Surreal Georgia

Never Ending Bathroom Story - Horror Intro

You know, I'm reconstructing my house. The bathrooms are important rooms in a house to feel homey and comfortable. I have been waiting for the plumber since last August now. 

You don't believe it, but he showed up yesterday. I didn't really expect him any more. Well, when I say HE showed up I actually mean that he sent two of his men. The bad thing was that the two men didn't knew what they had to do here. They thought that they only had to remove a shower, a few toilets, a bathtub and a few sinks. They did not know that they had to make a lot of plasterboarding to remove an old corridor between the two parts of the bathroom in the first story. They did also not know that they had to insert a glass door.

One half of the day passed by with endless discussions about how to make this, because they both had only few experience with inserting doors and do plasterboarding. Nice, really! You can imagine how pleased I was! 

                                     

Here you see the old little corridoor between the bathrooms. It had got three doors. One of them I already closed earlier. The door we are looking at should be replaced by a glass door and the door we are looking through should be completely removed.

First of all we learned that the door can't be inserted there, because the hole for it is too small and we can't make it bigger. I think I have to sell this expensive door now at ebay and I'm furious about the plumber who told me that it would be a breeze to insert the door. I guess I don't even get back a small amount of the money I payed for the door.

Then I had the idea to remove the door lintels completely and the wooden frame under the door trims. But when they removed the door trims they saw that it was no wooden frame around the doors holding the masonry but two beams that reach up to the ceiling. I didn't dare to remove them, so they have to stay.

OK, this would be no problem, we still could get plain walls instead of this small corridor with lots of corners.

The first door lintel was quickly removed. But they needed some vessel for all the debris. Don't ask me how, but I managed to get one container at once. If I wouldn't have managed this the men wouldn't have been able to go on with their work.

                                            

Container for debris in front of my door

But there were a lot of more problems. When the cratsmen tried to remove the second door lintel they found out that there was a pipe for cold water and a pipe for hot water running across the room. One of them nearly destroyed one of the pipes and we were pretty afraid that water would run out of it. But all stayed dry after we turned on the water again.

But what shall we do now with these pipes running across the room from one wall to the other? I had the idea to coat them with some gypsum boards so they might look like a beam. 

                                          

One door litel removed, the second only half. Look the wires and pipes and the debris on the floor!

In the middle you see the remains of the old corridor between two bathrooms. It once had three doors as you can see in the picture above.

The next problem were some power currents on the walls that have to be removed and layed elsewhere. So I called the electrician. He hopefully will come by next Monday, so this problem will be solved, too. I hope so, at least.  

                            

A closer look to the wires and pipes above the old door opening.

This is where the shower was removed and a bathtub will be installed.

And here the toilet and the sink were already removed.

Then I called the tiler. But he told me that his wife is ill and that he won't come before 8 or more weeks. To be honest he told me that he had no idea when he would ever show up. So I called every tiler in the surrounding and got only one on the phone. He came one hour later, I showed him everything and he will come next Tuesday and begin by the end of the week. And the best of all: He is not expensive! He has got a real company and seemed to be very well experienced.

                                   

I'm fed up with all this. Let's hope that all turns out well now.

                  

On Saturday the plumber will come back and I am going to force him first of all to make the plasterboarding before he can remove toilet, shower and bathtub in the bathroom of the upper story. So the tiler can hopefully begin next week and we will get nice bathrooms before Easter.

Christmas Is Won Under The Tree

Christmas is won under the tree - this is an advertising slogan of a huge discounter for electrical devices in Germany: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_(store)

I wonder if Christmas is a competition. Who wins and - against whom? Have you won the Christmas competition when your presents are those, who are from the right brand and just up to date? Have you won Christmas, when you get the most and coolest presents? If you don’t buy presents for thousands of Euros, are you a loser?

I tell you what: You are a loser when you define Christmas by presents. Christmas is no competition, Christmas itself is a present. You can’t win it, you can’t deserve it and you can’t require it. Either you get it for free and when you don’t expect to get it or you don’t get it at all. And you do not get it, when you try to force it with loads of presents, because this is just the opposite of the meaning of Christmas. Christmas comes when you get quiet, when you take a break from your normal routines, when you make each other really valuable presents. The most valuable presents in our stressful times are love and care. Don’t go into the shops and buy a lot of things, stay at home instead and give time to those you love. Talk to your beloved ones, play games, do something together with them, cook a meal, simple and tasty, have fun together with your family or friends or whoever is with you or have good conversations. Sit down, eat, listen, talk, play -  and then let Christmas come to your heart. And you will be the richest person on earth.

For me it is Christmas when I visited all relatives and then go to our little church, which is dark at the beginning. People start to sing Christmas carols, joyfully and festally, in the dark. When one light after the other is lit in the church, when the Christmas Story is read and God’s words are explained, then I feel like Christmas. And I go home with my daughter full of peace and joy. Then we have a simple meal and spend a wonderful and peaceful evening together - without any presents.

