Lazy rainy weekend

An entire day at home – ah, it was great. The rain kept Igor and me inside most of Saturday (that and his sprained ankle – so much for our jogging endeavors!). Dad was more adventurous, and braved the icky weather to spend a few hours in the city center. We weren’t entirely lazy, but after a few hours of very serious housecleaning (where does the grime come from?), we spent the rest of the day as couch kartoshki (potatoes), watching movies, drinking wine. Perfect.

The Patriarch of all the Orthodox churches, from Istanbul, is in Kyiv this weekend to celebrate the 1020th anniversary of Christianity in Ukraine/Rus’. It’s sort of a strange anniversary to celebrate, but I suppose it was a good enough reason, and President Yushchenko is not likely to have much of a political career by the 1025th anniversary, so I guess he’s getting in what he can. I was in Russia in 1988, the year of the 1000th anniversary of Christianity in Rus’. The official celebration was held in Moscow at that time, not in Kyiv (which was the seat of power at the time of and the actual location of the baptism of Rus’). We watched a bit of the ceremony on TV, looked like a decent crowd showed up despite the rain. The President’s speech was long, doubly long with the English translation.

Dad found the Aviation Museum on Friday. Kudos to him! I didn’t even know there was an aviation museum in Kyiv. And it’s not close to anything in particular, so it was an adventure in itself for him to find the place. He said it was not bad, even had descriptions of the displays in English. We’ll have to check it out sometime.

The one trip I did make out of the apartment yesterday was to get some passport photos – time to get a new passport! I hate showing people my current passport – it’s ancient, and the photo doesn’t even look like me at all. It’s like a completely different person, and I look 10 years older than I am now, instead of 10 years younger. I can see the sadness in my face, the depression and the low self-esteem. I was more than four years into an unhappy marriage, with 2 more to go. Boy, did it ever take me a long time to learn those lessons!

Well, I’m pretty happy with the photo this time around, and I’m definitely happy with my life now. Ready to start with some clean passport pages, looking forward to lots of new adventures.

Joy

I had a lovely birthday. Lots of nice phone calls and electronic warm wishes from friends near and far. In Ukraine, the birthday person is supposed to bring sweets in for colleagues, and I decided to bake a big batch of muffins Wednesday night to take to the office on Thursday. We had fresh wild blueberries and sour cherries that we’d brought back from Korosten, so I whipped up a couple batches. With only one muffin tin that bakes 6 muffins at a time, it quickly became clear to me that it was not going to be a quick endeavor. 3 hours later, I’d had enough of the hot kitchen and called it quits. Dad sneaked a couple muffins, but most of them made it to the office on Thursday. They were quite a hit, and once word spread throughout the office, it was a great incentive for folks to come visit us up on the third floor.

I was sporting the absolutely beautiful bracelet that Igor gave me – citrons and blue topaz, to go with the presents of the last 2 birthdays, a blue topaz necklace and blue topaz earrings. The set is complete! Dad bought me the cell phone I’ve been coveting for ages. My colleague Anna gave me a really cool cookbook, with Ukrainian recipes in both Russian and English, and the most beautiful, appetizing photos!

I told Igor I didn’t want to do anything fancy this year, no evening out, nobody over, just me and my guys at home. The sweeties that they are, Igor and Dad had a cake with candles waiting for me when I got home and they sang “Happy Birthday.” Igor cooked a fabulous meal (as always). I had requested zucchini pancakes (like potato pancakes, only made with the zucchini). Being the creative overachiever that he is, he made up an entirely new recipe and combined all kinds of vegetables for the pancakes – beets, carrots, zucchini, etc. They were both pretty and delicious!

After dinner, Igor did the most beautiful thing. He told Dad that in the Far East they have a tradition that a husband who is happy with his wife gives gold to his father-in-law. Igor said “I am very happy with Ann, and I want to thank you.” He gave Dad a gold ring, which fit perfectly on Dad’s little finger. Dad got a bit misty-eyed, and finally said “I don’t know what to say.”

I can hardly believe sometimes that this amazing and wonderful man is my husband, that I get to live with him the rest of my life. What pure joy!

The continuing story

of Pigs… In…. Spaaaaacccceee!
Don’t know why that is stuck in my head today, but it is. I’d love to watch some Muppets right now.

