Chicken Little

Eek! the sky is falling, the sky is falling. Well not the sky actually, but our ceiling did. I am not sure if you can tell, but our ceiling is a beautiful intricate wood pattern, throughout the entire apartment. The picture on the left is our dining room the one on the right is part of our living room. Any-hoo, there are little piles of sawdust each day as there are termites in the ceiling of this brand new apartment building. So, on Wed. when I was having my first dinner party, in full Martha mode, some workers came to fix it because our maid, Hilda, was there. She just got done showing two workers where the saw dust piles are biggest and left the room when KABOOM, the whole ceiling fell on to the two guys on ladders. Luckily no one was hurt, but there are huge gouges in the cement wall from it falling and they just put up big solid boards its place. The had moved the chandelier, but some of the lights were ripped right out of the walls. So I come home to a huge mess, varnish fumes to make anyone high as a kite, dust everywhere, no ceiling, and 6 guests for dinner in less than an hour. The maid is yelling at the workers, "Madam has guest, you must leave now, stop make mess, madam will be home soon!"
Meredith helped me transfer everything to her house. However, Pete was delayed at school and missed dinner. As we were enjoying our Grand Marnier dessert Fred made, Peter calls to say he is lost. Now, there is no way anyone of you, other than Beth, can understand how horrific the driving is here. I cannot even put into words how the taxis cut you off, people turn at any time, lane or not, people carrying huge loads on their heads walking into the street,and the traffic circles.... oy vay! So when Pete calls to say he is lost in the dark, with the cops pulling over cars for bribes, and no street signs, I felt helpless. He had no point of reference and no way of telling me where he was. The other thing is that our phones run by these little "Orange" cards that give you credit for minutes, once you are out the phone just shuts off. So my phone runs out of minutes and I can't call him back, just wait for him to pull over, oh yeah, that's right, there is no shoulder here, no parking lots, no gas stations nicely lit to stop in for help. Luckily, we got it sorted out and it took him about 45 minutes to drive the normally 15 minute drive for that time of day. Needless to say he is not driving alone at night anymore.