You want how much in cash????

Our lawyer phoned us at 6:55 pm the night before we bought the house to tell us that the vendor wants 15,000 of the money for the house in cash.

Say what????

OK......

What????

Aside from all the other issues....

Our little village bank ain't going to have that sort of cash just laying around.....

Went into the bank first thing in the morning and I'll let our bank manager know.

What was that all about you may ask?

Well, the manager wasn't surprised. They taxes have to be paid and in Spain in general it seems, the vendors aren't trusted enough to come up with the money, so they have to pay on the spot before the house is turned over. As most people don't have 20,000 Euros lying around, and the check takes a while to clear, they want cash.

Strangely, he had enough cash too, though it was a heck of a lot of 50's to be carting around.

Weird.

If you are ever asked to do this, just make sure that the documents you sign actually include the total price of the house, not just the amount that the check covers. Foreigners may not want to get on the wrong side of the tax man.

Met with another architect yesterday, I am coming to the conclusion that a fair number of architects are somewhat glutted by hubris.

He seemed OK, a bit of a poser. He wants us to keep the sink in the back cause the tiles are a hundred years old and from some traditional town. I know what he means, but the suckers are ugly, and I have to look at them every single freaking day....plus the "courtyard" is tiny and if we keep the safareig AND the sink we won't have anywhere to sit down......I need a home, not just a museum.

He wants to be paid 10% of what we pay the builders, that is over and above what we pay them. This does bring in interesting ethical questions. For instance, it is just as easy for him to design something a little (or a lot) more expensive as to design something cheaper, indeed probably easier to go more expensive. You can please the clients and you don't have to think very hard.

Plus you make more cash that way.

Also, as he is the one who is supposed to supervise the builders, he would not have our financial interest at heart as the pair of them together could inflate the bills quite nicely.

Hmmmmm.

Have to find out if this is a typical arrangement.

If nothing else, I am learning to ask the stupid questions and not finding myself surprised by things so often.

Whew.

Help me! Help me! I cant help myself!!!

My kids are pretty calm around wasps and bees. They don't LIKE them, but they don't freak out or run around and scream.

Chuck is not the same.

Hysterical.

Completely off his nut terrified. He alternately jumps at them to get them and runs away with his ears in this really unique and peculiar position.

Clearly screaming out for me to DO SOMETHING.

Then again, if I had an internal compulsion to bite wasps, I too might be frantic to have someone remove it.

Help! Help! Get it out of here before I eat it!!!!!

Stupid pup.

ANOTHER use for olive oil.

You know I have said that the Catalans use olive oil for EVERYTHING.

I just discovered a new use.

They used to (still do?) wash the tile floors with olive oil.

I haven't quite figured out how that would happen....but that is what I am told. They did it for the shine. I imagine it also would have soaked in to some extent.

Wow.

Baby button

Woke in the night last night and SOARED out of bed, went to check on the girls, who were sleeping, and stumbled back a little confused. I was sure one of them had been calling me frantically.

Weird.

Zzzzzzzz.

This morning the man reminds me there is a very small baby now living downstairs, only a few months old.

Seems it was crying briefly in the night.

That old internal baby alarm still seems to be working just fine.

Bread bread bread bread bread bread bread bread

I am now, or at least currently, the VERY proud owner of a wood fired bread oven in my new HOUSE!!!!

Holy geez!


The photo above is where the bread goes in....after we clear out a forests worth of pine needles.


This is where the fire goes, down underneath the bake oven.

An exciting view of the walls of the chamber for the fire....larger stones angle up to support the large single stone that seems to make up the base. You can see that below.


Seriously exciting photography, no? My parents bought an old house that they renovated extensively when I was a kid and I was always quite mystified by the endless and incredibly boring photos they took of the house. In the spirit of my folks, here's a shot up the chimney from the fire place in the kitchen.


I actually took that photo because I didn't want to stick my head that far in, and with the flash you can actually get a pretty good view.

