Flood, Renovations and Life Moves Forward

Crikey life moves forward, finally! I am sure my readers will be pleased to hear this LOL.

I apologise for how negative and depressing this blog may have become, but that is real life I am afraid and it happens here as well as in England or any other country of birth. Just because people move to live a dream, does not mean bad things don't happen, and life can be shit for a time.

When you read my blog, you get the real me, I am afraid I cannot work out how to put on a façade, it is just my personality to be real. I don't go out of my way to hurt people, I try to help and support others but I am who I am, even in writing!  If I am writing about my life here what you read is exactly how it is and leaving out the HUGE main part of my life would just result in a fairytale.

So welcome to my real life in Bulgaria.....

Bulgaria has had some freaky weather this past year and I am not sure if it is a one off or if it is a shift in seasons. I really hope it is a one off because it has been like a bad year in England with a few weeks of Bulgarian summer thrown in. So much rain, so many floods, flash flooding and land slides, resulting in many deaths, so much destruction, terrible tourist season and a miserable crop. Our food prices have and will continue to suffer.
Boy the tomatoes were not good this year and expensive. I grew my own but must have lost at least 50% of them to the bad weather and I know some people didn't get any. I purchased some from the markets but they were no better and some were 50% dearer than other years. Suffice to say I have not jarred my years supply, but I have frozen what I can.
I am trying something different this year due to the fact that I did not have enough tomatoes ready in one go to do the jarring. I am freezing them in bags, I have been told they are just as good for cooking with.

So right now we have a mix of weather conditions. One week it is hot but with a lovely cooling breeze making it perfect, then, like right now, other weeks it will rain for days and be overcast and miserable.
It is quite chilly in my house so the fire has been lit taking off the chill and when I was out the other day I had to wear a coat Brrrrrrrr

On one of the occasions of rain I actually had a flood, yep it's been a good year here LOL.
The living room window is ground level on the outside and at some point over the years the concrete window sill has worn away.

This is the outside of the living room window at the base of the stairs.

So, this was on the future "must do" list but foolishly I believed I had time to sort it out.
On this particular day the heavens dropped so much water in such a short period. One minuet I was watching it in the garden, it can be beautiful you know, and the next I was watching it cascade through my wall which had a hole blown out of it with the pressure!

So the renovation has now gone in a different direction LOL

To say I was in shock is probably an understatement! In fact I just stood & cried saying "What do I do, what do I do"  makes me giggle now but oh dear I was really up against it.  Thank God I have really great neighbours in the village who had a water sucker upper. Once they had dealt with their own water that was coming in up through the floor Alan came over to me & sucked out all the water & ripped up all the flooring chucking it out for me.  I really don't know what I would have done without him, soooo grateful!!!!

I had been spending the couple of hours with a mop & bucket just trying to stop the water getting into the electrics in the mud room & kitchen, so I was rushing from stemming the flow into the dining room and kitchen then rushing into the mud room where the freezers are, it worked.

I spent days after in loads of pain from doing this. Amazing what muscles are used in mopping and wringing.

So now work begins tomorrow Monday 29th September.

First part is the tanking of the outside wall, so it does not happen again, then a new window but smaller away from ground level, then it is inside for the flooring.

As with most work, especially when it is such a large area, there are other things that need to be tackled at the same time to be able to get the main work done.  I am very excited about this stage of work as it means a huge improvement to the house.  So was the flood a blessing in disguise? We will see, but make no mistake it is a very expensive blessing and will take me a long time to pay for it!

Tiles are here for the flooring apart from for the halls as they will be stone. 

I went to buy the materials on Friday for all the work and was ordering the stone when they informed me it was 30 lev a quadrant!!!!  Now, I know the same stone that I want is 9 lev a quadrant as I priced it up in June. I quickly cancelled the order and will be going in on Wednesday to order it from Polski Trambesh, the delivery will also be half the cost.

This is something to remember, transport costs for all you materials, it is well worth having a van if you are going to be renovating your Bulgarian home, even if you are not doing the work yourself!  I paid 70 lev for the delivery of some tiles from Praktika. I was told in store it would be 50 lev for transport but on delivery it was 70, I assume 20 was for the guys. Had I known this I would have asked for the tiles to be moved inside LOL  Transport costs are costing me hundreds and hundreds of lev extra, boy do I miss our van, so keep this in mind if you have a lot of work to do as most will be too big or too heavy to fit in a car.

