“It happens to everyone.  These are the little moments that add spice to life.”  I am standing in the elevator with one of my concierge friends and he is taking me up to the second floor to let me into my room.  I am in my pajamas, my feet are bare and I am mortified.  I’ve just walked through the throngs of corporate folk all high-heeled, power-suited and uber professional on their way to work, “rush hour” at the elevators, about 7:30am.  Aaron and the kids left at 7:00 and as I’m tidying the kids hurricane to ready their room for the camarista, I realize with a start that I completely forgot to put in their uniform laundry over the weekend (the stress of this situation is causing me to start to drop some balls.)  If I don’t put it in right away it won’t be ready for them for tomorrow when they need it… I’m ticked because if I had my own laundry I could just throw a load in and I would KNOW that it would be done in time.  I plan to call the concierge to ask them to send someone to come and get it right away – that way it should be back by the end of the day.  There is a fairly large armful to carry, so I collect as best I can, open the door, wrestle it through and click, the door closes behind me.  And there I find myself facing my clicked, closed and locked door with an armful of laundry and, you guessed it, NO KEYS…  After everything that is just NOT going right at this time, this SO feels like the coarsest salt grinding into festering wounds… I cannot believe this… I sink to the floor and just start to bawl… I sit with my back against the wall, my knees pulled up to my chest, my head buried in my hands and I weep.  I am having a total pity-party; how is it that we are STILL here and don’t have a house and why don’t I have my own space and why am I in a situation where I have to go to the lobby in my jammies and bare feet, sharing an elevator with all those suits to beg someone to let me into my room and why is nothing working out and why is everything taking SO long to accomplish and why are they behaving like they didn’t know we were uprooting our whole lives to come here and why is no one listening to us?!?!   I think I sat there for a good 20 mins… I need to get into my room and I know a trip down to the lobby is inevitable to get myself out of this jam.  I don’t even have a tissue, so I’m looking for the cleanest spot on Caleigh’s t-shirt (figure it might be the safest bet) to clean up my running nose and eyes.  Many deep breaths later, I head down the hall to the elevators, and well, you know the rest.  So when the nice concierge man who finds me at the desk in the main lobby in my bare-foot, jammied, bed-headed splendor and is tasked with rescuing me, tells me that these moments “add spice” to life, it’s all I can do not to either punch him, or sink down and have good cry part II in the elevator corner.  I wonder if he has any concept about just how much of a “scotch-bonnet*-spicy” life we are enjoying right now!!

Truly, it is beyond remarkable how difficult everything has been to accomplish here.  We are starting to wonder if this is “normal”.  We got a huge scare today when we opened an email stating that the landlord was going to walk away from us if someone did not cough up a deposit cheque in the next few days… Oh Wow… suddenly a whole lot of company people started to scramble to meet this ultimatum… sort of wish the landlord had done this sooner, although was terrifying.  This scenario had crossed the very back of my mind, but I quickly silenced it.  After all the time and effort and patience we’ve applied to this, it just seemed too cruel.  And today it came dangerously close to becoming a reality.   As of the end of this work day, the company has moved to placate the landlord and meet his requirements.  Can’t really blame him – he could have had a few months rent in his pocket by now.  Aaron has to travel for work the end of this week, so we are sincerely hoping that we can move in before he goes… otherwise we are here til the first week of April!!!!!!!

The weekend had a bumpy start with an email from an HR rep for the company apologizing for this mess, a response to our recent email wondering what the HECK was going on.  We had been building to this all week after zero communication – we were so worried about what was happening – our imaginations were running with various scenarios as they really cut off all contact.  It didn’t make sense.  So much doesn’t make sense.  I’m happy for that HR rep for taking the time to clear her conscience so she could feel better.  Her vague, empty words held no comfort for us as we continue to wonder why so many of the aspects of the contract we were promised have not come true.  No Spanish language learning yet, which could have made things a lot easier for Aaron with his day-to-day dealings at work, and would have made daily dealings out in this great big city easier for me; we’ve had to fight for medication coverage; we’ve had to fight for a place to live; we’ve had to fight for access to banking; we’ve had to fight for vehicles; we’ve had to fight, fight, fight.  We have driven everything.  Was a tough weekend because we were really doubting if we had made the right decision to be here.  I guess this is normal; wouldn’t really know as there has been so little support for our transition.  Quite a few people we’ve talked to who have done this say that it takes about 6 months to start to feel somewhat okay.  So frustrated that we are being forced to be in this limbo; being here means that we are not in our new place making connections and building community.

So we go to the kids’ school on Saturday morning for a really neat, loud, chaotic event, all of this garbage on our minds, gnawing at us.  We all behaved ourselves for the event, but were exhausted and hungry by the end and wanted to get something to eat and just crash afterwards.  We thought we’d go down into the mall under the hotel to a restaurant and ended up at a comic-book inspired spot.  There were life-sized (or bigger) models of all your favourite superheroes – Batman, Spiderman, Yoda, Darth Maul, Incredible Hulk, C3PO, etc., etc.  We were seated at a table with the Joker smiling his evil-scary smile down on us while we ate.  Freaked Caleigh out and she had to change spots with Hudson.  The kids were invited over to a crafting table at the back to paint while we waited for our meal.  Our naivete gets the better of us still and we assumed it was complimentary… but part way through I felt compelled to manage Aaron’s expectations and warned that he shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t release the kids crafts without paying a fee for all the fun!  And sure enough, the lovely ceramic figures they painted were 50 pesos each ($5)!!  So on our way back to the room after a less than satisfying dining experience (although we did try to redeem this current disappointment by posing for pics with all of our fave superheroes and got some fun shots) we are about to get on the elevator and Caleigh drops her glass ceramic painted craft onto the marble floors.  Insta-tears and somewhat coherent sobs of “I was going to put that in my new room…. I was going to put that in my new room…” burst forth from our girl.  I text Aaron with one hand while one-arm-hugging my inconsolable daughter with the other, on the off chance he can pop back in to the restaurant and grab a new blank one on his way back from getting water at the grocery store that she could paint later.   No such luck, he’s already back to the room.  Mansell is on his hands and knees picking up all the pieces, vowing to crazy glue it back together for her.  We are quite the noisy spectacle as we get off the elevator and make our way to our room. Time to put this day to bed, but it’s only 3 in the afternoon.  At this point, who cares?  Every conscious waking moment seems to render some new crisis, so safer just to go to bed.  Aaron can’t do it anymore and climbs into bed.  I take Rosie for a quick spin, tuck the kids into their beds for naps, and join him.  The next thing we know the kids are waking us at 7:30, and honestly, I think we could have slept the night straight through.

Every morning we are hopeful for good news while always bracing ourselves for some unexpected, super spicy twist…

*This footnote is for my dear husband who was not aware that scotch-bonnet peppers are one of the spiciest peppers.  It gets it’s name from it’s squished appearance, like a Scottish cap. That’s the extent of Scottish in this favourite Caribbean hot pepper.  While not the hottest of peppers, it scores very high SHU (Scoville Heat Units) at 100 000 to 350 000 heat units, as compared to the much milder Jalapeno at around 2 500 heat units.  I referred to this hot pepper to (hopefully!) clearly illustrate the extent and strength of “spice” in our life moments right now  🙂