I Love This Country!

Some days I just love Indonesia!

This week we discovered that Fluffy has been peeing on the library chairs. Yes, I have a library room (sorta) get over it. The only thing that is saving his cat life right now is that he peed on the chairs and not our oriental hand knotted rugs. (My husband has his Samsung flat panel TV, I have rugs!!) If the cat keeps this up I may leave his Big Fat Fluffy self in Kentucky. Teri if you are reading this disregard the previous sentence!!! I didn't mean to imply I was leaving him at YOUR house this summer.... OK maybe I did, but you are the self confessed crazy cat lady. He could give Kitten someone to play with.

To deal with the mess we called the upholstery cleaners to come fix it FAST! That was yesterday. Today they showed on time at 9 am with 3 men, 1 woman, buckets, scrub brushes, cleaning solution and a shop vac. OK for just a second I thought "I have a shop vac and stain remover" (absolutly NO idea why David shipped it to Jakarta but I have a shop vac), "I could have done this myself." Of course it would have taken at least 9 hours and created a huge mess. A mess so big Dwi would probably quit. They have been here less than an hour and are on the very last chair. I should mention that since they were here I decided to have them clean the dining room chairs** (all 8) and a couple of foot stools as well as the 2 smelly wing chairs. Two guys scrubbed with brushes, one ran the shop vac, the woman pretreated all the stains and sprayed water during the vacuuming out to make sure all the cleaning solution was removed. She also cleaned the wood work on the chairs and made sure to keep floor tidy where they were working. How much did this cost?? It was a little expensive by local standards: rp 45000 each for the 8 dining room chairs and the foot stools and rp 60000 each for the wing chairs. In American terms that is about $4.90 a dining room chair and $6.50 each for the wing chairs. Altogether less than $65. It would have cost hundreds of dollars in the states, they wouldn't have shown up on time, at it would have taken all day, and hopefully they would clean up the mess but I wouldn't count on it.


**Someone, somewhere in the state department decreed that all dining room chairs should be upholstered, preferably in cream or white brocade, instead of sensible plain wood. I devoutly hope that same person now has quadruplets all dripping spaghetti sauce, chocolate ice cream and purple koolaid onto those same upholstered chairs! First thing I am doing when we get to Frankfurt is making a trip to IKEA to buy cheap chairs for the kids to sit on so I don't have to worry about the stupid government property chairs!!