I designated today my physical labor day. Laundry, despite cold drizzle, I'm my last pair of undies, and office DIY.
Originally I thought to continue with paint stripping in preparation for painting on Friday. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to strip the desk in summer. I wish it had, would make a bushel more sense.
At ten minutes to two, I was eating and chatting with Maria, and Adriana showed up. She is always early! I told her about the paint stripping plan but she piped up with "There's a cupboard possibly in this house on the hill!"
"Whose house? What sort?"
She gave me one of her terribly long and involved and too-quick-for-my-Romanian stories. It involved lots of relatives and death. "something something something Grandma something something cousin something dead something something died something something I'm scared." for almost five minutes without pausing for breath.
We puffed up the steep church slope where kids sled in snow, little dog trailing behind, sock in his mouth. "Where did this dog come from?" I ask.
"A neighbor had two new puppies and nothing to do with them. He doesn't follow anyone else. Not even Lenuta, and she always tries to give him treats to make him come, but he only comes to me. I play with him and pet him."
"Cool."
Adriana is the first person I've met in this country who has thought to train her dog, let alone treat it nicely.
The house is a cute normal blue color, if a bit faded from not being replastered every year, with especially ornate wooden window frames. It's next door to the church in fact, prime real estate!
We un tangle the three feet of coat hanger sort of wire that's keeping the gate shut, walk past the front through some overgrown trees to the back door that's ajar. Adriana gives me a final warning of "it is dirty all over." Of course it is, I think, it hasn't been live in for a decade. I just nod "no worries."
What she meant was that we had to crawl through a hole in the foot thick wall made of mud and rush bricks. Then over various 50 year old kitchen appliances and dodge some falling bits of ceiling.
The shelf/cupboard was indeed perfect for our purposes, but two little girls (she's only an inch or two shorter than me) were not about to sprout the arm and back muscles to heft it out of the house and down the hill, around the corner, up some stairs and down the hall to my office.
We worried over it a bit until I spotted the shelves themselves were removable. huh. "are there bricks or something in here we can take also?"
"just mud ones"
"no good."
"How will we get it out?!"
"We won't, just take these! We'll make some ourselves in the office!"
Adriana looked a bit skeptical, but she went along with me on it. Next problem was exiting. The front door was nailed shut and she thought herself a bad hostess for making me crawl through the hole in the first place.
Ever quick on the draw, she jumped onto the door frame, kicked out some glass (at which I yelped like a six year old at a snapping dog) and swung through the place where the glass had just been. She tugged at the nails, but alas, to no avail.
At least now we wouldn't have to drag the boards out the back hole entry. Went back to retrieve our new furniture, covered completely with cobwebs and sawdust and half buried under ceiling. I was given a demonstration of how to be a mummy in a full sized wardrobe, and see saw on the fallen ceiling. I felt like a mischievous fawn or other creature from Shakespeare's wileyer fantasies.
A finger flung out in front of me: "My dad made that! My dad made it and now its all broken." She pointed at a half gutted tv frame, wires spurting impotently for direction. "Do you want it?" she asked. An image of a fish tank in a tv sprouted in my mind. Almost as good, a secondary shelf. Or puppet theatre!
"Yes."
We dragged it out with our boards.
Tossed em out the door window. The puppy scampered about. We were careful to miss him.
Walking down to school, spoils over our shoulders, Adriana talked about how jealous all the other kids would be if they could see her with me and such weird stuff, would she be allowed to bring the puppy to my office? She had to sing later. She wanted to sing, but with the other kids it was just so boring. Where was Elena. She's already at school, waiting to sing. Are you going to the Halloween party with the 12th graders? Could she come with me as my date, she was too young, but wanted to see it, also, she's shy.
She got her wish. Several girls from her class were hanging around and, true to form, asked what was going on, and how weird and dirty we were.
All that was left, was to set up the computer, put on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (Adriana heard one song from It's Blitz and it's all that's allowed to play now whenever she's around. She won't let me try to introduce her to other music she might like no matter how many times I point out how much she likes this song after it took me ages to convince her to listen to it the first time) and clean.
And we scrub and unscrew and smash out the remains of the tv until they gleam and are arranged with coffee cups and flowers in the corner of the office near the window. Adriana crashes and I feed her some coffee with lots of sugar. We go home.
Good afternoon.