Talked to the landlady again today to ask if we could stay until the end of September. It would just be so much easier if we could deal with all this a bit later. Igor and I both have business trips in August, Dad’s here until early September… She has this nasty habit of telling me what I should do, what I can do, and wanting to debate with me our decisions. During our last conversation, when I told her we couldn’t afford what she wants for the apartment, she said “Oh come on, I know you get $X for housing from UN.” I curtly told her she was misinformed, that in fact my housing allowance is half of what she quoted. She then told me that I should tell “them” to pay me more. If only it were so simple! But either way, it’s none of her business how much my living allowance is and how much I chose to spend on an apartment, but I didn’t manage to express that to her last time.

Well, this time I was better prepared to not get sucked into a discussion of my personal matters. I did say that with Dad visiting us until early September, it would be really helpful if we could stay until the end of September, and deal with moving after he is gone. She started in with her questions, and I promptly cut her off with “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to discuss our various reasons with you. It’s our personal business. Our question to you is whether or not we can stay until the end of September.” She was a bit surprised, but fortunately didn’t seem offended by my rebuke. She said her idea had been to get two students to rent the apartment starting in September, so she’s not sure. Then she asked if we had made a final decision to move out, don’t we want to stay there? It’s expensive to move, etc etc etc. I told her we would happily stay there but the bottom line is we cannot afford the price we wants. Much to my surprise, she said she could take it down $100, just for us because she’s used to us, we’ve never caused any problems, etc. But she couldn’t resist going into her usual pity party about how it’s hard for them as pensioners, they don’t have any other income, her husband had to go back to work, etc. I would feel sorry for her, if I hadn’t been to her apartment myself a few months ago and seen the brand new wide-screen digital TV, and if she hadn’t herself told me about how they got a new computer and wireless internet. I don’t think they are as hard-off as she likes to pretend.

In the end, we agreed to discuss it at the end of this month when she comes to collect for the utilities. It’s tempting to not move, we love the apartment and the neighborhood. Another two hundred dollars a month in rent will be tough, though.

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In other events, we had a nice weekend in Korosten with Igor’s family. Everybody loved the presents Dad brought them – overalls for Grandpa; shirts, jackets and jeans for Nina, Ivan, Oksana and Denis; and 3 bottles of barbecue sauce for Vova. He was practically drinking it straight from the bottle! And he nearly finished an entire bottle just at one meal. Good thing Dad brought a BBQ sauce recipe too!

Dad, Igor and I spent the night in the village house with Ivan on Saturday night. He’s done so much work there in the last couple of years, it’s really amazing. And in preparation for Dad’s visit, he had promised to make a summer shower. Usually a summer shower (at last in my experience) means the water is heated by the sun. Well, Ivan being the handy-man that he is, managed to hook up an electric water heater, so year-round hot water! You might not want to use it in the winter, though, since it’s more-or-less an outdoor shower (a little shed next to the house). We saw all the animals – 4 sheep, 2 pigs, 1 goat, a bunch of rabbits, and about 7 or 8 turkeys. He’s becoming quite the farmer! Sunday I picked fresh vegetables from the garden while Igor and Dad grilled a rabbit and Nina made ukha, a traditional fish soup that fisherman usually make after a successful catch. the guys only managed to catch 3 dinky little fish that morning in the nearby river, so Nina supplemented with a quick run to the fish market.

We had a leisurely lunch sitting in the yard, enjoying the lovely weather and good company. The drive that evening back to Kyiv was perfect – hardly any traffic at all. Dad opted to come back with us instead of staying in the village with Ivan. I’m not surprised, 2 days is usually my limit, too, and I can understand what everyone is saying! We’ll be back there several times in the coming weeks, so plenty of time to get more village-life experience.

Oh, and the muffler on the car finally crapped out. It’s been coming on for a while, we could tell, and last week’s trip to Andrei and Natasha’s dacha for the wedding party was the last straw, I think. The roads to get there were just awful, and the undercarriage of the car got banged hard a couple of times (it’s really low to the ground – not a good car for Ukrainian village roads!). We tried to find a working mechanic in Korosten on the weekend, but no such luck. A friend of Igor’s looked at it, though, and the good news is that it’s nothing dangerous or horrible. The bad news is it’s damn loud and a bit embarrassing driving down the street. We got back to Kyiv a bit deaf but otherwise in good shape. One more project for this week…

Wide awake

It’s the middle of the night and I’m wide awake. There’s nobody to talk to, online or in person.

