Summer suitcase, or, la maleta d'estiu

It's one of those pre-departure evenings--you know the kind--of doing last-minute laundry, and taking out the trash, and putting things in semi-orderly piles so that the return view of the house in a month and a half isn't horrific.

Tomorrow we are off to Barcelona to begin, at long last, some semblance of a summer.

Although tonight it is back to pouring rain and chilly air, this weekend we actually did have something that felt summery: a couple of hot days, a bit of sunshine here and there, enough to wear sunglasses and sweat a bit--and a barbecue with friends, to boot. I've never been so happy to sweat.

I'm sure we're going to do a lot more of that (sweating) once in Barcelona, both for appealing reasons (say, weekends at the beach), and not-so-appealing reasons (the back-breaking labor of putting our house in order). But behind the unsavory prospect of hard work in the dog days of Spanish summer, sans air conditioning, is the exciting prospect of having a proper home of our own in Barcelona and getting it all set up.

I'm most eager to see how our house has shaped up now that the kitchen has been put in and the walls have been painted. The wall color question is making me the most nervous, because we had to choose paint colors via e-mail and internet, a process that I would not recommend, and M., who saw the apartment last weekend, is describing the colors as rather different than we had envisioned them. The calming light blue-gray that I wanted, for example, in the living room, sounds more like an energizing vibrant sky blue. Oh dear.

I'll do my best to update the blog with the results, and pictures, if I can get a card reader or magically make my computer acknowledge my camera's existence again. Also, I'm not so sure about the internet connection in our new place, due to Telefonica's notorious slowness in setting up accounts, so it may be spotty for a while. At least, however, I'm pretty sure it'll be sunny while the internet is gone, amounting to a kind of cosmic compensation.