The Beet Goes On

The Beet Has Gone On

2010-02-17T06:46:00.000+02:00

I've moved up in the world to my own domain at www.thebeetgoeson.net.

Please follow me there and note the new address.

Love,

The Expatresse

Out With the Old?

2010-02-16T11:02:00.002+02:00

Thanks to Author Julia for suggesting the title of today's blog entry.

I swear, Moscow was handing out some heavy, angry energy on my last few days there.

I sliced the back of my heel on a friend's stairs. I slipped on some ice and wrenched my knee. I stepped in a small hole and twisted my ankle. Banged my leg under a restaurant table. Workers cleaning ice and snow off the roof dropped a load that just missed me and the girls.

It was as if Moscow really didn't want me to leave. Or was expressing some profound anger that I was.

Yesterday was Travel Day, and I woke with very unstable stomach.

I attributed it to stress.

You see, there was an issue with getting a Power of Attorney for the move, and I thought that it was very possible that The Spouse would have to stay behind in Moscow to deal with it.

Then there was the snow, which would have grounded any airline except Aeroflot.

Add to this all the headaches of getting the cats through the bureaucracy at the airport.

I ended up going to the airport in a taxi by myself, and the driver had the heat cranked. At one point I thought I was getting car sick.

My vet, Yuri, and his wife, Valeria, accompanied us to the airport, and Valeria worked her miracles both in the vet office there and at check-in (somehow she arranged for us to have a whole row to ourselves which meant an invaluable extra two seats as it turned out).

I was feeling worse and worse. I bought a Sprite, this is how bad I felt, thinking it would make me feel better. I was hot. I was cold. I could NOT get comfortable.

Long story short, about three hours into the flight to Paris, The Expatresse utilized TWO, count 'em, TWO "air sickness bags."

I had to hand the first one to The Spouse. That's love, you know. When you can hand someone your bag of vomit.

I went and sat in the loo for a bit, but by then the crisis had passed.

The rest of the journey was uneventful.

First impressions:

We arrived at the Luxembourg Airport about 7:00 p.m. Where did everybody go? Other than the nice lady at the car rental desk, and the nice man in baggage claim, no one was there.
Where was all the traffic? It was 8:00 p.m. on a Monday night when we drove to the temporary apartment. Where did everybody go?

The apartment is light and airy and spacious, although it is really only one bedroom, and The Spouse and I have the foldout couch in the living room, and it is on the third floor (fourth as Americans count it) with no elevator, but that won't kill any of us.

It has a dishwasher in the kitchen and a washing machine in the "keller." There is a bakery right next door, and a place to park our rental car in front. There's free WiFi, and plenty of channels in French (and God knows what else) for the kids. We watched an episode of America's Next Top Model last night, and I don't know what the subtitles were. Maybe Dutch?

It is going to have to be home for a while, too, as the moving company cannot release our shipment until we receive a "certificat de residence" which we cannot possibly have before our original delivery date of April 1.

Why do the moving companies ask you when you want to take delivery when it is rarely, if ever, anything you can control? Why do they even ask?

I expect we will be here until at least May 1, which helps justify the 27 kgs of excess baggage I paid a small fortune for yesterday. I just thought we might need something other than winter coats.

The other very fun thing is that I have already driven a car! I drove The Spouse to work this morning AND found my house again. This was my first big victory as I did not study the corner of our street for landmarks on my way to his office. It really is so terribly simple it is laughable: go to the corner, turn left, and continue until you get to the street his office is on. It is a 15-minute journey round-trip. The ease of it really did make me laugh: this is so NOT Moscow.

More evident to the un-Moscow-ness of it all:

Cats, happy to be done traveling, enjoy the view.

Behind our building is a park.

This is, apparently, a lot of snow for Luxembourg.

Skittles in the kitchen.

The view in front of our building.

What a nice, sunny day.

Parting Glances

2010-02-15T05:22:00.000+02:00

Time for Some Comic Relief

2010-02-13T16:29:00.000+02:00

I have a statistics counting site that tells me where my readers come from. It has lead me to some interesting places.

An entry on my Bratislava blog became the subject of discussion on some political forum when they got to talking about how The Spouse and I were voting for each other on Hot or Not. What can I say? I think we were having simultaneous mid-life crises.

This week I noticed a lot of traffic coming from a site called WEDINATOR. So I went over to have a look, and there in the COMMENTS is a link to my blog.

Thank you Kind Wedinator Reader!

Russian wedding pictures seem to be a hit on the site, because they also had this picture (see below, if you dare). I had seen it somewhere else before . . . anyone who knows Moscow will recognize the city immediately. That is, if they can see the city.

It is a bit over-the-top, if you'll pardon the pun.

I Dunno If You're Gonna Want to Read This

2010-02-13T08:14:00.004+02:00

It's just more of me whining about My Bad Day.

You might want to navigate away from this page now.

Okay. But don't say I didn't warn you.

Moving is just stressful no matter how many times you do it. I will make a little plug for my current moving company, Crown, as they are, so far, creating a much more professional experience for me than when I moved to Moscow. I won't mention any names as your mileage may vary.

Let's just say I should have stuck with AGS. Worst mistake I ever made regarding a move.

I mean, I actually called the other company for a quote about moving us to Luxembourg and could not get their Expat Contact Lady to return my calls. In fact, the Estimate Gal who eventually came out to do the survey even said, "Oh, she never returns calls . . . she only emails."

All well and good, but how am I supposed to email you when you have my computer on your truck?

They didn't even follow up with a call to see who I had chosen.

Who doesn't call a potential client to ask for their business?

Meanwhile, Crown has not given me anything in exchange for the mention here. Unless you count letting me shout at their Documents Dude on the phone this morning.

It wasn't his fault. It was the Idiot Notary preparing the Power of Attorney documents. And Documents Dude, in his defense, actually went out of his way to be helpful.

And what was his thanks? Having to listen to me cry on the phone and make snarky remarks.

In my defense, why is it that people, especially professional movers, don't grasp that when you are in the middle of a move like this you really Do. Not. Have. Anything.

Dox Dude made the mistake of suggesting I print a document. That would be fine except your team very efficiently PACKED MY PRINTER. Yesterday.

[NB: Seriously, they went through our place like a dose of salts. They originally said they would need 2.5 days to pack and load us. And they did it in 1.5 days. They managed to take the piano out without me even hearing it. Unlike when The Clowns brought it in. Up. Every. Step. For. Seven. Flights. BAM. BAM. BAM.]

Okay, okay. Here's my whole day.

7:30 a.m. Left New (temporary) Apartment and dropped kids off at school.

[NB: The New Apartment is just fine. Really. But the toilet makes me laugh. It is a "water closet." As in my knees hit the wall making the whole process not unlike the stateroom scene out of A Night at the Opera.]

I mistakenly thought I could relax for a bit, enjoy a coffee and maybe a little breakfast, while I waited for HR Babe at The Spouse's old job to get to work. I thought I would breeze in and sort out a few details. Never occurred to me that she might have meetings until 11:00.

Sheesh. The nerve.

So I ate half a cheese omelet and then went to what we are now referring to as the "Old Apartment."

I cleaned the bathroom and started on the kitchen when The Vet called to say she had my travel documents. She came over and explained everything I will have to do at the airport on Monday.

She left at 10:45. I know because I had set the alarm on my phone to go off reminding me to go see HR Babe.

In the meantime, I had several snarky conversations with Crown's Document Dude. Including the one as I was leaving the building that frustrated me so that I started to cry.

The details aren't that important.

But the short version is what notary won't accept your actual passport when Russian Immigration will, but insists on a translated form that then has to be notarized? It's not like our names on our Russian visas aren't already in Cyrillic.

Got to HR Babe's office around noon and filled out some forms so The Spouse can have some life insurance until we buy him another plan in Luxembourg.

Because when you work for an American company, things like life insurance come with the job. But insurance is not a benefit with a European employer because they all have insurance through their country. And so will we once we have a residency permit. Health insurance anyhow.

The life insurance we will have to buy. In the meantime, since The Spouse had that little pulmonary thrombosis scare while the rest of you were eating turkey and cranberry sauce, I thought I might want to extend his current policy.

Except.

Except, they want a check.

I haven't written a lot of checks since 1999 when I started living abroad. But I do still own a checkbook.

Which the movers very efficiently packed.

Because, I don't need it. Usually.

So I had to call American Blogging Girlfriend Katbat and ask her to write me a check.

"When you come back," said HR Babe, "just leave the check in an envelop at Reception."

"Um, HR Babe," I had to ask. "Can you give me an envelop?"

She was horrified, and did and even gave me a sleeve to carry the copies of the insurance forms. Because I am really without anything I normally have access to.

I'm about as prepared as the family pet. And it's extremely stressful.

Baboo finished school at 1:00 p.m. I stopped at the bank before and took a LOT of dollars out of the ATM to give to Sister Katbat and then ran around looking for one of those machines to feed money into for my phone. They are everywhere when you don't need one and curiously missing when you do. And boy, oh, boy, now that The Spouse has a Lux number and we aren't both with the same Russian service provider, is my phone ever costing me a mint!

Took Baboo to the New Apartment and then ran across the street to Hoover down a Big Mac Combo Meal.

[NB: There's a McDonald's across the street from us now. I can count on one hand the number of times I have been in a McDonald's since we moved to Moscow. Mostly I walk in and walk out because there is NO PLACE TO SIT. McDonald's just celebrated 20 years in Moscow, and it is as popular as ever.]

While I was sitting there inhaling French fries, my phone rings.

It's Natasha from the Luxembourg office. She's handling our travel details. She wants to know the measurements of my cats' travel cages.

Which would have been really easy to answer even yesterday when I had access to measuring devices, but now I. Do. Not. Have. Anything.

Quick: Tell me where to buy a measuring tape in Moscow! Metric or English, it doesn't matter.

I know of two hardware stores . . . and a few of those places in the perehods where you can get yarn and embroidery kits . . . but tick-tock, tick-tock . . . Natasha is two hours behind me, but she still needs the information today.

I admit to crying again while snarfling French fries, wasting an awful lot of my phone credit blubbering to Natasha about my helpless state, and wondering if I choked on the fries if anyone would try to rescue me or if they would just push my lifeless body under the counter where I was sitting, happy to have found a seat in McDonald's.

Realized I could ask Katbat, a confessed sewer, if she had a tape measure while I was over at her place utilizing her banking services.

Loyal Beetnik, Katbat truly is One-Stop Shopping. She lent me her measuring tape, which I must return this weekend.

I dropped the check off for HR Babe (thankfully Katbat lives across the street), picked up second child at 3:00 p.m. (who, like her sister, was weepy about her Last Day . . . heartbreaking to watch) and 5 liters of water (which is heavy!), and took both to the New Apartment before running back to the Old Apartment to measure the cat cages.

Got back to New Apartment around 5:00 p.m.

Now, as I type this, having the benefit of a very nice dinner out and a healthy portion of vodka, all of this seems so silly. But at the time I was just holding on until this moment.

Stay tuned.

EU 998

2010-02-10T09:03:00.000+02:00

Here's a tip for traveling with pets to the EU.

You need a form. EU 998.

The Veterinary Certificate for Domestic Dogs, Cats, and Ferrets Entering the European Community for Non-Commercial Movements.

If you google it, you will find lots of nice websites offering to sell it to you for $7.50 a copy.

Or you can just go here and get it for free.

Oh, and if you need it in other EU languages? Say, for example, you are going to Luxembourg, and they really want the bilingual (French/English) version? Then go here and scroll down until you find it.

Easy-peasy.

And free.

One Week From Today . . .

2010-02-08T18:42:00.002+02:00

. . . and what'll we do with Luxembourg?

I'm So Tired, I Can't Even Come Up With a Funny Title for This Blog Entry

2010-02-04T20:05:00.003+02:00

Oy, such a day I've had of it.

Yeah, I'm going to complain a little. But man, oh, man, it was TOUGH out there today.

Oh, it was deceptively pretty outside because the temperatures were, once again, rather mild. Only -7C, which, in the sun (of which there was plenty), was right nice. As long as the wind wasn't blowing. Which, unfortunately, it was.

This, combined with the Zamboni-ed quality of our city sidewalks . . . well, to quote a favorite blogger of mine, JESUS FISHSTICK CHRIST! Somewhere, and I swear it was this week, I read that Russia or maybe just Moscow is having the worst winder since, oh, say the Siege of Leningrad, but now, try as I might, I cannot find it. (I did stumble on this, however: "The big freeze of ’63: People fell ‘like skittles’" is a little too close for comfort.)

Long story short I had to TAKE CHILDREN TO SCHOOL this morning, which wasn't too horribly awful,except for the first part of the walk, right outside our building, which is also slightly downhill.

Then I had to GO TO THE AMERICAN EMBASSY (long, boring story involving FS-240 forms, the elusive DS-1350, and one notarized copy for $30; yes, thank you, my tax dollars hard at work), but my appointment was for 9:00 (earliest available) and, as we learned when we went on Monday, one will inevitably arrive at 8:30 and there's precious little to do in the neighborhood except to stroll around, and this is what I attempted to do (I did identify and then stand in front of the Chekhov House which I knew was nearby because Blogging Friend Dina mentioned it this week), but the wind was so strong and the sidewalks so slippery (and I had, foolishly, not worn my Yak Trax), that I was white-knuckled and drenched in sweat by the time 9:00 rolled around.

After I WENT HOME, but stopped to buy The Spouse nuts at the perehod between Mayakovskaya and our place. It was on THE WALK HOME FROM NUT SHOPPING, that I noticed, with a certain irony, that the parking lot/sidewalk in front of the GAI/Traffic Police Building was not only CLEAN and DRY, but had been SALTED.

Ah hem.

Not even the sidewalk in front of the US Embassy is SALTED! What is up with that anyhow? I have it on good authority that every stick of furniture in the embassy comes directly from the US of A and that the ambassador himself eats his breakfast off of a FIESTAWARE plate, for God's sake, that rests on a COLONIAL STYLE table. Well, the American ambassador in Bratislava did anyhow. As do I. The Fiestaware, I mean. Not the Colonial style furniture. But the point is: wasn't there any room for a little Morton's in the old diplomatic pouch? Can't anyone help a fellow American who is down on her luck?

But I digress.

I went home and barely sat down when The Spouse called and asked would I please GO BACK TO THE SCHOOL TO COLLECT SOME DOCUMENTS. Which I did.

Interesting thing happened here: I had exited the Metro and paused to put on my Yak Trax (I am a slow-learner, but I do eventually catch on), when a woman came up to me and begged me (in Russian) to PLEASE, PLEASE TELL HER WHERE I GOT THESE THINGS BECAUSE, HAVE YOU NOTICED? IT'S LIKE DEATH OUT HERE! When I told her I bought them v Amerike, she wept.

Then, before she even turned away, ANOTHER woman came up to me and started telling me that I needed a massage and that she was a professional and a doctor and her name is Galina and here is her number and lots of other details that I did not get because she was speaking in Russian. The funny thing here, other than the fact that I am almost completely sure that I fell asleep on the Metro twice today, was that seconds before I was accosted by the weeping woman, I was on the Metro escalator reminding myself to BREATHE and draw ENERGY from the Universe and all that other good granola stuff they tell you in yoga class. And I was even thinking, "I could use a spa when this move is over. Or at least a yoga class." And I tried not to fall asleep again on the escalator, but to BREATHE or at least remember to KEGEL and BAM! Whaddya know: the Universe does, indeed, provide. In the form of Dr. Galina, Massage Therapist. Who, other than the fact she was offering massages to total strangers on the street, seemed normal and even comforting, sort of like Sada Thompson in Family or Dianne Wiest in Law & Order.

I did escape and completed my errand at the school and then CONTINUED ON TO THE SPOUSE'S OFFICE where I delivered the documents I had collected that morning from both the embassy and the French school and even stayed to have a little lunch with him in one of the restaurants in the basement of his building.

[Note: We ran into The Spouse's Tall, Handsome, and Humorless German Former Big Boss today, and while the three of us were discussing what it is like to suddenly work for a company that isn't American and doesn't provide life insurance as a benefit and how you have to buy your own but you can keep the existing policy for a little while after leaving the American employer but only with coverage up to $125,000 which is better than a sharp stick in the eye but won't keep me and the girls forever without me heading back to the workplace after 11+ years away, I decided to blurt out that, "No, but it will keep me going long enough to find another husband . . . maybe get a little work done first," and Tall, Handsome, Humorless German Former Big Boss just looked appalled. I blame the icy sidewalks for my inability to self-censor.]

After that I WENT HOME and realized I needed to RUN TO THE GROCERY STORE before GOING BACK TO THE SCHOOL AT 5:00 TO COLLECT THE GIRLS.

Ah, sweet liquor eases the pain.

In other, totally unrelated news: There is a kid at the girls' school, let's call her "Heather," who has the dubious reputation for being the school's Self-Appointed Fashion Police. Famous in song and legend, I finally caught a glimpse of her as I walked the girls to school this morning. "Heather's" signature line this year is "You have to take action!" She also likes to make click-y noises while pointing with a finger-gun.

Today, she approached Baboo in the lunchline and said, in French of course, "Psst. C'mere." When Baboo responded, Heather pointed at Baboo's shirt and said, "Stripes are SO last year." Pointing then to another kid (who Baboo reports had "pants on the ground") she told Baboo, "Ça, c'est bien!"

Baboo responded by raising an eyebrow.

The playground, or in this case the lunch room . . . it is a cruel place.

In Which I Pay It Forward

2010-02-03T08:16:00.002+02:00

With temperatures soaring in Moscow this week (we are hovering right below freezing as I type) the hot debate among the expat crowd here is whether (geez, I can't stop the puns) we prefer last week's bitter cold (super cold = sun, blue skies, and relatively clean sidewalks, such as Moscow sidewalks are) to this week's tropical climes.

Warmer Weather = Sidewalk Hell

Honestly, I am sure there are plows in Moscow, but the streets I walk on sure haven't seen any. And this heavy, wet snow, while, um, heavy, is easy to shovel off the sidewalks.

Where are all our hardworking Tajiks?

And didn't our Mayor promise to divert all of Moscow's snow? What's up with that?

It is a mess out there. So much so that yesterday I finally put on my Yak Trax (again, no money changed hands here between me and the good people at Yak Trax except when I purchased four pairs of their product).

Mine look like this pair. Except I have lived in Moscow long enough not to be caught dead in shoes this boring. Even my Very Practical Winter Boots have some style. They just have day-glo green Yak Trax on them now.

The Verdict: Both The Spouse and I concur that our ability to navigate the city streets yesterday, while still difficult, was MUCH IMPROVED once we donned our Yak Trax. I did have to pop mine off to enter the Metro (they don't seem the thing to wear on a slipper, marble-esque floor), but it was easy enough to do.

I did not break out my pair until later in the day when I went to collect the children from school. Earlier in the day I went without, and let me tell you, it was rough going. Even the supposedly clean surfaces in the perehods/street underpasses were treacherously slippery.

Which is why when I passed an old woman, inching her way along the perehod, WITH A CANE, making weeping/whimpering noises, I had to turn around and go help her.

I cannot count the number of times total strangers here have helped us. Not just in my grocery store (where they refuse to sell me anything they deem is not fresh), but on the street, too. More than once we have had to ask for directions and when folks don't know they often go find out for us. It's quite sweet and very moving.

So I had to at least offer to help this woman.

She was old, but dressed well enough: good solid shoes, a fur hat, a thick sheep-skin coat. She had her wits about her. She just could not find any purchase on the floor surface. Since my Russian is virtually non-existent, I couldn't understand the outpouring of chatter when I first offered her my arm. I don't know if she had fallen (she didn't have any telltale wet and smudgy spots on her coat) or just went out to run an errand having misjudged the severity of the street surfaces.

She was happy to have me help her, however. I linked arms with her and held her hand and slowly, slowly we made our way through the perehod and up the stairs to street level. There is no way she could have done this on her own.

Once we reached street level, she seemed unsure exactly which way she wanted to go. She knew the address, however, and in typical Muscovite fashion, she asked several passersby until she got what she needed.

A young Russian man asked if we needed help. If I could have spoken to him, I would have said, "Yes! I have no idea how far this woman needs to go!" But my companion told him, "No, no, we're doing fine," much to my disappointment.

She had a small plastic bag that she held in the same hand with her cane. It seemed to contain one of those local newspapers and an open can of Coca Cola, among other things. She was very concerned that the Coke would spill out of the can and onto the contents of the bag. I was wondering why she didn't just discard the can (we passed several trash cans), but at one point she stopped, got the can out of her bag (with great difficulty), and had a swig.

I can't say I wasn't ever-so-slightly tickled to see her enjoying one of my favorite American products.

"Are you French?" she asked me.

Nope. American.

That seemed to please her. Oh, this was one of those times that I desperately wished I spoke better Russian. It would have been so interesting to have a real conversation with her.

Once up on the sidewalk, we began inching down the street. I know this section of sidewalk, and there is a point in front of an office building where the surface stone changes (for aesthetic purposes) to something I nearly killed myself on earlier that day. I was not about to let her navigate that by herself.

Thankfully, we stopped just as we reached that point.

"I don't know what number this is," she kept saying. "What number is this?"

I couldn't see an address, but while we were standing there, the Concierge Dude for the building saw us and came out. He was able to tell her that we had passed her destination, but only just.

So back we went while younger, speedier Moscow flowed like water all around us.

I got her to the door she declared was her destination, and held it for her so she could go inside.

