Experimental jazz

When the love of my life listens to experimental jazz, I don’t know how fast I can distance myself from him. My brain is immediately cluttered with a diarrhea of noise information. The melody lines that seem out of tune. Instruments that seem not to cooperate properly. Suddenly one of them starts a solo, the music notes shoot through my ears. Next the rest of the party falls back into the mess. Why now, at this particular moment, I wonder. I am unable to process this mess of information and volume, can not analyze it, recognize anything in it, make no connection. I am in fact going totally crazy! Well, this just about explains the situation we are in with finalizing our project…

Assembly and piecing together

Day by day passes by in an endless stream of jobs and chores. One day hardly anybody shows up at the building site. Why? This often remains unclear. Next day they are all present at the same time. Specialists for the alarm system, insurances, gardening, delivering materials, bringing quotes, taking measurements. To assemble the kitchen cabinets and wardrobes, install plumbing, sewage and faucets. People that measure the windows for the curtains. Come up with solutions. Adjust solutions. Attach the skirting boards. Puzzle endlessly on the infrastructural quests with all the new techniques.

Other realities

In between and in the weekend we play our own role in this theatre of fools. Tear wrapping materials in smaller shreds, sweep up dust, forgotten pieces of electrical wire and screws. Hoover sawdust. Clean toilets. Free the frogs from the pool. Sweep endless floors. Pick up cigarette buds. Many cigarette buds. Sort waste and bring to various containers. There are endless phone calls to be made and answered. Appointments scheduled and rescheduled. We deal constantly with partial information. Or details we have to position in a different reality. Because our level of tolerance is becoming insufficient. Nothing seems to communicate smoothly with anything else. Everything is on its way. All will be well. Eventually. We are soooo tired and fed up. We’ve had enough of everything.

Celebrate the successes

Luckily the outside of the house is becoming more and more white. The deck around the pool has become a grandeur and perfect for a future pool party! My 32 kitchen drawers and 30 wardrobe drawers and 6 living room drawers (I am certainly not bragging) will be in place and ready to fill up soon. We enjoyed the ooohs and aaahs of our lovely visitors from the Netherlands, as we led them through the spaces. The house is already comfortable inside when we have a spring storm outside. That the huge and heavy table from our old garden in Amsterdam (that Luís once designed and built himself) has survived and is now getting some fresh TLC. That we really really really need the extra extra extra large television set for this huge living room (I rest my case for the boys in this family…). But most of all we celebrate our super dear neighbors and other villagers who are so enthusiastic about our arrival, and help us with the count down….

We will move

After the Easter weekend our last move in this project will commence, from our temporary apartment in Bombarral. We have to leave soon, our contract is terminated. But we’ll have to camp a little in the coming weeks, as not all is yet finished. Maybe we can not yet run a shower. Or close any curtains (such fun to have the working guys on the other side of your bedroom window…) But the fridge will contain food and drinks. We can go to the bathroom. Have a little more rest. We can start to unpack and set up. And enjoy every day more of the wonderful views around the house, where spring starts to bloom.