DELVING BETWEEN THE TOES OF LIFE....I AM TOEJAM


2008-05-20 - 9:44 a.m.

I feel like I am on a vacation right now because last night I worked an evening shift and then a girl I work with needed tonight off, but was able to work the morning, so she asked to switch with me and so I am working tonight also. And then I have tomorrow and Thursday off...which means...four days of sleeping until I wake up. No alarm. It's kind of great. But I still prefer working the early morning shifts.

Anyway.

Yesterday I took advantage of having the morning and afternoon free and went for a two hour walk in absolute perfect weather. I think if it were always 60 degrees, sunny with big poofy clouds and a bracing breeze...I would be happy.

While I was out walking I saw many people outside, also taking advantage of the nice weather. I saw an unusual amount of people doing useless things with garden hoses. It was obvious that they had stepped outside to perform some mundane task or another and realized that the air was perfect and then set about to find as many things as they could to do. Instead of just going for a walk like I did. Or just sitting outside with a magazine and a cup of tea. No, no, instead people were just standing there blankly shooting water at things. Siding, sidewalks, gravel piles, mailboxes, lawns, tree trunks and floor mats. It was funny.

Tomorrow I have to drive my cat to Ann Arbor for an appointment with a specialist. There is a new treatment (not new to me, it was something we already tried in Spain but had to discontinue because someone (eh-ehm...Squishy Cat) got pancreatitis mid-treatment and had to go off everything in order to focus on his poor, poor pancreas) available here (well, not really available, it's just that this specialist managed to get the stuff from the UK and is offering it to his clients). That was a bad sentence. Anyway...there is an interferon available in Europe that is not available here and the doctor in Ann Arbor has some. So I want to try it again. Anyway, anyway, the point of this whole mention of the cat thing is that I have to drive 45 minutes to Ann Arbor and 45 minutes back from Ann Arbor with a screaming cat. He is SO bad in the car. He meows loudly the entire time. And it makes me batty. Hump Day drinks might be in order by tomorrow night.

In other news...the people who own the house we lived in in Spain have refused to refund the security deposit. When pressed for a reason why they weren't returning the deposit they sent a file of pictures. And every single picture was ridiculous and I hope they get laughed out of the courtroom when they are taken to court about it. There were valid things that we did to that house that could be mad about. Killing the grass was one thing. Killing the huge bougainvillea over the pool was another. We were ill prepared to take care of garden type things in a climate we did not know. We were also ill prepared for the dampness of the place and the garage (that we never used) got moldy. We were also not prepared for keeping up with a house which was allegedly partially built in the 1500's. The walls, we later found out, were dirt. We did not know, nor were we told or even prompted, that you have to sand and paint the walls all the time. So the walls, by the end of our stay, were quite crumbly and gross. But no, none of these things were included in their pictures. I could have even understood if they had said something about cat smell or something about they shrubs being overgrown or something about the spiders. But no. They sent pictures of things like a broken tile on the staircase (that was there when we moved in) and a scratched door (that was also like that when we moved in) and dead potted plants (that I BOUGHT over the years and that were alive when I left) and the best was the appliances that they had left in the laundry room and that we never touched. They sent a picture of an old fridge that was taped shut. We never even untaped it...it is exactly as it was when we moved in there. Also, before we moved in we asked that the bed in the master bedroom be removed because we had our own bed and we also asked that some couches be removed. We were told to THROW THE COUCHES AWAY. When we moved in we found that the bed from the bedroom had just been thrown into a back storage room and we just made do with all the couches because we don't just throw things away. So they sent a picture of that back storage room where the bed was thrown. And they sent pictures of some dirty couch cushions that I had put in that same storage room when we moved in because they were nasty dirty and couldn't be cleaned because they were homemade pieces of crap. They were constructed of a piece of foam stuffed inside a case and then loose feathers stuffed in to fill it out. So yeah, those are their pictures and those are their reasons for not refunding FIVE THOUSAND EUROS. Eric can't sleep he is so mad. The money is not out of our pocket (the company he works for is obligated to pay it) but it is an insult to us and it makes him look very bad to the company he works for. Honestly the house, after we moved out, would have needed a serious paint job and the doors and windows should be replaced because when it rains water comes in through all of them. (It did that the entire time we were there) And they probably need to replace most of the furniture because it was nasty and gross (as it was when we moved in). Part of the reason we CHOSE the house in the first place was because it was kind of run down and the furniture was all old and we were like, "we can't destroy anything here!". They make no mention of the things we did while we were there. Such as...installing a 3,000 euro alarm system. Adding iron bars to the windows (which already had iron bars over them, we just added an extra one that would make it nearly impossible to break in). Installing outdoor lights. And the numerous times we paid to have someone fix the fucking electricity. Oh, and the air conditioner.

My husband is about to have a heart attack. He can't get rid of this Spain stuff. All his tax stuff is still unresolved because the Spanish side won't give the accountant numbers and said something like, do we really have to go through all this for Eric, in Spain you can't get in trouble for anything less that 90,000 (I think that was the number) euros. And he's dealing with this security deposit thing. And it's all just crap.

We are getting a new roof this week. I'm really hoping they don't show up on my day off (Thursday) because I really want to sit around in quiet all day.

That is all.

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