"Beautiful! Beautiful!" she kept telling me, and gave me big kisses on my cheeks.

I don't know how she got home, but I hope she had a little help.

In Moving News: I guess we are T-12 Days since we leave Moscow February 15. Although the movers will handle all the packing, there are a million and one details left to sort out. Remember to have the water people come and take their cooler back. Sort out interim health/life insurance coverage until new kicks in. What on earth are the cats going to travel in? And what am I going to do with them (and the children) next Wednesday when the movers are here (short day at school that day, The Spouse will be out of town, and we won't have a temporary apartment in Moscow until the following day)?

In the Good News Column, we will have a rental car waiting for us in Luxembourg when we arrive, as well as temporary digs. We can go there directly from the airport. The question is, how long do we think it will take us to find a permanent place to rent? Two weeks? Four?

Argh.

The mind reels.

Čizi Piži Redux

2010-02-01T18:34:00.005+02:00

As those of us who travel all know, the best (that is funniest) stories involve embarrassing language snafus. Or horrible foreign toilets. Or both.

But I'm just going to talk about food this time.

Both The Spouse and I have had our disasters with misunderstanding a foreign menu and ending up with something we did not expect.

It happened to me on my First Ever Trip to France. We had been in Paris for several days, and I thought I had gotten the hang of the French dinner menus: you pick a price category or menu, and then you can usually select from several options in that price range. I wanted to branch out a little and try something new, so I ventured into Fish World and ordered something that sounded a bit more romantic, more poetic. What I thought was the French version of those menu items you find in a Chinese restaurant that give no clue as to the actual dish ingredients. You know like Happy Family or Three Delicacies Over Sun Moon Lake.

I ordered Aile de Raie, which I knew meant Wing of Ray.

What I did not expect was that it really meant WING OF RAY. As in skate. In a lemon caper sauce.

I was hungry, and this was not at all what I wanted, and The Spouse had ordered a really nice Merguez couscous, and he was hungry too and not into sharing.

I wept and, because we were in France, mimed a ray, hoping to garner pity, but to no avail.

His turn came years later in Bratislava at a restaurant called Voch. I don't think it is there anymore, but they used to serve this fantastic dessert called something like an Emperor Pancake or Kaiserschmarrn. Oh, God, it was good.

So we go one night, and we are sitting outside in the square there ordering our dinner, and The Spouse finds an item on the menu called Čizi Piži.

He quizzes the waiter in Slovak: "Is it good?"

Waiter, noncommittally: "Umm, yeah. I guess."

The Spouse sees the Slovak word for baked in the description: "So it's baked?"

Waiter: "In a cream sauce."

The dish arrives, and that was when we learned the Very Important Lesson in Slovak:

Pečeň does not mean baked.

It means LIVER.

Pečeny means baked.

Today, I met The Spouse for lunch. There is a restaurant in the building where his office is that features a daily Business Lunch. We had the same thing in Slovakia: the restaurant offers a fixed menu for a reasonable price. It's quick and, as long as you like the offering, it can be a good value. Order off the regular menu at lunch time and you will throw the kitchen into chaos as they are prepared to whip out the Business Lunch Menu.

So we have started getting the Business Lunch when we go there. The choices on the menu today are some sort of chicken dish with rice or a fish dish with mashed potatoes. I had a fish dish the last time I was there, so I opt for the chicken dish.

So does The Spouse.

It comes with a nice salad of salted tomatoes, cucumbers, and grated carrots and a bowl of meat solyanka . . . very delicious and typically Russian.

Then the main course comes.

Well, you can probably see where I'm going with this.

It's chicken, alright. In a cream sauce with sauteed onions over rice. But not chicken fingers or even chicken thighs.

It was CHICKEN GIZZARDS. куриные потрохи.

"I had NO idea it was going to be organ meat," The Spouse says as he and I pick around out gizzards and eat only the rice and onions.

"I thought that it would be a shape or cooking method," he sighs as we leave the restaurant. "Not a body part."

Burning Down the House?

2010-02-01T08:08:00.000+02:00

I really should be focusing more on arrangements for the move. Or at least washing the breakfast dishes and running the vacuum. I could put a load of laundry in to run while I type.

All of which is a lot more useful, at the end of the day, than sitting around thinking about my sweaty elbows.

Maybe they are "sweating" elbows.

I dunno. All I know is I woke up in the wee hours of the morning and the crooks of my elbows were positively wet.

Ewww.

Who gets sweaty/ing elbows?

I don't suppose anyone really wants to read about my menopause symptoms. At one point I thought that perhaps the blog would be more of an Everywoman thing, with the emphasis on my age group. The location would just be an after-thought.

The (Peri)Menopausal Mom Who (As It Just Happens) Lives in Moscow.

But that angle never really got any traction, as the kids say. Rather than hitting those Comedic Female Moments We All Can Relate To, it seemed instead to generate a room full of readers who coughed nervously, crumbled their programs nosily, and stared at their shoes uncomfortably. Amidst microphone feedback.

But it seems like there should be SUCH good material to be mined there.

I've seen other blogs with a regular Too Much Information feature. TMI Monday or something like that.

Sweating elbows.

That probably qualifies as TMI.

Or maybe it's a DIY problem.

Maybe they are merely the product of an over-heated Moscow apartment (it is a balmy -3C outside this morning, yet the heating is still cranked for colder temperatures). Maybe the Humorless French Doctor Across the Street was right: maybe I have not yet had a proper hot flash.

The Spouse always said I was wrong not to explore a career in HVAC.

I have a friend from childhood who recently relayed the story of how she woke one night. She toddled off to the bathroom, as so many of us do, and while there, became convinced she was dying of a heart attack or worse.

"I was burning up," she told me. "Suddenly, just BURNING UP. I couldn't move. I started crawling back to the bedroom, calling for my husband to come help me because I was certainly dying!"

Husband was just as mystified, and, well and truly frightened for her well-being, offered to call 9-1-1, when it hit her. She wasn't suffering from a heart attack.

It was a hot flash.

Call me callous, but that's a funny story.

Speaking of heat, here is a Devil Cat shot for you.

Crooky is definitely in her Climbing Phase. This Being-On-The-China-Cabinet is a recent thing, and I don't care for it at all. I suppose if she were an outdoor cat, she would be getting stuck in trees. So in that case, I prefer the china cabinet. But I am not looking forward to her knocking the whole thing down.

Okay. Enough procrastination. Housework Waits for No Woman.

God Makes Them

2010-01-31T13:15:00.002+02:00

Yesterday The Spouse, Baboo, and I went out to the market at Izmailovsky (Metro Partizanskaya). Skittles had a play-date/sleepover.

I've been many times before, but I wanted to get some things before we leave Moscow. Namely a fur hat for The Spouse, one for Skittles that covers her ears (her white fluffy one does not), and fur scarves like the one I bought for myself in Suzdal. (See photo here.)

Here are the girls in their hats.

Aunt Heidi is now the proud owner of the white hat.

I already have a crazy Russian hat that I love.

The City of Moscow shut down part of the market, but just the rabbit warren of vendors hawking cheap Chinese-made crap outside the "vernisage."

Unfortunately, Baboo was charged with remembering to bring my camera and she forgot. So no photos of the shopping. But if you look on Google Images you will find other people's photos.

Since I bought all our chapki (hats) from a dealer there before, I came armed with cash, prices I was willing to pay, and ready to bargain.

We got The Spouse a hat like this, but a better one (no suede) for about a quarter of this price. I got Skittles a white hat like Baboo's pink one. She is thrilled. Plus, two fur scarves (better than mine, I'm afraid to confess).

We had shashlik from one of the shashlik stands. Because it is winter, they directed us to the dining room upstairs, behind the grills.

I had never been there before, and it was very Russian-y, I tell you. It was not heated at all, but enclosed with lots of windows, like a sun porch. No one took off their coat to eat. Two men at the table next to us were eating all sorts of sausages and pickled vegetables, smoking endless cigarettes, and splitting a bottle of vodka between them. They were cheerful and boisterous.

There was a babushka-type clearing tables. The Spouse saw her saving uneaten meat in a plastic bag. Whether it was for herself, street dogs, or to go back on the grill for the next customer, I told The Spouse, "I am going to leave her a tip."

We left her 20 rubles. She was gobsmacked. "Spasibo," she told The Spouse.

Although I wasn't feeling a burning need for any more Uzbek ceramics (I have some, although they are really, really lovely), I said I wouldn't mind wandering by the vendors' stands, just to see.

I looked. But I didn't find anything calling my name.

What I DID find were these whimsical ceramic figures that I absolutely did not need at all.

The little one is for you, VW.

The vendor was a very large woman in a chapka like mine that rode so low on her face I could not see her eyes. She spoke a mile a minute about her products (in Russian, of course):

Her: "We don't do it [make the ceramic items] for the money. We do it for art. Doing it for the money is senseless."

Her: "We don't know how we make them [the decorative designs on the pieces]. God makes them."

Her: "It's cold today. I'll give you a discount because it is so cold."

Her: "You can see yourself reflected in their eyes."

Her: "They will be lonely. You need to buy more!"

Her: "Each piece is unique. No two are the same."

Her, noting a chip in a piece: "Let me give you another one. It's the same. That one has a bad ear."

She had a Laika dog I kind of liked.

Her: "She's looking up at the stars."

Then I noticed the piece below.

When she turned it around to show me the back, I had to have it.

I don't know the significance of the rabbit (or the mosquito), but that clenched the deal for me.

Yeah, yeah, I know: more tchotchke clutter to dust and break. And right before moving, too. But I only regret the things I DON'T buy.

Moscow By Night and By Day

2010-01-29T20:51:00.004+02:00

I hesitate to share this link because I do not believe it is in any way representative of the majority of Russian women. That said, it's like a car crash: you cannot help but look. And I will say that I have come across this demographic in Moscow.

I sat next to one last night.

Now, in fairness, Russian women outnumber Russian men, so they have a lot of competition. They tend to be extremely well-educated, attractive, and smartly put together at all times. Age and BMI is no excuse: above all else, you must be well-dressed, well-shod, and womanly (I hesitate to say "feminine," for that could carry a negative connotation: Russian women are not weak nor are they subservient).

That said . . . Moscow is . . . well . . . Moscow.

So I was at this little Thank You Do last night in a local English-style pub. (No, they didn't give me anything for mentioning them . . . the Thankers paid.) The owner or manager or General Big Cheese stops over to chat with us briefly about some plans he has to promote the place with the expat sports crowd.

And he brings along his companion.

I don't know if she was his steady or his Pay-As-You-Go. But she was a hoot. Asian features (I thought maybe she was Thai or Chinese, but the Russians with me said no). Pretty and very slim. In the tightest, most sprayed-on-looking lavender mini-dress I have ever seen. Bare legs. Super high heels.

Honestly, she looked at me and I looked at her, and then I looked at the woman across the table from me and she and I both rolled our eyes.

And then I turned to Miss Thing and said, in all sincerity, "Girl, you are working that dress."

That was it. We were officially BFF.

"What clubs do you go to?" she asks me.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WHAT CLUBS DO I GO TO? DO I LOOK LIKE I CAN HONESTLY GET PAST MOSCOW NIGHTCLUB FACE CONTROL? DO YOU REALIZE I AM OLD ENOUGH TO BE YOUR MOTHER??!!

" . . . I went to Krisis Genre once . . ." I say meekly.

"Oh, that's not a good club," she tsk-tsks. "You should go to We Are Family. It's a good club." She then proceeds to describe someone she saw dancing the last time she went there.

"A drag queen?" I keep asking, but she didn't seem to get what I was saying. Hmmm. Maybe she's the drag queen? Note to self: If I ever see her again, I will look for an Adam's apple.

"You should go," she repeats.

"Now how am I supposed to get past face control in a place like that?" I ask her.

"Oh, you just reserve a table," was the [obvious . . . duh-oh!] answer. "Then there's no face control."

N.B. Reserving a table in one of Moscow's ultra-popular clubs could run you hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.

We are from vastly different planets.

But she gave me her number. Just in case, I guess.

I was still laughing a few moments later out on the street as my hostess hailed us a gypsy cab. The driver was charming and courteous, if gold-toothed. He chatted amiably with my companions, all of us more covered in warm, winter clothing than not, as we flew through the dark Moscow night. I was home within five minutes.

Today had its own adventures. We had to run an errand at the Luxembourg embassy. It's over near the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The church is another one of those rare places where photos are not permitted, so I don't have any to share of the interior, but you can read about it here.

Outside was a real winter day. In spite of the Mayor of Moscow's claims that he would seed the clouds and prevent snow from falling in town, we had gray skies and light, but steady snowfall all day.

Very Russian-y.

This is the famous House on the Embankment. Wikipedia gives a very bland description of it here. A more thorough explanation about the significance of this building can be found in this blog.

Can you see the ghost of one of the Seven Sisters in the background?

Here you can see the dreadful statue of Peter the Great. This article gives the background.

And here we are looking towards the Kremlin. The Moscow River is actually frozen. We could see footprints in the snow on it.

By then it was lunchtime, and at first we thought we'd head back to The Spouse's office as there is a quick, but uninspiring restaurant in the basement. But we spied a cafe/pizzeria next to the cathedral and ventured in. When we lived in Slovakia we had lunch together more days than not, so it was a really nice treat to sort of have a date in the middle of the day. We just had the set lunch menu or "business lunch," but the cafe was elegant and chic and the weather outside delightfully frightful.

Then it was back to work for both of us.

"A Thing in Life"

2010-01-28T17:23:00.002+02:00

Our kids are teetering on the Cusp o' Adolescence these days. The Baboo One even has a few blackheads along the side of her nose.

The Baboo One has taken to spending more and more time in the bathroom examining herself in the mirror, and she tends to close the door now to do so. She was in just such a position the other night, examining her misbehaving pores, when she spied Skittles, peering at her through the opening left by the ever-so-slightly-ajar-door (no door in our place closes properly).

Skittles assessed the situation and declared, "Pimples. A thing in life."

We think it's "spot on," pardon the pun, and a great comment on so many of life's "things." We've starting substituting anything that vexes us for "pimples."

"Icy Sidewalks. A Thing in Life," for example.

You know, the last two winters were sort of ho-hum here, and I was actually a bit worried that we would never get to experience a Proper Russian Winter, and that, years from now, we would look back on our time in Moscow and remark, "You know it never got very cold," and feel cheated.

Well, I am getting my money's worth this winter. And I don't mind, really. I mean, if you're gonna be in Moscow, this is the weather you want!

Boy, oh, boy, has it been cold this week. So cold, in fact, that I've actually taken to SHUTTING the little windows in our apartment (fear not: I always open them in such a way that the cats cannot get out). Highs have been around -16C, and the lows have been in the mid -20sC.

The good part about this sort of Really Cold Weather, or, perhaps I should say the reason for this Really Cold Weather is the clear blue sky. No Clouds = Extra Cold. So we've had glorious sunshine sparkling off the golden onion domes. It is a lovely thing.

Honestly, today I was Out and About running various errands, and the air was full of tiny, twinkling snowflakes. Not a cloud in the sky. The sun was shining, but there was this glitter all around me. It's probably the result of condensation from car exhaust or something equally horrible. But at the moment, it was magical. Just magical.

What is NOT fun about this weather is the City of Moscow's insistence that Salt On Ice Is BAD! Oh, they "clean" the sidewalks. They shovel and sweep, removing any terrain on which your boots might find purchase until it's smoother than an NHL hockey rink after the Zamboni's been by.

I taught the kids to say "slick as snot," but, honestly, snot would provide better traction.

May I introduce Exhibit A:

The photo above was taken at 7:30 this morning on our trek to school. Long story, but we all had to go today. See the sidewalk? No? Neither can I because it is COVERED IN FREAKING ICE AND SNOW!

The one above is the entrance to our building, otherwise known as The Plaintiff's Steps.

It's about 11:30 in the a.m. See how clean our walkway is? And they've been working on it, too!

I stood by, at the ready, in case I had to help the woman in the hat go up the steps. I can barely do it, so I was worried I'd see her fall and break a hip before my very eyes.

Here's a guy working on a larger part of the sidewalk near our building. You think he's got the whole area clean with his twig broom (at least that creates SOME texture on the ice/snow). But click on the photo and blow it up: the sidewalk isn't clean. It's all BROWN AND ICY. Just in case you started to get all confident or something.

This has nothing to do with ice, snow, or treacherous surfaces. It's just funny. What cat lies like that?

Speaking of funny, you might get a chuckle out of this.

I've been wearing my "winter silk" long-johns the past few days. They aren't too, too heavy and really do help keep me warm when I'm outside. But today, when I got home from one of my many jaunts about town, I was too lazy to take them off. I only took off my pants ("trousers," to you Brits) since I was home alone and the long-johns are not too warm to wear in the house if they are all I have on.

Mine are black with a little bit of lace trim around the ankles. Very fetching.

So I'm typing away on email or something and the doorbell rings. The one to the door to my apartment, not the exterior door to the building. I go and look through the spy-hole, and there's a guy there, with a tool bag and a uniform. Like a Repair Dude.

"GAS!" he shouts cheerfully, and I remember: I saw him last year!

Against the advice of my Faithful Russian Girlfriend in Bratislava, I open the door and let him in, only then realizing that I am wearing these dumb, black, silk long-johns. They are opaque enough, but it isn't really the sort of thing one wears to receive guests.

I don't know what Gas Dude's goal is. Last year he puttered around my kitchen, smelling strongly of vodka, until he gave up looking for whatever it was he needed. He's sort of avuncular and not at all threatening.

This year was not so different: he looked at my stove (and in cabinets and around the fridge and under the sink), all the while chatting cheerfully in idiomatic Muscovite. He was not at all flapped by my attire. Instead, he politely ignored it, filled out a form, thanked me, and left.

Gas Dude (or maybe Black Long-Johns?): A Thing in Life.

Babble Update: 15??!! The blog is currently at Number 15??!! Oh, there's a lotta love in the room. Thank you all so very much.

The Beet Goes On . . . Literally

2010-01-25T08:00:00.000+02:00

Oh, Loyal Beet-nik. What a long, strange trip it's been.

And it seems that our time in Moscow is just about over.

Next stop: LUXEMBOURG!

No, I don't really know anything about Luxembourg either, other than what I have gleaned from the Interwebz over the past few days. But, it looks interesting, and it's happening soon (say, mid-February).

The Spouse got a new job (something neither of us was especially looking for . . . a virtual friend from one of the expat forums sent him a message right after Christmas and said, "Dude, you might want to apply for this!"). It's a good job with lots of room to grow professionally. In fact, it sounds like it might be a lot of fun, and not just because it has to do with VODKA!

Isn't that funny? So perfect for us. A fun product in a truly multi-lingual country (they have three official languages: French, German, and Luxembourgish).

Party at Beets' place!

So the Million Dollar Question is: SHOULD I CREATE A NEW BLOG? Or should The Beet Go On?

The Spouse came up with the title to this blog after watching me flail about with boring ideas. I've been brainstorming new blog titles, but I thought I'd share a few and let you all weigh in with your thoughts and title ideas. I haven't asked him for any help yet.

First, in keeping with the idea of using a song title in the blog title and recognizing that Luxembourg is a DUCHY, I could call the Luxembourg blog PASS THE DUCHY.

Yeah, I know. Now I have the song stuck in my head.

Then there are titles with plays on the word Luxembourg:

If LUX Could Kill
LUX Can Be Deceiving
LUX Like a Winner to Me

Then there are possible titles with plays on Luxembourg's size (since it really is tiny . . . only about 500,000 people in the whole ~~country~~ . . . I mean duchy which is smaller than Rhode Island).

999 Square Miles
Bigger Than a Bread Box
Size Does/Doesn't Matter

And while there are a million details to work through regarding the whole move, THIS is the burning question for me.

Ticking Away the Moments That Make Up a Dull Day

2010-01-23T16:27:00.001+02:00

Not really dull: just sort of everyday. IF you live in Moscow.

Thursday, I went out to find a place to get a new battery for The Spouse's watch. Easier said than done. LOTS of places had signs that said "Watch Repair." But when I inquired, they would apologize (or shout) that there was no "Master" there. In two places the clerks pointed down the street.

I headed down the street, twice, but had no luck until I ran into a French friend (her kids are classmates of mine).

"Oui, there is a place near here," she told me. "You continue up the street a while . . . maybe 400 meters. By the church on the left is a small street. Turn onto it, and you will see a door with a sign. Go through the door and downstairs. But I can't promise he's any good."

It was one of those typical Moscow places that you would NEVER in a MILLION YEARS be able to find if you did not know it was there.

But I found it, and the Master was on duty, and not only did he have the tools to open the watch, he had the right battery, AND he cleaned up the watch a bit for me before putting it back together and charging me 400 rubles.

"Do you want a receipt?" he asked me in Russian. "It's got a two-year warranty."

I declined the receipt.

"TWO YEAR WARRANTY!" he shouted after me as I left. "ALL THE BEST!"

Friday, the girls were hungry after school, so once we entered the Metro perehod (under-the-street-mall) I bought us all sloiki (pastries). We were standing outside the Metro entrance, eating our sloiki, when a man walked by and said something to us. Twice. He was clearly addressing us.

"Any idea what he said?" I asked the girls.

"I'm pretty sure he said 'Eat with you mouth closed'," said Baboo.

Today, we had to go sign up for after school activities for the second half of the year. It was extremely well-organized, and so we were in-and-out in all of ten minutes.

Since we were already up, fed, and dressed, and since Baboo had recently remarked that she wanted to see inside St. Basil's, we decided it was a perfect day to walk over to Red Square and go in St. Basil's.

