Love and Housecleaning

Just for the record, I almost titled this "Love and Sleep" again. Because a good night's sleep is all I can think about... It hasn't gotten any better.

We have a maid in our new apartment. Well, they call them chambermaids, which at first conjured up all sorts of Biblical stories about "chambermaids". I'm hoping that's not part of the job description here and since neither of us want children yet, I think we're in the clear. Her name is Albina and she is super wonderful. At least, we think her name is Albina. That's what we heard when we asked. (we were pretty proud of ourselves that we could ask in Russian...) I want her to just stay and hang out with us. I say she's super wonderful, but I'm honestly not sure since we don't speak the same language. But I like to think that we're more similar than we think. I drop things while cleaning all the time and mumble under my breath. Peas in a pod, I say.

Not only that, but she brought us the best selection of Moscow maps, a children's guide to Moscow (bilingual!) and a restaurant guide. I can't remember the last time I was so excited or given a gift so wonderful! (no offense to anyone who's given me a gift recently...) We have been searching high and low for a map of the town and a Metro map and now we have them both!! I could have hugged her but I think she got the point that I was excited after the 100th time I thanked her. (It helps that one of the only words in Russian I know is "thank you") I really need to learn the Russian equivalent to "pobrecito" because I'm pretty sure she says it often when relaying our story to her friends and family after work.

It's these little things that make life easier and sweeter. We've been so blessed throughout our lives to meet people who enrich our lives, sometimes by accident and other times on purpose, and Albina is no exception. We are well taken care of. And when we get back, you'll probably want to be on our team when we play charades. We've found that we are bilingual in that and we're only getting better.

One thing we stumbled through asking Albina for help with is laundry. I don't know why we have what looks like only a washer here in our apartment, but we do. No dryer. Just washer. Frankly, I'd rather have a dryer and never have to iron than wash my clothes but we're not in America anymore, and people here apparently don't think like that. So we get the laundry started thanks to Albina, then she leaves for the day. We're pretty proud of ourselves.

Until we check the laundry again. We open the door and all the water comes out. Well, almost all of it. Hubs has very quick reaction time and managed to close the door before it all came out. So we, very logically, thought we should let it sit some more. And before you judge us, remember that all the buttons and dials are in Russian. So, we let it sit. Then I open the door an hour later and more water comes out. We're doomed. We've lost our clothes to a watery grave.

In the end, nothing a good push won't fix. Pretty sure we broke the button that should've gone off on its own, but problem-solving paid off in the form of bobby pins, then more effective cardboard wedged between the space. Back in business.

We hung all our laundry out in the bathroom and this morning our underwear could probably stand on their own, they were so stiff, but we were pretty proud of ourselves. (again)

To get the full effect of how awesome this picture is, you really have to imagine us in the middle of the bathroom, high-fiving. We high-five a lot, so really, anytime I write about being proud of ourselves, that's what we're doing. 'Merica!

Cheers to airing out our landry and being proud of it.