Random fact of the day:  Paint in Austria is the consistency of pudding.  Also, I painted for five hours and was rewarded with a new, improved, more pronounced callus on my hand. Yay!

In happier news:  Audrey has yet another wiggle tooth!  I think this one is just protesting since her new tooth coming in is so big.

Puppies are seven days old and they're getting so big!

A Season to Everything

To everything-turn, turn, turn

There is a season- turn, turn, turn

And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time to be born, a time to die

A time to plant, a time to reap

A time to kill, a time to heal

A time to laugh, a time to weep

Why is it I so often find myself simultaneously in the time to both laugh and weep?  

There certainly is a season for everything...and right now I am in the season of cleaning.  Not because it is (all-caps!) SPRING, but because I'm attempting to erase two years of wear from our apartment before our landlady comes for her walk-through.  And when I say "erase", I mean literally--magic erasers are my new best friend.  I'm an addict.  I feel like a freak every time I pop into the BIPA to purchase eight two-packs of these suckers.  Every time, I tell myself that these sixteen magic erasers will be the last.  And yet, time and time again, I find myself at the bottom of my magic eraser stash, digging through the trash to find one with a smidge of melamine foam left to magic my way into keeping our three-months-of-rent's-worth deposit. 

That's right.  Our landlady has access to an incredible hunk of money that has been sitting quietly, accruing interest for two years. And just like that, Willian's game face is on.  The amount of wiggle room this gal is going to allow for any of that dough to be put towards re-painting walls or repairing the shoddy excuse for a parquet floor (I'm seriously suspecting it may be the original, because nothing younger than a century old should be looking this worn) is basically zero.  I'm ready to dig my heels in and argue with our sassy (and fabulous) Italian landlady until the cows come home.  

The current plan is to spend my remaining days in Vienna scrubbing and restoring this 170 year-old flat until it shines like a new penny...or as new as a 19th century-minted penny could be.  

I do also want to be able to spend time with my children, breathe fresh air, and actually enjoy our last days in Vienna, though, so this plan has been slowly in the works for a while now. 

Things were going along at a fantastically steady pace, but it was just that when the movers removed all the heaps of clothing, toys and random effects I had spread on the floors in every room, I could finally see the apartment.  ALL OF IT.  The floors that hadn't seen a vacuum in far, far too long, and the walls that had born the abuse of two rabid children, wielding countless new schleich animal figures with perfectly detailed black paws, each prancing across that once-flawless paint job in turn.

So, as soon as those seven strapping Slavic men were done schlepping our things down to the moving van, I declared it was time to vacuum the apartment.  ALL OF IT.  RIGHT THEN. WITHOUT DELAY.  I was serious, so John beat a hasty retreat to the playground with the girls, under the understanding that I would have the apartment floors entirely fuzz and dust free in the interim.

And it started out that way.  It really did.  I was ecstatic. Totally motivated.  So pumped up that I decided to start with vacuuming under the huge L-shaped behemoth couch our landlady inexplicably decided was a perfect fit for this apartment. I pushed the monster out into the center of our now-empty living room and sucked up the fluffle of dust bunnies that had sought shelter underneath the thing for over a year.  And as I rounded the corner, I realized there was a dark stain on the side of the couch that had butted up to our own sofa and gone unnoticed for God knows how long.  So, what would a manic-cleaning girl do, but to flip off the vacuum, grab her trademark magic eraser and scrub that sucker into oblivion?  

Pow!  Stain gone! These erasers are not the only thing possessing mad cleaning skills in this flat.  Oohhhh NO!  I am a rockstar!  A veritable goddess of deep cleaning!!  Wait.  What's this?  

I realized the armrest of our mostly-neglected rented sofa appeared filthy.  And what would any person possessing superior cleaning skillz do, but to apply her genius to that as well?  

I started wiping down the arm rest of our couch, oozing satisfaction at the amount of grunge that was being magically erased.  I completed that easy task, took a step back to admire my work and realized that the arm rest was SO CLEAN that the rest of the couch was now obviously NOT WHITE, but some other shade between BROWN and DEFINITELY NOT WHITE. 

But still.  Not to panic.  I am a professional.  The easy solution of magic erasering the whole couch presented itself as an easy, back-pattingly satisfying solution.  

So, I continued on, seat by seat, exposing incredibly confounding layers of dinge...until I got to the second seat cushion and started exposing what appeared to be the death valley of our sofa...a pattern of excruciatingly visible cracks in the leather that had me wondering if it were possible this couch could be as old as the building we live in.  

I was now at a pivotal crossroads.  Couch half-white, half NOT WHITE, exposing cracks to rival Yzma's cracked visage with every stroke of the (damn, you!) magic eraser.  What was there left to do, but to soldier on, praying to God with each freshly unearthed square-inch that it wouldn't get any worse.  

And that's how John found me.