I don't know why they all look so morose. I made them stand here because this is THE first Star/Crap Dogs stand I ever photographed in Moscow.

But when we got to Red Square, we realized that Lenin's Tomb was not only open, but there was virtually no line. I'm the only one in the family who had seen Mr. Lenin. After the trip to Gorki Leninskiye, it seemed appropriate to make sure everyone made the pilgrimage inside Lenin's Tomb. So we did!

The reviews:

Baboo: He was waxy and weird. I would have enjoyed it better if it hadn't been FREEZING!

Skittles: Mlah! Don't waste your time!

The Spouse: That was weird. Wow, look at all the flowers in front of Stalin!

The Kremlin wall has a necropolis where you can find "Iron Felix" Dzerzhinski, Josef Stalin, Konstantin Chernenko, Yuri Gagarin, and American John Reed, among others.

No cameras allowed in Lenin's tomb or along the wall, so no pictures to share. You have to check your cameras (including phones with cameras) for 20 rubles each at a small office in the History Museum building.

Then we went inside St. Basil's Cathedral. The inside is especially beautiful and my lousy camera cannot begin to capture what a jewel box it is.

I took lots of pictures of the murals. In case I ever decide to paint my dining room walls.

St. Basil, who is interned in the cathedral, was really a bit passionate in his beliefs. Next to his tomb was a sign with information about his life. He was apparently a "Fool for Christ" and what the sign called a "nude walker." That made me run right home and google him.

St. Basil's tomb.

Here is St. Basil doing his famous Nude Walk.
Religious Zealot or Neighborhood Nutter?

You Make the Call.

There are windows in the cathedral. I was able to take a few pictures from inside.

Lenin's Tomb is blocked by the statue.

A lovely blue sky. We've had great weather the past few weeks, actually. Yes, it's been cold. But it's been sunny like this: not a cloud in the sky.

Souvenirs for sale inside St. Basil's. We bought a book about czars and a Faberge-type egg charm.

Babble.com blog contest update: As I type this I am currently ranked #28 over here. NUMBER 28!!!!!! That is SO COOL, and I thank all of you for voting for me. Today was especially wonderful as I watched my blog ranking pass that of Mommy Wants Vodka, a blog I and LOTS of other people follow. She's actually well-known in the Blog-O-Sphere. And, she's been nominated for more serious competitions, namely this one over at the 2010 Weblog Awards. Go over there and vote for her (and The Bloggess). Spread a little love.

Moscow Never Ceases to Surprise Me

2010-01-17T14:45:00.005+02:00

First, an update on the Mystery Contest over at babble.com.

It is an odd contest and poorly defined (for example, I have no idea when it ends). That said, their Top 50 Bloggers are pretty well-known and well-regarded around the Blog-O-Sphere. It seems any of these contests could result in an expanded reader base, and, frankly, that's all I ever want from these things. (Okay, and Julia Powell's agent, but a girl can dream, right?)

Anyhow, thanks to you, Loyal Beet-niks, Yours Truly has broken into the Top 100. The ranks are someway fluid, but I'm now in the ~~60s~~ 30s! That's really, really nice, and I thank you all.

But shameless vote groveling is not why you're here, is it?

No, you are here to read about My Misadventures in Moscow.

I had a minor one yesterday afternoon. Nothing really New & Shocking, but, instead, perhaps a pleasant reminder not to take anything in Moscow at face value.

Skittles got invited to a classmate's birthday party yesterday.

Does anyone else hate birthday party invites? It's awful of me, I know, but I find they break up the weekend so. Weekends are precious because, if I may blatantly plagiarize from a virtual friend's blog, we (this being me and The Spouse) are loathe

to leave the warmth of our cozy little flat . . . anticipating instead a stubble chinned, lazy, booze fueled Saturday on the couch. . . .

Usually we tag team birthday parties: he drops kid off and I collect. But yesterday The Spouse was out of town.

No matter. This was a bowling party, and the lanes were connected to a shopping mall.

I had visions of sitting in an upscale coffee shop, reading a spy thriller on my Kindle for two hours while my kid merrily bowls and celebrates. Perhaps strolling the mall and even stumbling upon a Nespresso outlet. (I just bought a used machine, and have yet to use it because I haven't yet bought any of the coffee capsules.) Most of the malls in the city center are quite up-scale, so this is not an unreasonable expectation.

Have you ever been to the Moskovskiy Shopping Center at Komsomolskaya Ploshad? No? Well, you're in for a real retro treat then.

First, if you are unfamiliar with this corner of Moscow, Komsomolskaya Ploshad is home to THREE train stations. I knew this; I have even gone by in a van on my way to a tour of something or another. But I had not yet had the pleasure of experiencing it from the ground.

Oh, I've been in the Komsomolskaya Metro station. It is GORGEOUS.

But the area above ground is, well, what you expect to find around a bus station or a train station in any big city.

Lots of kiosks.

Lots of somewhat disreputable-looking people.

Lots of cops.

The largest, wildest looking pack of street dogs I have ever encountered in Moscow. Seriously, they played Chase with each other, running through the perehod/underpass, around the square, up and down, barking and leaping. They were not paying the slightest attention to anyone with two legs, but it was a little unnerving.

The cops watched them and laughed.

Then there was the I've-emerged-from-the-Metro-but-I'm-not-sure-which-way-I'm-facing moment. The best reason for having an iPhone-type product complete with a GPS. Which I do not have.

Got myself oriented, and realized I was across the street from the shopping center that I believed housed the bowling mall.

I was still thinking I was heading to something reminiscent of Au Park in Bratislava.

But I wasn't: the shopping center looked like this instead.

Very Russian-y.

Inside is a series of kiosks and stands. Skittles and I wander around for a while, looking for a sign or evidence of the bowling alley. The party was only scheduled from 2:00 until 4:00, it was almost 2:15, and I was starting to feel that desperate claustrophobia that comes from knowing you are on the verge of ruining a kid's birthday party experience. (FLASHBACK!)

Finally, I resolve I would have to rely on the kindness of strangers. I have no choice: the clock is running, and I'm not making any progress.

I decide to ask a woman selling icons.

Me: "Скажите, пожалуйста . . . Bowling Club Globus . . . где? Я говорю по-русски не очень хорошо."
[This is pretty much the limits of my Russian: "Tell me please, Bowling Club Globus, where? I speak Russian only a little."]

Nice Lady: "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"

Me, sadly: "Nein."

Nice Lady, closing up her kiosk: "Komm mit mir."

She takes me to the service elevator, pressed the button labeled "Office," and explains that I should ask there. No sighing, no eye rolling. She just very kindly goes out of her way to help me solve my problem.

The elevator doors open on a fluorescently-lit hallway where a security guard-type sits at a desk. I repeat my Russian sentence.

"Oh," he says in accented English. "You must go outside this building."

So it is as I suspected: the entrance is on the side of the building.

After that we had only to retrace our steps (Is there really only the one entrance to the "mall"?), go outside, and walk around the side of the building to the bowling alley entrance.

Here, although the place looks a bit dodgy, we are greeted by Doorman/Coat-Check Dude who, although he speaks no English, is extremely nice.

"Are you staying, too?" he asks me (and Skittles translated), offering to take my coat.

I do not stay, but bail out and go to a coffee shop chain across the street.

While I walk over there I consider how I always thought we lived in the ugliest corner of Moscow, but that now I have to revise that opinion. THIS is the ugliest corner of Moscow. It has the ugliest perehod (pedestrian underpass/under-the-street-mall), the saddest shops, the most impressive collection of drunks, and the most train stations in one block in Moscow. The streets are lined with those imposing Stalinist apartment buildings (yellow brick, huge arches), but the street-level shops are all low-end eateries one would associate with a train station neighborhood.

In short, the worst a Big City has to offer.

Yet, inside the coffee shop my waitress is professional, kind, and efficient. One more example of how this ugly corner of Moscow isn't really so ugly once you look beneath the surface.

Skittles has a nice time at her bowling party. She reported they ate unlimited sushi. (I know, I know. Bowling alley sushi. But sushi is ubiquitous in Moscow.) As I arrive back the waitress is serving the kids plates of ice cream in tuile dishes and garnished with whipped cream, lovely fresh fruit, and small flowers. At a BOWLING ALLEY!

In fact, the worst moment of the entire experience comes as we head home.

I cannot find how to enter the Metro station, and we have to sort of circle around a bit until I figure it out.

While doing so, I slip on a patch of ice.

I do not fall down.

But I do pee my pants.

C'mon! Do It! You Know You Want To!

2010-01-14T14:09:00.010+02:00

I'm bossy.

You should know that about me.

I like order in the universe. Always have.

Perhaps it is OCD Lite. Or Not So Lite.

I dunno.

But I'm gonna tell you what to do now.

First, go here and look for me. I'm hovering around Number ~~326~~ ~~184~~ ~~164~~ ~~136~~ ~~129~~ ~~119~~ ~~100~~ 69 (Wow! Thanks!).

You don't have to register or anything. ~~And I think you can vote every day~~ ~~(Nah . . . maybe not)~~ (Actually, YES, you can). You definitely can vote for more than one blog. If you have a blog there, let me know: I'll vote for you, too.

Then go here and make a donation.

Well done.

Now stop playing around on the Interwebz and get back to work.

What I Got The Spouse for Christmas

2010-01-12T14:34:00.001+02:00

It finally came today.

The artist's photo is better than mine. Here is her link.

I'm really, really pleased.

The High Cost of Healthcare

2010-01-11T10:53:00.001+02:00

Remember in November when The Spouse spent a week in the posh Russian hospital that caters to expats?

He spent seven nights there and was treated for pulmonary thrombosis.

He had lung scans.

He had MRIs.

He had IVs practically around the clock.

He had a private room.

He had four meals a day.

We were convinced that when the bill came, our part would be at least $10,000.

Today the bill came.

Wanna know what the total was?

The total bill, for everything, was 7,510 Euro or $10,900.

Of that, we owe 1,838 Euro or $2,670.

Not the greatest news right after Christmas, of course. But a hell of a lot less than I was braced for.

Christmas Round Up

2010-01-10T10:35:00.000+02:00

I found some pictures on my camera that I had not yet posted anywhere. A bit random and, perhaps, not interesting if you aren't family, but here you go. You do get a sense of the Summer/Winter Dacha, I guess.

Tiara Baboo

Skittles Shows How Old I Am

Skittles Made Me a Birthday Cake

New Year's Eve/Birthday Festivities

WHAT Am I Wearing?

Nana and the Cousins

Assembling Cars at Steak 'n' Shake

It Is Serious Work

My Mother-In-Law Made Me Pumpkin Pie

The Girls' with The Spouse's Potty-Mouth Grandmother

"You talk too much!"

My Sister-In-Law Took This One

And This One

I'm All Shook Up

2010-01-09T18:09:00.003+02:00

So I'm celebrating Elvis' birthday while typing merrily away on my New Christmas Laptop in my Moscow dining room.

Elvis would have been 75 today. Well, make that yesterday. It was January 8 when I started my day.

Jet lag, you know.

The Spouse's Potty-Mouthed Grandmother is/was 94 today/yesterday. And she's still rockin'.

Our 22nd wedding anniversary is today.

Really today.

January 9.

At least that's what it is where I am.

We celebrated by dragging our luggage on the Airport Express train, through the Metro (with one line change), and across the (surprisingly) snowy Moscow streets.

WTF, Moscow? What happened here yesterday? I've never seen so much snow. The mayor promised he was going to seed all the clouds so the snow would not fall here.

At the apartment, the cats were actually happy to see us. Cat-O, who apparently was on a bit of a hunger strike protesting our departure, looks a bit thinner. Crooky looks bigger. She even climbed onto my chair and sat behind me for a bit while I typed. For her, that's the equivalent of full frontal nudity. Or at least getting to second base.

Late lunch/early dinner where else? Taras Bulba. So I could have a slice of their heavenly Kievski torte.

Now I am celebrating the Festival of Laundry. Both The Spouse and I have unpacked and put away the things in our suitcase. So I have time for some observations about this traveling between Russia and the Ancestral Village thing:

First, this summer my suitcase was filled with odor eliminating products on my return trip to Moscow because the cats had been using the children's room as a means of protesting our absence. Seriously, I must have brought back four or five products, at least three of which were large, heavy spray bottles of liquid. Result: I arrived back in Moscow in September to a surprisingly pleasant smelling house. This trip the heavy and (probably) over-purchased items were shampoos/conditioners and moisturizers. What was I thinking? Cheaper in the US, I guess. If you have an odor problem, let me know.
Why is it Americans don't provide a place for your coat in restaurants? Maybe we tend to leave our coats in our cars, but I found myself thinking, "The Russians ALWAYS have a ГАРДЕРОБ/garderobe/coatcheck or at least plenty of coat hooks near your table."
The American cashiers never tore my receipt, but insisted on handing it to me intact. That's just wrong. Now I know I've lived in Russia too long.
I found myself mortified at the condition of my boots while in the US. Practically the first thing I did upon arriving at our Moscow apartment was polish my boots. They look so much better.
Hot water: here it's UNLIMITED!!!
And the heat, my God, the heat. Granted, it was a (beautiful) sunny day (all the better for enjoying the snow), so that just added to our already very warm apartment. I could not get out of my traveling outfit and into the shower fast enough. Actually, the dacha was warmer than I expected, and in spite of the unusually winter-y weather, I did not need my long underwear. But back in Moscow means back to t-shirts and shorts. That Festival of Laundry actually dries faster on the line this time of year than in the dryer.

We did a basic grocery store run . . . just enough to get us through breakfast tomorrow . . . which for us meant eggs, bacon, and alcohol. I got some coffee, too. Because I might have more to write about tomorrow after I've had a decent night's sleep.

Introducing Maru

2010-01-08T19:30:00.000+02:00

Since we are stuck in the Holiday Inn/Washington Dulles, we are having Fun With Laptops.

We had initially thought we'd try to venture into town to visit some national monuments. But, alas, The Spouse is poorly today. Suffering from the sort of head cold *I* normally get while on some sort of holiday. I cite last year's trip to Cornwall . . . a vacation everyone tells me was lovely . . . It looks like it was nice . . . I mean, I have seen the photos . . . It appears that everyone else was looking at seals and the Tate Gallery in St. Ives, while I spent the week in a blur of vodka therapy and the UK version of Nyquil . . . a lesser product, I assure you.

Seals in Cornwall, Dec 2008

But I digress.

I tried to fire up the pay-per-view movies in the hotel, seeing as how The Spouse has not yet seen the Star Trek movie (I swear I ordered the DVD, but if I did, it got lost somewhere). I already had to bother the hotel front desk because the heater in our room didn't seem to function as well as the heater in the kids' room. When I selected the Star Trek movie our room was immediately billed for it and then the teevee screen went blue.

Sigh.

I called the front desk again, and the nice lady there said she would send the technician down to sort us out.

She's going to regret that she gave me Late Check Out for free (well, I did have to enroll in the Holiday Inn's loyalty program, but what's a little more spam in my in-box? That's not code for anything . . .).

So left with a choice between Dora the Explorer and whatever daytime programming now comes on after The Today Show (what on earth happened to Matt Lauer's head since 1999 when I last watched The Today Show on a regular basis? Can anyone tell me? It's like he is actively trying to be unattractive.), I discovered Maru the Cat on YouTube and his subsequent website.

Ah . . . but now the technician has repaired the teevee . . . Star Trek movie starting now.

Hoping Maru lives long and prospers.

Here We Go Again

2010-01-08T05:44:00.001+02:00

So.

We are flying from Columbus to Moscow via Washington DC today. In theory, anyhow.

At the Columbus airport for a 2:15 flight. BUT, and this is a very big but, a mechanical issue causes us to be delayed.

Then the snow that is falling (Columbus was expecting 1 to 3 inches today) requires de-icing of the plane. Then people in the plane begin missing connections and wanting off the plane. This means paperwork by the flight crew and unloading of luggage.

Then the snowfall was too heavy to allow us to take off. Then more people decided to bail out. Then we needed another round of de-icing.

Result: Three hour delay, missed connection in DC, and a night in the Dulles Holiday Inn. This time on our nickel because United determined that we were delayed by WEATHER even though we would have left on time and made our connection if we had not had the mechanical issue.

I have a spare pair of underwear. The hotel gave us complimentary toothbrushes and toothpaste. I some sort of wipes to remove my mascara tonight, but have no makeup, other than lip gloss, for tomorrow. I guess we are all sleeping commando.

I don't have a comb.

Maybe I can get one at the front desk in the morning.

What Not to Watch

2010-01-06T03:47:00.000+02:00

Other people's teevee choices, like their sexual preferences, are just wrong if they aren't YOUR teevee choices.

My mother-in-law doesn't watch Two and a Half Men. She watches Dr. G. on Discovery Health.

My father passed on The Office in favor of Becker.

BECKER?!

Sigh.

Makes me actually look forward to returning to Moscow on Friday where I'm, once again, in control of the remote.

That said, I always secretly enjoy those rare nights when The Spouse is out of town, and I can trade Air Crash Investigation for America's Next Top Model reruns and What Not to Wear.

One man's trash is, indeed, another man's treasure.

But seriously, after watching an episode of Dr. G., Skittles was concerned about The Spouse.

"Are you in Grave Danger?" she asked The Spouse at lunch today, referring to his recent pulmonary thrombosis scare.

"Why do you ask?" we asked her.

"Because Dr. G. showed the guy with the kidney problem who dropped dead," she answered.

Thanks, Mom-In-Law.

Actually, the visit to the In-Law Village was uneventful, pleasant even, except for the terrifying Dr. G. episode.

We took the kids to two movies (Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel and The Frog Princess).

Skittles played dominoes with the In-Laws.

We had some meals out with The Spouse's grandmother.

Grandma M is going to be 94 on Friday.

At once of these lunches, we went to Rita's, a place known for its home-made pies. I was all excited for pumpkin pie, having missed my chance at Thanksgiving.

But, alas, by the time we got around to ordering dessert, they were out of pumpkin pie.

Merde.

BUT! Later that same afternoon, Mother-In-Law made me a pumpkin pie. From scratch. With the Libby's recipe. (To my foreign readers: the Libby's Pumpkin Pie recipe is THE gold standard for pumpkin pie. Period.)

Hooray!

For this I forgive her the teevee choices.

But I digress.

Grandma M is in fine form.

Really. She's been living in an assisted living facility/nursing home for over a year now. Twice in the past few years we thought she was on her way out. But she's better now than I have seen her in a LONG time. Plus, she's sort of getting used to be waited on in the nursing home.

She's got color in her cheeks.

She's got a rapier tongue. (Her: "Your girls are awfully quiet." The Spouse: "Uh huh." Her: "Because YOU TALK TOO MUCH!" The Spouse: "Huh?")

And the little man we all have in our heads who holds up his hand and tells us, "STOP!" . . . she doesn't have him.

Lunch is over. The Spouse has gone to pull the car around. Mother-In-Law and I are helping Grandma M from the table to the car. Grandma M always needs a moment before standing or sitting. She's focused now, summoning her energy to stand and shift her weight to her walker.

Me: "Can I help you? Do you need anything?"

Her, struggling to stand: "WHAT I NEED IS SOMEONE TO SQUEEZE MY PEE HOLE CLOSED."

There are two other diners in the restaurant. One, an older man, might, I pray, be hard of hearing. The other, a younger man, clearly in control of all his senses, just looks at his plate and keeps eating.

Mother-In-Law and I lock eyes over Grandma M's head.

"This WILL be in the blog," I tell her, sotto voce.

Old Friends

2009-12-28T15:28:00.000+02:00

I wasn't really unhappy. The sun was in my eyes. And look: I'm holding presents!

I have known the two women next to me in the photo above for a million years.

The blond on the far right has been my friend since something like third grade. We lived next door to each other when I was in elementary school. The reason we are standing in front of a Chinese place for this photo is that when I was a kid, we always went out for Chinese food on my birthday. Once we had a terrible fight in the middle of her driveway regarding who GOT to be the princess and who HAD to be the queen. Hair was pulled. My friend had recently broken her arm and wielded that cast like a cudgel. At the time, I swore I'd never play with her again. That lasted until she came back over to my house about an hour after the fight, knocked on our front door, and asked if I could come out.

When I was in sixth grade, we moved to a different school district. The woman in the black jacket has been my friend since . . . what? Seventh grade? She hates it when I tell this story, but the truth is that we were standing in line at the school cafeteria, and she kept punching me in the arm. I told her, "Will you stop hitting me!" She says she just wanted to get my attention. Apparently it worked.

These two probably know more about me than my husband of 22 years. Give them a call if you want the real inside scoop.

No Comment

2009-12-27T01:49:00.002+02:00

Christmas at the Dacha

2009-12-25T15:50:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, since I woke up at 2:00 in the a.m., I was sort of fried by the time we finished dinner. I served the ham, ~~Jamie Oliver's~~ my famous roasted pumpkin soup (which I make without the chestnuts since I am too lazy to forage for them), a tossed green salad, and baguettes.

I forgot to served the chocolate gateau I got at Trader Joe's.

I did remember that I had to get the Mallard Morning started before I totally melted down.

Poor Friend Valentina. She schlepped all the way here from A-town only to have me sort of fade away and crawl off to an early bed.

But before I did that, I made the Mallard Morning.

The Spouse had a college roommate named Dubber. Mallard Morning is Dubber's mom's recipe. Just now I was googling Mallard Morning to see if I have been making it correctly, and lo and behold, here is the original recipe PLUS a picture of Dubber's mom!