The internet “master” came on Tuesday to work his magic and connect Dad’s computer to our wireless network. Also hooked up mine. So we now each have our own computer with internet connection. It’s quite a scam they have going, that internet company. Even my MacBook, which normally finds all internet connections by itself and automatically connects, couldn’t even see our wireless network. You have to have the technician come to your house, for 60 UAH, and do some mysterious thing on your computer to get connected. But we’re all hooked up now, and don’t have to talk to each other, we can just communicate via chat and Skype. 🙂

I’m really stressing about the apartment thing. Igor spent all morning checking out ads and calling landlords and real estate agents. We quickly realized we had to up our price range, and now are practically at the price our current landlady wants. I’m so angry and disgusted with her, though, that I can’t bring myself to call her and discuss staying here. Man, it’s frightening to think of paying a full 50% of my monthly income just for rent. I like volunteering, and I love what I’m doing, but I’m starting to think it’s time to get back into a job that actually has a real salary. I set out in 2004 to volunteer in Peace Corps for 2 years, and here I am four years later still volunteering. I don’t have any regrets at all, all the choices I made were the right ones. But money is on my mind more and more, and it’s time to start earning some again. Not just for our immediate needs, but also for the future.

In other news, I can’t find the battery charger cable for my camera. It’s possible I left it in the U.S., but Dad says he didn’t see it in his house. My camera is a completely useless hunk of metal without the battery charger. I did find in Dad’s house, though, the USB cable for downloading from my camera. Dad must have accidentally packed it up in January. One mystery solved. The absence of that cable had also left the camera more or less useless, but we eventually solved the problem by buying a card reader. That was an adventure, since of course I have the one type of camera that uses a very particular type of memory card and I had to go to about 8 different stores in Kyiv to find a card reader, and ultimately had to spend something like $30 for one. I’m not optimistic about finding a new battery charger.

Actually, I’m not optimistic about much of anything at the moment. It may have something to do with the fact that it’s 5:00 am and I’ve been up for nearly 2 hours. Not a good time of day for me.

Welcome Dad!

The old man arrived in Kyiv a couple hours ago – with two beautiful bottles of Jameson’s for me! He’s with us for the next six weeks. Well, partly with us in Kyiv and partly with Igor’s parents in the village and probably with us on some trips if we can get them organized.

We’re looking forward to checking out some different sites in Kyiv – it’s always good motivation to do some sight seeing when we have company. Dad’s seen pretty much all the highlights, so we’ll dig deeper into some of the less known places, I hope.

Careful what you ask for

Did we say we were ready for some changes? Holy cow, are we ever gonna have some. Our lease ends in August, and the landlady dropped a real bomb on us last night. I knew she’d want to raise the rent, but I wasn’t prepared for her expectations. Not fifty bucks, not one hundred bucks, but a whopping three hundred dollars! That’s not only completely out of our price range, it’s also just an absurd amount of money to pay for this apartment. Even if I had the means, on principle alone I would never pay that much. But it’s not about principles, it’s about our budget. So, we’re looking for a new place to live. Any leads would be most welcome!

More changes

Wow, did we ever take the Declutter Challenge to heart today! I tackled the balcony and the cupboard in the living room, Igor worked on the hallway closet. We’ve both been working on the clothes and shoes for awhile. So today we had lots for the dumpster, and about 4 bags of clothes and shoes for the Missionaries of Charity. We’re cheating a bit on one thing – taking a box of dishes to Igor’s parents house to store in their attic.

We managed to create 4 clean shelves! 2 will be Dad’s during the rest of the summer. The other two were packed back up tight, but with things we relocted from other more useful spaces – like under the kitchen sink.

And all of this was after starting another change – getting back to exercise. I was doing pretty good for 6 or 7 months working out about twice a week with a friend and a personal trainer. But I haven’t been since early May, and since I don’t see any free weekends for the next couple of months, it’s unlikely I’ll get back into that routine. But we both have been feeling flabby and fat. Igor impressed the heck out of me by getting up early last Monday and going for a jog. He did it again 2 more times during the week, and this morning I joined him. I haven’t been running in nearly 4 years, but boy did it feel good. Hard!, but good. There’s a small track near us, so we jogged there, and I think altogether I ran about 1.5 km, plus I walked a couple times around the track. We came back and did sit-ups and push-ups, and then tackled the cleaning! It was definitely too much for the first day, and I know I’ll be hurting tomorrow, but it feels good to start exercising again. And I love that Igor suggested doing it together – one thing I really disliked about going to the trainer’s was giving up my Saturday and Sunday mornings with Igor. But this is a great way for us to spend time together, and to support each other in getting in better shape. I hope we can keep it up!

