my little trip update

Oh, I. Have never shared before. Russian is my first language but I have lived in Germany and at the point of my first coming to the States my English, though good and I used to teach ESL to teens, was poorer than my German. But now I do not use German and it is allgone as is French which I also used to know well and spoke when living in Montreal.

Ex was born in Germany but is ethnically and linguistically Russian.

My son is perfectly bilingual French slash English with some knowledge of spoken Russian but he is not literate. Maria and Julia are also not literate in Russian especially after they stopped living with me because ex speaks English to them. Maria takes French in HS and Julia... Julia takes MANDARIN in MS. I have never even attempted to learn an Asian language but back when I saw the girls still, Julia used to say that Mandarin was easy especially the grammar. I was amazed. Also back when I saw the girls I used to help Maria with her French and everything came back to me easily without effort so I came to believe than unused languages just go into a dormant state, ready to be retrieved when needed.

Now I know how good housekeeping is done, by observing bff. Every day, she does something productive. Not a day goes by without her doing a load of laundry or mopping the wooden and the vinyl floorss or sweeping the floors or vacuuming. Everything is done done swiftly and, to an outside observer, effortlessly. I envy her. Her mother taught her the right skills and the right attitude when bff was growing up. My mother had absolutely no housekeeping skills, nada, zero. That I can cook is completely self-taught.

Lol. Russians are crazy. They are Russians... in Voronezh, I had one overproctetive Boris always tell me and my foreign friends "it's Russia, it's dangerous" when we tried to do just about anything... Russians have weird perception of time and distance too (2kilometers is "near")... And Russia always triggered my moodswings and general crazy (could be the vodka too, but even sober, i always felt very intense in Russia...). Russians have decandent and crazy in their DNA... and they are all sorts of special. ANd the women wear crazy crazy shoes.

As for milk on cereals... I learned to heat my cereal when I visited Ukraine and never went back.
Microwaves? I think all older generation of Eastern Bloc has this "they make food radioactive belief".
My granma said the same about icecream too.

I would never guess you were Russian... you actually seem hopeslly American in your way and thinking...

hope you are having fun.

Venus, my experience of the Russians' perception of distance was completely the opposite - not "(2kilometers is "near")" - but "you need to take a bus - you cannot walk to the subway station, it is too far!". But I did walk every time, to and fro! And only one person, a cross country skier, agreed with me.

So I am back... and with a new plan. I was in several apartments and all were clean.

- bff, because she herself does at least one tidying or laundering task each day
- Lana's, because she has been employing a cleaning lady for the past five years
-Katya's parents', because Katya's mom is extremely particular and Katya helps her with labor-intensive tasks such as mopping the wooden floors in a big three-bdr apartment
-D's, because he cleans and has really weird notions about what I would expect of him in terms of cleanliness. I have big feet (American size 11 - the biggest standard women's size) and he did not have slippers for me. I said I would walk in my socks, no problem. He said that he then needs to MOP HIS FLOORS first. I said that I did not care. I also wanted to say that I would have much preferred that he not smoke in my presence because I DO CARE about that, but decided to be polite and did not say anything (until I got a migraine triggered by second hand smoking).
-my former teacher's because her daughter cleans and she herself cleans.

Nobody lives like me - without doing anything AND without hiring help.

It is so nice when you can invite people over any time without being embarrassed!!! I want to live like that too.

So I decided that that would be my priority. I STILL think it might be a good idea to have a baby, and in fact visiting my girlfriends convinced me that age is not a big deal at all (bff - son at 37 and daughter at 39, Katya, the jazz singer - daughter at 36, Lana - twins at 40, which is not that much younger than I am now, and all do well and all the children are healthy and happy), but there are other issues and for sure I should first take care of living in a decent environment. It is not just that in the current state my apartment is good for cats and only for cats and not fit for a toddler; it is not just because of that. It is that I want to spend the second half of my life living more similarly to how other people live and not being the messiest person around.

Having decided to make it a priority, I recalled how ex used to chastise me for being messy and not having cleaning skills. Well, I am messy and I do not have cleaning skills but I will no longer be ashamed of it. It is just who I am. As I said, I cook and my mother could not cook AND was messy AND had no cleaning skills. So in comparison to her, I have more skills. And I think this is enough progress from one generation to the next. I will let my children make further progress - I will just accept myself for who I am - a messy person without cleaning skills.

That means that I need to hire help. If that is my priority, what will I give up in order to free up money to pay for the cleaners? What I have been able to come up with so far is: manicure/pedicure, marijuana for sleep, and breakfast foods - we have breakfast foods at work so if I get disciplined enough to get to work earlier, I can have free breakfasts. This is probably not enough but it is a good start.

