So this morning's crisis involved (and this will come as a complete shock) the washing machine.

Yesterday, I put a bunch of white cotton sweaters and a few other light tops in to wash. Our washing machine only has two cycles-- normal, and permanent press or delicates-- so I used the latter. When it finished last night, I didn't feel like draping wet laundry all over the place, so I turned off the machine and figured I'd just do it this morning.

This morning, after getting all cleaned and painted and dressed and whatnot, I decided to do something about all those wet clothes. I opened the washer (it's a front loader), and a river of soapy water came gushing out all over the kitchen floor and, incidentally, my blue �ber-pointy shoes, ie. the pair of snazzy flats I own that weren't drenched in Sunday's torrential downpour. (the brown �ber-points that were soaked and destroyed on Sunday are still awaiting resurrection, as the shoe care items I have on hand are in no way up to the task and I haven't made it to the store yet. They have dried out, though. Well, mostly.)

No matter. After staring dumbly at the cascading water for a few seconds, I slammed the washer door shut after several attempts. Then I dried off my shoes. Then I got out the mop and removed a whole bunch of water from the floor. Then I used the hair dryer on my jeans, which also got soaked from mid-calf down. They're still damp, but that's as good as it's going to get for now.

On the bright side, the mop handle Elvis thought he broke while cleaning up our flooded balcony for Saturday's party is not broken after all. Or, at least, not unusably so. The balcony is flooded again after Sunday and Monday's constant rain. You would think, given the amount of rain we get around here, that the idiots who built this building would have put in some sort of balcony drainage. Well, I would anyway.

Yesterday, to my amazement, it did not rain. It was supposed to, and all the weather gurus assured me that it would. I believed them, too-- especially since there were big black clouds on the horizon. It came close at times, but in the end it turned out to be a nice one. It's supposed to be lovely today as well, then rain from tomorrow until next Thursday, which sucks since Elvis has the day off Friday, we've rented a car, and we're planning to drive down to the Algarve for the weekend.

I spent more time than I would have liked yesterday at the Junta, trying to get them to issue me with a certificate stating that I'm actually living here for the Portuguese embassy in the US. Apparently, they want proof that I am actually living with my husband since our last names are different. Which might be a bit more comprehensible if they were different, but they're not. They have a copy of my passport, issued before we got married, including the page that indicates that I have, in fact, changed my name, but it seems that they are unable to lift that first page and take a look at the second and telling them to do so has gotten us nowhere. Elvis suggested that we send them a picture of me holding a copy of the newspaper in front of the Monument to the Discoveries. They don't appear to have a sense of humor, either.

I find it strange to think that this town is being run by a Junta. It's probably down to too much study of Political Science at a formative age, but I'm not able to see or hear the word "junta" without mentally appending "military" to it. My mental picture of a Junta consists of a bunch of dark haired men with cigars, dodgy mustaches and artfully teased chest hair blossoming out of open necked, olive drab shirts. There's a red flag on the wall behind them, and possibly a picture of Che Guevara.

The Junta of Cascais is nothing at all like this. There's modern art on the walls, and potted plants. Not only that, the Junta of Cascais appears to consist entirely of women.

Which kind of threw out my plan of looking helpless and blonde and cute as possible, in the hope that they would issue the certificate without my having most of the documentation necessary to do so. Well, actually, I didn't have any of the documents they state they'll accept to prove residency. I know I'm getting a bit old for that sort of plan, but you'd be amazed at how often that sort of thing works. I always am.

The problem is that nothing is in my name. They don't want that, here. Elvis is the one that is working, I am merely a housewife, so why would we possibly put my name on the lease, the phone bill, the whatever? And some of the bills-- electricity, water-- are in our landlord's name; a very common practice. The only thing I did have in my name is the envelope where TMN sent me my new SIM card when my mobile phone was stolen last Fall. They horribly misspelt my name, and I wouldn't have kept it except that they had sent me new security numbers. In addition to that, I brought along a copy of the current issue of our women's club magazine, in which I have a column and an article, and my phone number and title are listed several times. I paired it with our latest phone bill, in Elvis' name, so they could see that phone numbers matched. It was the best I could do.

And it worked out OK. The women of the Junta are efficient and very nice. I got a chance to practice my Portuguese, since the woman I needed to talk to spoke no English. There was a woman who worked in the back that had a little, and helped out once. I need to work on the conditional tense, I think, to be more easily understood. Since I haven't technically learned it yet, I'm not disappointed in myself. It's good to know that the money spent on all those lessons wasn't wasted though.

Speaking of which, it's almost time to leave for class.