Hello World !!!!

Goodness me….where can I start. My feet haven’t touched the ground since the last time I managed to get to this, and really, things aren’t getting any quieter. With getting the house ready for guests I’ve just been busy, busy, busy !!! So, where to start……….

Lets take a look at the house….it is just looking fabulous. I think the last time I wrote my diary up the place was crawling with Bulgarian rough getting parapet on the balconies. This is what the house now looks like…

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Who lives in a house like this ?????? Oh, that’s right….I do … 🙂

It just tidies the place up so much and makes it so much safer for both myself and guests coming to the house.

The third floor is pretty much finished but I can’t take any pics just now as all the rooms are full of guests…and they may not want their undies to be displayed for the entire world to see.

But that’s not all……this is my new entrance [photopress:new_entrance4.JPG,full,pp_empty]

And the first bedroom and the guest lounge are also complete, but not without some late night dramas and disasters…….

My guests, Nula, Carl & Baby Lyla were due to arrive at about 4am last Tuesday morning, At 8pm on the Monday night Ivan and I were running around here doing the last minute things that needed doing to finish the room. I had Ivan putting up towel rails and dunny rolls holders etc. The very last thing was the soap dish for the shower…..between us we decided that it should line up with the taps. I left him to it and went into the next room. I heard the sounds of drilling and then a lengthy silence filled the air. I went back into the bedroom and asked if everything was OK. Ivan was standing in the shower area, soaking wet, with his finger pressed against the tiles on the wall. When I asked those fatal words ‘is everything OK?’ he removed his finger from the wall and a stream of water sprayed all over him…he’d accidentally drilled through the pipes coming from the boiler into the shower cubicle……Ooops !!!

Oh, how my heart sunk…….8 hours until the guests were due to arrive and their shower karput (sic)…..and the room not actually finished, as I was waiting for Ivan to finish the bathroom before I did the last clean up……Dang !! I have to give it to Ivan…he isolated the boiler, so the bathroom at least had cold water and then he headed off into Yambol to get whatever it was going to take to sort the problem. He came back around 11pm with the thing to weld the plastic, (hey, this is mans stuff…I don’t know what it’s called) but he was unable to find the sleeve needed to patch the hole. He was so apologetic because he’d trawled through the place looking for the necessaries, wasn’t able to find what he needed and this meant the clients were arriving to a room with only cold running water and no shower. After he’d stayed until 10pm the night before helping me and wasn’t going to get home to his family until well after midnight this night, I just told him not to worry…everything would be all right…and, of course, it was.

The family Robinson arrived around 4am. I explained about the disaster and they were fantastic about it. I think showers after their journey was the last thing on their mind and a hot cup of tea was far more what they required. And what can I say about this delightful family. It was an absolute pleasure having them in my home and baby Lyla just stole my heart. She was the most smiley, happy little soul and I was just so enamoured by her.

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From the moment she woke in the morning, she was smiling. She’d sit in that high chair watching as I busied myself around the kitchen. I would find myself chatting away to her and whenever I looked in her direction, I would be rewarded with a magnificent, toothless smile.

The weather has been very hot and when Nula & Carl decided to just have a relaxing day with the baby here in Miladinovtsi, I rang Ivan ( via Stefka, my translator) and asked him if he would really, really mind picking up a paddling pool in Yambol and bringing it with him when he came for work. Now, I did say that if he didn’t want to do this task for me, I’d understand, but of course, he arrived the next morning grinning from ear to ear with the cutest little pool under his arm. And the baby loved it

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The terrible thing is, I realised after the family Robinson had departed for their next destination that I didn’t have a single pic of Mum & Dad…just the baby. She really did melt this hard old heart… 🙂

Speaking of things that bring joy to the soul….you know I moan about having the go to Yambol all the time. Well, just now, I’d happily drive in every day. Why ??? Take a look at the current view…

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No matter how glum I might feel when I’m driving along the road, this sight just fills me with all the joys of life…it’s stunning, beautiful, breathtaking……..The sunflowers stretch for miles and miles and miles. And I know we learn in school that the flowers follow the sun, but to drive into town in the morning and see thousands and thousands of these flowers facing east and then to drive back late in the afternoon and see the same thousands and thousands of flowers slowly moving to face the west is just so bizarre…and fascinating.

And just when you think things can’t get any better, I walk out onto one of my now safe balconies at about ten o’clock at night and this is what I see coming up over the mountain

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yeah, Yeah, I know it’s not the best pic in the world and I dont think my camera is really up to great moon shots, but take it from me, it was beautiful…a real sky filler.

I had my monthly checkup with the lovely Dr Drinkoff on Thursday. My throat has been a bit sore recently and I had some concerns when I headed up to Stara Zagora. Apparently, it’s a bit red and a bit inflamed but he thinks it’s a minor infection or I could be getting a cold, which he said I had to avoid at all cost….and difficult request really. How does one avoid getting a cold if there’s one hanging around ???
Today the builders started to dismantle the roof. It’s really scary up there and dangerous to boot. I wandered up there when i got back from Yambol today and watched one of the guys taking the cupola apart.I was most perturbed to see that he wasn’t tied on to the building in any way, but when I raised this, he made a joke about being able to fly.!! Jesus Wept !!!! I don’t even want to hear jokes about this.

Tonight I sent all my guests to the big Toon for a night out. I’m completely exhausted and declined the invitation to join them. I had 12 diary days to catch up on….and I reckon that’s one job that’s now out of the way.

I’m so tired now I’m struggling to keep my peepers open long enough to get this posted…….I can hear my big comfy bed calling me
so for now, leka nosht

mercer