Week 3

Week 3 – June 10, 2012

Dear fam,

Hello. How are you? We are well. Ella and Anne wanted to share their most recent paintings. Anne is a "Rainbow Tree" picture - and she says the tree with blue has a lot of birds, the one with red on top has apples, and the rest are all rainbows. The picture of her holding her picture she wants me to tell you is "important, be-cause she has a snake in her hair ... but don't worry, I'm holding it so it won't bite you." As you can see, not much has changed, except we've added snakes to the line up of dangerous animals she likes to imagine are with us. Ella painted a picture with rainbows, flowers, and butterflies. She says the red flower is a rose, like in Beauty and the Beast. Mary likes to color on lots of surfaces, including, but not limited to, the couch, table and walls ... we're working on her art mediums of choice (paper!) at present. 

Benj caught the Bush Lady - which ended up being far more hassle and drama than necessary. His night shift called at 4 am Tuesday (or maybe it was Monday?) morning and said she was there taking bushes - so he hopped in he delivery van and sped over to the store ... it was early in the morning so no traffic (or so he thought) and he really did not want to miss her (again) so he ran a red light ... and of course the police pulled him over. There were three officers in the car and he tried to explain to them that he was on his way to his store where a lady is stealing bushes, and they thought he was drunk. 

Needless to say, he offered them 100 griven (12 dollars) to let him go, to which they readily agreed - yes, the police here are very corrupt and can be bought off for a nominal price. Problem was he didn't have 100 griven on him, so he told them to follow him to the store ... where they all met the bush lady. After a series of events (involving Igor, the security camera company, and the police) the lady was taken to jail ...not exactly what we wanted either - since we really wanted her to repay the bushes, and that's not going to happen with her in jail, right? Well, then of course the police realized ... there is an American doing business here? How are we not in on this? and started hounding Benj (truly) for document after document - for him, for the business, for recipes for the bushes, for copies of the security footage, color images of the bushes ,,,, it was (is?) a bit of a nightmare, and we are hopeful that with the Euro it will all sort of die down and they'll find some other business to harass. Lesson learned - NEVER involve the Ukrainian police.

Euro cup - in full force. Center is completely blocked off to traffic, which makes delivering sheets, towels, and tablecloths to our downtown clients really difficult. Benj works around the clock - truly. We've interviewed MANY delivery drivers, and think we have a good potential who will start tomorrow (Monday) which will free up a bit of Benj's time to sleep more than 4 hours a night. The employees are okay ... but somehow over the last two weeks they've been mixing up orders (just a towel or two wrong to each hotel) which is really embarrassing and bad for business - and then Benj has to go tell the hotel how sorry we are and that it won't happen again ... and then it does happen again! So he fined all 15 employees this week for negligence on the job (I guess you can do that here) and said if they don't have any more mistakes he'll re-pay them at the end of next week. It's actually really daunting for me to even go to Bubbles because there is so much stuff - it's all orderly, but there are priest robes that we launder for the local seminary, and piles of restaurant and hotel orders, and the industrial iron never gets turned off ... there is just so much to do, and it never ends (not to mention the individual clients who come in on their own). Anyway, it sort of overwhelms me to be there - which is probably a good thing because I think it overwhelms the workers when we all show up and have three little cherubs bouncing off the walls. Oh, this is big news, we knocked out a wall this week and we're expanding Bubbles by 1,000 sq/ft ... also no easy task to coordinate since the construction creates dust, and dust and clean linens are not exactly simpatico.  

Amira turned 18 today - so that was fun to have a birthday to celebrate - the girls love birthdays! Summer (20 in August) and Amira are doing well - a little home sick at times, and sort of sporadic on helpfulness - but it is nice to have company, and help cleaning/ with the girls ... plus, it makes it so even though there's no time to go on a "date" Benj and I can still do things together (like make Bubbles deliveries, or grocery shop) which we couldn't do otherwise. Overall, I'm glad they are here and hope they have a good experience too - so far they seem to enjoy it, and we are trying to create more of a regular routine which I think will help ... hopefully:) 

Other than that - nothing too new. We love and miss you and hope you are well. Perhaps one of these days when I have enough energy I'll upload some pictures and post something on our blog ... Let me know if you are available to Skype or Facetime - we'd love to chat! You are in our thoughts and prayers, and thank you for keeping us in yours. 

Much Love,

Meagan+