A photo of the offensive object in happier days

...on the floor of the living room....where he had left me...every floor in the flat still littered with grit and fuzz and a couch that now resembled something that had been baking in the sun for a hundred years. 

To everything there is a season, dear friends.

A season to laugh, a season to weep

A season to clean, and a season to leave well enough alone 

before you make everything exponentially worse.

All this to say, I might not have a future in song-writing, but I sure as hell have learned that some things are better left filthy, especially if I don't actually own them.  And you better bet I'll have some eloquent words for our landlady come walk-through if there's even a mention of that sofa.      

Two Foster Grant cuties out for lunch in the sun!

We woke up this morning to puppies!  Our boy is here!  Reba had seven puppies last night!

In other news: IT'S MOVING DAY!  We're looking forward to getting all our stuff packed up and moved OUT!  Also, I want this guy to do all my Christmas wrapping: 

It took seven Slavic men just a few hours of slinging tape and loading boxes to get all of our things out of the flat.  Our place now feels very, very big.

Puppies are on their way!! Our breeders are so amazing.  They've been sleeping by Reba (Mama) so they can be there when she goes into labor; she's not left alone for a single minute until the pups are five days old.  All we know so far is that the first pup is a boy.  So excited!!

In Which John Has an Awesome Birthday

Here's one gift that didn't need tech-support!

I have a really good reputation for gifting John defective versions of his most-highly-sought-after tech gadgets.  I think I must be some kind of karma, but at least I'm now familiar enough with the exchange routine that I can easily complete it in German.  Despite the fact that John's sexy new fitness band wouldn't sync with his iPad, the man had a great Birthday.  We're fortunate that the things we value most aren't material.  The real gifts of the day were found in the company of friends, and what is our end-all, be-all: The four of us--together.  As long as we've got that, the rest is just icing on the cake.

Donuts at Karlskirche like NBD

It turns out, "icing" took the form of a lot of really good food and hours spent in the warm sun.  There were biscuits and gravy for breakfast, donuts for second breakfast (REAL donuts...which if you haven't lived outside the US, you won't understand how unbelievably rare this is). There was just enough time to fit in a Naschmarkt Doener Kebab before wrapping the day up with a dinner of pulled pork in (miraculous!) tortillas, coleslaw (more miracles!), mashed 'taters and corn on the cob (all the way from Senegal...because desperate times call for desperate measures)

Jumbled up in all that amazing food from near and far was the stuff that makes up glorious everyday life for us.  No day would be complete without a stop to see Mr. Happy-Happy (who has now publicly claimed us all as family) and John's birthday was no different.  I love our little ten-minute philosophical conversations with this man that have spread out over the days, months and now years.  On this day, Mr. Happy-Happy pointed to the right side of his belly and told us this is where the men are...and the women on the left--like two wheels driving a person.  He told John that I am the moving force in our marriage and that without me he would be nothing.  (have I mentioned I love this man?)  We all had a hardy laugh at this, but coincidentally, John agrees...which I can't help but adore in my husband.  Mr. Happy-Happy is always encouraging John not to work so hard and telling him he needs to free his mind and soak his feet more in salt water before bed.  Today, he gave John some Sandalwood incense and reset his energy for him.  Apparently, the fire element is prominent with John, which means he needs to drink more water (which may be why the man's life motto is: Dehydration is your worst enemy, folks.)

So many birthday snuggles

It's a mutually uplifting relationship we've got with our Mr. Happy-Happy; the girls lift his spirits and he lifts all of ours.  So, setting off with happy hearts and our energy balanced, we embarked on what could only be called a great day.  Sunshine, no responsibilities and a fat chunk of time to just enjoy each other's company lead us through our neighborhood to Karlskirche and all the way over to the Belvedere Palace, where Audrey, like a little fawn set free, ran out far ahead of us along the long gravel paths

The satisfied face of a man and his Doener

.

After resting in the afternoon, some friends joined us for dinner and we spent the evening laughing raucously and filling our bellies with food so foreign to this land it felt like magic.

The girls insisted on adding four birthday candles to John's mini pineapple upside-down cake and he spent a bit of his birthday song in reluctant embarrassment before realizing the singing wasn't actually for him--he was giving his girls the immense joy of getting to sing happy birthday, for real, to their favorite guy.  And that's one hell of a gift in itself.

Bear cage!

Mr. Happy Happy read the girls' palms today.  He said Audrey is very healthy and that she has a very big heart.  He also said she would do well starting to learn an instrument now.  He said Bailey has lots of energy now, but later it will be channeled into studying and that she will become very well educated.  We love that guy.

Took the girls to the zoo today.  Made the epic mistake of saying "yes" when they asked to go in the bird house.  *facepalm*  

Bailey says: "Mama, we gonna take our stuffed animals and go to our United States home?"  I'm just relieved that we can leave everything but the stuffed animals.

We went further into the Prater Woods than we've ever been today.  It was just lovely!