On a personal note, I am so so so much better. I was told some news going back a couple of years and although it was like a punch in the solar plexus it has released me, finally and given me the reason as to why. I now feel free'er than I have and stronger too. Situationally, nothing has changed but I have, something has shifted.  I have sent my funeral letter and have laid him to rest!  Forgiveness is a great thing and I have found release here too, it is a continual thing right now but nevertheless it is real and I am not bitter and twisted.  I also am taking anti depressants due to the fact I hit rock bottom emotionally with deep dark thoughts and knew I needed help. I now feel completely different, life is still lonely but I am quite liking my own company, most of the time. I have a friend who comes round to dinner, which gives me someone to cook for and a friend I help at car boots, so I get to see lots of acquaintances one a month too during the nice weather.

So life is looking up and I can see the sunshine again and I hope this time next year I will feel like smiling again, for real 

England, Plans and Uncontrollable Emotions

I have recently come back from two weeks in England celebrating my mum's 90th birthday and awaiting the imminent arrival of my Niece' first baby.
Unfortunately the hospital had a backlog of un-birthed mums so changed the date of her induction, so the beautiful Gracie was born on my return :-(  so sad to have missed cuddling her but hoping for Skype to be part of our bonding, please God!

My mum organised a wonderful party for her birthday with the whole family and all her friends around her. It was fabulous to meet up with family I haven't seen for donkeys years some being 16 years! Such a shock when you see someone who was a little girl last time and is now a beautiful young lady, half Italian and with such grace, a gorgeous second cousin! I met my youngest second cousin too, for the first time. She is the same age as my first two granddaughters and half Maltese. She has gorgeous curly dark locks and a beautiful smile :-) I loved sitting chatting to my cousins Italian husband Lino (love that name) catching up on the last 16 yrs, how sad is that! Obviously the shock was on all sides as they, my aunts and uncles, cousins etc had not seen my kids for years either and now they all have girls of their own.

People don't let time get in the way of your relationships especially with all the technology we now have at our finger tips! It is so sad to be distant from each other, family should be close, loving and caring!

My friend of 50 yrs also came with her husband, oh how wonderful it is to be back in touch after losing each other over the years, big catch up a few days later too and a trip over here next year, I am so looking forward to that.. I am so proud of the beauty of this country and all it has to offer the visitor or ex pat lifestyle, even on my own I love it so. The life here is hard if you are a woman alone, especially in the villages and not driving. Winter is very difficult, I have to say I am dreading it not sure a harsh winter in this house would be survivable, last year was difficult to say the least, and it was a very mild one. I had all intentions to get central heating in the house by winter but with my husband fitting it, without him I cannot afford it, I do have wood burners upstairs but I would never be able to get the wood up there or keep 4 wood burners going, it's difficult without a strong back and hands.

It was lovely to spend time with my kids and my granddaughters, all so grown up now.
I am familied up & ready to get going on the house renovations again, oop's forgot winter is coming........

A Few Steps Forward, Plans and Planning

Well here I am still alive and dare I say it, maybe moving forward slightly?
It is just too much to cope with so I guess at some point the heart says, you know what lets start to heal,  I hope anyway.
I am really trying to be positive, even when all I want to do is lay down, close my eyes and never open them again, I try.
I am still crying all the flipping time (when will this ever end?) but I find sometimes I can check it instead of it bringing me to my knees every time.  I look upon this as a major step forward (for the 3rd or 4th time), as my friend says, "Baby steps".
It doesn't help when I am being completely ignored, there is no communication other than from me and I found myself getting really frustrated and angry, I don't want this as I have no idea to this day why we are where we are, so, I don't want to sink to the level of hate or extreme dislike.
Conclusion, I am taking a huge step back and seeking legal help to retrieve my belongings and finding out how to get things sorted out. I guess this is what I need to do to let go?
I wish I understood why, but I would need to know why in the first place. I now realise I will never be told, as I would now guess the ex Mrs never knew why either. How very very sad is that! How very very sad he will one day be!

I need to find Joy again, I just can't see how right now but I will try, I will look and I will hope for some kind of future!  Oop's here I go again, it's the future thing that starts me off. How do I do a future with no one in it? How do I make a future with no money. How, how, how. Why, why, why?

I know this will sound negative but it is also positive! I have been living off nothing for the last month. Food wise I have no meat except a humongous leg of pork, which for some reason I have kept hold of ( just in case).  I have been living off what is in the larder as even the freezers are empty of meal making things other than a couple of bags of veg, which I am using. So a lot of rice, making vegetable risotto mainly. Some pasta with tomato sauce made from the little I have bought this month (toms, cucumber and a little Sirene cheese). I have made loads of Wheaten Soda bread, Lemon curd and Jam also had mayonnaise so none of this has helped my diet, sadly!