The thought of comparing prices and Yelp reviews of various cleaners did not make me happy so I decided to ask for a recommendation. I knew that Aparna, an Indian female friend of mine and a former colleague, employs cleaners in a STUDIO APARTMENT, because she does not want to spend weekends scrubbing bathtubs. I emailed Aparna. She gave me the phone number of Carmen, a Mexican lady who speaks English and works together with another Mexican lady who only speaks Spanish. I contacted Carmen, explaining that I just need them to clean the kitchen and two bathrooms - the bedrooms and the living room are too cluttered for them to vacuum the floors. And, I said, everything is incredibly dirty. She thought for a moment and said that she would charge me $50 an hour for the joint work of two people for the first cleaning and then will be able to give me a flat rate. I thought that $50 an hour is more than I can afford but still said "yes, please". I made an appointment for the next day. Then, I started removing clutter from the counters in the kitchen (how else would I give her the area to clean?) and quickly realized that I would need more time. I rescheduled for next Wednesday. I plan to spend all weekend removing stuff - both ex' and mine - from the bathrooms and the kitchen in order to clear the space for Carmen and her mate.

So clearly hiring cleaners first CREATES work for me, and only eventually would free me up.

But I am determined to go forth with it and eventually I want to use my clean kitchen in order to do what I LIKE TO DO, that is, cook. There is a therapy for bipolar called "social rhythm therapy" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpe...rhythm_therapy) and I will use it via scheduling guests every weekend and cooking at home for them. I actually already have a backlog of invited guests - back in September, I invited all the volunteers from my local cat rescue agency for lunch in November, but did not make good on my promise because in November I was totally consumed by preparing to file the motion to court. So those cat rescuing ladies will be my first guests after Carmen, her helper, and I turn my kitchen into a usable place. Then will be a couple of my former colleagues whom I promised a get-together after I get back (she is from Hong Kong and he is from France - I already had them over once at the old apartment and posted my menu back then). And then, Aparna, my Indian vegetarian friend, whom I promised vegetarian Russian food. And after those promises are fulfilled, sky's the limit.

I think it is a good plan because I will be doing what I LIKE doing - cooking - and will outsource what I HATE doing - cleaning. And not just hate but have no skills for. When I observed my bff effortlessly mopping the floors in a large three bedroom apartment, I thought to myself "this task would seem totally daunting to me; totally beyond my capabilities". And she does it every several days! And vacuuming (I have carpeted floors) - just forget about it. I can mop the tiles in my tiny kitchenette before someone visits but to vacuum two bedrooms and a large living room - ain't going to happen. Just being realistic...

There are also ex' boxes that I will try to move all to the small bedroom until he picks them up in April, as he promised. And, on Monday night I will get the key to my car, which is already in my carport, and that will enable me to load the car with stuff I do not need and drive to Goodwill (a chain of American second-hand stores that accept donations) because freecycling is wonderful but to slow and unreliable for my needs, and does not scale. Some things get a ton of responses and other stay unclaimed. With Goodwill, they take EVERYTHING. That is what I need.

My plan is to just work on getting his boxes in one place and working on having clean bathrooms and kitchen by April. After ex picks up his belongings, I can ask Carmen to clean the small bedroom and then buy furniture for it and then invite my son to visit.

So that is my plan! Thanks for reading! I feel that now that I have committed to it in a written form, I have a better chance to really do what I have planned.

Great plan, good for you! I recently started having my lady come again, every 1-2 weeks. At first, I was so embarrassed because what a wreck the house is, but she just told me don't worry and was extremely grateful for the work. So I just let her and her helper get to it, and it has started to make it easier for me to declutter, cuz all the crap I have is mine to deal with. And at least things are sanitary, and making headway. I don't have the time nor the skills for cleaning, I wish I could have them do my laundry too. I did used to clean more, actually was a maid at a resort for a job a long time ago. And when I stayed home when the children were small, I did more cleaning. But honestly, it's not my strength and such a relief to have cleaners come. Good for my sanity.

Thank you for the encouragement! I, too, thought this morning that having them do the laundry would be nice, too, but at present I will just focus on the above plan. The rest - maybe one day if I get a permanent job with benefits etc.

More about my trip. D. and I went to an exhibition of Russian still life paintings. I also went, alone, to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, http://www.arts-museum.ru/?lang=en, which is similar to the Metropolitan Museum in NYC. I used to go there a lot when I was growing up and I wanted to go again because I missed it, especially the sections on Ancient Greece (http://www.arts-museum.ru/museum/bui...ex.php?lang=en) and the most ancient portraits called Fayum, which I love. Alas, the line was too long. So I went to a new exposition which is now part of the museum in an adjacent building, http://www.arts-museum.ru/museum/bui...ex.php?lang=en, to see European and American art of the XIX-XX centuries. Frankly, I did not see any American art. Maybe because I got too tired by the time I reached the Picasso hall and left. That is where I saw the last paintings by Van Gogh. But the most amazing thing was to see the exact same Rodin sculptures in the very first museum hall as we have here at Stanford - Stanford has a Rodin sculpture garden.

