Been kind of tired lately...

I'm kind of out of sorts. I don't know if I've caught a bug, or eaten a bug, or just this experience is starting to catch up with me.

This weekend was Erik's birthday. I didn't do anything for it besides order the cake. I'm sure it was disappointing. I will hopefully post the photos tonight.

Saturday we interviewed our first potential housekeeper. Her name is Jennifer, she's 18, super sweet, speaks some English, doesn't cook, and she'll do babysitting on the side. If she works out, she might spend the night one night a week (Friday or Saturday) so Erik and I can have date night. The advice I've heard from other Expats is that you need to try staff out - an interview won't tell you much. So you start the arrangement on a temporary basis and make it permanent after you feel good about the decision.

We spent Saturday and Sunday furniture shopping. We'll need something to sleep on when we move into our villa 1st Sept. We ordered some kick-ass furniture made in India and we'll receive it in 6 weeks. We still need beds for the kids. All the bedrooms have built-in closets so we won't need dressers or anything like that.

Annika had tummy trouble all night Sunday night. She went to bed fine but then started throwing up around 11:00p. I stripped her bed and moved her to the livingroom couch with a bucket next to her. I tried to sleep next to her to comfort her during the sharp pain attacks in her belly but there wasn't much sleeping for either of us. By morning she was fine (that has been our experience - once the offending organism has been expelled you feel fine again rather quickly) but since she was exhausted, we kept her home from school. We kept Auggie home too since we weren't comfortable with him taking the school bus by himself the 2nd week of school.

Yesterday we were out of power ALL DAY. Am I exaggerating? No, from 9:00am until 4:00pm. I didn't make any phone calls about it 'cause I thought it was just an India thing. But when Erik called about 3:00p and I told him about the power, he said a coworker, who has an apartment one floor up, has power. So Erik made some calls and it turned out that someone with an apartment number "close to 1122" didn't pay their bill so their power was shut off. Only, they got it wrong, and turned ours off. Ahhhh, fun fun fun.

I finally bought eggs yesterday. To some this might seem like a mundane comment, but I've been trying to buy eggs for a week. I don't feel comfortable buying the ones that are out on a store shelf in the heat, or with past expiration dates, and then I found some fresh refrigerated eggs and I opened the carton to check their condition and they were covered in chicken sh!t. Dude... it's exasperating. So finally, yesterday, success... But it's not like the store will have them again tomorrow.

Today I'm heading downtown with a British Expat named Sue. Yippee!! She's going to show me Commercial Street and MG Road (Mahatma Gandhi Road - every city in India has one) two places too crowded to go with the kids on my own. I'm very excited. It's where the bargaining happens and lots of small shops and local crafts. Sue knows how to bargain so I'm going to learn. I'm sure Erik will have some pointers too. :-)