I have never put mushrooms in Mallard Morning. And I cut up bread instead of using croutons, but that is because I generally live places where I can't buy ready-made croutons. But those would be good, too.

ANYHOO . . . I like to make it the night before and then bake it in the morning. I didn't have any room in the fridge for the pan, so I covered it with plastic wrap and put it in the backyard.

In the night it rained.

A lot.

I had to pour a lot of rain water out of the pan, beat up a few more eggs and milk, and stir it all real well before I put it in the over. Shhhhh! Don't tell anyone.

But I think it turned out okay.

I also made Blueberry Boy Bait, but I forgot to hold back half the blueberries for the topping, so I had to use raspberries. I guess now it is Blueberry/Raspberry Boy Bait.

It was a hit.

Off to watch the children open presents now.

Christmas Snapshots

2009-12-24T13:04:00.001+02:00

Yes, it is 5:46 in the a.m. right now. I woke up at 2:00 a.m. Thought I might as well use the time to finish some preparations for tomorrow and update the blog. It's my Christmas gift to you.

So yesterday (Dec 23), my father, LR, tells me he needs the car to go to the dentist around 11:00 and later, around 6:00 to have a drink with his buddy, Baker.

No problem.

Because I am jetlagged, I am up with the lark (way before 5:00 a.m.). I send The Spouse some emails.

No response.

I send some text messages.

No response.

I remember that he had already warned me that he was going to be in meetings with "the other side" at their offices all day.

Oh. Right. That explains it.

Later, my new computer arrives (it is soooooo lovely). Of course, I rip open the box practically before the FedEx/UPS Dude has let go of it.

[Me (to FedEx/UPS Dude): Oh! Oh! Oh! You brought my present! Oh! Is everyone happy to see you today?

FedEx/UPS Dude, grinning: Yeah. Today is pretty good.]

No point waiting until Christmas to open it. I mean, after all, I can use the new computer to talk to The Spouse who is now trapped in Closing Hell until Tuesday, Dec 29 at the earliest.

Merry Christmas to me, Merry Christmas to me! I am thrilled with my present.

I set up the computer. I figure out how to connect to the Interwebz. Loyal Hungarian Cat Sitter pops up on Gmail chat.

"Hi there," she writes. "I was just over at your place to feed your cats."

Hmmm. That's odd. But not out of the realm of possibility. I can certainly see The Spouse being too busy remember to tell her that his travel plans have been postponed.

"The Spouse is still in Moscow," I reply. "Didn't he talk to you?" He told me he had spoken to her/delivered keys on Monday.

"Oh?" she's perplexed.

I text Spouse "WTF?! LHCS doesn't know you are still in town!" I know he's busy, but this has the potential for some real hilarity.

Apparently she is texting The Spouse simultaneously.

The Spouse, who I have not heard from all day, replies, "In Conference Call Hell. Will call her later."

LHCS and I have a few more exchanges about how funny this all is, and then we both wander off.

My brother and his wife and I decide we will have pizza at their place later.

Six o'clock comes. LR leaves for his appointment. "Save some pizza for me," he calls back over his shoulder. "I'll want dinner."

My brother, who lives across the street, calls, and says now is a good time to come over. They have ordered the pizza and opened a bottle of wine.

We sip. We chat. We review their recent home improvement projects. We eat pizza.

LR comes blasting in their front door. "I'M BACK. I BROUGHT A LADY FRIEND. HOPE YOU DON'T MIND."

No, no. Of course not. LR lives to date.

But lo and behold, who should enter my brother's house behind LR . . . it is not a lady friend.

It's THE SPOUSE!

Everybody had been in on it, including (of course) the Cat Sitter. When I consider the depth of the plotting in order to surprise me, I am beside myself. How wonderful. What a great Christmas present!

Now, in exchange for escaping the Closing Hell, which is very much real and on-going, The Spouse has to fly to DC on Sunday afternoon and stay there until Tuesday afternoon. But at least he is here for Christmas!

The children, who he expected to be the excited ones, were too jetlagged and sleepy to really respond. But they also are too young to realize how funny and thoughtful the whole thing was. To me, it's the planning that went on behind the scenes that makes it special.

So here are my two wonderful Christmas presents:

Speaking of holiday snapshots, I have two others from yesterday.

The first was at the drug store. Standing in line in front of me is a woman wearing a red suit, a green winter coat, and assorted Christmas froo-froo. She is delighted to have discovered a white stuffed dog that is also all Christmas-y. Further, when you squeeze its tail, it barks Jingle Bells. She makes it bark over and over, thoroughly enjoying her find. Grinch that I am, I think it will become really, REALLY tiresome in about 20 minutes.

Second snapshot was in the ham store. I had reserved a ham before leaving Moscow. Originally I intended to take it with us to The Spouse's Ancestral Village as an offering. At the time I went to collect it, I had decided we would eat it ourselves, sans Spouse, on Christmas Day.

As is typical at the Ham Store at this time of year, the parking lot is full and the line of customers goes out the door. My Moscow friends will be amused to note that there was a Ham Store employee stationed at the door, controlling the flow of the crowd, but, to my mind, functioning as Ham Store Face Control. I crack myself up.

Further, there is a Ham Store Rent-A-Cop standing by the cash registers. I refrain from asking him if he's had to break up many ham riots. I also wonder if it is frowned upon to take my just-purchased ham and stand out in the parking lot and scalp it for twice the price I paid for it.

That would be bad and not in the Spirit of Christmas, right?

Turning Japanese

2009-12-23T13:59:00.002+02:00

Oy, what a time I've had of it.

Here's how the journey went.

Original flight plan: Moscow-->DC-->Columbus, Ohio

Saturday, Dec 19: Went to Domodedovo Airport, Moscow. Flight to DC cancelled due to Storm of the Century. Told "Go home, you will fly tomorrow." Went home, dragging our suitcases, and CALLED United. Told hold time would be up to 90 minutes. After about an hour I was told "There's nothing until Dec 27." Booked that, but, on advice of airport and phone people, returned to Domodedovo the next day.

Sunday, Dec 20: Returned to Domodedovo at 8:00 in the a.m. (This involved getting up around 5:00 a.m., taking the Metro to the train and the train to the airport, all the while dragging our suitcases.) Check-In opened at 8:30. Stood in the line as instructed. I was second. Then they said, "Oh, if you were on yesterday's cancelled flight, please come over to THESE windows across the aisle." That put me about ten people back.

They served us, one-at-a-time, to reroute everyone. They re-booked me Moscow-->Tokyo-->Chicago-->Columbus. Oh, but starting out of SHEREMETYVO Airport, which is across town. Flight scheduled to leave at 5:50 p.m.

Dragged suitcases back to train, Metro, home. The Spouse dutifully met us at the Metro and helped. Had some lunch, a little rest, and then dragged suitcases to the Metro, went to the OTHER train station, and then the OTHER airport (Sheremetyvo).

Flight departure delayed. Sat on plane for a couple of hours before departing for Japan (a nine-hour flight), but think this is okay because we had a six-hour layover in Tokyo.

Notice that one of the in-flight movies is Julie & Julia (hooray!), but cannot watch it or any other movie because none of the seats in our row has a functioning sound system. Merde.

Monday, Dec 21, I think: Now is when things get hazy because of the time differences. Arrived in Tokyo.

[Sidebar: No one yells at us in Security. In fact, not only is everyone extremely sweet and polite, but they offer us SLIPPERS when we have to submit our shoes for x-ray. SLIPPERS! No blue plastic shoe covers. The contrast between Russian and Japanese cultures is mind-blowing. Or maybe it's the jet-lag.]

Have about 5 hours to kill because of the delayed flight. Found what they call a "Dayhotel" in the airport. This gets the three of us three hours with three single rooms. Each room has a shower, a single bed, slippers, and some toiletries. The toilet is down the hall. I think it cost me about $70 total. I installed each kid in a room, took a shower, and had a nap.

Checked out of Dayhotel, and went off and found some sushi in the airport. It was lovely. Found the gate. They begin to board. We get seated (two on one side of the plane and one on the other, but whatever) when they announce we have to deplane. Oh, and take all your stuff with you. Delays continue for hours. A small child has a total meltdown in the waiting area. Never seen a tantrum of such epic proportions. Finally they announce that they are very sorry, but the flight is postponed until 2:00 the next day. They bus us all to hotels. A father has a total meltdown in the hotel reception area. I have never seen a tantrum of such epic proportions. We start to bond with other passengers. Get eight hours of decent sleep.

The following morning around 10:00 a.m., we return to the airport where we learn that no one will be there to deal with us before 12:30. The airline staff begins to re-book our connections after Chicago, one-at-a-time, until they realize that if they do all of us, we will not make our scheduled 2:00 departure time. Thankfully, we are processed before the staff abandons the project.

Board plane, fly 11 hours to Chicago.

Watched an episode of Grey's Anatomy (a show I have never seen), something called Royal Pains, a documentary called It Might Get Loud (which I recommend), Elf (I was so exhausted by now that this made me cry, that's what a mess I was), Julie & Julia (finally!), and the last Harry Potter movie (which I had already seen, but what the heck).

Arrive Chicago around 11:00 a.m. Tuesday, Dec 22. Flight to Columbus scheduled for around 1:00 p.m. Get through Immigration, Baggage Claim/Customs, return bags to airline, and make way to gate to learn flight delayed about two hours.

I don't know what time we arrived yesterday, but it was afternoon.

Had a shower, two martinis, carryout Chinese, and went to bed.

Woke up this morning to find kids up. Asked one, "What time is it?" She replies, "It's 6:30." I was done sleeping, so stayed up (LR, my father, is an insomniac, so he is ALWAYS up).

Put some laundry in, had some coffee, and started checking email. Wondered why The Spouse wasn't seeing my email activity and calling. Realize time on the computer says 5:45 a.m.

Kid's watch was still on Tokyo time.

Sayanara!

2009-12-20T13:01:00.001+02:00

Got up at 5:00 a.m.

Took the 7:00 a.m. train back to Domodedovo.

Check-in desk opened at 8:30. I am second in line.

Then they told all of us to go over to those check in desks. Now I'm behind a bunch of people. But there are more behind me.

Left Domodedovo on the 11:30 train back to town.

I will fly out. Tonight at 7:20 p.m. From Sheremetyvo.

And I will arrive in the Ancestral Village tomorrw around 6:00 p.m.

After going through Chicago.

And spending six hours in Tokyo.

I Dreamed a Dream

2009-12-19T20:29:00.001+02:00

They told me at the airport "Come back tomorrow. All will be well!"

"How are you planning to overcome the laws of physics and get two planes worth of people on one plane?" I asked.

"Come at 8:30," they said.

"But won't the whole delayed world be here tomorrow? Shouldn't I try to come earlier?" I asked.

"You can," they said.

I went home and called United. Was told, "Due to high call levels, expect delays of 90 minutes."

I held for an hour. Thankfully, I have just (finally!) cracked the code and can use SKYPE. The call cost me nothing. A nice lady was glad I did not yell at her. She told me the best she could get me was Sunday, Dec. 27. "But go to the airport tomorrow, too!"

"They told me to return tomorrow," I said. "They said I would have priority. I didn't believe them."

She had no information about what the plan was here, but said it was possible there is a local plan. "I'm showing nothing," she said. Then she thanked me again for being nice to here.

Meanwhile, I read a post on one of the local expat forums where a guy on our flight said he was rebooked for Dec. 23. The Spouse said "WTF?!" because when, a few days ago, he tried to move his flight today because of work issues to Dec. 23, they told him all they had on Dec. 23 was Business Class (which his firm sprung for, thankfully, but now it looks like he could arrive before we do if we have to go on Dec. 27).

In the meantime, the friend of a friend took United up on the hotel-at-the-airport option. She told my friend that United told her they would have two planes tomorrow.

I have two thoughts on this:

1. It's the only way, and
2. How on earth did they get their hands on a second plane?

BUT! I am getting up at the ass crack of dawn and taking the train back out there. Because I'd really rather not wait until Sunday.

Just sent kids to bed. They so do not want to wait for next Sunday. The sleigh is in the Ancestral Village, you see . . . Santa's sleigh.

I'll Be Home For Christmas . . . Eventually

2009-12-19T13:51:00.000+02:00

For people who travel as much as we do, we can be remarkably stupid.

I knew yesterday that D.C. (our port of arrival) was bracing for "the storm of the century."

La lala lala.

I looked at weather.com and cnn.com and commented about how making the connection to the Ancestral Village was certainly going to be dicey.

Got up this morning, dragged our bags through the Metro to the train, congratulated myself that the worst part of the trip was now over, and took the train out to the airport.

Only to discover that the flight has been canceled. Or postponed until tomorrow.

All of which I could have figured out by looking at . . . wait for it . . . you'll never guess . . . ready? . . . THE AIRLINE'S WEBSITE.

In my defense, The Spouse didn't think of it either.

Between the two of us, I don't think we've ever had a flight canceled. Delayed? Sure. But never canceled.

It was originating here, for Pete's sake. If the weather here had been like D.C.'s I would have called the airline.

Duh-oh!

So we had a nice round trip out to the airport and back.

Everyone was hungry and cranky by then (who can eat breakfast the morning of a long trip?), so we went out for lunch.

Now I'm going to have a little nap because the airline told us to be back at the airport tomorrow at 8:30 for a noon flight.

I plan to be there at 8:00.

Your Russian Word of the Day

2009-12-18T09:34:00.004+02:00

It's REMONT (Ремонт in Cyrillic).

A word that strikes fear in the hearts of all who hear it.

It means renovation or repairs.

As in "the apartment has a full European remont" (ours doesn't). Or "they are remonting our building." Or when one of the escalators on the Metro is closed, they usually block it with a barricade that says Ремонт.

Everyone hates living through a remont because it is so chaotic and messy and noisy and, well, just dreadful. I have heard that some people actually move out of their apartments temporarily while having them remonted. That way the workers can just sleep there and work around the clock (which is illegal, but since when has fear of doing something illegal ever stopped anyone in Moscow?).

When we moved into this apartment two years ago, we were told that we could store some items on the stairs to the attic. It is a secure space with a gate and a lock. We have a (forbidden) key, and so do the neighbors (who stored a LOT of things there).

Quite some time ago, prior to last Christmas perhaps, someone from the building maintenance crew came to us and said we had to clear everything out of there because they were going to remont the stairwell (or podyez in Russian). So our boxes of Christmas ornaments moved into our bedroom. The cats sleep on them.

But nothing happened for ages.

Until about the time The Spouse was in the hospital (about two weeks ago now).

A team came in and began actually repainting the stairwell. It was dreadful quality work. With the same dreary colors as before. No sanding and only minimal priming. Thick paint just slopped on top of existing thick paint. And the paint fumes! Made my head ache and my eyes water.

To add insult to injury, before the work could be finished, someone (surely the workers) stole all my umbrellas. Then they dropped their tools and vanished.

Seriously, I have kept all my umbrellas in a big brass pot outside our apartment door for two years, and no one has ever touched them. Until about ten days ago when they took every single umbrella (including crap kid umbrellas). But not the brass pot.

A few days ago, a nice man and woman, apparently fellow building residents, came by with a document they wanted me, as a Representative of the Apartment, to sign regarding a remont of the building exterior. She wanted me to sign immediately, but I begged off explaining that I am not the owner . . . let me have my husband read it . . . maybe I'll scan it and email it to the landlords . . .

When I mentioned the proposal to remont the building exterior to The Spouse, he said, "Given how well the podyez remont is going, I can't imagine what the exterior remont job is going to look like!"

Then we all forgot about it.

I mean, I still step over abandoned paint buckets by the elevator on the ground floor. And there remains badly wiped up spilled paint on our landing. But like anything you see daily, we soon became immune to the mess. And, frankly, I have always thought we win the award for "Crappiest Podyez" anyhow.

Yesterday afternoon, arriving home with the girls, I noticed the following taped to the wall of the elevator. I saw the words Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost . . . the Russian Santa) and assumed it was some sort of kid holiday party.

When The Spouse got home much later, he insisted I go take a picture of the notice because, "It's hilarious, and I want to read it carefully later." (Click on the image if you want to see a bigger version of it.)

This he did, and he sent me a translation a few moments ago. The notice says

HAPPY COMING NEW YEAR

Dear residents of Entrance No. XX
of XXXXXXXXX St., Building no.XX

Like all of you, I am looking forward to the New Year 2010 and am preparing for it. I planned to visit all of you and wish you well.

But!!! Your Entrance
Is in a Disgraceful and Dreadful State

I do not believe that I will be happy about my visit. Moreover, you will be embarrassed that you were unable to get the management company to fulfill its contractual obligations regarding maintenance of the entrance way and stairwells. As you all know, they haven’t done anything for a month, and this is not sufficient. Moreover, they have abandoned the repairs of your entrance way and left it cluttered with debris. I dare surmise that it will be this way until long after the time for my visit.

I think your guests and relatives will be unpleasantly surprised by your indifference to, and disdain of, basic cleanliness.

If you, as I, are upset by this blatant situation and lack of respect to you on the part of the management and the local administration,
please note the following telephone numbers and I suggest
YOU CALL THEM EVERY DAY

Very truly yours,

Grandfather Frost

For a city with a budget of 40 billion dollars, this is a bit strange….

So that explains the list of phone numbers and addresses that was posted next to this. It wasn't Rent-A-Santa at all!

Isn't that a hoot?

Well, That's Just GRATE!

2009-12-17T19:34:00.002+02:00

Long day, partially because I got roped into playing Mama Cop at the Noël en musique au lycée français. Four hours of my life I'll never get back.

I agreed to help out because there is so little I can do for the school, being French-impaired and all, and this was language-lite. I asked when the Nice French Mom called me and guilt-ed me into doing this: "Do I have to talk? To kids?"

"Mais, non," she replied. All I had to do was glare and shush people.

The four hours consisted of kids from the school's upper grades performing musical numbers for their peers.

Badly.

So the peers tend to get bored and bavarde.

That's French for blabbermouth. Isn't it a great word?

But seriously. I sat (well, actually I stood) through FOUR HOURS of

"Boughi-Boughi Thonkie-Thonkie" (er, that's "Boogie-Boogie Tonky-Tonky")
"Au Champs Elysées" (twice)
"A Time for As" . . . you know, from Romeo and Juliet
A soul-less rendition of "Hot n Cold de Katy Perry"
A different "Boughi-Boughi"
CHOPSTIX for God's Sake
Some kid playing "Smoke on the Water" badly
A passionless version of "Listen to Your Heart"
A dreadful version of "You Are Not Alone"
And two bands.

Oy. The bands.

If the administration had any idea what those English lyrics meant, I somehow doubt they would have been allowed to perform in school. And what was up with the go-go dancer? Her already short skirt kept creeping higher and higher until, I kid you not, her cootchie was right there. I looked at the younger kids in the audience at that point. Hilarious. They were just stunned.

I had such hopes for the geeky red-headed kid with the electric guitar. I was SO sure he was gonna fire up AC/DC's "Shook me All Night Long." I was SO SURE.

Alas.

Say what you will about American education, but I went to high school with some talented musicians. On my walk back to the Metro I counted off at least five classmates of mine who were concert level. A couple are professionals.

My kids, of course, were stellar. (These are my first attempts at using the "video" feature on my camera. And uploading videos. Bear with me.)

But I digress.

I got home and found I still had some of that lovely bolognaise sauce in the freezer. AND the remains of the Chunk O' Parmesan.

Which I set about grating.

Note to self: don't use the box grater. Use this thing to grate cheese:

Or you'll end up with a Knuckle Sandwich. Ew.

Yeah. That's a SpongeBob Band-Aid. I just grabbed one.

Then I applied this tried-and-true cure:

Ah! All better.

Favorite Things

2009-12-16T21:05:00.001+02:00

No comment on this one. It's been a while, it seems, since I've had any vodka.

Babysitters who make wonderful crafts with the kids.

How DID she do that?

And tonight they made this:

They didn't have green paper, so they painted paper green. They left a water glass and brushes full of paint, but still. That's creative.

Then there are these. I bought these great handmade socks on the street today.The woman who sold them to me was so cute. She made these herself.

And these.

SQUIRRELS! I mean to give these away, but I also covet them.

Then there are socks:

And a pair I am wearing. So warm.

Note the August Bike Injury Scars. Yes, I still have the marks from THAT.

Um, People . . . It's DECEMBER, and We're in MOSCOW

2009-12-15T13:17:00.001+02:00

A funny thing is happening on the Interwebz since the temperature here dropped to some seriously cold levels.

All of the expats in Moscow are posting about how cold it is where they are.

"My thermometer says -22C!"

"Forecast is -17C for tomorrow!"

"Hey! It's cold out!"

"Did you see how cold it is?"

We've even started commenting on how much we are all commenting. And we're arguing about the validity of the wind chill factor like we're the love children of Al Roker and Yukon Cornelius or something.

Frankly, it has only been this cold once before since I've been here. Last winter was sort of a yawn. I mean, if you're going to live in Moscow, you want a real Russian winter, right? Everyone said, "Oh, it will be cold, but the sun will shine and the skies will be blue!"

I had forgotten what blue skies look like. It still gets dark around 3:30, it seems. But at least it's bright out until then.

The sun at such a low angle combined with the condensation created by anything warm makes the city look very pale and almost delicate.

Add to that the frost on the windows. Thankfully, we have double everything, so the frost is on the outside layer of windows, not inside. And it is very pretty.