In our countries we don’t need any presents, because we all have more things than we can use, but we often forget about humanity, love and care.

No, Christmas is no competition. But it is won by expecting nothing and being thankful for all those presents that we might get and that can’t be bought with money. These are the real presents. And listen: They are so extremely valuable that nobody can afford to buy them.

 

 

Crappy Rollercoaster

Sometimes life is like a gigantic rollercoaster, too fast and too furious, up in the sky and down through...well, a cellar full of poop. You may wonder why there is so much time between this and my last post. The reason is that at the moment my life is like I just described it. And as we say in Germany: One accident doesn’t stay the only one for a long time. In my job there is so much to do at the moment that I work from morning till late night without any break. There is nearly not enough time to go to the toilet... (This is a bit overdone, but I feel very stressed out at the moment and the amount of work that has to be done is gigantic).

A cellar full of poop - these pics were taken after I already had tidied up a lot of the mess, but the water was still very high in the rooms at that time.

And as if this wasn't enough stress, last Wednesday when I came home from my working place in the evening, totally exhausted and longing for my bed, a coffee and TV, my cellar was flooded by masses of sewage and poop. There was a thunderstorm in the morning with extremely heavy rain, so the rainwater pressed the sewage backwards into my house. The poop nearly exploded out of the drains, which are in each of the cellar-rooms. When I came in the evening the house smelled bestial and in the cellar the water was about 5 – 10 cm high, at some places also much higher. All furniture, all carpets were soaked with the poop-water-mixture. I cried of exhaustion not knowing how to manage this mess. I would have liked to sleep in a hotel the next weeks. But there was no way, so I kicked myself into my ass and started to work.

Washing the carpets was incredibly hard work. Can you imagine how heavy a water soaked carpet can be!?

First of all I hauled all the wet and therefore extremely heavy carpets into the garden, where I cleaned them with a lot of water. Then I flushed the cellar, 150 square meter, with a water hose until most of the poop was gone. Because these bastards who constructed the house put all the drains at the highest point in every room, the water couldn’t flow back into the drains and I had to shovel all the water into the drains. When the work was done it was already early morning. Then I had to wipe the whole cellar and to clean all furniture and things which had any contact to the poop brew. Well, when I was finished it was already time for breakfast and for rushing to work again. Wasn’t this a nice night!?

Today the rollercoaster went upwards again. The weather was gracious: There was no rain in the meantime, so the carpets were all dry again this morning. I hauled them back into the cellar and was finished at 8 o’clock am. Now the cellar nearly looks as it was before. A few chests and furniture have to be put on the dump, because some of them still don’t smell not very good, but I'm going to wait with this work until we have holidays in two and a half weeks. I'm also going to put all things, which are stored in chests on the floor on shelves just for the case that this will happen again!

Leckmuscheln

One quick glance over my work, then I rushed into my car, driving to Anna in the Ruhr Valley. I arrived in time at 10 o’ clock and we two had a nice breakfast together. Anna bought some „Leckmuscheln“ (look at the picture; “Muschel” means “shell” and “Leck” means “to lick”.). One day I told her about things I remember from my childhood. Those Leckmuscheln are such an old memory. When I was a little girl we bought them at a nearby kiosk in Duisburg, where I lived at that time. Every Sunday my father gave me 50 Pfennig for the collecte in the church and 50 Pfennnig for me, when my friends and I strolled around in the neighborhood between mass and Sunday dinner at home. It was sort of our sport buying as much candies for our money at the three kiosks in the neighborhood as we could. And Leckmuscheln were one of our favorites. It seems as if my taste has changed a bit in the meantime, but Anna and I were very amused about these candies and laughed a lot about trying to lick the candy out of the shell. It was again a wonderful, wonderful day with my daughter. We laugh together, we speak about all topics, we snuggle, snuggle, snuggle... O Anna, I love you so dearly! But then the time came to say good bye. Every time I’m back in my car I use to cry when I drive away from Anna. It was not different this time. It’s always hard to leave her.

The trip was good, not too much traffic, but when I drove over the mountain crests near my home I already saw very black clouds. Lightning battered from cloud to cloud and very, very heavy rain fell. Do you know what thoughts I had at that time!? Yes, my cellar!!!!! Please not again, please! But all went well and this time my cellar stayed dry. I'm afraid that I won't loose this fear for years...

I call it a day now. I'm going to creep into my cozy bed, watch TV and drink a good cup of coffee with milk. Good night!

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Pictures: Taken by Georgia; all rights reserved

Too Tired

                                                   

     

I was away from Bloggerland for a couple of days and I should write a few new articles. Always when I’m away from my computer I use to think: O well, this would be something I could blog about! But when I’m sitting in front of the computer-monitor I don’t know anymore what I wanted to blog about. I’m simply too tired for writing anything.

