Josh is in Saudi this week on his first business trip with his new company. He’s had several meetings and all is well there, but you know what happens whenever he travels, right? 
That’s right. I came home from work to no power and no AC. And I didn’t have a contact number for the maintenance people. It was the first night in over a week that I was going to get to enjoy an evening at home and instead I had to play the repairman waiting game.
Thankfully the boys figured out how to get the lights back on and solved the problem of what was tripping the house (the downstairs AC unit) and Josh texted me the number of the repair people. So I call, a man answers, “Hello?” I explain the problem, talking for about 20 seconds and after I pause he replies, “Hello?” Oh good grief. I ask if he can hear me and he replies, “Hi, Arabic?”
It’s going to be a long night . . .
While we waited for the repair people (the man eventually brought the phone to someone who spoke English) we at least had lights and cooling upstairs. Even with the AC out and temps in the high 90s (and at 10pm it still “feels like” 103 so it’s hot 24/7), our new house seems to stay cooler than our old one. Yay for that!
Of course the electrician came in the middle of dinner and tripped the breaker to the house. Then he asked if he could go get his tools. What did you come with? Your hands in your empty pockets? Totally normal here.
Yay, power is back on (and my house is looking more sorted than a week ago)
and then off again . . . so that was my relaxing evening at home. And then they had to come back the next morning to complete the job. Which meant I couldn’t go to the gym today, sort of a good-news, bad-news kind of thing. I’m always thrilled to not have to go to the gym, lol, but it’s annoying to have to rearrange my schedule to wait on someone whom you’re not sure is going to show up (these guys did though — winning). It doesn’t matter to most people because they have full time house help that is always available to answer the door, but that is not my life.
And they didn’t actually complete the job so we get to do it all over again on Saturday or Sunday once they get a compressor — probably from a vacant house nearby. That’s what they did at our last residence. Totally normal. 
Another normal crazy: we finally got sheets for the boys’ beds (I have no idea why I don’t have sheets for that bed from our last house), but they are the wrong size because it’s an American size mattress and even though I measured, they are too tight and pop off in the night because the corners are too short for the thicker mattress. Maybe I’ll just wait until Calvin comes to visit at Christmas and have him bring me some from the US. 
At least I was productive this morning while the guy was at the house fixing the AC — until I ran out of the special hooks for cement walls. To hang things you either need a drill, which I can’t be bothered with, or these nifty hooks with tiny pin-like nails that get hammered into the wall. They are fine enough to go into the concrete and the several connection points in each hook holds it into the wall. But once it’s in there’s no going back — pulling one out takes a chunk of the wall with it. So I go wild with my hammer and eyeball, no measuring for me, and 95% of the time it comes out OK. I tend to go with intentionally eclectic spacing so measuring becomes less essential.
Finally we have my normal crazy girlie who I realized has been spending too much time on computer screens lately because she gets fully absorbed and goes into withdrawal tears when I tell her it’s time to turn it off. I won’t post the wailing photo out of respect for her (because she’s old enough to care), but this is after she pulled it together, apologized and we worked on folding laundry together before bed instead. I’m thankful that tomorrow is finally Thursday because I have needed a weekend all week.