For the record, it was -23C/-10F on the way to school this morning according to the sign outside the Metro.

Here is a view from the girls' room. The view is hazy because the window is frosted, not because of the glare from the sun (the window faces west, and this was before noon).

Makes the girls' room actually look nice.

Don't tell them, but I broke down and did a little cleaning in there today. I usually maintain a strict Hands Off! policy. But it had really reached a new low. And, in fairness, they have little time to do much about it before we get on the plane on Saturday.

Oh, and I know I suggested in a previous post that The Spouse may have to take a detour through Sweden before joining us at the Dacha, but as of this morning it appeared that no delay in his travel plans would be necessary.

Assuming the Doctor approves.

He went to London on Sunday and returned back home at 3:00 this morning. I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, but the fact he is now taking blood thinners should mean his risk of any problem is actually lower now.

Still. I'm glad the trip to Sweden seems to be off. Two round trip flights and a long-haul to the US all within one week feels like playing with fire.

He has a lung scan scheduled for tomorrow. So fingers crossed and all that. I'll keep you posted on our travel plans.

It's a Small World

2009-12-14T15:34:00.001+02:00

I am, believe it or not, incredibly patient with All Things Computer. But this is largely because I am Change Averse.

I've mentioned this characteristic before in regards to travel and new experiences in general.

I don't like change or new experiences very much. And I'll suffer through no end of inconvenience to avoid having to Try Something New.

But The Spouse is getting me a new computer for Christmas and boy, oh boy, am I ready for that! Especially today.

Dear God, why is my computer so freakin' slow today?

Maybe it knows I've already mentally dragged its sorry ass to the DUMPSTER! and it is just stickin' it to me one more time.

I know I am getting a new computer because The Spouse called me the other day and asked me what he was getting me for Christmas this year. As in, "Did you already buy yourself something for Christmas?"

I had not. Because I don't know nuthin' about computers.

There was a time, back when I got paid to go to an office, when I would, honestly, go through the manuals that came with the software when I didn't have anything to do.

Really. It's true. Because there was also a time when I sometimes got paid to document software. And I know hardly anyone ever opens those manuals. And documenting software is about the most thankless job out there.

Okay, teaching first grade is the most thankless job out there.

But documenting software for a living is B-O-R-I-N-G.

So I would, from time to time, read the software and go through the tutorials. Just because I could.

Alas, I cannot do that with this computer because, you see, we bought this computer in Austria and that means I have a German operating system. Also I have an Argentine copy of Word.

So after having the computer yell at me in idiomatic Viennese, it is such a pleasure to open up Word. Because Spanish is sooooo easy.

Why did I ever complain about Spanish verbs?

The subjunctive? Bring it on.

Two forms of the verb to be? Child's play.

Because even The Spouse has to resort to google at times in order to translate some of those German error messages.

My new computer is a Dell Inspiron 1545 Intel Pentium Dual Core T4300, 2.1GHz 800Mhz, 1M L2 Cache. I don't know what any of that means. I do know it is being shipped to the Winter Dacha in the Ancestral Village, and that it is scheduled to arrive there about ten minutes before I have to get back on a plane to return to Moscow.

As long as it gets there.

But none of this has anything to do with what I sat down to write about. It is what came to me as I tried to load photos off my camera and onto my PAINFULLY SLOW COMPUTER THAT IS GOING TO THE DUMPSTER AND I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING.

What I was going to write about was that The Spouse had to fly to London last night.

(Yes. I know. He also has to fly to Sweden on December 20, which, you may note, is ONE DAY AFTER he was supposed to fly to the Ancestral Village. But this is all fodder for another blog entry.)

Since The Spouse normally takes the girls to school, when he is away then I have to take the girls to school. I decided to use the opportunity to hop over to the gym right after and do my swim.

As I was walking up the sidewalk in front of the Radisson hotel . . . the lovely, salted sidewalk of the Radisson hotel . . . the only salted sidewalk I have ever seen in my time here in Moscow . . . I saw, standing in front of the hotel, a guy I knew from Bratislava.

He was Food and Beverage Dude for the Radisson there back about the time I was IWC Women's Club President. So Food and Beverage Dude was my good friend. I used to have to hotel kitchen cater my own parties for me because the food was good and extremely reasonably priced. I just loaded everything into the back of my car (ahhh . . . the car! I used to have a car! I even drove it myself!) and kept it all in the garage which was like a giant Walk-In Refrigerator in the winter.

Anyhow, I think I scared the bejeezuz out of him because I could not remember his name, but walked up to him and said, "I KNOW YOU!" His eyes got really big for a moment until he figured out that I was not some Deranged Stalker in a Big Russian Fur Hat.

Isn't that funny? I mean, it makes sense that he would end up at another Radisson. It even makes sense that he might work for a Radisson in Russia. But that he would happen to be standing outside on a day when I changed my routine and happened to walk by?

Things like this happen to me all the time in Moscow.

A funny story about F&B Dude requires you to know that he is not a very big person. He is one of the most professional people I have ever met. Impeccably dressed. Always on the ball. But he is not much taller than I am and I probably out weigh him by a good 30 pounds.

You have to know this for the story to be funny.

He liked my kids. And my kids always liked the chef statue that stood in front of the hotel restaurant in Bratislava. You've seen them, right? It looked sort of like this. Except the hand that held the sign broke. So it was useless to F&B Dude, and he told my kids they could have it.

Like I need a chef statue.

Anyhooooo, I went to the hotel to pick up the statue. F&B Dude was not about, so I told the restaurant manager that I was there to pick up the little man.

That's what I said. "The little man." Because I didn't speak Slovak very well. I figured the manager would know what I mean. I even gestured. I held my hand about chef statue height.

He told me to wait a moment.

When he returned, he did not have my chef statue with him. Oh, no. He brought me F&B Dude.

Speaking of Food and Beverage, I saw Jamie Oliver make this pumpkin soup on the teevee the other night. I made several modifications to it:

I didn't have any coriander seeds, so I just used garlic and chili pepper on the roasting pumpkin.
I didn't have any chestnuts, so I roasted a zucchini and added that to the soup instead.
I used my regular (Hungarian) bacon.
I had fresh sage, but it had been in the fridge for a while, so it was sort of dried sage. I didn't use a lot, because I didn't want the stick-like stems in the soup. But I crushed up some leaves with my fingers and added them.

It was so good, I have roasted some more pumpkin today, and I'm making another batch.

What happened to the chef statue, you might ask?

In Bratislava, there was a place out by one of the malls where you could drop off certain things that didn't really belong at the landfill and that the garbage collection people would not take away. I lived there for almost seven years and did not figure this out until a few weeks before we moved to Moscow.

One day, while the children were safely playing at someone else's house, I took Chef there rather than move a broken statue to Moscow. And, although the Internet said the place would be open, it was not.

So I carefully lowered Chef over the fence and drove away fast fast.

The next day I came back with more things to drop off. The facility was open. And Chef had a position of honor by the front gate.

S'Wonderful

2009-12-10T07:43:00.000+02:00

Submitted for your consideration: WONDER VISION!

Isn't that a riot? I get handed this at one of the Metros now and then. I love how Stevie is, at long last, freed from the darkness. Free at last, free at last!

In other news:

Cat-O peed in the tub this morning. Uh-oh.
Someone stole ALL my umbrellas. I kept them in a brass pot on the landing outside our front door. They have been there for TWO YEARS. The whole mess o' them disappeared last night. Crap kid umbrellas. Nice new IKEA umbrellas. The umbrella I bought at Crate & Barrel last summer. Who would take ALL my umbrellas?

Ho! Ho! Ho!

2009-12-09T07:26:00.003+02:00

Thanks, Kate, for the tip!

Oh, the Weather Outside Is Frightful

2009-12-08T09:18:00.000+02:00

Yesterday afternoon around 3:00, I suddenly looked out the window and realized something was different:

Same scene, about 9:00 p.m.

Playing with the flash. Now you can see the snowflakes. And the Continuing Hell that is Moscow Rush Hour. It's after 9:00 in the p.m. people!

And, again, this morning:

The sidewalks have been swept, so they should now be Nice and Litigiously Slippery. Perhaps today is the day to try out the YakTrax I brought back from the US.

Seriously, though. This is what I signed up for. If I am going to live in Moscow, I want it to be snowy.

Snapshot: Moscow on a Monday

2009-12-07T13:24:00.001+02:00

Things are actually sort of normal here, Chez Beet. By that I mean everyone who was supposed to went to school/work this morning. And the temperature outside is actually -3C.

Much more what one would expect for Moscow in December, no? None of this +6C rubbish.

I got roped into accompanying Skittles' class on a field trip today. So what follows are some snapshots I took along the way.

But first, for your reading pleasure, I have included a vivid image of "Hell As I See It." Or maybe as I "Feel" it.

Imagine, if you can, that you on your way to the school wearing a pair of tights with a dress. And the tights are, apparently, older than you realized.

As are your undies. Elastically speaking.

So old, in fact, that midway between your front door and the Metro, you realize that the tights are not only sagging, but they are actually sliding down off your body.

Pulling the tired old undies with them.

Your bare behind is al fresco, albeit covered by your dress and coat. But, baby, it's still cold outside!

Now imagine ducking into alleys and trying to PULL UP said undies and tights without flashing Greater Moscow.

Good times.

I'll try to erase the horrific image now undoubtedly searing into your brain, by sharing some slightly more Family Friendly Shots.

I'm not really sure which museum we visited with the class today. My best guess is that it was the Museum of Packaging. Which sort of makes sense because I vaguely recall another mother saying once that her kid's class went to what she thought was a Museum of Labels. It could have been this museum.

There were lots of labels.

It's a very small museum, just one room, really. On my map that block of Novaya ploshad is marked "Polytechnika Museum." Maybe . . .

The kids heard a lot about packaging, however. The history of glass containers, paper, barrels, cardboard.

And we saw some packaging.

Yuri Gagarin on matchboxes, for example.

My Star Dog friends, Strelka and Belka on a tin.

Then kids got to play with all sorts of cute things other kids made out of recyclables.
I swear, the little guy on the left looks like he has the words E coli on him.
It can't really say E coli. Can it?

This doll was made out of candy wrappers. Isn't she fabulous?

This fairytale illustration was also made from candy wrappers.

Note the icon made from an Alenka chocolate bar wrapper.

Here's Alenka again, this time masquerading as a Mexican Madonna.

But enough of the Mystery Museum. Let's go back out and hit the streets, tights and undies still dragging.

The shrubs are all wrapped up for winter now.
This site is a shady sidewalk cafe during warmer weather.

The Russians are really into the Chinese New Year animals.

Everywhere you look now you see tigers for sale in anticipation of the upcoming Year of the Tiger.

This is an illustration of how much I confuse the two alphabets now. Recently I have seen a lot of people on the Metro reading a book called Legends of the Arbat. I can actually read that in Cyrillic. The title, that is. Arbat, in Cyrillic, is Арбат. I actually thought, at first, that this was a poster for a movie version of the book. It's not. It's for the movie Avatar.

Duh-oh!

Jewelry Makes Me Feel Funny . . . But Don't Let That Stop You

2009-12-04T17:56:00.002+02:00

Like anything for sale in Anthroplogie, I get all . . . GIMME, GIMME, GIMME! when I look at jewelry. I don't know why. Half the time I acquire pieces, and then I don't even wear them.

I just want them.

WANT THEM!

In Anthropologie, I'm so overwhelmed that I never buy much.

BECAUSE I WANT EVERYTHING!

But especially the bedding.

Like that's all going to fit nicely in my suitcase.

I also have a lot of very nice jewelry from Robert Redford's catalog.

Back before we had kids and I still had a Job-Outside-the-Home, I used to mark up catalogs as a sort of entertainment. I just wanted to consider the items for a while, but I rarely, if ever, ordered them. Like shopping at T.J.Maxx or Odd Lots: sometimes I just like to put the items in my cart for a while. But then, I put them back. I got to have them for a few minutes, and I wasn't that much happier for having done so.

One year around Valentine's Day, The Spouse uncovered one of these Wish-List-Catalogs and ordered everything in it that I marked.

It. Was. Great.

Almost as good as the year he went to Burdine's and got me a lovely sapphire and diamond ring, and even though there was a purse-snatching in progress, the clerk held on to him like grim death, thoughtfully suggestive-selling him other items while her colleagues begged her to "Please, give us the phone!" and then "Please, dial 9-1-1!" because the perp had shoved the victim down and she had bonked her head. Every time I wear that ring I wonder if that poor anonymous shopper is okay.

That was The Valentine's Day to End All Valentine's Days because that ring was the Grande Finale in a series of gifts that also included

The Largest Garfield Card Ever
A Dozen Red Roses
A Whitman Sampler
and the thing I wanted most . . . dinner at the now-defunct Las Puertas in Coral Gables, Florida.

He really outdid himself that year. I don't think he's reached those heights since.

Anyhow, I was bopping along, reading comments on a recent post by one of my very favorite serious bloggers,* and I found a comment by the woman who has this site.

I've been a very good girl, Santa. Can I please have this?

Or this?

Preferably both?

* She's not "serious" as in "humorless." She's serious as in "seriously makes me snort my coffee out my nose, that's how hard I am laughing."

These Boots Were Made for Walkin'

2009-12-04T10:41:00.001+02:00

A while ago I bought these winter boots.

You need to know, if you care about me at all, that I used to be REALLY EASY TO SHOP FOR. Shoe-wise, that is.

So easy, in fact, that my mother used to call me The Imelda Marcos of the Midwest.

Seriously. I could buy shoes from catalogs. Alas, those days are long gone.
I'll spare you the details of my Podiatric Hell. My kids are probably the best people to ask about how annoying it is now to go shoe shopping with me.

Why can't I find stylish, dare I say it, CUTE shoes that don't hurt?

But I digress.

I found myself a nice pair of winter boots. Stylish enough. And, oh, so comfortable.

Then, one day, a few weeks ago, tragedy struck.

On my way out the door to get the children from school, the zipper on my right boot suddenly refused to zip. I pulled. I swore. I got the tool box out and tried to find a way to maximize my leverage. Or maybe it was my torque.

Nothing doing.

I tried, in the late afternoon gloom that is Moscow in November, to see if I could identify what was wrong with the zipper teeth.

I had to go get my reading glasses in order to see the black zipper on the black boots in my dimly lit hall.

I even applied soap, hoping to entice it to S-L-I-D-E. No luck.

NOTHING LOOKED AMISS. What the hell was wrong with the stupid zipper?

Eventually I was able to get the zipper zipped past the Problem Area. I was even able to get my foot in the boot. But the zipper gaped open below the Problem Area. And proceeded to get worse.

Oh, spit.

After consulting with my trusted Moscow Expat Friends, I confirmed what I suspected:

Russian women break boot zippers, too.
Boots are expensive.
Any of the Shoe Repair Kiosks all over Moscow ought to be able to repair or replace the zipper.
I should expect to spend about 200 rubles ($7US).
Which is less than I was quoted to replace a much shorter zipper in the Ancestral Village this summer when I took in a pair of ankle boots I essentially trash-picked out of the detritus of my father's third wife's belongings. (They have fur around the ankle, and are CUTE CUTE CUTE. But not as comfortable as my tall boots. No way.)

There is a nice shoe repair kiosk in the Mall-Under-The-Street about 800 meters from my door.

Just far enough that I want to make sure the shop is open before I go over there. It's not on my way TO anywhere I regularly go.

So, of course, I went over the other day, carrying my one boot in a bag. And even though the sign in the kiosk window said it should be open, it wasn't.

So I got to take my boot to the grocery store.

Harumph.

The Spouse said he would go with me on the weekend, but then he ended up in the hospital. I wore the boot anyhow, feeling like everyone in Moscow was Staring at The Gap in My Zipper.

I'm sure it was barely visible to the naked eye, but I was very self-conscious.

So yesterday I thought I would try again.

I girded my loins, put my boot in a bag, and marched off to the repair kiosk.

Let me just tell you that December 3 shall henceforth be known as Saint Shoe Repair Dude Day. Because Shoe Repair Dude fixed my boot zipper!

Yes, he had to faff about with it a bit, going through the same WTF?!-It-Looks-Like-It-Should-Work-Just-Fine Analysis I did.

He got out tools, and then different tools, and then still different tools.

I was frantically practicing in my head just how I was going to mime "Can I pick it up tomorrow?" when he suddenly solved the problem, demonstrated it several times for me, and charged me 50 rubles.

That's like a buck seventy-five.

I was so grateful that I bought a tube of Super Glue and some black shoe polish from him.

Well, not grateful, exactly. But feeling guilty cuz I only had a 1000-ruble note.

This was the high point of my day. I'm still all giggly about my Newly Refurbished Boot.

Sad, isn't it.

Love This Site

2009-12-03T11:21:00.001+02:00

I don't usually push this sort of thing because I am, essentially, very lazy myself.

But I happened to notice that this particular contest ends tomorrow. So I can't whine and grovel and annoy you about it for very long. Especially since I will probably forget all about it myself in a few minutes anyhow.

But if you have a moment, be a love, eh? I'm curious to see what would happen.

I mean, if you don't, things could get ugly.

I'm just saying.

BEFORE and AFTER

2009-12-02T19:00:00.002+02:00

BEFORE: Wednesday, 5:17 p.m.

AFTER: Wednesday, 7:17 p.m.

He was sent home with three drugs (one inject-able) and the cardiologist's blessing to do whatever he feels up to doing. Follow up on December 7. Cleared to fly. And drink wine.

Food Is Love

2009-12-02T15:31:00.001+02:00

I was the recipient of an EXCELLENT good deed today. See, the Festive-Spirit-Peace-On-Earth-Good-Will-To-Men thang has reached even here in Moscow where it is already dark as I type at 3:22 in the p.m.

The Spouse has been in the hospital, lo these many days. But fret not! He is due to be sprung later today. In fact, as soon as I post this, I'm going over to the hospital to hang out with him. For. The. Last. Time.

Yay!

And Yay! for the Interwebz, which is how I met Fellow-Blogger-in-Mockba-Girlfriend. The other day Fellow-Blogger-in-Mockba-Girlfriend told me she was cookin' up a mess o' marinara sauce and would be sending some my way.

Today was the day.

She called me this morning to say she was going to have someone bring it over to me and was now alright?

Are you kidding me? Homemade spaghetti sauce delivered to my door? You betcha now is alright.

And, sure 'nuf, about 20 minutes later the Delivery Dude called to say he was out front, so I scampered down to the street to be handed the MOST HEAVIEST GROCERY BAG EVER.

There was, like, a GALLON of sauce in there.

Mmmmmm. Sauce.

I was thinking, "Gee, I'm down to a crust of Parmesan cheese . . . I'll have to duck into the grocery store on my way to pick up Skittles from school."

(As you may recall, while Baboo is Quarantined for Strep, Skittles is still forced to attend school. It's been like that scene in Madeline when all the little girls cry, "Boo! Hoo! WE want to have our appendix out, too!")

But I digress.

Do you know what Girlfriend did?

Girlfriend included a wedge of Parmesan cheese in the Care Package!

A GINORMOUS wedge.

Do you have any idea how expensive Parmesan is here?

Sauce, cheese, and even a bag o' pasta! Girlfriend is THE BEST!

This is not just dinner. This is love.

I will pay it forward. I promise.

'Tis the Season to Be Jolly!

2009-12-02T11:03:00.000+02:00

The Spouse is being released from the hospital later today.

Film at eleven.

Is It Happy Hour Yet? Somewhere?

2009-11-30T15:06:00.002+02:00

Oy, such a day I've had of it. And I'm nowhere near done.

Got up at 6:30 after a very restless night's sleep (Baboo being sick and me fearing swine flu).

Took Skittles to school at 7:30.

Stopped by the grocery store on the way home.

Called doctor's office across the street to schedule Baboo a look-see. Got an appointment for 12:30.

Now 9:15. Ran over to see The Spouse and bring him clean clothes. Stayed until about 11:00, then came back home.

Checked email, called the insurance company, tracked down some needed documents before running out the door (late) for Baboo's appointment.

Thems some UGLY tonsils, girl!

Met the Fabulous Dr. M who first treated The Spouse. He checked out Baboo, diagnosed strep, not swine flu, and sent us home with horse pill antibiotics. So glad I didn't just go to the pharmacy and mime that I wanted anti-viral meds!

Largely because I couldn't remember "Tamiflu." All I could think of was "Theraflu."

Baboo is 43kg/94.6 lbs and 154cm/60.6 in/5ft.

In an attempt to nurture myself a little, I am now roasting a gorgeous big, fat chicken with clementines and butter and garlic and parsley under the skin. And I made a big pot of potato soup.

I'm sure the kids will shun both.

While at the hospital this morning, The Spouse reported that he was told that there was NO WAY he'd be sprung on Wednesday. He needs to be in for at least a total of ten days.

Further, no gym after for quite some time (I don't know what this means) and no walking to work (with dropping off the kids and then walking to and from work, he walks 7 km/day). Again, I don't know what this is going to mean. Obviously, I'll be taking the kids to and from school now.

The last I heard the doctors seem to think sitting at a desk and flying in planes are the culprits. Not sure how to get around either of these things either.

I guess all will be revealed.

Comic relief follows. Alternative captions encouraged.

Basement Cat Cat-O Is in the Box

Now Basement Cat Crooky Is in the Box.

I still get to run back to school in time to collect Skittles at 5:30. Then I can relax.

UPDATE: The Spouse reports the tentative release day is back to Wednesday. That's day-after-tomorrow Wednesday!!!

Nooooooooooo!

