Rule #1-Only one of us can be "insane" at a time.....and the boiler....

Today I woke up today feeling very down......I don't know why. Maybe not seeing the sun for weeks on end? I've been trying not to dwell on the difficult parts of moving to another country, but today I'm feeling all of it. I just feel like I'm frozen and I can't move.......I don't want to walk to the grocery store, I don't want to take the dog for a walk, I don't want to go out at all.......I know going to the gym for a good workout would make me feel better, and even just going for a walk in the woods would make me feel better...but I get so tired of feeling dizzy all the time. I just want to be still for a bit. Today I just don't have the energy to deal with that and not knowing the language enough to even ask for something at the store. I realllllly realllllly miss my children and grandchildren....my "old" friends, our old house and the town we lived in, my car...annnnd (WHAT?!?!) my job (sometimes!). I'm trying to sign up for another Dutch class, even though my therapist told me to forget trying to learn another language. I don't want to give up on it!

Andrew and I have a saying......."Only one of us can be "insane" at a time!"  Today.....Andrew woke up feeling fine!  Thank goodness! While I was moping around the house, he went out and bought some beautiful tulips for our vase, some truffel cheese (our favorite!) and some of our favorite wine! When he got back I put the flower in a vase, he cut up some of the cheese and poured us each a (small) glass of wine!

It took a couple of hours, and Andrew's help.....but I feel better now!

We did end up taking Sammy for a long walk in the woods, and we went to the grocery store together (nice to have help hauling the groceries home!).

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I've started researching areas to move to when we go back to the States. It's very overwhelming. We don't even know what State we want to live in! We're looking at the mountains in California and Nevada, Montana, Idaho and Colorado. We've also thought about checking out Texas. We do know we want to stay west of the Rockies...mostly because of the weather.

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The past few days the water temperature in the shower has been fluctuating, meaning the pressure in the boiler system is low. Sooooooo, Andrew and I decided to tackle the job on our own for the first time!

First of all, we had to hook up the hose to the radiator in the kitchen:

Then we disconnected the dishwasher and hooked up the other end of the hose to the water faucet under the kitchen sink:

I went upstairs and opened up the cabinet for the boiler (which is over the staircase):

Here is the boiler.....we shut it off, and while Andrew turned the water on downstairs I watched the pressure gauge on the bottom right. When it got to "2" I yelled downstairs to Andrew and he turned the water off!

Then we took this special key:

and put it in the pressure release valve on the radiator in the upstairs bathroom. Hot water leaks out when you do that, so you need to have a towel handy.

Whew! We did it!!! We turned the boiler back on and now it's operating normally!!!

After dinner, I was about to put everything away under the sink and discovered the connection was leaking. Soooooo, we disconnected the dishwasher again, put some plumber's tape on (luckily I had brought some from the U.S.....don't ask me why!!!), then put it all back together again. Voila, no more leak!