have had it done before we moved in. This past week, I went as far as getting a quote to have the work done. Which we would pay for, not the landlord. I realize that we have been busy and that James has been out of town and very busy at work but I am getting fed up and embarassed by how it looks. So, he went out to trim the overgrown shrubs only to come in about twenty minutes later...the trimmer battery was dead. Let me clarify--he didn't charge it beforehand (and he knew he was going to trim on Saturday). And, it's not the type of trimmer that you can plug into an extension cord and keep going. So much for getting that done this weekend! Even if James wanted to do it today (Sunday) he couldn't because Germans do not do noisy work on Sundays, including trimming trees or mowing lawns. It is dark here by 5 PM but James says he'll try to do it a little at a time this week and try to go to work earlier and come home earlier this week and it not he'll do it next Saturday. I really hope so.

But, like I said, the main floor of the house is unpacked. Even though he has frustrated me with his tactics (Saturday is not the first time that he has done this), I do have to credit James with moving it along. We don't have a single decoration on the wall yet and everything is still in a disaray, but it is better. Upstairs, Thomas' room is unpacked and then there are a few boxes in the other rooms but much progress has been made. When the movers brought our things, we could barely turn around in most of the rooms, there were so many boxes! Seriously. This past week, I was even able to go through Thomas' and Toby's rooms and put away their outgrown clothing. All the the 5T stuff is boxed away as well as all of the 6-9 and 6-12 stuff. The basement is still very scary but the basement is only for storage and laundry so I'm not that concerned about it. One day we might have an office again, but since we have a laptop now it's not all that pressing. We found the printer, we plug the laptop into it when we need to.

This week, we are going to call the moving company and have them come and get the boxes and packing paper that we have in the backyard. Due to the recycling laws here, it is very hard to get rid of mass amounts of cardboard and paper so I am glad that they gave us the option of a "one time" pickup. We'll have to deal with the rest on our own but that's OK.

Until later,

Emily