Housewarming April 21 - May 12, 2002 on an inevitable post-moving party, our first homeowners' woes, and how we did not dissolve.

	Housewarming Party clockwise: Sid, Martin, Michelle, Mark, Matthew., Simon and Barbara

	Sid + Mai the moment he gets out of my sight, another female gets immediately attached

It is a long way, from buying a house to making it a home. It means sweeping away all traces of previous owners, unpacking, figuring out the best arrangement for every aspect of your household; and it means not losing your mind. That applies for those situation when, for example, I have logical reasons to store scissors in a cabinet on the right, and the following day, I find them, after half hour of desperate search, in a cabinet on the left, where Sid (based on perfectly logical reasons) moved them to. We were also visited by a swarm of sockeaters - and we are still looking for my green sweater, camera manual, rusty utility scissors, and a digital thermostat. We did not even start looking for plenty of things with a vague hope that "they will certainly be in those unopened boxes in the small bedroom."

Then there were bigger problems. When the fourth internet service provider declined dealing with us saying they don't service our area, never have, and definitely don't intend to, we sank into a mental depression, for we are heavy net addicts. Then Sid discovered that a fiber-optical cable (which could easily carry TV, phone, and high-bandwidth internet together) terminated at the house. Joy. Prematurely. The cable got installed by Pacific Bell, which got acquired by SBC, who sold that network to their competition - AT&T; they say that it's not theirs... and so on, like in a fairytale. And thus the said hi-tech cable slowly deteriorates while we stumble in the midst of multiple sets of (excess) wire pairs and coaxial cables. It took us a whole month to resolve our internet connection (and we would like to apologize to our regular readers for the interruption of their favorite hroch.net materials).

	Visiting children happily accepted their roles of guinea pigs

It appears to be an Anglo-Saxon custom to escape one's moving woes by means of a so-called housewarming party. Given the patience with which all our friends treated us, it occurred to us as a good idea. Having bought a bag of mango and artichoke sausages (they consist mainly of chicken meat, and are very good), a box of Samuel Adams (one of few "potable" American beers), we sent out an all-hands invitation for one Sunday afternoon.

If I remember correctly, the party turned out all right. Simon and Barbara and Michelle cleaned weeds out of one flower box, one of our guests locked our bathroom from within, then closed it from without (previous owners locked it because of their toddler - we only removed the key and put it in a drawer -- inside the same bathroom) so that guys had to eventually push Matthew through the vent to let him unlock the door again. I also found out that it is ill advised to let Sid out of sight -- the moment I turned to entertain other guests, another female immediately attached herself to him -- Mai Dvorak was slapping his bald head and pulling his ears until he delegated her as a guinea pig to walk on our pool cover. It is made of rubber and should allegedly withstand the load of several adults, but had we somehow hesitated to test it so brutally. Kids, however, did not hesitate in the slightest.

	Junior Chemist Sid performs experiments with our pool

	A man staggering over a roof requires careful supervision

The pool took care of creating another trouble. Our first vacuuming and collecting some leaves from the surface was a breeze, yet Sid insisted on testing the water. He pulled out a box with little bottles full of colored liquids and turned himself into a junior chemist. He started with our jacuzzi (holds a lot less water than the pool) and stated that it was too acidic. He first poured in a handful of something from a large jug, and then began to read the label on the jug, concluding that he might have just slightly overdone it. I don't know... the jacuzzi turned periwinkle green color that faded away only after two days of filtering. Sid told me that I am an old conservative when I demand water to be blue, and emptied TWO jugs of the same gock into the pool. It promptly turned green. Filtering the water took us a fortnight and Sid got nightmares about water sprites, topically mumbling in his sleep.

Our neighbors really helped. Two houses down the street lives the family of Tony the Italian. Tony came one day to our door, saying that they just filled in their pool after having it for thirty years, and would we like to have a vacuum robot that all by itself runs at the bottom and sucks up dirt. Considering that such little gadget costs several hundred dollars, we gladly offered it a new home.

	Periwinkle Pool ... and this is how it turned out.

	Sid over our garage practicing the pose "Stalin over Prague"

I had planned my one-week trip to Czech Republic approximately one month after moving, believing quite naively that we would be well finished settling in, and I would have an easy time leaving. I admit that an "all done" state of a home belongs into a science-fiction area, yet we tried hard to get there anyway. It wasn't easy -- as temperatures kept climbing, we had to climb on the roof, too, and remove plastic bags from our roof vents that looked like funny cat heads (a two-minute job), but that meant driving to a store and purchase a sufficiently long and at the same time Hippo-rated ladder (two days of shopping). I was also mentally sagging under the weight of my imagination how Sid, left without supervision, neglects all surviving remains of our plants and flowers, dissolves himself in an acid that was in our pool, invites termites and cockroaches to have free run of the house, forgets to put out our garbage can on Sunday evening for disposal -- simply how he would fail to take proper care of our house without me.

As my vacation approached, Sid was re-testing the pool water every evening and kept adding chemicals, while the robot whirled at the bottom for hours. Just before my departure Sid finally authorized already heavily de-perwinkled jacuzzi for unrestricted use. Said he did so to motivate me to come back. And so we took our first bath there, and did not dissolve.

Copyright © 2002-2004 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.