To weed or not to weed

 My parents weeded the common area in front of our house when they were here and I've been keeping it clean ever since.  But I REFUSED clean up the other side near the garbage because since we've been here, I've seen  mice, stepped in dog poo, on glass and other stuff I just don't want to even think about. The dog poo problem is becoming a real nuisance.  The lady who's dog poos everywhere, just makes up excuses and is in total denial about the problem (yeah, I know what you are thinking, but remember this is Italy, in order to get anyone to do anything about a problem, it takes 100 years, lots of standing in line, loads of red tape and at least 7 people must die because of the problem).  Today I weeded the common area in front of our yard, but since I had to keep going to the garbage and live in fear of seeing mice, stepping on poo or on glass or who knows what...

...I broke down and weeded.  The top picture was actually take a year ago and it's gotten worse ever since.  Max was a trooper, when he went and cleaned up the abandoned garbage cans and all the garbage that was lying around the courtyard.  And of course our nosy neighbor with the poopy dog came out and chit chatted, not helped just chit chatted.  She even had the nerve to make a comment on how I had better not kill her rosemary bush-I had to use all my strength and control not to whack her in the head with the cutters I had in my hand, but I did imagine the scene in my head.

side note: since it's not my job to clean up that mess, I doubt anyone else is going to do it again, but I don't want to do it again in the future  and I most certainly don't want to spend any money to do it again, I was thinking I'd just throw down some salt and see what happens.  Instead I googled homemade herbicide. Cross your fingers and let's hope this works...I ended up using a solution of 1 c vinegar, 1/4 c salt and 1/4 c soap. Will let you know what happens.

side note morning after: darn no miracles, esp on the nasty crab grass.  Some of the weeds looks like left over salad that had been tossed with vinagrette (which it basically was), but no miracle brown patches everywhere...darn.  Will pass with more salty soapy water again today, as i have no more vinegar.

Scarafaggio

CHE SCHIFFO!!! New word to add to your Italian vernacular.  It rhymes with Caravaggio.  We brought up some more boxes today.  Luckily this is from some portable drawers that hold art supplies, but I think some of my brushes will have to go, unless I am going to go for that modern art look with poop in the paint. The drawers were supposed to go in a closet with our clothes, Max was in a rush to go  to work so we were stupidly/lazily going to just shove them in.  One of the drawers happened to be stuck and when we pulled it out, that big giant guy happened to pop out.  And YES I did SCREAM and Max told me off for being such a drama queen until....

we saw that nasty mountain of poop in the back and a couple of babies and the baby daddy in there.  He didn't scream, but he did get grossed out and then just leave me with the nasty mess to clean up. So now we all learned a little Italian lesson, you now know the word for cockroach and I know that any box that has been left downstairs for 3 months needs to be check BEFORE being brought upstairs and wayyyy before Max leaves for work.

Crooked house and a Hypocrite

We're about to go back to the States for the summer and they are about to begin work on the house, so here are a few of things that drive me crazy that hopefully will be fixed by the time we get back:  Aside from the fact that the tiles are u-g-l-y throw backs from the 70s, they are also totally crooked.  If you look closely at the way the light reflects you can see all the tiles are laid at different slants.

And the thin, cracked and dirty linoleum of fake ugly throwback tiles from the 70s.  Who puts linoleum on stairs??  We're the third owners since the original guy who built this place and nobody bothered to change it, I guess it's just me that thinks its gross.

Ripostiglio or closet/pantry/place to hide our junk.

Remember a few weeks ago after my parents cleared out the weeds and then my dad cut out that nasty plant that was full of bugs and had nothing to do with the rest of the plants?  And then that crazy lady Anna Maria came and yelled at me because she said that plant belongs to the condominium and besides the gardeners were supposed to come and clean up the place any day now...well guess who went and hacked up one of the plants (probably because the gate wouldn't shut). If you guessed Mr Anna Maria you would be correct.  I just shot her the evil eye and laughed it's still full of weeds and over grown trees, but now there is an ugly hacked up bush too.  Now it's totally confirmed, I know who the old psycho busy body of the building is.

