We're back.
Where to begin?
With the trip? The trip was fine. The kids did great, and nobody threw up. Getting out the door was crazy, what with the 4 am motzai Shabbos departure, and neither MHH or I slept at all that night. But we did it, and even successfully got our VAT back at the airport, which is not for the faint of heart. Most of our luggage made it--just the strollers and Barak's booster seat were left in London, which turned out not to be a problem at all because a) it meant we could all fit in one van and b) British Airways gave us a new carseat! "We have to! Otherwise how would you get home from the airport?" More reasons to love BA.
Then we got home. The less said about that the better. The tenants, we immediately noticed, had not cleaned. The had not cleaned the stove, or the sink, or the fridge, and where are all those fruit flies coming from? Sheets dirty in washing machine... are there ANY clean sheets? Pretzels in couch, toys, all over house, and let's not think about Pesach. Okay, it could be worse... wait... are those my fleishig glasses in the milchig cupboard? Where are the sink tubs that I use in my treif sinks? They're in the guest room?! What have they been washing dishes in all summer? Is that a fleishig spatula in the parve drawer? And what's this pile of flatware in my fleishig dish rack... milchig, milchig, fleishig, parve, parve, milchig...
[sound of uberimma's head exploding]
The father of the family is the principal of an orthodox school. Nuff said. We're not sending our kids there...
We are about 70% unpacked, and the kids are about 50% over their jet lag. One duffel bag left to unpack, and several baskets' worth of clean laundry piled on my bed--it's hard to put away laundry when both rooms where clothes are kept contain sleeping children at the only time of day in which I am at liberty to put laundry away.
MHH started his new job a couple of days ago, and B"H so far so good. I met the other kollel wives and felt a little bit fish-out-of-water-y, but I'm sure it will be fine.
Back to work now. Next up: our exciting late-night trip to the local children's emergency room. Don't worry, everyone's fine, and Iyyar has lots of new stickers and play-doh now...
2 comments:
1. Welcome back! I'm glad the trip went well, that the actual traveling part is over, and that BA was so beyond-decent.
2. I'm shocked to hear about your temporary renters. Even if they'd been a non-Jewish family, I'd've thought they would at least keep to basic standards (like cleanliness!) and make at least an effort to keep things separate once they were shown that it needed to be so. But if they're orthodox, wow! Don't they keep the same rules at home, then? It can't be because they don't know about them. Does it just not apply when in someone else's house? I'm really taken aback.
3. ER visit?! Come on, post already.
Oh. My. Word. with the tenants. I don't even want to think about it myself - lots of {{{hugs}}} and might there at least have been some clause in the lease saying that they were responssible for damages incurred? Like, oh, replacing anything you can't reasonably kasher that they mixed up and potentially mis-used?
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