Day Eleven

This is a relaxing way to spend your birthday - get woken up at 5am by an insurance company in London calling to remind you that some policy or other runs out shortly, try to get back to sleep, fail - because your eyelids are now firmly attached to your forehead just thinking about the silly amount of stuff that needs to be done - get up, call Emily and open presents from Mrs. A. via Skype, and then shuttle for the rest of the day between building wholesalers to talk windows and doors.

Company number one was in West Chester, number two in Downingtown, three in Christiana, stop at office for 30 minutes, four in Exton, five in Frazer.

I did think that being armed with the correct dimensions would make this a relatively smooth process. Not so. I'm pretty dumb for every other day of the year, but I shot out of the apartment this morning believing the stars would be correctly aligned today and we could choose the windows and doors and order. Hah and bah.

In England you can walk into your corner shop, pick up a loaf of bread, a pint of milk, a copy of the Guardian, chat about the weather and politely request some new windows - not quite, but almost. America offers everything; windows of every shape, material and colour in any combination a window-fetishist could desire. Leather with steel attachments? You got it, Sir!

The result is mind numbing. I keep reminding myself that at least we do not have to order custom-dimension windows; when Tom and I met at the property the other day he worked out that even though each window was slightly different (really) he could build around a standard size - the difference this makes in cost and delivery time is significant enough for me to whoop.

Perhaps the stars will realign themselves tonight and the stack of options in front of me that need to be compared will be a breeze tomorrow. Uh huh.

Thanks for the birthday presents Mrs. A!