I Think I Killed the Old Lady Upstairs!

OH HELLS NO!  Of course this happens the day after my parents (namely my dad) left and on the day Max is in Rome for a class.  I went outside to take the garbage to the curb (at this new place, each house takes out the garbage from his/her own general garbage can and puts it on the  curb and it must be in large transparent bags.   That's so that the garbage people can see whats inside and fine you if you don't separate your garbage.  Inside the bag can been opaque bags (like shopping bags), but the exterior bag must be transparent.  Weird and contradictory.  The other garbage (cans, glass, plastic, food) go into separate bins and we haven't quite figured out who takes those out yet.  In any case it's a nasty mess over there.  But I digress).  I as I picked up the bags, I noticed that some peanut shells were falling out and I was muttering begrudgingly under my breath about which idiot member of my family just through the shells into the bin and not put them in a bag (and they were in the wrong bin too). Then I noticed that the bags had holes and PLOOF, as I pulled one of the bags towards me a little black scurrying ball fell out... and so of course I screamed bloody murder.  I scared the people walking down the street and the old lady upstairs, god I hope I didn't induce a heart attack.  And I still had to walk the stupid bags to the curb!  I walked in the most awkward position keeping the bag as far away from me as possible in case another one of those things fell out!  As revenge, the people across the street were falling over with laughter as the realized from my stance what I was screaming about. I the proceeded to run back to the bin, slam the top shot and run upstairs, slam and lock the door-you know just in case he came back a knockin.
side note:  I have now seen a mouse scurry across the whole court and dart into a whole under our garage.  Max just bought packets of poison and shoved them in the holes and bin, but what if one of those stupid things dies outside the hole and I have to see it or walk over it....thank god we are LEAVING soon!

Don't Wanna Even Know

....what gave me these welts.  Since we've been here, I've had been bitten constantly by unseen little creatures and now these welts.  I scrubbed the grout of all the floors except for the one downstairs (haven't had enough time).  I sat down to color with Sophia (we have no tables yet) and anywhere my legs had touched grout had these nasty itchy lines...eeeeeew!

A Real Pool (sort of).

Since we didn't get to have a party for Sophia, I did want to get her a nice present.  It's dang hot and we have more space, so we got her a blow up pool.

Valentina and Sophia initiate the pool.

After they got bored with that, we made magnets with the art set Pietro gave Sophia.

It's been a while since we've had a mirror large enough for Max to shave.  He looks like an escaped convict!

Ahhhh much better.  He was hardly recognizable.

Snail Foreclosures

My supermega awesome parents (yes I'm giving props!) have weeded both inside our gate and out, leaving these big giant nasty snails without damp places to slither around.  They are coming out everywhere and Sophia is morbidly fascinated. She likes to check them out, but she won't actually touch them.

This is how the strip of garden looks now.  Remember when it was like this:

Inside our gates.

   

Outside our garden.

Oh Italian Work Ethics....curse you!!!!!

A couple of days ago, the fridge and washer came.  They got the washer up the stairs, but then decided that the fridge was too big to do the same thing (without even trying)  and so we had the choice of them taking it back to the store or they would just leave it and we would have to figure out how to get it delivered ourselves.  Stuck between a big ass fridge and hard place, we chose the latter.  Did I mention that we already paid a delivery fee?  Now we were going to have to hire someone else on top of that!  Our apartment isn't even in a super high building with no elevator.  How do they deliver fridges to the rest of the people (actually usually there are furniture elevators-like cherry pickers, but apparently these idiots didn't have one).

We went to the store and Max bitched and they got a new set of delivery men to come.  This time these guys used the other entrance, but said since they would have to take the fridge door off in order to do it and it would cost us an extra 25 euros (cuz they are supposed to do that, but they 'happened' to have the tools to lift the door off and would do it as a 'favor'). Once again, stuck between a rock and hard place, I shelled out.  Damn these nickel and dimers!

