FRIDAY - Day 36 -- wow!
George tries to work from home on our new internet. It's supposed to be faster than what we get in the States for broadband! Hard to tell. You can't stay connected long enough to find out if it's fast. So now we're thinking that George may have to do his work from home day at the mall every week. The other bummer is... we can't both be connected to the internet at the same time! (Unless one of us uses his iPhone) And we probably can't do that whole Vonage thing we were planning, so no Colorado number guys, sorry!
For dinner, I'm so excited to make us a little taste of home... tacos!
I'm being good and eating them sans tortilla, and even Regin is getting his first tastes.
SATURDAY
We go to the custom furniture place which turns out to be a kitchen design center. Not exactly what we were thinking! Plus, we can't do anything with our kitchen. Wish we could -- the counter tops are so nasty I can't imagine kneading dough on there, no matter how much I clean it first. The cabinet door handles are covered in a sticky-thick layer of old grease (I wonder if they sell goo-gone here), and did I mention the roach behind the drawer? Ack! I'm also starting to notice a definite odor coming from the lower cabinets/drawers. So I wish I could just gut the kitchen and start afresh.
We check out some other furniture places. Most of the stuff we are interested in is slightly above what we were hoping to spend. And it's all a little more formal than our tastes generally run. But I do see some GORGEOUS (pricey) dining tables. Thing is... we were at our shipping limit coming here. I already know we'll be over going back, you always have more going back, but are we going to ship furniture back with us? So ought I to be buying things that I will really love and not want to part with?
It's really hard for me to spend the day out, here. I haven't found a single thing I can eat if I am going to try and get back to a hypoglycemia diet. I even checked out a Penang cookbook at the book store and... sugar in every recipe! Savory recipes! Do you know, I thought it was impossible to buy orange juice here without added sugar, until I found some imported Florida's Natural which I promptly bought for George. Boy loves his OJ.
The last set of furniture places we go to are at this events arena, and they were holding a PC fair, if we'd planned better we'd have gone to see if we could find the kind of printer inks and things that we need -- did we bring over unusable printers? The place is a mad house. There is no real parking lot, just little side streets and it takes us at least half an hour to find somewhere to park. Then we walk the whole place to find something for me to eat -- I'm crashing again -- and the only thing we find, other than ice cream, is curried fish balls. We buy some, eat them, then buy some more. YUM! They're probably filled with sugar.
SUNDAY
We spend the whole day trying to get ourselves ready to go look at more furniture places. There is a short window in the morning when you have a one year old to get out and go places. After that it's nap time and then you have to do lunch, and it's late afternoon before you know it and time for another nap. We go to the mall and check out a couple of furniture places there. We see some cool things, but out of our budget. Not sure we even have a budget. We're only getting RM4,000 reduction in rent, so that's only like $1,250 outside of our own money. Not much! We have dinner at the mall. I have baked cheesy rice with seafood. Yummmmmmm, but BIG mistake. I'm crashing tonight.
MONDAY
Oh what a bad day. I've had a really bad crash all day. I have a horrendous headache, my temper is so bad you wouldn't believe it, and I'm so drowsy I can't hardly hold my head up. I'm starting to feel unsafe being alone with Regin. This is getting serious. George wants to put the maid/nanny search into high gear. He thinks that with that help, I can make sure I'm doing what I need to do to get my glucose stabilized, plus be able to work on my art which is an important outlet for me.
Other than having a terribly grouchy mamma, Regin has a particularly good day. Just yesterday we were trying to encourage him to walk between George and I and back again, and now today, for the very first time, he walks on his own, not from couch to table, or Mamma to Papi, but from wall to 15 feet into the middle of the room, or from room to room! This is serious, real walking! By the end of the day he quickly walks from room to room without too many balance losses, and George is freaking out when he gets home. For the first time I am really starting to understand what people are saying when they say, "Enjoy it; they grow up so fast!" My baby is not really a baby anymore. He's a toddler; a little boy with growing independence.
TUESDAY
Another bad day. It's difficult to get my glucose under control, especially when any errors you make food-wise can still be plaguing you three days later. In the evening I contact one of our prospective maid/nannies. She speaks really good English, she has references, and she does both cleaning and childcare.
