Sleep, Play, IKEA-fication, and gross gunk

I see it's been almost a week since I last wrote. The post-election-euphoria crash combined, I think, with the crash predicted by the American School psychologist during orientation. That is, November, with its early sunset, the sun not rising 30 degrees above the horizon even at noon, (if you can find it behind the buildings/cloud cover), and getting over the initial culture-shock and push of settling-in all conspire to produce a let-down that can trigger a huge energy slump. So I'm not surprised, just... tired. Add to this to the vestiges of jet lag from my recent trip to the east coast of the US, and the neighbor downstairs who wakes me at 1, 3 and 4 am with his shenanigans, and I'm not really getting up until 10 am. Fortunately, TeenE and Hubster sleep through the nighttime neighbor naughtiness.

TeenE continues to spend afternoons after school rehearsing for the play "And Then They Came for Me", about Ann Frank and her friend. The friend survived the holocaust, and lives in St. John's Wood, and is a consultant to the play. The parent meeting of Friends of the Arts at ASL
on Friday will give us more information about the show. TeenE tells me it's going to be very intense. She is in the "company", and needs "company shoes", whatever they are, and a leotard "for the concentration camp scenes".

Our IKEA order that we placed online in early October has finally been delivered. It arrived on Saturday. Every day since then I have weilded my trusty Phillips-head screwdriver and made good progress on a piece of furniture. So far, a bed-side table, a set of drawers for TeenE's desk, two shelf units to hold up our desk, and the desk-top with legs have been assembled. At some point I will tackle the garment rack and the two tall bookcases. Now we can see the top surface of our dining room table again.

Yesterday I had lunch with MomA at her flat on Maida Vale. She casually mentioned that with the hard water in this area, you are supposed to put dishwasher salt in the special dispenser in the dishwasher. I had never heard of this, and set out to find out if our unit had such a thing. Sure enough, it did. And it was really clogged with black, soapy, waxy, grimy, moldy GUNK. I decided to check out the other parts in the bottom of the dishwasher. I had already cleared out the screen that sifts out food particles (twice), but this time, after lifting it out, I decided to check on the lattice-work column upon which it sits. Ewwwww. I kept discovering that this mechanism came apart in more ways than one could imagine. And with each layer that I pried apart, there were more and more deposits of unspeakably disgusting GUNK. I whipped on the latex gloves and was finally grateful for the scalding-hot water that comes out of the tap. I poked through the hundreds of miniscule holes in the main column with a pin. I scrubbed all the outer surfaces with a scrubbie pad. I cleared out the crevices with cotton swabs. I soaked and re-soaked those suckers until there was no goo left. Now I just have to figure out how to put the (*&^% contraption back together again so we can use the dishwasher. Meanwhile, I am hand-washing everything. Just when there was a relative lull in the laundry...