Addio Old House

I spent over a week cleaning every surface in the old house, including floor boards, the stove fan, inside and outside the dresser and all the crap I had to clean when we moved in, that hadn't been cleaned for us.  I made sure there wasn't a speck of lime on any surface of the bathroom and the drapes were all washed and ironed (I left ruffly ones Max's mom made for us, cuz I always hated them, but didn't want to hurt her feelings :o)  I just dropped off the keys at the owners place and they called back and had the nerve to tell Max that they were going to charge us a 50 euro cleaning fee.   I need to leave the place at least as clean as I found it when I moved in.  Max said not to clean the whole time, I guess he was right.  And of course he didn't put up a fuss, because they didn't charge us all the rent they could of, even though we stayed over the time.

Kitchen

Things are moving along, the furnishings store across from Sophia's school is having a big sale.  They are changing their floor models and so are having a blowout sale.  It's not my dream kitchen, but it's relatively inexpensive and ready immediately.  Okay here is another learning experience-the price on the kitchen is for EVERYTHING you see-the stove, the oven, the fridge (hidden inside the cabinets on the far right) and dishwasher.  If you don't see an appliance that you need there, its not in the price. Weird huh.  I mean I understand that because this is the floor model it comes like that, but I'm surprised about that being the rule for anyone who orders a kitchen normally.  Of course you can order other things, but then you need to pay for that separately.  I only mention this because a lot of people in europe have the washing machine in the kitchen since bathroom space is often limited and garages are not usually connected to the house (if you even have a garage).  So if you wanted to shove a washing machine somewhere in this kitchen (because it doesnt come with one) you would either have to forgo the dishwasher or the fridge or something and get a machine that was the right size to fit in the cabinets.  Complicated. Luckily that's not our case.  In fact a few days ago we found a fridge (a normal American sized one) and washing machine (that will go in the bathroom until we can get it in the garage).  So we are giving the appliances we don't need to Max's dad for their mountain house. 

 

Signed sealed delivered...

...it's ours!  Break out the margaritas, now we have two things to celebrate on cinco de mayo!  We dropped Sophia off early at school and went to the bank where: Max and I, the two owners, 2 people from the real estate agency, 2 from the bank and 2 from the notary office (real estate lawyer), ( plus Vivienne), listened to boring legal papers (hundreds of them) being read, signed, resigned, initialed, initialed again, but this time holding the pen in our left hand jumping up and down on one foot while singing the Italian national anthem. Okay, just kidding, that last part wasn't true, but it would have made things a hell of a lot more interesting.  It took a couple of hours, so luckily Viv eats the old fashioned way. 

New Room

Trying out the room

Half way there

We haven't signed the papers yet, but since we need to be out of our old house as of ...well,  over a month ago, we're moving our boxes in and shoving them in the dirty garage and cleaning the new place to make it semi-livable, esp since my parents arrive in less than 2 weeks.

Last of the boxes at the old place.

 This is all the stuff that they were supposed to have taken away on the terrace. (side note, the owner just offered to leave us the table (in stead of his lazy ass hauling it away) because it's practically new...awwww how sweet...NOT!)

Viv's little hazmat protective gear.

 Max paints the girls' room.  I found boogers on the wall...gross!

 Upstairs toilet-lucky for you, the picture doesn't show how nasty it all really is.

The downstairs shower door was always closed, I didn't realize how bad it was in there.  I wasn't planning on cleaning it, because we are having it redone asap.  Unfortunately not asap enough, my parents are coming and we need to shower somewhere.

 We'll be knocking down that kitchen wall, so it's loveliness will grace us until that work can be done.

 And unfortunately I will have to clean the kitchen stove too, but we wont be using it. It's just very unhygienic and I can't leave this mess until the construction works come.

For now, we will be eating and showering at the old house and then sleep at the new house until most of the work is done.

