I just tried my hand at making bread this morning, but I’ve just discovered that I can only use one appliance at a time.  My oven kept cutting off the electricity, and after Kabob’s many well-researched attempts at resetting the breakers and then finagling with the oven, we realized the reason we kept cutting the power was because I was also running the dishwasher.  I turned it off, and sure enough, there was enough power to keep the oven alive.  Unfortunately, I think it screwed up the timing of certain steps of the recipe, so I don’t think it will be my most magnificent loaf of bread to date.  But seeing as I can buy beautiful, fresh, homemade bread across the street for the equivalent of $.25, I’m not too worried.

Kabob just left for IKEA to return some stuff, leaving me and Chickpea at home for the day.  I was really, really in the mood to go with him, but considering how long it takes to get there and back, and considering what that does to a little girl’s nap (it cancels it), it’s just not worth it.  A few days ago we witnessed her actually falling asleep on the metro in Kabob’s arms, and staying asleep in his arms as we waited 30 minutes for the bus, and then a good 20 more minutes crammed on a seriously crowded, hot bus – and if you know her total inability to fall asleep anywhere other than her bed, you know that’s amazing.  But it definitely didn’t count as a restful nap, evident by her lovely mood the rest of the day.  So…  I’ll take naptime over a trip to IKEA and its shopping-center counterpart, Starbucks, anyday.  And that’s saying a lot.

Speaking of furniture, we ordered our sofas yesterday!  And I’m glad we did, because it will take four weeks for them to arrive.  We weren’t even planning on buying them yesterday; I just wanted to pop in to a local store to browse.  But we ended up finding what we wanted at a decent price (a sofa-bed, loveseat, and armchair for $600 less than one sofa-bed at IKEA).    Unfortunately, we prefer a nice, neutral color like taupe for our furniture, as opposed to salmon, neon green, royal purple, or any combination thereof – because we could have taken home the salmon-colored display of our sofas that night.  It really seems like crazy colors are the decor preference here, because every display of furniture we’ve seen so far has been something that resembles Austin Power’s living room.  Oh well…  We’ve decided we need some patio furniture anyway, so we’ll just use that indoors for the next month, and we’ll probably throw in a canoe for good measure (name that TV show), AND to up our whitetrashness.

The neighborhood elementary school is a stones-throw away from us (not that we would throw a stone at it, mind you) – as in, we can open our living room windows and hear kids playing outside for recess.  Yesterday afternoon we had our windows open, and out of nowhere, loud traditional music blasted into our home.  After a quick check to make sure Chickpea was still asleep for her nap, we peeked outside.  Sure enough, it was from the school.  Remember that period of two weeks of square-dancing in P.E. class, when you’d be forced to dance with the nice-but-totally-uncoordinated-redheaded-boy?  Well, apparently they do that here, too, in their own cultural version.  We enjoyed watching a couple rounds of 8-year-olds dancing around in circles while a man gave directions on a microphone.  Good times.  And cheap entertainment.

Alright, I’m off to do laundry…   Better make sure the dishes are done.

posted: 07 March 20
under: culture