2009-11-29T14:20:00.003+02:00

When I arrived at the hospital this morning a little after 10:00 a.m., The Spouse was slightly more chipper.

They let him have coffee with his breakfast.

Ah, the simple pleasures.

While I was there the Doctor On Call stopped by to take a look-see and have a chat. Once he discovered The Spouse speaks French he switched from Russian to French, and then I was able to follow a bit better.

What I learned:

This is likely NOT hereditary.
It is likely NOT due to his height
Other than the fact that being so tall makes it difficult to sit comfortably in chairs and on airplanes.
He is, for whatever reason, prone to producing blood clots in his legs which have traveled to his lungs.
But only to his lungs.
And only to small veins/arteries/blood vessels in his lungs.
And only to the lowest part of the lungs (which is the best place if you are going to have clots in your lungs).
His blood pressure has been in the normal range, and his blood oxygen fine since yesterday (when it was actually better than when he checked in on Thursday night).
Christmas travel is NOT necessarily ruled out, especially now that he is being treated. But we will make the final decision the week we intend to travel to the US.

While I was there the babysitter called to say

The electricians are here to replace your electric meter (which has NEVER functioned in the TWO YEARS we have lived here)
Baboo is sick and won't leave our bed.

So I scurried home to find Baboo with a

Sore throat
Fever of 101F/38.3C
Aches
Irritability

Oh, spit.

That's all we need.

She responded well to Advil and while she's not feeling totally okay, her fever came down and her mood lifted. But if she's still poorly tomorrow morning I'm marching her across the street to the doctor and keeping Skittles home, too.

In the meantime, I have managed to find myself with little anyone wants to eat in the house.

Fennel anyone?

How about some beet salad?

Aw, c'mon! It's GOOD!

Maybe I can leave them long enough to run out for carry-out pizza.

Hospital Stay: Day Two

2009-11-27T19:05:00.002+02:00

I couldn't sleep when I got home last night, so I stayed up until 3:00 a.m. drinking wine, playing Bejeweled on Facebook, and listening to two episodes of Criminal Intent.

Woke up at 7:45 a.m.

Probably wasn't a good idea. I tried to have a bit of a nap around 9:00 a.m., but just couldn't do it. Up is up.

So eventually, I dragged my sleep-deprived ass over to the hospital.

No Spouse.

But soon he returned, chagrined because they made him ride around in a wheelchair. He had just come from Ultrasound where they determined there was nothing wrong with his legs.

Then a neurologist came in and questioned him at length about his headaches (This guy thinks they are NOT migraines but, because they begin at night, have more to do with the position of his neck when he sleeps, and you know what? I think the dude is right. But that's another blog entry.) and did a full examination of his reflexes. Determined no brain damage (since there was/is this clot in his lung, and we are now starting to suspect it has been there since 2000, who knows where else clots may have landed?), but tomorrow will be What IS in His Head? Day with MRIs and other scans to make sure. After I left, they did some heart scans and plan to do more and different ones tomorrow.

Blood clots generally form in the legs, which was why they examined his legs. When they break off they land in either the lungs, the kidneys, the heart (causing a heart attack), or the brain (causing a stroke). And one of the tools/tests they use to evaluate if someone has inappropriately clotting blood is called D-dimer.

The doctor at the French clinic ran a D-dimer test on Wednesday night after The Spouse returned from his day in the Russian Hospital. If I understand correctly, a normal reading is below .5 and The Spouse's was .7. Last night the staff at EMC ran another D-dimer, and this time it was 1.3. This suggests to me, expert that I am, that, for whatever reason, there is more clot formation and disintegration going on, and that cannot be good. I mean, I'm guessing that maybe the clot in his lung is breaking down (good), but its residual rubbish is now floating merrily around and could land who knows where (bad).

Good thing he's on anticoagulants now.

I haven't been there for The Chats with the other doctors, but, from what The Spouse reports, they all suggest a strong tone of "Jeez-us! You Dodged THAT Bullet!"

They also believe, based on lengthy probing of The Spouse's medical history, that the chest pain incident in Miami in late 2000 was related to this, as was another chest-pain/trip-to-the-cardiologist event in Bratislava a few years back.

They cannot believe he flew to Paris last week in Cattle Class. Nor that he went to the gym several times this week (he usually goes 6 days/week) and did an hour of cardio each time.

Not that exercise is bad, mind you.

All of this makes me far more creeped out NOW that he is being treated than I was yesterday when he was wandering the streets of Moscow as volatile as Krakatoa in the summer of 1883.

Word today is three- to six-months of treatment. They will not release him until they figure out WHY he has these clots.

I spent the afternoon taking pictures.

The Ostankino Tower in the distance.

Lactated Ringer's Solution . . . yummy.

It's hard to play with your Blackberry with one hand. Here, he was responding to work emails with "I'm hooked up to my IV right now, so you'll have to figure it out without me."

There is a rocket in front of the Armed Forces Museum that you can see from his window.

Comic relief: this was on the way home. I thought the blue neon says "SUSHITERIA,"

but now I think it only says "SUSHITERRA." Not so funny.

This is funny. This is a Spicy Tuna Roll.

The Thing I Fear Most

2009-11-27T08:26:00.001+02:00

I remember being in Argentina and The Spouse ended up in Miami for a project that was supposed to close but didn't for weeks.

It dragged on and on with me down there and him in Florida.

During all of this he called me one evening to say he was alone in the office and, oh, by the way, "I'm having chest pains."

I believe my response was, "Why the hell are you talking to ME?! Call Reception before the lady who vacuums finds you on the FLOOR UNDER YOUR DESK!"

Frankly, I was relieved he was in Florida, not so much for the healthcare delivery but because my big fear has always been that something would happen to him and I would have no one to deal with the children.

How do you even get someone to an Argentine hospital in the middle of the night when the kids and all your friends are sleeping?

Thankfully, I never had to find out. And the diagnosis that time was muscle spasms probably due to job stress.

In the last week we've had a similar situation.

Patient presented with what was at first hard-to-define chest pain (I thought it was a rotator cuff injury initially), no fever, trouble inhaling at times, and occasionally coughed up blood.

Pleurisy?
TB?
CANCER???

Wednesday he finally went to the French place across the street where a VERY concerned GP sent him to a Big Russian Hospital out by Izmaylovsky for a chest scan.

Which ruled out lung cancer, but did confirm pleurisy and identified something in his lung right where the pain was.

He came home with pain killers and antibiotics and instructions to check in Thursday (yesterday) for word on all the blood work they did.

Seems all those symptoms are the classic, textbook definition of pulmonary thrombosis, otherwise known as blood clots in the lungs.

So The Spouse was instructed to

Leave work immediately and
Get over to the hospital. That very evening. Please.

So here is what I have learned so far:

I have lots of friends who are willing and able to help out. Kids slept over with one family, and we even got a ride to the hospital (although it is very close, and I walked home).
Blood clots can land in the lungs, the heart, or the brain. Seems we won that spin of the roulette wheel.
Yes, it can be a fatal thing, but it is very treatable with blood thinners. That just requires a few days in the hospital usually at first because blood thinners are, essentially, rat poison, and monitoring is encouraged. But after that the patient can typically go home and take a prescription.
The smell of freshly cut hay? That's produced by a natural anticoagulant.
EMC has a LOVELY new facility near the Olympic Stadium.
We're not sure what caused this (the broken ankle in 2001 is a possibility, as is job stress).

I went with him to the hospital last night where he was examined again, had a hep lock installed, and was assigned a room (on the website you can see the funny, pointy-end of the building that is all glass . . . that's what he has). They gave him some drugs (I'm guessing IV heparin, an oral warfarin/coumarin-type drug, and a sleeping pill), and I left at midnight as he started to doze off. I should be allowed back after 10:00 this monring. I want to run by his office and pick up some toys (MP3 player, etc) and hope I can hang out with him until school is over at 4:30. Not sure if kids can visit.

At the moment we think he'll have to stay until Sunday, but it all depends on how he responds to the drugs.

Let the Holidays Commence!

2009-11-26T14:45:00.004+02:00

The question has been raised: what DO we Americans listen to at Christmas if we don't listen to those UK favorites?

What follows is a sample. I never said these were better. Just the devils we know.

And my personal favorite . . .sing along, with me!

Finally, I have to add this song. I had never even heard of this singer before Loyal Beetnik Katbat mentioned him in the Comments. Then I found a mention of him in The New Yorker on the same day. He's a friend of Lyle Lovett's. How have I never heard of him? The song epitomizes everything I miss about the US of A--the good, the bad, and the ugly.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

2009-11-24T09:27:00.002+02:00

You wouldn't think living in Slovakia and Russia would teach me about British culture.

Oh, the wonders of Sky.

Anyhoo . . . what I wanted to say is that I now know all sorts of interesting things about British culture.

Like how they use the word brilliant all the time, sometimes shortening it to, God help us all, brill.

Pants are not to be worn on the street. Well, not without something over them.

Just say the words fanny pack and watch the reaction.

Moreish has nothing to do with the Alhambra.

Fancy dress does not mean black tie optional. (I just learned this the other day.)

Christmas (or Crimbo . . . yes, they say that) brings a WHOLE 'NUTHER realm of cultural differences: the Brits have endless favorite Christmas songs THAT WE HAVE NEVER HEARD OF.

All of which receive endless hours of airplay on the video channels.

Yes, I know.

It isn't even Thanksgiving yet.

After you listen to these Classic Christmas Favorites (should that be Favourites?), you'll wish you hadn't. Because you won't be able to stop humming them. And some of them are JUST AWFUL. Or weird. Or both.

You have been warned.

I'll start with one you might know. It's even in HD for your viewing pleasure.

I kind of like this next song. Well, I did the first one hundred times I heard it.

We always thought this was just the Tesco theme music. Guess not.

I'm really sorry about this next one.I had never heard of this band until I read Touching the Void. One of the guys talks about how he has a Boney M song stuck in his head the whole time, and he can't believe he's going to FREAKING DIE with a Boney M song stuck in his head. I think having this song stuck in my head makes me want to kill myself. That's what I think.

But if you stick it out until the end, all FIVE minutes and THIRTY-NINE seconds, you get a surprise.

I love Paul McCartney. Really, I do. But honestly, I will hum this song for the next FOUR weeks and hate him the entire time. And now you will too. Heh heh.

This one isn't so bad.

This is pretty, but sort of melancholy.

They really do say Happy Christmas instead of Merry Christmas.

But our VERY favorite Weird British Christmas Classic here Chez Beet, is this little number. It is disturbing on so many levels.

Kind of makes that American tradition, the annual Day-After-Thanksgiving-Shopping-Hell known as Black Friday or, say, having your teeth drilled, pleasant in comparison now, doesn't it?

And Now for Something COMPLETELY Different

2009-11-20T07:36:00.000+02:00

Here are photos of British Humour Night taken by the bar's photographer.

The Germans sketch

Neil's monologue

It's the Arts sketch

Lysistrata

BRITISH HUMO(U)R NIGHT 2, Some Highlights (Thanks Alice!)

2009-11-19T21:03:00.006+02:00

D.A.R.E. to . . . What?

2009-11-18T11:29:00.001+02:00

I was all in a lather and ready to fire off some rapier-wit snipes to this columnist because this time she really has GONE TOO FAR.

But, in the end, I decided it is best to treat her like a misbehaving toddler and just ignore the behavior.

Instead, I bring you some good karma.

Do you know about Operation Beautiful? Go check it out.

Isn't that nice? Talk about your random acts of kindness.

I have a Facebook Friend who always posts lovely positive affirmations. And not in a Stuart Smalley way. Not that Stuart isn't wonderful, you understand. But FB Friend lacks Stuarts self-doubt.

Speaking of D.A.R.E., there seems to be something up at the French school. We got the following email from the PTA:

Subject: Information prévention des conduites à risque‏

Chers Adhérents,
Monsieur LXXXXX , Proviseur du lycée, nous charge de vous informer que l'intervention concernant la prévention des conduites à risque aura lieu dans les classes 4ème à Terminale pendant la semaine du 30 novembre, une séance plénière destinée aux parents sera programmée. Ces interventions seront conduites par deux experts français.

Bien Cordialement,
Le bureau de l’APENG

Even I understood this. It says something like

Dear Folks,
We're going to have an intervention regarding risky conduct for those students 8th grade and above.

So it doesn't apply to us. But it set The Spouse and me to puzzling: what kind of risky behavior?

"Doesn't say it's limited to flu," mused The Spouse. "Might be passing out condoms, for all I know."

But then we brainstormed a little and came up with this list:

Crossing the Garden Ring while not using the underpass.
Publishing an article about human rights abuses in Russia.
Being on the street late at night or at any time if you are from Tatarstan.
Not using the sidewalks in the winter.
Using sidewalks in the winter.

Guess we'll have to wait a few years until our kids are old enough for L'Intervention.

Um, I'm PRETTY Sure I Didn't Say It QUITE That Way

2009-11-13T17:29:00.001+02:00

Oh, the Interwebz! It is a wonderful place.

Thanks to the miracle of blog statistic sites, I discovered another lovely American woman who blogs about her life in Moscow. And today she joined the original Fab Four Blogging Babes at lunch.

My blog stat info showed a reader coming from a site I didn't recognize, so I followed the link, and lo and behold! New friend!

My blog stat info also showed this link. Hmmm. Also mysterious. What the heck could that be?

Ah, yes! The cat scratching box people!

You may recall, if you are a regular here Chez Beet, that about a month ago I wrote and posted this entry about how happy I was I found these cardboard boxes for cats to scratch on since I had been bringing them back from the USSA in my suitcase.

Go click the link and read it again.

Go on.

I'll wait.

[drums fingers]

Didja read what I wrote?

Now, if you can read Russian, this is how what I wrote got translated into Russian:

Мы с мужем живем в Огайо.
Наш любимый кот использует картонную когтеточку Catoslav. Ветеринар посоветовал нам приобретать именно такие когтеточки в специализированной аптеке, где их можно купить по наиболее приемлемой цене в $ 43 (около 1300 руб.), в то время как в других местах Catoslav будет стоить дороже. Чтобы съездить в эту аптеку надо потратить несколько часов на дорогу, в общей сложности посвятить один из выходных дней.
Недавно я была в Москве.
Это было удивительно! Я обнаружила, что подобная картонная когтеточка, без которой американский кот не представляет себе счастливой жизни, производится в России, продается в московских магазинах и называется «Когтедралка Домашняя».
До зоомагазина добиралась недолго: пять остановок на метро с одной пересадкой, да пару кварталов пешком.
Купив когтеточку всего за 250 руб. ($8.4), я возвратилась домой.
Покрутив упаковку, я увидела сайт производителя картонных когтедралок. Зашла. Там очень интересные видеоролики. Рекомендую - посмотрите их все!
Особенно забавное видео про российскую леди Светлану и ее семь (СЕМЬ!) кошек Плюшку, Кабачка, Кису, Цыгана и их друзей, изодравшими мебель, стены и занавески.
Когда Светлана дает своим питомцам «Когтедралку Домашнюю», они буквально набрасываются на нее, мешают друг другу, выстраиваются в очередь. Все остальные когтеточки (веревочная и ковровая) остались пылиться в кладовке.
Теперь Светлана может потратить свои сбережения на новую обивку кресел, а свободное время посвятить себе (зайти в салон красоты).
Действительно, смотрите все видеофильмы.
Мне 64 года, и для меня они очень забавны.
Спасибо «Когтедралка Домашняя»!

I was very excited.

"What does it say? What does it say?" I asked The Spouse. I wanted to see how The Expatresse translated into Russian.

The Spouse dutifully took the Russian text and translated it back into English for me. Here is what the good people who visit the Kogtedralka web site think I wrote:

My husband and I live in Ohio.
Our beloved cat uses the cardboard cat scratcher “Catoslav.” The veterinarian recommended us to acquire just this kind of cat scratcher in a special drugstore where you can buy them for a better price of $43 (about 1300 rubles), as the Catoslav is more expensive in other places. In order to get to this drugstore, I had to spend hours on the road and the main problem was that I used up a whole weekend day.
Recently, I was in Moscow.
It was fantastic!! I discovered that a similar cardboard cat scratcher that my American cat could not imagine living without is produced in Russia and is sold in Moscow stores under the name Kogtedralka Domashnyaya.
To get to the pet shop didn’t take long. Five stops on the Metro and one transfer, and then a couple of blocks on foot.
I bought this cat scratcher for 250 rubles ($8.4) and returned home.
When I opened the package, I saw the website where these cardboard cat scratchers are made. I went to that sight and saw some really interesting videos. I recommend them – watch them all!
One video about a Russian lady was especially funny. Her name is Svetlana and she has seven (SEVEN!!) cats: Fluffy, Squash-shaped, Kissy, Gypsy, and their friends and it showed their furniture, walls and curtains.
When Svetlana gives her wards the Kogtedralka Domashnyaya cat scratcher, they literally throw themselves on her, tussle all over each other, and get in a line. The other cat scratchers (rope ones and carpet ones) were left folded in the closet.
Now Svetlana can spend her savings on new upholstery for her chair and her free time for herself (going to the beauty parlor).
Really, look at the videos.
I am 64 years old, and this is really fun for me.
Thank you, Kogtedralka Domashnyaya cat scratcher!

Sheesh. I hope none of them ever run into Washer Repair Dude III.

In other news, It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like . . . CRAP DOGS!

The Apples Sure Don't Fall Far From the Tree

2009-11-11T20:28:00.003+02:00

A million years ago, like, back in May, I agreed to join a book group here in Moscow, largely because my friend was part of the group.

We all nominated titles we'd like to read during the 2009-2010 year. The Spouse had recently handed me a copy of The Death of Achilles by Boris Akunin. It takes place in 1882 Moscow, and I wanted to read it, so I nominated it. The group approved it at a meeting I did not attend.

Someone kindly created a schedule with a hostess, a book, and a presenter for each month. When they read your book, you are the presenter.

I have been in book groups before, but we never actually discussed the book.

These people seem to really talk about the book.

I mean, in my previous experiences we read the book, but no one ever discussed the book.

Book group usually went like this:

Someone: Didja read the book?
Someone Else: Yeah. I liked/didn't like it.
Someone: What do you wanna read for next time?
Someone Else: How about this? [holds up a book]
Someone: Okay. Is the waiter ever going to bring my glass of wine?
Someone Else: Gawd, I am so angry with my husband! This morning he had the nerve to . . .

So September rolls around, the group begins anew, and Friend gets a job and politely excuses herself from the group.

I skip the October meeting because they were reading The History of Love, which I read and adored, but I apparently gave away my copy and didn't feel like buying/hunting down another one.

Plus, it made me cry. I don't need to go there again.

Plus, with Friend gone, I'm not sure I will know anyone in this group.

Plus, THEY ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT THE BOOKS!

This week I plowed through the rest of An Echo in the Bone, telling myself that I can then read The Death of Achilles over the weekend.

AEITB was 814 pages.

TDOA is only 320.

Piece. Of. Cake.

Except on Tuesday the Anglo Russian Theatre guy sends me an email with a script for a hysterical version of Lysistrata attached and asks, "Fancy making a comeback?"

Now I am playing Lysistrata on Sunday.

Oh, and I got a pitiful SMS a few minutes ago asking if I would please, oh, please play "The Host" in another sketch.

And I'm probably "Third Bruce" in still another sketch.

So I should be cranking through The Death of Achilles now so I can get it out of the way before Friday.

Instead I am watching YouTube videos of the sketch in which I play "The Host," memorizing the lyrics to "The Philosopher's Song," trying to remember how to do an Australian accent (I did live there for two months once. . . in 1977), and writing this blog entry.

Guess I shouldn't be so surprised when my kids do the same thing.

Oh, and did I mention that the Barefoot Contessa is on? She's making chicken bouillabaisse.

TOGA! TOGA! TOGA!

2009-11-11T07:56:00.001+02:00

Now you definately have to come to Pivo Vodi Sunday night (their web site is here) because not only am I cast in our version of Lysistrata, I am cast as Lysistrata!

I suspect it is because I am the only one with a spare sheet. But whatever! I'll take it.

A little bird tells me there also might be some of this:

Don't mention the war.

Bad, Better, Best

2009-11-09T20:38:00.001+02:00

BAD
Kid comes home from school today after TWO WEEKS of holiday and complains, "I have to write TWO essays by Thursday!"

Me/The Spouse: "Um, when did you get the assignment?"

Kid, wailing: "BEFORE THE VACATION!!!!!!!"

Me/The Spouse (in unison): "Oy!" [smacking foreheads]

Actually this was a Play in Two Acts with me (Act 1) explaining how this assignment would certainly require a five-paragraph essay with

an introduction,
three points of support or examples (because we are a Christian culture) and
a conclusion.

Act 1 was followed by Act 2 or The Spouse explaining how this assignment would certainly require a five-paragraph essay with

an introduction,
three points of support or examples (he left out the trinity references, but then again, he was a Poli Sci major and not an English major) and
a conclusion.

BETTER
Dinner.

I'm sorry but I KICKED ASS tonight.

Pan-seared pork tenderloins seasoned with salt, pepper, cumin, and chili pepper.

Oven-roasted Brussels sprouts with olive oil and sea salt.

My latest version of beet salad. I roasted a beet. Yeah, just one. But it weighed a pound and a half. It came from Chernobyl. Peeled it and cut into chunks. Added one grapefruit, peeled and sectioned. Salt and pepper. Fresh, grated horseradish. Lemon zest. And a sauce made of sour cream and the juice of one lemon. Damn, but it was GOOD. It was also yummy on the pork.