OH NO HE DI'NT

Since the renter didn't want to give up a set of keys and has been dragging his feet about getting his stuff out of the house, he said we could come buy while he was there and he would help us paint and stuff.  The renter is actually a pretty nice guy, despite being a lazy procrastinating slob. However, the owner, did not show his face all weekend and the renter, max, max's dad and me ended up cleaning out the house and tearing down the furniture.  Basically it boils down to the renter won't give up his keys until he gets a check from the owner, so the last thing Max did before we all went home, was to set up a meeting with all three parties involved, where the owner brought a check, the renter received it and we witnessed it all.  Early this morning we got a message that the time was moved up to 7:45am, so Max ended up going by himself and I got the girls up and ready.  The renter and owner ended up bickering of nickles and dimes and it took an hour to get the whole affair over and done with.  And now...

We haven't signed the sales documents yet, but at least we can start moving our things in and painting the house.  Which is exactly what we are doing today.

Side story: Remember how the owner offered to leave us the kitchen?  Well, Max's dad says that the kitchen is not worth saving, besides being disgustingly dirty, there are things that just don't function.  We were going to break it down and get rid of it and get something cheapy at Ikea.  The only reason we were going to try and use the kitchen is because the owner/renter situation has left us with very little time to take measurements and get something in there.  At the end of the meeting today, the owner had the nerve to tell Max, 'Perhaps you can show me the receipts from the hotel and stuff, that way I can take off the cost of the kitchen that I'm leaving you from what I was supposed to pay you'.  Oh no he di'nt...oh yes he did!  What a culone (translation:  jackass).

Max's dad also said that he thinks the bath tub upstairs is salvageable, but the bathroom downstairs is worse than we thought.  The toilet doesn't work and the shower is friggin scary nasty.  I brought some major toxic products and cleaned out the bath, it's cleaner but not enough to give the girls a bath in.

Downstairs Bathroom (notice the nasty grime in the shower and the fancy sink that starts in the middle of the step up).

Upstairs bathroom. (Notice the fancy tiles.  The ones on the floor, despite not matching anything, belong on the walls, not the floor and are extra slippery.)

RidiCULOs

This morning we started calling the renter to see if we could get the keys to the house to start painting the two bedrooms/cleaning up, so when Weds comes when(if) we sign the sales agreement, we can just move our stuff and sleep there-without breathing nasty fumes and dust.  So now the story is, the renter doesn't want to hand over a set because it's his last card to bargain with.  His reason behind his asking for the money is because-the owner never came and fixed the things that needed to be fixed and either he had to do it or just live without (like the leaky water heater, the leaky bathroom pipes (so now we know why the owner argued with the neighbors downstairs that 'share' our garden) amongst other things.  That is the apparent story. And though I can now empathize with the renter a bit, it really boils down to I don't give a flying you know what anymore and just want this whole deal settled. 
To add fuel to the fire, apparently the owner didn't take out ANYTHING last week after we went over there.  There is still wardrobes, the nasty sink, the piano, broken down swing, broken tables and today he was out (as my mom would say:) galavanting .  (When Max spoke to him on the phone, he said he was out and about.  Since today is Labor Day here, we know he is not working). 

Here are some other little facts we discovered:
-The renter is not handing over the keys because he asked for a 'cashiers check'  (or cash)  instead of the already offered personal check, because he doesn't trust the owner. The owner still hasn't brought that over.
-The owner has whined to the renter about his debts, including 20 thousand that he has had to give to us regarding the changing of the rogito (was not even close to that much).
-The owner asked us to lie about how much we bought the house for because he could be in trouble for not having accepted the offer that the renter put out.

This situation is getting totally out of hand and ridculous and the owner is being the culo in ridiCULOus.

Final Deadline (again)

We went to Castorama (sounds like something out of the water cooler skit from 80s SNL-but really it's sort of like a HomeDepot in blue and yellow, instead of bright orange) this morning to buy stuff to paint the rooms.  We're going with disinfection white for now.  I hate white walls (reminds me of the M&D's no offense to them, but booooooring!) At least this way if somehow this stupid house deal does not go through, we can always use the paint for the next house.  We dropped off the stuff inside the garage.  Today is the 30th...the final day the guy is supposed to be out by midnight.  What do you think we found. (insert drum roll please)....

