Ding dong

I hate the sound of my doorbell.  It chirps, kind of like those antique bird whistles that look like this...

I'm pretty sure we have a milk glass one somewhere in the Frost household that I remember playing with as a kid.  It's not the sound that I hate so much, but what it symbolizes. Since I live on the first floor, there are people that go upstairs all day long and pass my by door all the time.  I have a peephole, and a strong front door, but it still weirds me out when someone rings my doorbell.  There are usually three options for when someone rings my door:

1) my neighbor and friend, Yana, who lives across the hall
2) my landlord and/or husband who are supposed to call first
3) the ladies that come by to read my gas, water, and electricity meters

My apartment building is old, and the whole "creeping to the door to see who's there" doesn't work when the floor creaks.  Yana informed me of that one time.  So much for pretending I'm not home!  And now, like most Ukrainian apartments, I have two front doors.  I'll take a picture of it soon.  There was an inoperable door on the interior of my front door that my landlady's husband just recently fixed.  I told him it wasn't necessary but he insisted.  Turns out, the second door keeps a LOT of cold air out of the apartment.  It creates a little storage space for all of the cold air that slips in from the outer door.  But, this second door blocks the peephole (which we are required to have by PC living rules).  So now, if my doorbell rings, the person is really gonna know that I'm home as I have to open the interior door to even see who is on the other side.

That happened this morning as you might have guessed by the subject of today's post.  Who stood on the other side?  My landlady and her husband.  Surprise!  They didn't call first.  I'm well used to that by now, although she had gotten much better...but it looks like we've digressed a little.  Oh well.  They came bringing good news though:  my stove that sits unusable in my kitchen is being replaced, maybe as soon as tomorrow!

It is normally covered in dishes and things like that because I don't have much storage in the kitchen. But, when I heard they were taking away the old one today I quickly cleared it off for them.  Fingers crossed that a new one comes tomorrow.  They are currently cleaning what is probably years and years of dirt, old food, and dust that I don't really care to see (in my used to be very clean kitchen), so I decided to blog about it instead.  Those are flowers to the right of the stove that Phil got for his birthday...and then proceeded to give to me.  In the bottom of the picture, you'll see my emergency water storage area with lots of 2 liter bottles if the water gets turned off (as can happen in Ukraine).  The hot water heater is above the stove that heats both my individual radiators (a luxury for me to have control of the heat in my apartment) and hot water.  I'm pretty blessed when it comes to my apartment. 

Here's a question for you.  I was discussing cooking with my most advanced English club the other day, and they kept using the word "cooker" to describe the combination of oven and stove top.  Have you ever heard this word Americans?  I had not, but the group assured me that's how they learned it in school.  I questioned other classes after that, and sure enough, the consensus says "cooker" describes the oven AND cook top.  They proceeded to ask me that if cooker wasn't correct, what do we call the entire stove/oven combination.  I was stumped.  Do we have a name for the combo?  Please please please tell me if we do!  

Today's video clip comes as a movie trailer, because I couldn't find any of the specific scenes I wanted. I present to you, The Santa Clause :)

Gotta love Tim Allen. 

Maria will be here in less than 3 hours so I need to get moving...but happy Friday :)  it's almost the weekend!