Encouraging change

We’re in the mood for change lately, and Igor started with shaving off his goatee. He looks much younger to me without it. He also threw away the rose petals I had in a dish in the bathroom, from a rose he once gave me. I was a sad about it, but he said “something” was living in there, so it was definitely the right choice.

I’ve been inspired reading about Ukrainiac’s Declutter Challenge. I don’t think I’m ready to accept the challenge on a daily basis, but I have been much more conscious of what we have in our small apartment – what we need and what we don’t. The new clothes we bought in the US went into the closet only when old stuff that we don’t wear anymore came out. We’ve got a big bag of clothes for the Missionaries of Charities. Next step will be do clean up the balcony/storage space. Yikes, that’s going to be challenging.

We need some change in our life, and the best way to spark change is to initiate it. Let’s hope it will catch on- in a good way!

Happiness

Isn’t it funny how something wonderful comes along right when you need it? Like the great news I got last night after my depressing funk about maniac drivers.

Petya and Marina got married!!!

Dad picked them up on Sunday and brought them back to Columbus, where they will live for the rest of their summer Work and Travel program. He took them to the courthouse Monday morning to find if they could get married in the US, and if so how. Turned out the answer was Yes and they could do it right away! I am so so happy for them.

We will also be sharing in another wonderful happy moment this weekend – Igor’s cousin Andrei is finally marrying his girlfriend of many years, Natasha. Andrei was best man at our wedding. They will have the civil ceremony on Saturday (just them and the witnesses), with the church wedding and small party on Sunday. We are honored to be included among the few people who get to share this important day in their lives with them.

Nothing like a wedding to make you feel positive again.

Terrors

Jayne is blogging about bombings in Afghanistan, and I can’t get out of my mind the different kind of terrorism we have in Ukraine – the murderous drivers. I’ve seen more than my share of the horrible aftermaths of reckless driving, from mangled and burnt cars to once a whole carload of chicken parts splayed across the road from what had once been the back end of a car.

I saw the worst I’ve even seen on Saturday. Stuck in one traffic jam, I tried an alternate route only to end up in another traffic jam. I learned soon enough what was the problem – two people in the middle of the road, in pools of blood. I drove slowly past, my hands shaking and vision clouded by tears. I noticed a woman standing nearby crying, and a man talking on his cell phone. Calling an ambulance, I hope. There was a plastic bag a couple lanes away from them – was it their’s? Had they been crossing the street to the riverside park? Or perhaps, having had a fun afternoon with friends, they were crossing back to find their car and head home? Were they holding hands when they crossed? Were they laughing about the great day they had had, or were going to have? I saw both of them move slightly, so I know at least at that moment I was passing by they were alive. Are they today? Or did their suffering end on that road?

It was a bad choice to cross the busy road where they did, no doubt. But I can also imagine the maniac driver who slammed into them. Possibly the same one who swerved in front of me later that day because he just had to be in front of me even though there was a semi-truck barreling down in the oncoming lane, forcing the asshole to cut me off so he could squeeze in between me and the next car (and it wasn’t that I was going slow – it was a freaking traffic jam!). Or maybe it was the driver who zoomed past me on the right-hand berm because there was already a car passing me on the left (again in a traffic jam). Or the SUV that nearly slammed into me, flashing his lights and screeching his horn at me because I had the nerve to “only” be going 130 km/hour on the highway. Or maybe it was the guy who flew around the line of stopped cars at a traffic light in the center of Kyiv, driving not only in the lane for oncoming traffic but right across the intersection against the red light. Didn’t even slow down to look for cars or pedestrians.

I hate them. I hate all the selfish, thoughtless assholes. I often tell people that Ukraine is a good place to live because it is relatively safe – no wars, very little crime, rare natural disasters. But the terrorist drivers are forcing me to change my tune. You take your life in your hands on the streets here. You’re not even safe on the sidewalks, where cars drive if the traffic is jammed on the street or, god forbid, just not moving fast enough for the Special Ones. I would happily give them all Darwin Awards, except they don’t just weed themselves out of the gene pool; they have a nasty tendency to take others out with them. Like suicide terrorists. And also like many suicide terrorists, what they hope to accomplish is incomprehensible.