Day 29

An afternoon at the Mall.

With the house nearly sorted, we discovered that there were some essentials that we needed for civilized existance, so we headed to the local shopping mall.  After filling our basket to the brim we were ready to head back home to put some finishing touches on our unpacking.  The most notable purchase was a nice pair of house slippers.  We have discovered that the courtesy of passing out house slippers to guests isn't a courtesy at all.  It is a necessity.  Most traditional style homes in the area are outfitted with either parque or stone floors.  The stone floors are FREEZING and extremely hard on the feet.  That being said, we quickly discovered that the house slipper is an essential part of life here in our new home.  In addition to the cold floors, the house has radiant heat.  For those of you familiar with this concept, you already know that it doesn't hold a candle to the central heating systems we have come to rely on back home.  The house remains relatively chilly.

I suppose what makes this a negative in the mild winters, makes it a huge plus in the warm weather months.  Particularly important as there is no air conditioning in our home.  In fact air conditioning is still quite a luxury option hear and you will still find new cars sold without it to this day.  The house is an absolute vault.  I have never been in a home so quiet.  The reason for this is that the construction here is all stone.  They do not have access to lumber as we do in the States and the concept of a timber built home is unthinkable.  Building practice aside, we have discovered our home to be quite lovely and really larger than we need.  Unpacking usually takes a few weeks and you end up living out of boxes for more than a month before it all becomes unbearable and you just decided that the last few boxes don't really need to be unpacked at all and either put them in storgage or throw their contents away.  You see, I have a theory that if you haven't used the item in the last three months, you don't in fact really need it and it is ready to be discarded with.  My wife doesn't share my sentiment and is usually quite offended when I throw one of her treasures in the waste basket.  You live and learn.  Nowadays, she is generally diligent about gathering the items she truly cares about to prevent their disposal.

With all of this being said, my anal retentive nature does not allow those remaining few boxes to stay unpacked and I am now sort of marveling at the fact that we have gotten all of our personal items unpacked and in a semi-permanent location inside of three days.  What we have left, however, is a shit load of cardboard boxes and packing paper.  The office in our new home is now on the verge of bursting forth in a mad explosion of paper products.  Our moving company has been kind enough to come and remove all the debris on Tuesday and I should then be able to get the last room organized and get back to painting.  I have turned into quite the scavenger in an effort not to spend any of my own money on someone else's home and at the same time live in a place that I am proud to claim as my residence.  This hasn't really been all that hard as it would appear that Madam Chabou was not that big of a fan of throwing anything away.  Plenty of old paint laying around to finish painting the entire inside of the home and a bit of gate paint to refurbish a little of the lacking curb appeal.

The boys have been on video game overload.  The spoiled nature of their existence makes their most difficult decision of their day whether to play the XBOX 360 or the Playstation 3.  Both in full hi-def of course.  The eldest is pleased that under his expert guidance, he has trained the three year old to have bionic thumbs and a video game addiction that may put his hotdog addiction to shame.  It is amazing to watch kids these days.  You have to be an octopus to operate these controllers and at age 3, my youngest is damned near better than I am at it.  The key is to spend the requisite amount of stick time so that you no longer get a headache from the manic screen movment and you become as deft a thumb as exploratory surgeon.  Tonight I would get my chance.

After a long day of shopping and house cleaning, we had promised to make good on our agreement to take the boys to the carnival.  Unfortunately, the youngests still frail physical condition made the parental decision easy.  We would be staying in for the evening.  So as to not break my eldests heart, I brokered a deal that he could stay up late with me and we would spend some quality time on the sofa, entranced by the flickering beast.  We would try and make an honest run at beating his latest game.  It took us some time to outlast the youngest and virtually no time to outlast an exhausted mother, but soon enough we were deep into the bowels of machine gun driven fury.  Eventually, my parental instinct took over and I ushered my eldest to his bed for the evening.  Turns out that the Siren song of the Playstation was initially too much for me to handle and when I came to, it was three in the morning and I knew then that mom would not be impressed with me allowing the eldest to stay up to this hour.  So much for father of the year honors.

Another day in the book.  Perhaps tomorrow we will finally make the Carnival and get to spend a little down time away from our home improvement hell.  Rest Well.