The man also managed to remove the cloth wall from around Eldest's loft, we can now see it rather better:



This here is the safareig again, where laundry would have been done. Youngest and a friend spent an hour getting it clean, and filling it and emptying it. We are now thinking that we may keep it, with water and lilies and fish. Maybe a little fountain noise. I am not sure. It is so freaking BIG in a small space...though it is also quite traditional....hmmmmm

In this one you can see the overflow rim which is the half circle, and the tiles on which you would scrub the clothing. I imagine not the silks.....


The tap at the top where the water comes into that rectangular sink, the water from there streams down into the main tub.


We'll paint and put up lovely tiles if we keep it, and lots of plants.

It may be nice when all is said and done.

There, more home reno...this may slow down until we get the architect in place.

Always an adventure.

I love to cook bread.

New house!

The internet crashed yesterday.....that was annoying.

Bought the house yesterday....that was pretty cool. And pretty slow. Goodness it took a while.

Yup, now we're landowners here.

We went over today and cleaned it up a bunch....the little back.....hmmmm...... I don't know what to call it in English, it's a pati in Catalan. It could be a garden, but it is walled on every side and the ground is paved in either bricks or concrete.

Anywho, this space out back was an inch and a half deep in earth and leaves et al, then weeds on top of that. We had to clear all that out, and under it all we found a sink, a safareig, which is where laundry would have been done, and what may have been a barbeque, or an outdoor oven for cooking when it is too hot to do it inside. These outdoor areas were not really spaces for relaxing in as we think of them, they were work spaces and storage spaces. It is an interesting transition.





There were also walls in the living room made of fabric. Those are gone too. THAT was a gross job. The fabric had been painted many many times and the paint must be full of lead. Masks around for everyone.




Below is one of the two pie safes, for lack of a better name, that we pitched. It's a classy place, there was both indoor AND outdoor pie safes. What more could you ask for?



One of the biggest local organisations, that amongst all else it does, runs weekly activities for kids was having sign up day. Virtually everyone we know in the village and a lot of people we don't came by, and they all had a peer in. Many of them wouldn't come in even when they were invited. Their kids had no such inhibitions. Youngest ran tours for a good part of the afternoon. One guy gave himself a tour. A middle aged guy, I'd NEVER seen before just sort of let himself in while I was down the street pitching out some garbage. I came back while he was in there, said Hola. He kept looking!!!

Bold as brass.

I didn't offer him a tour.

The place looks better, but we're going to make it worse before we're finished.

More tomorrow.

More long hot showers too when we're done.

Read the label

Chuck LOVES his new food. With a passion.

Chuck's new food is not loving him.

It is emerging a little, um, rapidly from his system.

Then today I read the bag where they advise us to gradually introduce it mixed in with the old food.

Woops.

Poor pup.

Photos

The man was asking me for photos of all four of us together so he could send one to some friends.

Zip, nada, nothing....

Not a one.

Partially because we have no family here so one of us is always holding the camera...mostly though because I am not quite interested in it I guess. We are all here, why prove it?

That might be why I still don't know how to use the timer on the camera.

Maybe I can train Chuck to take some snaps of us.

What do you thing?

No?

Cava

Chuck's Leishmania, while returning, is not severe...NO NEEDLES (for now).

That is good news.

CAVA!!!

Headed off to Ikea today with a friend to check out stuff for the new (fingers crossed) house.

The Ikea catalog can be a whole lot of fun, no?

CAVA!!!

Cava is what I keep hearing cried out at work.

My boss LOVES the stuff, and we are having quite the cava fest these days.

Cava is Catalan champagne.

We had some on Monday, at lunch in honour of my boss' birthday, and at night for another woman's, today because some of the students were new...lunch and night....tomorrow the same...

Thursday looks free,

Friday I am supposed to bring some in to celebrate the house...

Monday another girl because she is going to Austria for the year.

Then there is the third anniversary of the second bikini I ever bought, that has to be Tuesday.

Festa!

CAVA!!!!

Too bad I don't drink.

Amazing Beethoven's 5th

You have to go over and see this...Beetoven's Fifth: You can hear it, plus see it...you have to check it out to understand.....seriously cool.

Also a little difficult to explain.

Cheers,

O