Yeah, I shoulda taken pictures. But sour cream on beets just turns PINK. Believe me: it tasted incredible.

I intended to serve it on a bed of posh mixed greens. But I got lazy. So sue me.

BEST
The Spouse came home early to help Kid with homework. Brought samples of chocolates and cookies that the office had sampled in planning this year's Office Christmas Gifts for Clients. My favorite was some sort of caramel/brittle topped with a layer of bitter-sweet chocolate, chopped almonds, and dried fruits.

Perfect end to a really delicious meal.

Leninalia

2009-11-08T19:06:00.003+02:00

Today we went to Gorki Leninskiye. It is an estate, about 30 km south of Moscow. What is interesting about it is that this is where Lenin went to convalesce after an assassination attempt in 1918. The property had belonged to a wealthy widow, but was nationalized and turned into a sanitarium for the Bolshevik elite.

We went with a tour, so we went from the center of Moscow to the estate by van. That was interesting it itself because I go around by Metro normally. Which means I pop up at various points above ground and so don't often see how these places connect with one another. I found I knew most of the route, actually. I had just never seen it from that perspective.

A confession: I am not particularly well-versed in Russian history. Lennon is a lot more interesting to me than Lenin. I happen to live here, however, and, love him or hate him, to say that Lenin was an extremely important character in modern history in an understatement. It seemed foolish not to take the opportunity to learn a little something.

The estate at Gorki Leninskiye is a perfectly preserved snapshot of a place Lenin lived and, ultimately, died. In addition, his apartment/offices in the Kremlin have been meticulously recreated in a separate building on the grounds. While the layout and some of the room proportions are not the same as they were in the Kremlin, every item is just as it was. They even took the oak paneling from the conference rooms.

As usual, I have a lousy little camera that is profoundly limiting. Glass in front of many items made for reflections, glare and unusable pictures. But don't be discouraged: the estate is definately worth a visit.

The estate is comprised of three main houses. Lenin and his wife and sister lived in the more modest one at first.

We had to wear these slippers over our shoes whenever we went inside. MUCH better than the blue, plastic numbers you normally get. But they were big. I tripped over mine a lot.

Below is Lenin's first bedroom. He worked at the small desk. The wolf was a gift.

But eventually he had to move to the bigger, more elegant house because his strokes made climbing the stairs in this building difficult.

Here is the bigger house. It is definately posher, but not grotesquely over-the-top.

One of the attractive features about this place was that in the 1920s it had a telephone.

The letters on the desk are notes Lenin wrote to the phone company complaining about problems with the service.

Part of Lenin's personal library. If you can read the Cyrillic, you might see that this shelf holds his copies of works by Marx and Engels.

They had a movie projector and used to watch movies. The films were silent, so his sister would accompany on the piano.

The curtains were inspired by Napoleon's flags at the battle of Borodino. The bees symbolize work, power, and wealth. I think they, like almost everything in this house, were remnants of the previous owners and not personal possessions of Lenin.

In fact, Stalin thought this painting of a Russian cemetery was gloomy and inappropriate to have around a convalescent. But Lenin did not want money spent to change anything on his behalf. So the painting stayed put.

This mechanical wheelchair was a gift to Lenin by some factory workers. However, he never used it because it required two hands to steer, and his strokes profoundly impaired his use of his right hand.

He did use this wheelchair. There are many photos of him in this chair on the estate grounds.

He had to have the hand railing on the stairs modified to fit his crippled right hand. I'm not sure why the steps in the other house were a bigger problem (they did seem steeper, as I recall).

This was his bedroom in the big house. He died here in 1924 at 6:50 p.m. All of the clocks were stopped and still show that time.

You can see his walking stick leaning against the table.

The death mask was sort of macabre. You can see how his right hand was unnaturally clenched by the strokes.

Perhaps the best part was in the garage . . .

His specially customized, snow-ready Rolls Royce! How cool is that? The estate guide told us it is still in working order, although the hood ornament is a replacement after the original was stolen during a tour of school children during the 1990s.

P.S. The Spouse sent me this today.

My Cats Could Do THAT!

2009-11-07T16:44:00.003+02:00

Okay, we just returned from the Yuri Kuklachev Cat Theatre.

This particular show had very charming moments. But not nearly enough cats!

The two-legged performers were certainly talented. Especially the young man who I suspect is Dmitry Kuklachev. Whoever that was, that boy can DANCE. I mean serious balletic leaps and spins.

All extremely impressive. I kept thinking, "And you're stuck doing that here at the CAT THEATER?!" I'm American, so I spell it that way. But seriously, if he can't get a gig doing that with a real ballet company because there are BETTER LEAPERS AND SPINNERS . . . well, Moscow is an amazing place.

The first half of the show went on for a VERY long time before we got any cats.

I was starting to get worried.

And the cats didn't do anything more than my cats can do: run across the stage with tails held high, climb something, and stay put because they have been, in effect, attached.

I went into this thinking, "I'm gonna see some cats with real talent." But those cats didn't do much more than, well, be cats.

The finale of the first act involved the company of two-legged actors reading newspapers and devolving into a paper ball fight with the paper balls getting bigger and bigger until a REALLY big ball, covered in newspaper, appeared and was introduced into the audience like a beach ball at a rock convert. It was very clever and a real crowd pleaser.

But did not include any cats.

We had ice cream during the intermission. It was good.

In the second act the cats did do some actual tricks. They walked on very narrow bridges that connected all the two-legged performers, some of whom were on stilts. They sat in little seats suspended high in the air that were swung out over the audience. They rode scooters. They refused to leave soup pots (very cute). They suffered being petted by EVERY KID IN THE AUDIENCE. They scooted across parallel bars on their elbows (THAT was impressive).

Skittles could not get over the cats on scooters. Really, the cats did nothing. They just happened to be on scooters that were pushed on and off the stage. But it was funny.

"A cat on a scooter!" she said the whole way home. "You don't see that every day."

I have pounded into them that a man in a dress is ALWAYS funny. But Skittles has noted that a cat on a scooter is always funny, too.

But the Cat Man in Key West has cats that jump through rings of fire.

RINGS OF FIRE!

Okay, I laughed until I cried at a moment where a cat was seated in a gold sequined moon suspended high above the stage while an orchestral version of Memories played.

And the Grand Finale included BALLOONS FOR EVERYONE!

It was really sweet and very Russian-y. Every single kid in the house got one of those really long balloons. They were all invited to approach the stage and they got a ballon and no one was greedy and everyone took turns and was polite. And the kids, as a group, were ADORABLE.

And then it was over and we were all heading for the Coat Check and a woman stood there in the lobby with a kitten saying "Free cat!" to everyone.

Yeah. I bet they have a few.

Overall, I'd give this particular show a 7 only because it was Cat Lite. But I would definately go again.

Tomorrow we're going to Gorky Leninskiy. I'll tell you all about it when we get back.

My Favorite Moscow Museum: Decorative, Applied, and Folk Art

2009-11-06T14:56:00.000+02:00

I've mentioned this funny little museum before, as I've been probably four times now. But today I finally remembered to bring my camera.

For the record, the price of the camera permit (100 rubles) was more than the cost for me (50 rubles) and the girls (20 rubles each) to get in.

Also, for the record, today is Friday. All the sites I looked at said the museum is closed on Fridays.

Below are a few pictures of things I really like there. Blogger isn't the best place to share large quantities of photos, so I will put them all on the blog's Facebook page. But here's a taste.

The little train engine is a samovar.

In Which I Fall in Love

2009-11-05T17:46:00.002+02:00

I'm sure I've said this before, but, for someone who has lived as an expat since 1999, I don't much care for new experiences.

I like the Tried-And-True, thank you very much. The Demon I Know.

So although we will have lived in Moscow and this apartment for TWO YEARS as of December, until this week I had not tried the cute little Italian place right behind us.

There are so many reasons not to:

What if it's too expensive?
What if I can't find anything I like on the menu?
What if the Cyrillic is in that cursed italic font that I find impossible to read?
What if they are mean to me?

I didn't say anything about my fear was logical.

Anyhow, the girls have been off school the past two weeks, and we have been going out to lunch every day. And since there are only about three places I go to for lunch, it's been getting boring.

Which was how I was driven to try the cute little Italian place on Tuesday.

It's called U Giovanni, and here is their website. If you are not familiar with Slavic languages, the "U" is like the French "Chez."

The girls always order pasta carbonara in Italian places. It was excellent, and about 100 rubles cheaper than Mi Piace's pasta carbonara. I had a nice spinach salad with sliced red peppers, pink grapefruit sections, and sauteed scallops. And a Margarita pizza (if they can't get a plain cheese pizza right . . .). All great.

Then we had dessert. Tiramisu and panna cotta.

A confession: I had never eaten panna cotta before.

This one came with a thin layer of passion fruit on top. Light and lovely. The tiramisu was probably the best I've ever had.

All this in a cute, cute, CUTE little place.

Did I mention it was cute?

I don't know why it struck me so. I think it just felt like a small restaurant tucked in a corner in a really big city. Which it is.

So we took The Spouse there last night. Girls had a repeat of their carbonara. I had an arugala salad with duck breast and the minestrone. The Spouse had a cream of pumpkin soup and pork with gorgonzola. The girls shared a slice of chocolate torte, and we got to have a bite. Heaven.

Coincidentally, the Barefoot Contessa featured panna cotta this week. It seemed like a sign from the Divine that I ought to try making it.

Confession #2: I've never made anything involving gelatin.

I was pretty sure they sell little packages of gelatin in the grocery store. That's when Fun With Russian began.

This definately says "GELATIN."

What threw me was the pictures of vegetables. I looked at the back, but the ingredients list was

microscopic (I really need to carry my reading glasses with me at all times) and
in Russian.

I wasn't sure if what was on the front of the package was a Serving Suggestion or an illustration of What's Inside.

So I bought this, just to be safe.

But I don't think this is gelatin. I think maybe it's something like pectin, for putting up jelly and jam. But I'm just guessing here. A quick google of the word kvittin gets me quince.

Now, if you look carefully at the pictures, you can probably tell which one I used (um . . . the one with the ripped open packet). But I had to open it, stick my finger in, and taste the powder to make sure it was flavorless.

Which it was.

So I made Ina Garten's Panna Cotta, which is just the simplest thing ever and oh, so delicious! Strawberries are not in season, so I skipped that part, but I ate my portion with some sort of berries I found in the freezer (I think it was part of a fruit crumble without enough crumble).

And it was good.

Next time I get invited somewhere and have to bring a dessert, I'm making this.

Grand Guignol Photos or What I Did Last Week

2009-11-04T11:27:00.000+02:00

Applause, Applause!

2009-11-02T09:07:00.001+02:00

Okay. Now I can get serious about finishing An Echo in the Bone.

And cleaning the kids' room.

Go Ahead! Touch It!

2009-10-31T10:53:00.002+02:00

In all the excitement of play practice and Skittles' rentrée, I forgot to tell you about the visit to the State Archives yesterday.

By now, I have become quite a fan of the Fabulous Larissa. So when she wrote an email saying we would "visit State Archives with Tzar's Romanovs belongings! This is the place where you can touch history, which changed the world." I had no idea she meant literally touch history.

I didn't really have any idea what to expect on this outing, but with Larissa, it's usually entertaining. Skittles was still at Sports Camp, so I dragged Baboo with me.

The group was, by design, small. We found ourselves seated around a small conference table with Larissa and an archivist (coincidentally, also named Larissa).

Archivist Larissa is talking in Russian (although she spent her formative years in New York and her English is flawless) and opening large file folders and passing around what looks like a bunch of very old, handwritten documents. I catch "Catherine the Great" before Tour Guide Larissa begins to translate. By now the document is sitting in front of me.

Me, carefully putting the cap back on my waterproof/fade-proof uni-ball and setting the pen in my lap lest I twitch suddenly and drop it, cap off, onto the file: "Um, excuse me . . . these are written by Catherine the Great?"

Both Larissas: "Yes."

Me: "WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT!?"

And so it went. She trotted out and passed around a lot of things, no doubt intended to give us a sense of the depth and breadth of the Archives' holdings including

A letter signed by Napoleon before he started referring to himself, like Cher and Madonna, by just his first name. We tried to figure out the date, but Baboo was able to tell us that in Napoleon's time, they had different names for the months. Further, she knew that they tended to say things like "in the 23rd year of the 1st Republic . . ." which is, indeed, how the letter was dated.
The original constitution of Poland (also in French). The Russians gave it back to Poland at one point, but the Germans took it during WWII and then swapped it back to the Russians in exchange for something else. Me: "Um, doesn't Poland kinda want this?" Russian Dude Sitting Next to Me, with a shrug: "Meh. It doesn't hurt to want."
Commemorative handkerchiefs from 1912 featuring the Czar's image. Apparently once everyone figured out that the hankies could actually be used, it was quite the scandal.
A hat that may or may not have belonged to Nicholas I. Archivist Larissa thought it was only of-the-period.
A letter from Franz Schubert dated 1828.
A letter from Charles Dickens.
A letter from Dostoevsky dated 1872.
The personal photo albums of the Czar's family, hand-decorated by the Czarina. Here they are in front of the house. Here they are on the side of the house, but you can see the front of the house. Here they are in front of the tree. And so on.
English-language books belonging to the Czar's daughter, Olga. One was Tennyson. Her mother had decorated the flyleaf. Olga was known for being sort of a couch potato and liked nothing better than spending the afternoon lying on the sofa with a book. Like Baboo.
And, finally, everyone's favorite, a letter written to Anastasia in 1914 by some 11-year-old kid in Kansas City who went on and on about her favorite classes in school and details about her town including the number of various businesses and denominations of the local churches. She included a photo ("This isn't me, but it sort of looks like me.") and a lock of her own hair.

I kept thinking, "What if I sneeze a juicy sneeze all over these papers/photos/textiles?" It's the sort of thing that would happen to me. However, the Archives house over 6 million files. I suppose if I had sneezed or had some sort of small seizure involving my pen, there's plenty more where these came from.

Play Practice

2009-10-30T23:02:00.002+02:00

So somehow I got roped into doing this play.

It's the total opposite of a Cecil B. Demille production (ie. a cast of thousands) in that it only has something like four actors.

Me. I play the Madame in the brothel. It's my house, you see,

The Prostitute.

Jack. As in Jack-the-Ripper. After all, it's Halloween. And, okay, it's set in Paris, and we all know Jack-the-Ripper wasn't working in Paris. But it's a slasher-serial-killer-butcher-with-a-knife-type dude.

That's it.

Okay, there are some cops who come in at the end, but you have to come to see the show on Sunday to find out if they get there in time to save the damsel-in-distress.

All neatly wrapped up and tied with a bow in 20 minutes.

So what's my point?

My point, and I do have one, is that the tender sweet young thing playing the Hooker with the Heart of Gold and the Dude Whose Name I Can Never Remember playing Jack are really, REALLY good.

Then there's me.

I haven't been in a play since I was an extra, in the chorus of our high school production of My Fair Lady in . . . oh . . . Nineteen and Seventy-EIGHT.

They didn't even give me a line.

Okay, in eighth grade we did a sort of bastardized version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

I had a line in that.

You wanna know what my line was.

Really?

Are you sitting down?

"Here's the bucket!"

That was all they trusted me with.

Tonight, we rehearsed the play, running through it with the director about three times, and then the three of us just sat and read our lines in another room a bunch of times, and then we went home, and the girl (she really is just a girl) playing the prostitute and I end up walking to the Metro together, and I asked what her day job is, because starving young actors usually have a day job, and she says,

"Oh, good Lord, I'm an English teacher. I've never done this before in my life."

And then she says. . . are you ready? She says,

"But you're a professional actor, right?"

Ha hahahahahaha ha!

Ha!

In a Complete Change of Topic: Skittles is back.

Hurray!

One of the other kids in the group has les poux.

That's lice.

Ha hahahahahaha ha!

Ha!

Was that wrong of me? Seriously.

I checked her head. She's fine. But I think there is Justice in the Universe when kids who mock my kid get lice.

There. I said it.

You Can Lead a Whore to Culture . . .

2009-10-30T07:34:00.001+02:00

At the risk of boring you to death, here are the details of Sunday's performance. One. More. Time.

Admission is free, although they do pass the hat after. Shows tend to run about an hour. You don't need a reservation.

Pivo Vodi is a nice venue, and you should know about it anyhow. Come downstairs and if the hostesses swoop down on you, just say "Theater!" and they will direct you to the "karaoke room."

One of the regular members of the company pointed out this article in a local paper. I think it gives an accurate description of the group.

While I have rehearsal tonight (and tomorrow and most of the day on Sunday), Skittles makes her triumphant return this evening. The week has pretty much gone as I predicted it would with her being

picked last for teams,
met with disappointment by her fellow team members ("It's not fair! With her we're handicapped!")
the last one in the pool finishing her laps while everyone else has gone to the showers, and
mocked for being "planted like a NAIL!" during soccer.

Oh, the playground is a cruel place. She said the other kids imitate her soccer skills by standing stock still and then watching an imaginary ball roll by while commenting, "Is that a ball?" She fails to find the humor in this.

When I talked to her on the phone last night, I reminded her that today she would have to pack her suitcase.

"I already packed," she said.

Never mind the fact they don't leave until 4:00 this afternoon. I imagine her sitting on her suitcase by the hotel front door now with her purse or whatever a 9-year-old would have in her lap, waiting for the bus.

Oh, well. A valuable lesson learned. I give her big points for even going in the first place.

Happiness Is . . .

2009-10-29T13:41:00.001+02:00

Grocery shopping with Baboo
She has requested Nutella. I'm thinking about what she can eat it with, should I buy some sort of bread or crepes?

ME: What are you going to put it on?
BABOO: A spoon.

Today's Text Messages from Skittles
This morning she writes: Much better hardly hurts bored everyone has a play station thing that i have [and I did not allow her to take to sports camp] and is playing with it

Just now I received this: Good i am hHAPPY cause i have a extra large jolly pop

Not Related To Anything
The Spouse just sent me this link. At is an ad promoting tourism at Lake Balaton in Hungary. I have been to Lake Balaton. It is very nice. But I don't recall it being quite like in the ad.

Camp Granada

2009-10-28T09:34:00.001+02:00

So a few weeks ago, someone from school sent around an email about what the French call a stage. A stage multi sport, to be specific. What you and I would call sport camp.

It would be a week, more or less, for kids ages 9 to 13. Soccer, jogging, ping pong, judo, swimming, and basketball. At some hotel/complex about 50 km outside Moscow. Hosted by Anatoly who is one of the fellows who teaches judo after school. I vaguely recalled Anatoly as one of those rara avises who loves kids and kids love back and who seems delighted to let them chase him and climb all over him and tumble around on the floor with them like puppies and not like Michael Jackson.

(Perhaps you remember our attempts to enjoy judo shortly after we arrived in Moscow? You don't? Because it was some sort of fresh hell all around. For me and for Skittles.)

I did raise the topic with The Spouse, and we had a big old belly laugh at the thought of our kids expressing any interest at all in attending Franco-Russian sports camp.

But, oddly enough, a few days later Skittles brought it up herself. Could she please, oh please, go to the stage multi sport?

Okaaaay.

Long story short, I arranged it and off she went last Saturday morning with three other girls, eight little boys, and the Very Brave Anatoly and his Trusty English-Speaking Sidekick.

The Spouse and Baboo and I spent the weekend wondering if stage multi sport might devolve into some sort of Franco-Russian Lord of the Flies.

Hello Mudder, hello Fadder
Here I am at Camp Granada
And it's very entertaining
And they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining

I sent Skittles off with Baboo's mobile phone, and we suspect half the fun of going to sports camp was getting access to a phone. She figured out how to send text messages, but she's not that good at it, preferring to have a real conversation. As a result, her messages have a very plaintive quality to them.

Some examples:

SKITTLES: Hi

Monday during siesta time, a very homesick Skittles called sobbing, "I want to come home right now!"

Take me home, oh Mudder, Fadder
Take me home, I hate Granada
Don't leave me out in the forest
Where I might get eaten by a bear

Even if I knew exactly where this facility is, I have no car. We talked her off the metaphorical window ledge and soon all was well.

Later, we determined that lots of kids were having a tough time on Monday. Her roommmate became a bit short with her and announced, "I don't feel like talking right now." And another mother reported that her son called her on Monday in tears because the other boys were excluding him.

There was also the Great Candy Caper, in which some of the boys apparently secured and consumed large amounts of candy, so much so that they spoiled their appetites for supper. This caused Anatoly to confiscate the candy and lecture the group, in passionate Russian, about how athletics requires good nutrition, candy was certainly allowed, but he would only release the candy cache AFTER meals.

Tuesday during siesta, I received this:

SKITTLES: rest Skittle

Later, during a conversation, she revealed that she had been responsible for the basketball and that, while holding it, someone had slammed into her resulting in an injured and swollen finger. After supper, I received the following exchange:

SKITTLES: Salad french fry and meat and chocolate for dinner finger dark purple

No I don't want - to-oo scare ya
But my best mate has malaria
You remember Jeffrey Hardy
They're about to organise a searching party

That resulted in my calling her and asking if she wouldn't mind showing it to Anatoly who, I understand, is a med student. Perhaps some ice might be in order.

SKITTLES: Finger in cup of cold water

Today is only Wednesday. A lot more can happen between now and Friday afternoon.

Take me home, I promise I will not, make noise
Or mess the house with other boys
Oh please, don't make me stay
I've been here one whole day

Cats: Who Needs 'Em?

