How to get a cleaning lady

I am in urgent need of a cleaning lady.
Like everyone has claimed after we bought the house "how are you going to keep this place clean" - I can't do it by myself.

So, I started asking around for references and came to the conclusion that it's really hard to find someone in this area. Not enough unemployment apparently.
In cities it is easier to find someone.

From a friend, we heard you could get a cleaning lady through a program called "dienstencheques". You have to register somewhere and then you can order these dienstencheques and use them to pay a cleaning lady. They only cost 6.70 Euro (for one hour of cleaning) and are tax deductible so you end up spending only 4.69 Euro.
CHEAP !!!
So I registered and called several companys to ask whether they have someone available for cleaning, but what do I hear: it will probably take months. I register myself with 5 companies who will contact me if they find someone. At one of these I am number 27 in the list for people in Tremelo waiting for a cleaning lady. What are the chances of finding someone soon huh...

BUT I GOT LUCKY - one company called me yesterday and said they found someone living in Tremelo who wants to work an additional 4 hours on Wednesday. So she came by, I showed her the house and she will start next Wednesday. She will even try to nibble off a few hours with one of her clients on friday so she can come an additional 2 hours on Friday.
That would be perfect!!

Finally something that goes smooth....

Kitchen issues are almost laughable (almost...)

October 11: Good news - the corner cabinet has arrived.

October 15: Since the kitchen company Thys doesn't want to send someone to install the corner cabinet, our contractor decided to install it himself. So he arrives at night with the cabinet, which is TOO SMALL.
It should have been 60 cm deep, instead it is only 20 cm deep. How on earth are we going to put in a mac mini and all other equipment that we had planned (and not to mention all the lost space in that corner).
Our contractor installs it anyway so that the granite guys can install the granite.

Half an hour later the granite company calls, THEY DROPPED OUR SLAB! What else can go wrong.
But hey - they will make a new one and will come on the same day, just a little later.

October 16: The granite guys came late but we don't care at this point, they made it!
They told us they have never seen a kitchen like this, where the owners (we) don't have any appliances installed. The kitchen installers (Thys) should have done that, even without a countertop. The granite guys can not install the equipment so we have to wait till October 26th for Thys to come out and do it.

However - it looks great right now with granite in place, I really like it.

BUT HEY WAIT - WHAT IS THAT??
Oh no, they cut out a regular square for the cooktop, which is not what our cooktop needs it's a built-in cooktop, not one to put on top (Thys didn't check the type of cooktop we have before passing the info to the granite guys). GRRRR...

The granite installers call the granite company and they say that someone can come over to our place and fix it here - only disadvantage is HUGE dust problem, so we will need to tape off the work area, tape off all the slides in the drawers because if not, it will make it impossible for drawers to slide ever again...
SCARY - especially since this is probably going to be done while I am in the States, meaning my mom needs to do all the clean up...

Irritated Larynx

I don't know whether it is stress related or whether I caught some bug, but for the last two weeks I don't feel too good.

It started with regular sore throat (but more painful than most times), then it got better and now it has gotten much worse to the point that I can not touch my neck because it hurts so much. My shoulders are hurting too, I have a headache and my ears are also painful.

I went to a local doctor who diagnosed an irritated larynx and he prescribed a mild allergy medicine.

Great, I come all this way to healthy Belgium to become allergic to something here???

I really hope it's just stress and that I will be better a few weeks from now (man, I am really not looking forward to the next few weeks - except from seeing our good friends of course :-) )

Mendel is integrating at her new school

Mendel's teacher posts pictures of things happening in their class and as such I am showing more pics of Mendel, but I promise there are some of Elias coming soon!






Here, Mendel is eating "smoutebollen" which were a treat from the teachers. They bought it at a local Kermis and Mendel is obviously savoring every bite.







One week, the theme was pets and children were encouraged to bring pets from home to show to everyone. I knew they saw a bunny, a dog, a cavia and in this picture a cat.
Mendel loves to snuggle with all these friendly pets (since we have an unfriendly cat at home)






These next two pictures are taken in a new classroom, called the "voorleesklasje" (reading class) which is very luxurieus (lots of pillows, bed, hanging chairs, etc..). The older kids can go and read in here as well.

I booked my flight to the USA

I did it, finally made a decision on whether to go to the USA or not. I'm going....

I am leaving on October 22nd, will do the oath ceremony on October 24th and than, somewhere in the next week I hope to be able to go to the Passport Agency in San Francisco for my US passport so I can leave again on November the 4th.

I called the 1-800 number at the passport agency and was told that I can only make appointments when my travel date is less than 2 weeks away.

I called the automated appointment line for the S.F. agency but the first available appointment was exactly 2 weeks out (so if traveling within 2 weeks, how on earth can the appointment be in two weeks?).
I am really puzzled how that is going to work out, but we'll see, I booked the flight with a "changeable travel date" so that I can prepone (in the best case scenario) or postpone (in the worse case).

How to get involved in school - by hassling others...

This past week I have been hassling store owners in Tremelo in my quest to gather prices for our quiz night at school on October 20th.

Apparently most people hate doing this, but for me this was a great way to explore boutiques, furniture stores, flower shops, etc...

I found a few nice places, talked to many sales people and even managed to get tons of stuff for the quiz.

Here is a list of some of those items:

- A few coupons for a pound of free Leonidas pralines (I just have to resist the urge to put one in my own pocket :-)
- coupons for hair salons, brasseries, ...
- decorative pillows, lamps, candles, ...
- sports bags, backpacks, travel bags, ...
- kitchen items, towels, ...
- watch, puzzle, games, school materials, ...
- night gown (size 46 ;-)
- etc...

Sleepless nights...

* If the kitchen headache isn't enough to cause sleepless nights, we now also have to deal with a problem with our mattress.

* When they delivered our bed/mattress a few weeks ago, we noticed that they had brought the wrong mattress. They acknowledged the problem and would bring us a new mattress but in the mean time (6 weeks or so), we could sleep on the wrong one. We slept GREAT.. so we really hoped the new one would be just as good or not better.

Not so... the new one is harder and Wim wakes up in the morning with a sore back. So after two nights I head back to the store and ask about whether we could get back the other one. The owner (a neighbor so that helps) explains that the core of the mattress is the same, only the cover is different, and the one we have should be the best on the market. But he is willing to put the old cover around it again so we can sleep on that one for a few nights. He wants us to be happy with the mattress (being our neighbor and all ;-) .... not the usual Belgian customer service.

* Another item causing me sleepless nights is the passport issue (on which I am now not going to elaborate because of Big Brother watching me) ... paranoia hits Belgium too....