Regin is walking more and more. Things are starting to migrate around the apartment, and I really have to watch him or he may suddenly end up checking out the water heater in the kitchen, or pulling knives off of kitchen counters.
WEDNESDAY
Today starts great! I have such energy you wouldn't believe it. George is working really hard to try and help me turn this around. Last night he cooked me some appropriate foods, and this morning he made sure the kitchen was cleaned up enough that it wouldn't hinder my food prep and delay my eating again. I spend the day thinking up all kinds of fantastic projects I want to work on, and fine-tuning some decorating ideas I have in my head. Regin and I are doing reasonably well today, and I have a little more patience with him than I've had.
The view is particularly beautiful to me now. I'm sitting at my dining table looking out at the green hills and the city in the foreground.
Close to us, there's a large, golden temple peeking out between all the hotels and apartment buildings. It and all the green around it are some of the things that help me realize that I'm somewhere different.
The maid/nanny, Shanti, stops by and we decide she should start work on Friday at noon. I may have to cancel my ladies lunch! Bummer! It was my first one! But I can't leave the maid alone in our place on her first day! I'm wondering about tomorrow too. I'm not doing quite so well this afternoon and it scares me to leave the place for any length of time until I really have food figured out. Tomorrow I'm due to take Regin to a play group (yay!) with other expats. I'm looking forward to it, but dreading getting there, and dealing with my food issues while I'm out.
5 comments:
I just can't get over how great those windows and that view are! I love the tile floors too.
That's the highchair you had here right? Where did you get it again? I've been looking at standalone highchairs and that's one of the nicer ones I've seen.
Are you able to pay the difference to ship extra stuff back?
E-
Thanks for the updates ... good to hear what's up!
Hang in there, looks like you're on track!
K:M
I know. The view is one of the things I think I'll miss the most about this place. I'm so getting used to this great big feeling of openness, and being surrounded by that beauty, though it is a challenge to remember to open the curtains every day. Otherwise I begin to feel very closed in.
The tile... not so much love for me there. I really miss hard wood. Tile is hard and unforgiving on your feet, it's extra slick when it gets wet, furniture/rugs won't stay put at all, and it gets dirty really fast. Regin falls fairly often on it, and those falls hurt!
Plus, it's been really pretty tough for me to figure out our decor having this floor. I'm trying to embrace the whole white on white look (so we don't have to paint the place and repaint it when we leave), but with a hard and cool-toned white floor, it's easy for that to look sterile, so I've been trying to find warmer toned whites to put in the room. That and some wood furniture in place of my wood floor. I can't wait to get some art on the walls too, but they are solid, cement walls, so we're not sure how to go about mounting things yet.
The highchair-- I so love that high chair. We got it (as a gift from Monica) from One Step Ahead. You can order through their catalog or website. It's pretty reasonably priced too. The downsides to it... the main one is that we can't scooch Regin all the way up to the table, so that he can use the table instead of a tray. The cheapo IKEA chair lets you do that and it's nice. The other downsides are pretty universal I think. The food gunks up on the harness/belt and everything else, Regin can easily climb out of it if the harness is not on, the tray also has to be screwed in and screwed out to take off, though there is a tray to place on top that can just be taken away and washed and put back with no struggle.
But it has a really nice design, can be used as different things as he grows up, and is easily wiped down after meals (unlike many of the ruffly fabric ones in the States).
We could pay the difference in shipping, but we're told it's break-the-bank expensive.
Thanks Keith! We miss you guys! A few weeks ago I had the urge to invite everyone over for movies or games. :( But you guys would have a long way to come over to our place!
One more thing about the high chair. I know there are some that allow you to put the baby in even if she doesn't fully know how to sit unsupported yet. This is not one of those chairs. This one you have to wait. But we just held Regin in our laps to feed him for the first while. Then we fed him propped up in a stroller until we got the high chair.
Thanks for the info about the high chair. I looked at the Stokke but it's kind of $$. I'm glad to know that this one has some of the features that I really like about that one (can sit up next to table once baby is big enough..I see you say yours doesn't do that, but the Euro II on the site has that as a feature, somewhat matches our existing set, not plastic).
About the rug slipping on the tile- what about those rug grippers that you put under the rug?
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