Yesterday I installed Windows and a lot of programs on my daughter’s computer after the hard drive crashed a few days ago. Needless to say that nothing went well like it should go or like it usually goes. The Windows-installation drove me mad. I hate Bill’s programs and I would love to use another operating system: Linux for example. But I don’t dare to change it, because Windows and Office are standard everywhere. - Well, at least I managed all and Anna’s computer is fine again. I changed the desktop of all our computers. This is our new spring-design:

New spring-desktop

The weather is grey, wet and stormy. It doesn’t make you feel like going outside. We are waiting for the next storm after the hurricanes Emma and Johanna, which both reprieved us here, where we live. On Saturday the weather shall become a bit better, but only for a few hours until the next rain will come. Time to fertilize the lawn, rose-bushes and conifers before the garden will become too wet again. After an early beginning it seems as if spring decided not to come too soon.

I just took this picture from the sky

I should do the laundry now, but I don’t feel like doing anything. I’m simply much too tired. I would love to go to bed watching a little bit TV and doing nothing else. But, well, the laundry is waiting and it will not become less the longer I wait and there is enough paperwork on my desk, too, emails that have to be answered, baking tins have to be cleaned in the kitchen and ... and ... and... I don’t think that I can manage all before next weekend, but I should at least do some of my duties today. I’m tired to my bones. I need some rest I can’t get at the moment. So tired...

Scotty, beam me up...to Erie.

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Pictures taken by Georgia; all rights reserved

F***ing Computer Problems

Last Sunday my daughter rang me up and we had a very nice talk through the telephone until... until her computer crashed after viewing a website of her university. I told her to restart her computer, but after this the problems were still there: The f***ing computer reported that the LAN-cable would have been removed, although nobody has touched it and although it was still where it belongs to. Anna couldn’t get access to the internet any more.

What does a Mommy do when her daughter needs her help???? Right, I instantly went downstairs and drove about 2 hours to her. It has been a terrible journey on this Sunday afternoon: Traffic jam, traffic jam and once more traffic jam. But the worst of all: I couldn’t help her with her computer problems. The cable was OK, because a girl of a neighbor apartment connected her laptop to Anna’s cable and it worked, she could get access to the internet. I removed the Internet Explorer and several other programs, which all have to do with the internet access and I reinstalled them. Again: „Cable removed....“ I used several programs to check the computer for viruses, worms and Trojans and they found a lot of this malware, because my dear daughter likes to visit sites where she can download stuff for the SIMS-game, and I suppose that these sites are full of malware. But also removing the spy-ware didn’t change anything. „Cable removed...“ So I had to leave her without a working computer. This is a real problem, because students need internet for 1001 purposes like checking dates in the university, like registering for tests or getting some attestations or simply for internet banking and so on. The thing that concerns me most is that I don’t know how to fix the problem. So my mood wasn’t very well when I drove home late in the night. I lost my way in the darkness, so it was about 1 o’ clock in the night when I was back from my journey.

Needless to say, that I couldn’t sleep. I did a lot of online-search about the problem, but I couldn’t find anything really helpful. So what shall I do?

The next day – Monday – I drove to my house and fetched Anna’s old computer. My father should have got this machine, but he died a few days before I could give him the computer, so it was still at my house. With the computer in the trunk of my car I drove to the next big computer shop and fetched an external hard drive with 350 GB to save all the data from Anna’s computer. I think that I have to format the hard drive of her computer and to install Windows XP and Office and all the other programs again. *Sigh*. So I have to save first her data.

Then I drove back and fixed the garden at my parents’ home. It’s getting very cold here and the weather is like deep November already and I’m afraid that some of the plants in containers wouldn’t tolerate frost. So I put them partly into the living room and partly into the garden house, I mowed the lawn (maybe for the last time this year), I swept the entranceway and I weeded the flower beds.

Today I’m resting a bit, because I have to drive to Anna again in the afternoon. She is waiting for her old computer and we hope that the problem will be fixed by connecting the old computer to her LAN-cable. I hope that she will have internet again this way. The computer is old and slow, but this wouldn’t matter for a few days. Keep your fingers crossed that it will work! I think it will be late night again when I’m back at my parents’ house tonight.

Tomorrow it’s a holiday in Germany: „Tag der Deutschen Einheit“ (German National Holiday). I’m going to use the time to fix Anna’s new computer so that I can bring it back to her perhaps next weekend. I’m annoyed! So much time and money for fixing this f***ing computer! Sometimes I hate these computers! I have tons of work that has to be done and I can’t get anything done because of these damned computer problems! Grrrrrrr!

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Picture: Public domain

This time it's not the bad-word-filter on Erie Blogs which caused the "***" in "F***cking". ;o)