This will be a day behind but I’ve been a bit delirious thanks to good ol’ jet lag.
I woke up after two hours of sleep and made myself some eggs with avocado. After that lasagna nightmare they were the best eggs I’d ever had. Then I spent an hour with Natasha as she took me around the house showing me all that needs to be done on a daily basis. It goes like this:
. Clear the plates, utensils, pots, pans, egg-scrap-shit-show left over from breakfast. Then wash the dishes and clean the counters. Take the compost, the recycling, and the trash to their respective bins outside the house.
. Clean the toys off the floor in the basement den. (The toys of course being those highly unnerving lego and play mobil pieces that seem to multiply as you’re putting them away).
. “Hoover” the den. And all the stairs in the house. And the kitchen. And the upstairs den. And all five bedrooms.
. Clean the bathrooms: Collect the toys from the tub, clean the sinks, clean the mirrors, clean the toilet, collect the dirty towels for the laundry.
. Fold the clean clothes from the laundry and put away in the children’s rooms
. Take clothes out of washing machine and hang out to dry on clothesline
. Collect dirty clothing from the bedrooms and start another load of laundry
All this takes around an hour to an hour and a half depending on how much there is to do. Mind you, Natasha doesn’t keep paper towels in the house. Or napkins. Or tissues. She uses rags and small towels to clean everything. The sink, the counters, the windows, even the dishes. I thought, “Wow. How eco-friendly of her.” But as I looked around I realized that she is just cheap. Very, very, very, very, very cheap.
This nice German lady puts us Jews to shame. She has literally just enough plates and cups to accommodate each member of her family plus one. Having dealt with the laundry twice already I’ve noticed that each child only owns about three shirts… and all about two sizes too small. Natasha explained that their school uniforms are hand-me-downs from their cousins as the new ones are too expensive to buy at forty euros a piece.
Then there’s getting the garbage from the kitchen to fit into the bin outside. I have to get inside the bin and stand on the trash to compress it, as they won’t pay for the tag required for biweekly removal. The problem with that logic is that for a family of six, once a week isn’t nearly frequent enough. It is currently overflowing even after my daily rain dance on top of it.
After I finished the exhausting task of cleaning the house Natasha took me with her to pick Gemma up from school so I could learn the route. When we got back I felt utterly depleted and there wasn’t much time left in the day for me to go to town so… I didn’t.
Dinner tonight was rice, steamed broccoli, and fried zucchini. Not fried rice, not spiced rice, not sautéed rice, just… rice. Now I understand cutting corners when it comes to clothing that your children will inevitably grow out of, paper goods that are really a convenience more than a necessity, and I even get the stinginess when it comes to trash removal… sorta. But feeding your children? Come on.
We sat down at the table and the kids took their share of the food first. When it was my turn to eat what was left of the broccoli was two stems. Two stems that Natasha so generously offered to me because, “The kids won’t eat the stems.” Well of course they won’t, Natasha. Nobody eats the fucking stems.
Ultimately my dinner consisted of two broccoli stems and some fried zucchini. Oh wait! I also got to eat Aileen’s leftover meat sauce from the night before. Good thing I saved it.
On the bright side- if things continue like this I’ll be a size two by June.
