In Which We Are Overcome by Fluff

First, ARGH! www.blogger.com is being recalcitrant, and I am unable to move my $%#@ photos around. How annoying.

So, below is the walk in front of our building.


The point of these photos was to show you the poplar "fluff" that is everywhere, lo these past few weeks. It is like clouds of dandelion or milkweed seeds, and it swirls through the air, invading ears and noses, getting stuck in ice cream, on eyeballs. Piles of it gather along the curbs, but also in my apartment corners. Another expat told me how she opened her linen closet and a pile rolled out. I have heard that carelessly tossed cigarettes can cause urban wildfires. Yikes.

Can you see how it is floating in the air and over the sidewalk?


Here, it gathers in the gutter.


Moscow loves pansies. But only the blooming kind.


This is just silliness.


As is this. We celebrated A Decade of Baboo on Saturday. I guess it was also "A Decade Since I Held a Real Job." That's spooky in itself.


Our dining room. I am not responsible for the tartan plaid wallpaper.


Jennifer Lopez perfume! Oooh!


They were remarkably quiet, as a group, and so I barely noticed when they raided my shoe closet and assigned everyone a pair of high heels (no big deal . . . I can't wear them). Next thing I knew, they had all applied lipstick (again, having raided my ample stash) and were strutting, FIERCELY, across the living room floor.


The downside was that the shoes made black marks on the floor. Not the girls' fault: anyone could have done it. So I took what I thought was some wood floor cleaner (I bought it to use on the dining room table), and scrubbed up the marks. They all came up, pretty much without a struggle.

But that wood cleaner? It's a wax.

Now we are all sliding and skidding around corners. Even the cat.