 Of course the damn garage door lock is broken and it took forever to open the door, so keep that drum rolling.....

That's right crap is still in there, but at least most of the big stuff is gone! (When we went to look at the house last week, there was a nasty couch in the garage, that wasn't there all the other times before. that, at least, is gone!).  This guy is such an f'n lolly gagger, it's ridunkulous!

This whole thing is taking so friggin long, that this spider decided to start building his house...by the time we get in there he is gonna have spun himself a big ole mansion Candy Spelling style and all!

We have been calling the owner all day long with no answer still as to whether or not the renter is out of the house and when/if we will be getting the keys any time soon. My fingers have been crossed for some good news for so long, I'm losing circulation in them. And this wknds forecast of rain is not helping my feelings of uneasiness on this whole affair!

Oooooh weee Whaddup Wid Dat, Whaddup Wid Dat!!!

Behold, we have key!

It's only for the garage, but at least it's a step closer, not that I'm moving anything in there, the house was horribly disgusting.  The renter (intead of packing boxes) was following us around like we were going to steal something. And he was super stinky too. I kept running out of the house for air! 

Tieni le Dite Incrociate!

Keep your fingers crossed!  The owner just called to see if we want him to leave anything in the house (like the kitchen, closets or bathrooms).  As disgusting as it is in the house, we will have to use the kitchen because there won't be enough time to buy a new one, have it delivered and set it up.  If you read in the papers that there is a toxic cloud over Milan, that's just me disinfecting the hell out of the kitchen/house.  Anyways this is a good sign, that means that the guy is actually getting his stuff out of there.  I am not expecting him to have moved or packed up much.

Otzi Otzi Oxen Free

I think I've found a second Otzi the Iceman of Bolzano!  Our freezer always has the thickest nastiest layers of ice hanging off its walls.  I always find weird little things we I don't remember even having eaten when I defrost.  In anticipation of moving (and just being plain lazy) I haven't defrosted in a long time, chances that I actually find a second Iceman are pretty good. I'm trying to clean out the fridge and freezer before the end of the month.  If we do finally move, there is a good chance that we will have to stay in a hotel for a week and so everything needs to be out.  I am down to a bag of peas, spinach, some frozen chicken broth, ginger and various forms of ice.  Hmmm what can I make with all this stuff?  (These are the easy things to get rid of, I don't know how I'm going to use up all the condiments in the fridge!)

Squeezing Every Second Out of the 11th Hour

I am still stalking the house.  This is the last weekend before the end of the month and guess what?  Guess  who's still there. The windows were opened, but it looked more like it was to dry laundry (he does laundry) than to air out the house, while moving boxes. While it is true that there wasn't much stuff in the house, mostly just a bunch of dirty clothes piled up on the floor and a lot of video games (in other words just a couple of hours of packing and 2 car trips worth of boxes) - I won't be holding my breath that the guy will be out of there for this THIRD scheduled rogito (signing of the sales agreement).  And the worst thing of all, Italian law says there is nothing we can do about it, unless we want to give up on this one and look for another house.  The only reason we don't let it go is because I honestly think that with minimum work on the house, we can flip it for nearly double our money.




 Just talked to my friend Jenny-she comes from the land of Ikea (and even works at one now in Oz).  Even she thinks it's weird that houses don't come with kitchens (or even bathrooms), that said from the people who invented instant room furnishings-all you basically have to do is add water.  I only mention this because I had made that comment about flipping the house, just so you know, the house is not being sold as a fixer upper. All the houses around here are sold as an empty shell.  You can make a deal to buy/sell the kitchen (separately) when the house is bought/sold sometimes.  I hope we can do that, because I so do not want to disassemble, pack up, move and reassemble an entire kitchen.  Okay, back to wishful box packing for me.