Sunday: move day #2 + 1.

9:00 a.m. We slept surprisingly well, given the curtain fiasco of the previous day and the fact that the mattress was about 4" thick. I woke up with one leg asleep but was otherwise fine. That combined with the chilliness and the fact that there was only one pillow between the two of us (I usually have four and Jack has two), it was almost like camping. After hearing how difficult it was to get things through customs, we went on an extensive search for a grocery store of some size that would be open on Sunday and would carry things we might need, such as paper plates, forks, spoons, etc. It was also time to start building up the food collection. Our survey of the tri-Delhaize area yielded nothing. We ended up getting pastries from Croissant d'Or (surely a play on the nearby area of Toisson d'Or--how droll) and heading back to the homestead for some tea drinking. So we heated up some water in the frying pan and drank out of the tumblers. We haven't come across anyplace that has takeout coffee yet (perhaps the McDonald's is open Sunday morning...).

11:30 a.m. Jack tried to find out how to work the manual-less washer/dryer in our bathroom (a photo of the neighbor's yard from the bathroom window at left). The mop immediately came in handy, as the water supply to the washer was dripping all over the floor and had left a big puddle which was discovered upon stepping in it. We felt great satisfaction in having anticipated such an eventuality by buying the mop. This was quickly dampened when we figured out that the W/D is a W (I don't think this was disingenuousness on anyone's part, but rather miscommunication and lack of familiarity with front-end washers). As the woman who had transported our goods on Saturday had confirmed that I had, indeed, purchased detergent and not fabric softener, we eventually just put some detergent in and set it on "coton - 60" degrees C. There is a digital readout on the washer, and once we turned it on it read 2:30. After one minute we realized that this was the countdown timer. Two hours and thirty minutes to wash a small load of clothes? Sheesh. These front-loading washers may be water-efficient, but they don't skimp on power usage, apparently. The other setting was the spin cycle speed, from 0-1200. Given that we wanted the clothes to be as dry as possible, we set this for 1200. K. had mentioned that the open-top pipe that the flexible drain hose was put into would sometimes overflow, so it was best to leave it in the bathroom sink. Once the rinsing cycle began it pulled the hose out of the sink and onto the floor, necessitating the use of the mop again. Fortunately there is very little water involved so not much spilled. We put it back in its original spot and it was fine.

3:00 p.m. Inaugural showers commence. Given that the kitchen sink hot water stays hot for maybe about 2-3 minutes before going cold again I worried that the shower would do the same. It is actually okay, though, because the heater turns back on once it realizes that you are serious about wanting hot water. Not sure how to deal with this, as it makes things like hand and dish washing less sanitary, but hopefully we can figure it out how to adjust it at some point. It really defeats the point of buying high efficiency appliances when you have to let the water run for such a long time to get the hot to stay on. So there's that for me to be sullen about in case I ever run out of other things.

p.s. The movers called yesterday (Tuesday) and are supposed to deliver our goods today. Because our staircase is narrow and paying for a lift to transport things to our 2nd floor window would be prohibitively expensive for them (we've already settled our bill on the shipment), they are going to bring the boxes onto the ground floor landing, open them, and then walk our goods upstairs. It's kind of like being evicted in reverse: the whole world has the opportunity to see what kind of junk you paid obscene quantities of money to transport. Fortunately, most items should be safely wrapped in paper, although people might wonder why I chose to bring over the purple bridesmaid dress. Hey, you never can tell. (Real answer: I didn't get a chance to go through my closet before the movers showed up).

-s