this apartment is slowly sucking the life out of me

Yesterday I was home all day and of course, there was construction in the bathroom column, so I closed off the door from the living area to the sleeping areas to try and block out the sound.

Imagine my surprise when I opened that door up around mid-afternoon to put up clean clothes and I saw red dust everywhere in the hallway.

Unlike last week when the construction workers pushed shut the bathroom windows from the column, this week they only closed one of the two windows.  Thankfully Jimmy's and my side of the house was clean but the other side was filthy with a fine red dust.  The floors were covered, the bathroom counter was covered,  the bedspreads in the two bedrooms on that end of the hall were covered.  Everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - was covered in red dust.

I nearly had a conniption fit.

I called down to the front desk to complain and they told me I needed to speak to the Administration office.  So I called them and informed them of the mess that was now in my apartment and asked why hadn't they closed the windows.  (I explained that if we leave the windows closed all the time, our whole apartment smells like a sewer and thus, we'd opened them back up over the weekend.)

The lady told me that they couldn't just stop construction.  To which I responded that I never asked them to stop construction, but I would ask that they have basic respect for the residents of the building who are having to live with this nonsense everyday.

After I cleaned, I sent a raging email to Jimmy about the potential need for a visit to a loony bin (he's in Brasilia by the way), and then I calmed down.

Today at 8:45 am, I got a phone call from Administration to make sure my windows were closed because construction was starting back.  That was nice of them.

And then this afternoon after Mac got home and finished his homework, we decided to go play ping pong on the patio near the pool where they have several games set up.  We do this nearly every single night and nearly every single night, we take Leo down on his leash and hook the leash onto the knob of the foosball table so he can hang out with us outside.

But today, we were early and that was my major mistake.  We walked past the Administration office, and they spotted the dog. We hadn't even gotten to the ping pong table when the lady came out wagging her finger, pointed at the dog and said "senhora, nao pode".  Ma'am, you can't.

I said nothing but "okay", turned on my heel and walked past her.  I am really growing to hate this building.

But then I got good news when I got back to the apartment.  Jimmy called and said we are moving to a hotel on Monday instead of Tuesday.  And we're going out of town this weekend on a consulate trip so really my nights remaining here are dwindling in front of my eyes.  I think we probably will stay here Monday night so we can get organized after the weekend getaway, but even with that night here, I only have 5 more sleeps in this apartment.

Do you know how utterly and blissfully excited that makes me???