Mindy Carlson

One. Month. Left.

It seems impossible that 2 years could have gone by so fast. Was it really August 2014 when the kids looked like this?

And now they look like this?

That’s just wild.

There is a myriad of stuff going on here just this week.

I just made chocolate chip cookies. Am I the Best Mom Ever? Nope. I’m just using up the last bits of brown sugar and chocolate chips I had “imported” over here by friends and family. (Actually, I have enough for maybe 2 more batches of cookies and some cinnamon rolls. Anyone for a tea time at my house?)

It turns out that we can’t bring back any spices or food items in our shipping container. That makes sense. We don’t want bugs or rodents thinking that our container is a great place to make a home. However, I don’t really want to bring a jar of ground cinnamon in my suitcase and then find that it’s exploded all over my shirts. So that means I will be cooking a lot of different foods this month. Including Schnekken.

We are on our way to having an apartment. I thought we had one, but the landlord wanted a 2-year lease, plus a few other items on our shoulders that made us wary enough to back away slowly and look for another apartment. Keep your fingers crossed for us that the next one goes better.

Our landlord here is showing our apartment to others. It’s stressful and inconvenient. I try to keep the house extremely clean, but with two little entropy machines running around that is darn near impossible to have every room perfect. I really want him to find a new tenant so I don’t have to keep cleaning so much. I have other stuff to do!

We finally visited all 26 cantons in Switzerland! Glarus was the last one. I’ll be writing that up as a separate entry, but it is notable that we are some of the only people in Switzerland who have been to every canton.  And it only took us 2 years.

My BFF, Shaun, is coming to visit me today! She came to help me settle in and now she’s here to help me settle out. I get to show her some of the things I’ve learned and we are going to Amsterdam. Lord, help them. They do not know what is coming.

Mark has a place to stay in DC for a week. It’s with our friend Trish who has an AirBnB room. The minute that got settled I felt a big weight leave my shoulders. I had no idea how tense I was not knowing where he was going to stay when he flew back to start work. And now he’s staying with a really great friend of ours to help him settle back into the horrors/joys of DC life.  It’s a relief.

I am purging. I didn’t think I was going to, but here I am with two giant bags of H’s too-small winter clothes ready to go out and be collected. At least I hope winter is over. It’s only been 55F/11C here lately. It is the end of May. You’d think I could consider us solidly into Spring now.  I am also purging all the things with holes in them I have been hanging onto because I can’t find replacements here.  I also have a skillet that needs to go. Two skillets in fact. And I need to buy a new one.

I am buying stuff. All the stuff I love about Switzerland and want to take along with us. Plus souvenirs for our families. I have t-shirts and chocolates and hats to buy! I need to find a Basel Chicken-Dragon (a basilisk) to buy for our garden, too. And some new clothes. I really, really want Swiss clothes to remind me of all the good things I want to keep doing that I learned about in Switzerland. It’s a bit silly, I know, but I need that tangible thing to help me in the mental transition from Swiss to American.

We are going out to eat like we have never done before. I think that before April we’d eaten out a total of 4 times in 2 years. This is not counting the BIS club because it is cheap and kid friendly. Eating out in Basel is expensive. A hamburger is 20chf! But this last month and a bit we have been going OUT. Teufelhof, Zum Isaak, WerkAcht, The Brasserie. And those are the names I can remember off the top of my head. All of it has been fantastic food and it’s been fun to sit outside in the gardens behind the restaurants and eat under the fairy lights.

I just made arrangements to shut off my phone. It was easy! I just called and told them what day to shut if off and I was done! Mark called for his phone and they made him fax them a document we got from our city hall that proved he was leaving the country. I guess I just sound more trustworthy.

I also need to contact Verizon in American and figure out how to get my old account turned on and use my new phone. That should be interesting. We also need to contact our internet company here to get them to shut off the internet in a month.

And as soon as we have an a house in the US I will need to figure out about getting all these things turned on there. That should be fun.

In a moment of awesomeness I contacted the kids’ old doctors in the US and made appointments for them. In a moment of not-awesomeness I realized I’m going to have to change those appointments because they are for the first day of school. 😦  No wonder they had those slots available.

This next month is going to be a whirlwind of activity. School is winding down, I have tons of writing to do, Mark has scads of paperwork that needs to be completed. And all in 30 days.

But don’t you worry. I’ll be keeping you all up to date with our craziness here. 😉