2009-10-27T16:10:00.002+02:00

Odd, I know, but I'm THRILLED because I scored four tickets to the Moscow Cats Theatre.

I'm told the theater is small and there are no bad seats, but if you go here, you can see my seats: Row 1, Seats 15-18.

Yay!

Getting the tickets was a feat in itself. The theater is on the other side of town. I finally dragged my sorry behind out there today, in the rain. Because otherwise it just was never going to happen.

The closest Metro is not that close to me or to the theater. And the final bit o' fun was that the theater was receiving a delivery (cat litter, perhaps? I hear they all live upstairs. . .) so the front door was open to the street making it very noisy and difficult to talk.

The street is Kukuzovskiy Prospekt which is wider and noisier than the Garden Ring, if that's possible. Kasse Lady didn't speak any English. My Russian sucks.

Baboo to the rescue.

Really. She was a great help with words like "best seats" and "weekend." Hurray for Baboo.

The performance is November 7, so I'll report back then.

In Skittles News, Skittles is spending this week at Sports Camp. Yesterday she had a moment of severe homesickness, but she rallied and seems to be having fun again.

In Theater News, I went to my first real rehearsal last night for the short play we are performing on Sunday. Acting is hard work! Not only do they expect you to memorize your lines, but then you have to say them while doing stuff you would normally do while you are talking, but it's really hard to remember your lines while you are trying to do stuff. I find it like trying to pat my head while rubbing my belly. I have great respect for actors who make it look easy. Because it isn't. At least not for me.

Thankfully, we have many more rehearsals this week, so I have many more chances to try to get this stuff down.

As one of my new friends in this process remarked today, it was only a matter of time before I was pretending to be a brothel keeper in a deserted karaoke room.

That pretty much sums up my Moscow experiences to date.

The Cold War Museum

2009-10-26T09:54:00.001+02:00

Recognize me? That's my photo they put in the little "passport" that comes with your admission.

In an unassuming neighborhood near Metro Taganskaya (purple line/7) is the Cold War Museum. The address is 11, 5th Kotelnicheskiy. But even knowing that, you are apt to have trouble finding it.

You really do need to know where you are going.

Seriously. This entrance is sort of tucked around a corner. There is no sign. Just the red star, which, yes, is large. But, trust me. You could miss it.

You have to book a tour. You can't just drop by.

Then you go down 18 flights of stairs. It's a L*O*N*G way down.

Everything is pretty much as it was when the facility was abandoned. It was never intended for use by Party VIPs or the general public (although other bunkers were). This bunker was designed and used as a communications center.

Here is the first check point. Just because you may have worked here did not mean you had access to the entire bunker.

Here our guide shows us a model of the entire facility. The yellow building I showed above is a fake apartment building. It had lights on timers so that the neighbors would think it was a normal residential building. But it was only there to cover the entrance to the bunker.

We got to play with a lot of original artifacts from the era. Is this what you call "the Red Menace"?

And the guide showed us machines for encrypting messages.

Tunnels like this one connected with the nearby metro line and at night, after the Metro was closed to the public, supplies could be transferred to the bunker and moved along on rails.

We could feel the Metro trains as they went by.

It's a very interesting tour and worth doing if only to be reminded of the horrors of the nuclear arms race.

I have more photos posted on the blog Facebook page.

For more information:
The Cold War Museum

MosMania Tours.

Moscow Metro . . . This Time It's Personal

2009-10-24T22:08:00.001+03:00

I'm sure you are tired of hearing me rave about The Beauty of the Moscow Metro.

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends. . .

Are you also done with the Unnecessary Literary References. That aren't accurate references. Because I actually thought that was Emily Dickinson. Ha! My bad. I should be forced to return my Master's diploma.

Last night we went to see The Bright Stream at the Bolshoi. I recommend it. The sets were incredible (with a reference to the Friendship of Nations fountain at VDNK). And I actually got to have a glass of bubbly at the Bolshoi Bufet.

Well, it was Asti Spumante because I couldn't bring myself to pony up over 1000 rubles for a tiny glass of real champagne. I had just decided it was bubbly water for me, when I realize that the woman in line in front of me bought a glass of something Fun-N-Bubbly PLUS a little plate of nibbles, paid for it with a 1000-ruble note AND got change back. So I got all brave and pointed to her glass and asked in my best Bad Russian, "Hey! What's this? How much? Um, please."

I guess there is something wrong with the universe when my report about the ballet focuses on the glass of spumante I scored and NOT on the actual performance. But the dancing was great, the sets were stunning, the plot involved dogs on bikes and men in dresses (ALWAYS funny . . . just ask my children what I tell them: "A man in a dress is ALWAYS funny"), our seats were good, and it didn't run too long.

A SPLENDID TIME!

Except for The Spouse who had to GO BACK TO WORK after.

I got to go home and watch Mamma Mia! on the teevee and sing along and cry. It always makes me cry. It must be some sort of weird girl-y thing. Because I love Momma Mia! But when Meryl Streep shouts, "You wanna hear another one?" and the fellows all join them in those ridiculous outfits and then the girl sings I Have a Dream over the credits . . . well, it's just a three-hankie weeper for Ol' Beets here.

The Spouse finally came home, and we watched a little of Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, which was stupid, but funnier than I expected. I only wanted to watch until they drop through the roof of Prairie Chapel Ranch and find President Bush hiding from Dick Cheney.

Yeah, it's juvenile, but it makes me laugh. It is a VERY funny scene, and you should look for it on YouTube.

But by 2:00 in the a.m. I hadn't seen that scene yet, and I know I can see it on YouTube any time I want. Which is how I ended up with barely six hours of sleep in spite of the fact today is a Saturday. Thankfully, here in the Russian Federation, we change the clocks tonight. So I can "fall backwards" for an extra hour of much needed beauty sleep.

The reason for the sleep deficit is that today Skittles went off the Sports Camp which required that we present her at the pick-up spot at 10:00 a.m.

Then the Baboo and I went on a tour of the Metro. (The Spouse went to the office . . . poor Spouse.) My camera sucks, but the Metro is a Great Photo Op. I'll post more pictures on the blog Facebook page. But following is a little taste of the the Fabulous-ness that IS the Moscow Metro.

Tomorrow, Baboo and I will take a tour of the Cold War Museum/Secret Shelter at Taganka, so stay tuned for more blogging and photos coming soon.

Drama Queen

2009-10-22T11:00:00.002+03:00

Look at this. Isn't it pretty?

That's a ticket to the ballet at the Bolshoi Theater for tomorrow night. Except you know if you have been following this saga that the Bolshoi is closed for reconstruction and is never, ever going to open again at this rate. So where is this performance taking place, you may ask? At what is called the New Stage next door.

For the record, it is very easy to get tickets to performances. You can select and pay for tickets using the Bolshoi website (www.bolshoi.ru/en/). You print out a copy of the receipt and take that and the credit card you used to the ticket office and collect the actual tickets.

I did this last night while Baboo was at fencing class. I wasn't exactly sure where the ticket office was, but figured I'd just wander around the complex (which is big) until I found the right place. If that didn't work, I still had two days to research it.

The receipt I printed said "Kasse One" (kasse, just as in German, means cashier). I found the Bolshoi Management Building and on it was a sign that said something about tickets. And in front of it was a HUGE sea of people who all seemed to be waiting to get in.

Rats.

Waiting in endless lines while unsure if I am even in the right place is not this girl's idea of fun. But I found myself sort of falling in behind two babushka types who just walked through the throng and into the building. "When in Rome . . ." I decided and went along with them.

Which turned out to be the right thing to do.

I don't know what all those people were doing standing outside the office. But inside there were several windows. To my left I saw Kasse 1 and Kasse 2 and what appeared to be two lines. Since the old ladies headed straight for the window at Kasse 1, I followed along. But a Formidable Battle Ax in line stopped me and said, in Russian, "Eh, eh, eh! The line forms to the rear, sister!"

Oops. My bad.

I went to the end of the line (which was blocked by a pillar) and there was greeted by a sunny smile from FBA and a nervous-looking Japanese man who was clutching his receipt and credit card.

"Are we good?" FBA asked me.

"Oh, da." I said, just relieved to be in what appeared to be the right place. "BFF," and I fist-bumped her. No, not really. Should I have?

I watched Japanese Guy hand the woman at Kasse 1 his receipt and credit card. She handed him tickets. Then I did the same with the same results.

Hurray! Victory is mine.

But how to get into the theater on Friday night?

I walked around the building until I found what appears to be the right entrance. I later looked at the Bolshoi website and found this map of the complex that confirms what I thought. I offer it here to you as a Helpful Aid to Happy Theater Going.

Now, speaking of theater, it seems Yours Truly has been cast as Madame Briquet in a hastily-hastily-thrown-together production of Jack (Lui! 1897) a Grand-Guignol play by French playwright Oscar Méténier to be performed on the Occassion of Halloween, November 1. In a truly horrific moment, I realized I have LINES to learn and only a week in which to learn them.

In other news, the Young Skittles has elected to attend un stage multi sports (basket, natation, foot, footing et judo) for the first week of the Toussaint holiday. Okaaaaaay. Best I can determine, it's

A week away
With friends
Including swimming

All of which she considers good things. The basketball, soccer, jogging, and judo apparently are inconsequential to her. Anyhow, the stage is ten kids between the ages of 9 and 13 and one Very Kid-Friendly Anatoly. As long as it doesn't devolve into some sort of Franco-Russian Lord of the Flies, it should be alright.

I'll report back as soon as I hear anything.

Save the Date . . .

2009-10-20T13:56:00.001+03:00

I don't know how I end up associating with These People, but next thing you know it's Sunday night and The Spouse and I are in a bar with these characters.

Mark your calendars.

Even scarier is the following, as I have just been informed that I've been cast as . . . wait for it . . . you're going to find this hard to believe, I know . . .

A BROTHEL KEEPER!

Seems there's no denying this "sassy buxom gal with a flirty nature."

That's what they called me.

КОГТЕДРАЛКА домашняя

2009-10-17T14:51:00.003+03:00

Since Catoslav was diagnosed with Tetchy Bladder this summer, he's been switched to Tetchy Bladder Qat Fud.

Which is only available at the Far Away Pet Supply Store/Veterinary Pharmacy. It might be available closer, but the vet says this place has better prices. At 1300 rubles ($43 US) for 3.5 kg/7.5 lbs, I'm not totally convinced prices could be much worse. A bag does last them a month, at least, and since we've started feeding them this the Bathtub Whizzing has ceased. That's a good thing.

It takes an hour, round trip, to do the Qat Fud Run. No one wants to deal with it on a weekend, so I went yesterday.

Nothing about the outing is really very noteworthy. I walk to the Metro, take it one stop, change to another line, and take that four stops. Then I exit the Metro and walk two blocks to the store. Make purchase. Return home.

What was exciting was yesterday I discovered the store carries these! A Russian product, too.

Especially amusing are the videos on the product site. Scroll down and watch them all. I love Svetlana, the Crazy Russian Cat Lady and her seven (SEVEN!) cats.

Poor her with her shredded furniture, walls, and curtains. Her closet full of expensive and unused cat scratching products.

Poor Plushka, Banderol, Kabochok, Roma, Lariska, Kusia, and Bipa.

But once Svetlana discovers КОГТЕДРАЛКА домашняя, she is able to channel her savings into reupholstering her armchair PLUS a little time at the beauty salon. Thank you КОГТЕДРАЛКА домашняя!

Do watch all the videos: the James Bond-esque ad and the one that uses When I'm 64 (huh?) are amusing, too.

Here are Cat-O and Crooky making their own product endorsements. Sadly, neither they nor I received any compensation.

This is the old cat scratch box. I bought this in August.

Here is the one I bought yesterday.

Everybody SCRATCH!

No, the new one IS better.

Ding Dong Delivery! And Other Fun Moments in Foreign-Language Land

2009-10-16T08:52:00.002+03:00

Monday, I ordered some groceries for delivery.

The heavy stuff.

I use this site.

Because even though I can practically SEE my grocery store from where I'm sitting right now, it's a pain dragging heavy items home.

So I ordered the following. I love how the Russian gets translated into English.

Detergent powder Persil Gold Plus automat 3kg Russia 2 @199.00 [that's $6 US each bag of laundry soap]
Sour-milk drink Actimelle multifruit 1.5% 100g 6 @12.90 [$0.43/little bottle]
Fruit drink Ya cranberry-wild strawberry nonaer. 1l pack 2 @85.90 [$2.86/1-liter carton]
Cat`s toilet Filling Catsun Ultra crumpling 5l Germany 2 @589.00 [$19.63/5-kg bag]
Olive oil Borges Extra verdgin 100% 0.75l Spain 1 @439.00 [$14.60/0.75 liters]
Milk Domik v derevne (Country House) sterile 6% 0.95l tetrapack 4 @52.90 [$1.76/liter]
Vodka Russian Standard original alc. 40% 0.5l gl.bottle Russia 1 @289.00 [$9.63/half liter]
Utensils Gel washing Prill frut's extract 1l Russia 3 @46.90 [$1.56/liter of dish washing soap]
Spring water Saint Spring aerated 1.5l pl.bottle 12 @19.90 [$0.66/1.5 liter bottle of bubbly water]
Soft drink Coca-cola Light aer. 2l pl. bottle 4 @60.90 [$2/2-liter bottle]

You can specify when you want your ordered delivered, but you have to give them a two-hour window starting at 9:00 in the a.m. I asked for Wednesday between 9:00 and 11:00, which, if they delivered at 11:00 was a bit tight as I have to be at school at 11:25 on Wednesdays, but I was willing to risk it.

Except they called me.

They always call if they don't have exactly what you ordered. For example, I never, in a million years, would order two-liter-sized bottles of Coke. They barely fit in my fridge. Also, I ordered a different brand of vodka (Yuri Dolgoruki . . . just to see what it was like), but they were out, so I went with the Tried and True.

Oh, and also, we can't deliver between 9 and 11. How about 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday?

Nope. Doesn't work for me (that's ping-pong/fencing afternoon). I counter with "Thursday?"

Sure. Thursday it is. Thursday between 12:00 and 2:00. They even have English-Speaking Colleague call me back to confirm. Because, everything that has happened over the phone so far has been them speaking Russian and me saying, "Okay!" because really, it doesn't matter which laundry soap they bring me. Just bring me laundry soap.

So Wednesday at 2:12 p.m. my phone rings.

A harried-sounding, Russian-speaking man says,"This is Sedmoy Continent! We're at your house. Where are you?"

"TOMORROW!" I say.

"Blah blah, blahblahblah blah," he tells me.

Um . . . does this mean he will come back tomorrow? Or does he want to know when I will get back home?

"THIRTY . . . no, FORTY MINUTES!" I say in my very bad Russian.

On the off chance he is waiting outside my building, the girls and I hurry to the Metro. On the platform, my phone rings again.

Same Dude. "Blah blah, blahblahblah blah! Your house blahblah," I hear.

"I'm in the METRO," I stammer as a train pulls out. He can figure that out based on the deafening noise. "THIRTY MINUTES. I'M ON MY WAY!"

I turn to the girls who are allegedly better Russian-speakers than I am but who, invariably, don't have the vocabulary I need. "How do you say that in Russian?" I ask, with Delivery Dude still on the line. "I know how to say it in Slovak."

I'm pretty sure it's the same because I heard a Russian say it this past weekend and I even asked, "Did you just say We are on the road?" and she said yes.

"ON THE ROAD!" I say in Slovak/Russian and hang up because either he understood or he didn't and nothing I can add will change the situation.

We exit the Metro and I ask the girls, "How do you say It's not my fault in Russian? In Slovak, it's ne bola moya vina. My Slovak teacher told me if I was ever in a car accident, I should come charging out of my car shouting that. Is it the same in Russian?" I'm thinking I can say it's not my fault, it's not his fault . . .

Again, the girls are useless. How much am I paying for their international, multi-lingual education?

Phone rings again.

"FIVE MINUTES!" I say in Russian. I say the name of my street.

"Ah!" he repeats the name of my street. "Blahblah blah blah blah blah!" He sounds happy.

We reach our building.

No sign of Delivery Dude.

We enter our building.

No sign of Delivery Dude.

We exit the elevator on our floor.

No sign of Delivery Dude.

Is he making other deliveries in the area? Or is he going to return tomorrow as I originally expected?

I change my (sweaty) clothes. I start dealing with dinner. The girls begin their homework.

The doorbell buzzes.

This is not even the front-door-to-the-building doorbell. It's MY door doorbell.

And there is Delivery Dude and Delivery Colleague with my delivery.

He just seems damn glad to see us, all sweat and apologies. I sign, pay, and even tip him for his trouble (much to his surprise).

The girls and I had a similar Fun With Russian moment yesterday when we decided to attempt to schedule a haircut appointment for Skittles.

"Should we try?" I ask the girls while standing outside the Persona salon in our building.

Sure, they say.

"Do you know how to say appointment? Or haircut?" I ask. Because I don't.

They don't either. But what else could I want in a hair salon? And we can say Saturday. I figure when vocabulary fails, miming and context succeed.

We enter the salon. I hold my hand over Skittles' head and say in Russian, "Her? Saturday?"

Message received. He points at the book, and we settle on a time.

Except now I have to specify who I want to cut her hair: the master, the top master, the stylist, or the top stylist. Because the price varies depending on the experience level of the person doing the work. And I can't remember which one is the cheap one. Nor do I know how to say cheap or expensive. I really am useless.

"MIDDLE!" I pull this word in Slovak/Russian out of my ass.

Middle it is.

Lean On Me

2009-10-15T10:54:00.001+03:00

Today was pleasant enough, weather-wise, that I did not wear socks when I went to the gym for my swim this morning. I have these sporty Mary Jane-type shoes (good for city walking) and since today did not require boots, I wore them instead.

The commute to the gym involves some Metro stations with multiple connections. This means that when the train arrives, packed full of people, often they all get off and I can even get a seat.

This morning I was standing on the platform at Novoslobodskaya (which is on the line that circles the city). The train pulled up and everyone, it seemed, poured off. I got on and, lo and behold, there was a seat, on the left, against the end of the car.

The reason there was an empty seat was because on the floor, in front of the seat, was the BIGGEST DOG I HAVE EVER SEEN.

I think it was a Neapolitan Mastiff.

The other passengers gave him sort of a wide berth, but he wasn't bothering anyone. He had his head on his paws and was sort of sleeping in that way that someone sleeps when they are on a train and constantly being disturbed.

I sat down next to him.

And he put his head on my feet.

I rode for three stops with his giant, warm dog head against the skin on the tops of my feet.

It was lovely.

I hope he was not late for work.

Rush Hour

2009-10-14T08:17:00.000+03:00

I took this picture from my window last night around dinner time.

I never cease to be amazed by the traffic in Moscow. This is the Garden Ring, one of several "ring roads" in the city. It is rarely, if ever, completely deserted. But at peak hours it is incredible.

This is why we don't have a car here and rely on the Metro and our feet. Yes, it is exhausting sometimes. It is certainly difficult at others (like today when Baboo has fencing class and I have to schlep her equipment bag to and fro). You sure can't just toss stuff in the back of the car like I did in my past life.

The kids' schedule this year means we are in the Metro later than we were last year. Commuting at 5:00 p.m. and even 4:30 p.m. is a lot more crowded. With their backpacks or the big sports bag . . . sometimes I'd almost rather just walk than deal with being packing in like sardines.

Some people take the "wild taxis" or private cars you hail on the street. But when the traffic is as dense as in my picture, I know I can get home faster by walking.

Russian Rooster Lollipops

2009-10-13T12:20:00.000+03:00

I'm sorry I can't be more mature.

These are beautifully crafted. And the children proclaim them tasty.

But the wordplay.

My God. The wordplay.

In the News Today

2009-10-12T20:49:00.001+03:00

. . . was this chick with the potty mouth.

They didn't even use the shots with the freaking Kindle that I dragged out in the pouring rain for this shoot. Why would a reader of this article want to look at me?

Do you like the scarf? I purposely wore the scarf so you, Loyal Reader, could see my new scarf from Suzdal. I'm practically sleeping in it, it feels so soft.

The story behind the story is that on Friday I saw a posting on one of the expat forums here in Moscow asking if anyone used a Kindle. I replied and had a chat on the phone with the reporter. He asked if I would mind being in a photo.

Me? Mind? I live for the spotlight.

Okay, then, he says. Can I get someone to take a picture of me and my Kindle in some particularly Russian-y place like, oh say, Red Square. By Monday.

Um . . . doubts.

Today some nice woman from the paper calls and asks would I be willing to meet their photographer, Vladimir.

Sure. When?

Soon.

Okaaaaay . . . guess that means I better turn off the oven and put on some pants (the heat is on now, so as soon as I get home it's Pajama Time here Chez Beet).

Off I go to meet Vladimir-Who-Speaks-No-English outside the Metro. But not a problem. Vladimir is a Thinker and quickly suggests we go to a cafe called Bookcafe, which is right around the corner from both the Metro and Chez Beet. Which is nice for me because I've never gone in there. Until today. And it is very cool.

The photo in the article is the result.

I'm not sure why the editors picked this one. Vlad took lots of shots of me pretending to read my (battery-depleted) Kindle. Don't worry. I've since charged it again (I've been reading An Echo in the Bone in Real Book form, so the Kindle has stayed in a drawer, safe from CATS who might knock it on the floor).

Anyhow, just call me the Publicity Junkie. Too bad I didn't get to plug the blog.