When we went to the cemetery, I could not find the grave. I went to the administration building and asked for directions, giving my mother's name. The lady at the administration building could not locate the record by my mother's name so she asked me for the name of the person who was first buried in the grave because that is how the records are kept. I actually remembered that my great-grandmother died in 1954, 16 years before I was born. The lady then found the record and gave me directions. It turned out that I had already been there but did not recognize the grave I was looking for a wooden cross that my aunt must have removed, having made an engraving of a cross on the tombstone instead. I felt bad that I could not find the grave so I recorded all the directions and the names on the adjacent graves for easier orientation, not to be embarrassed next time around.

I also visited Katya. Katya is a gf from the 4th grade or even earlier. Her parents live in a building downtown where my maternal grandparents lived a long time ago, and when my parents went through the first divorce (they then got back together for a few more years), my mom moved in with her parents for a semester, taking me with her, and placed me in the same school with Katya. So we were friends, neighbors, and even classmates.

Katya went to Moscow conservatory as a pianist, but in later years developed a singing talent and is now a jazz singer in a band. Unfortunately, I could not go to any of her concerts on a short notice, but next time I visit, I will coordinate with her, because bff, who knows Katya through me, says that Katya has a splendid voice and each subsequent concert is better than the previous one.

I saw Katya's parents who are in a terrific shape. They were leaving to see a theatre performance, so I just overlapped with them for a few minutes but was glad I did. I met Anna, her 5-y-o daughter, a blonde, blue-eyed girl who looks like Katya's very handsome father and speaks in long adult-like sentences. Anna goes to preschool and to art classes and showed me her creations. Because Katya travels the world over as well as all over Russia including Siberia with her band, Anna lives with her parents, and Katya splits her time between her own apartment and her parents' place. She is divorced from Anna's dad. Her latest beau is... an American naturopath in Bangkok who pleads with her to move to Thailand to live with him!

Many years ago Katya babysat my son a couple of times.

Several years ago Katya obtained my email address from bff and wrote to me, asking about life, my son, and everything. I did not have anything optimistic to reply back with... so I did not reply at all. It was shortly before the separation, and already after my ties with my son were severed. Katya started complaining that I had not responded, but I explained and she understood. She was really warm towards me and I stayed until late. By the way, my sleep schedule was off in Moscow, I was staying up late and sleeping in after it, but it did not trigger an episode. Maybe because overall I had enough sleep.

I was not manic despite being off Geodon. Sure, initially I was on Zyprexa, but even off Zyprexa, I was fine. I even did a high responsibility assignment - I picked up $$$ cash for two people in the Bay Area who did not want to have money wired to them, and transported the largest amount of cash you can travel with internationally without declaring it. Michael, one of those two people, picked me up from the airport so I did not have to pay for the shuttle ride. Originally, I wanted to say "no" to those two requests, but then I figured that the safest way to carry cash is to always have it with me in the fanny pack, and that is what I did, without any trouble.

Oh, and another thing... I want to tell you about my experience meeting two elderly ladies. It is just amazing how differently people age.

a) D's mother, age 83
b) Bff's MIL, age almost 80.

a) Has Alzheimer's. A widow as of many years. He takes great care of her, giving her both neurological and psychiatric meds (some Seroquel to improve touch with reality). He brushed up on neurology to do that. She used to be an artist but not anymore. Her last painting is dated 2010. Her paintings are bright and optimistic and very detailed. Right now she spends all day in her room, with the TV on. She does not go outside at all. She needs a caretaker when he travels. Her hair is all white - completely white. And in disarray. She has a bit of trouble with the eye contact. While I was staying with bff, she had an incident - while D. was running errands, she lost touch with reality, became disoriented and stopped recognizing that she was in her own apartment, became scared and fearful, went to a neighbor who called 911. An ambulance arrived, did tests, everything was OK. By then D. came back and explained to the ambulance team what must have happened. They left. He raised Seroquel by a bit. He said he was even glad that this happened because everything - blood sugar, etc. etc - was OK, and it would have been hard to take her to a clinic for all those tests.

b) Has a perfect figure. No fat. Perfectly shaped medium-sized breasts. Brightly colored eyes. Perfect eye contact. Nice auburn hair and a neat hairdo. Actively helps her son and DIL with the kids on a regular basis. Told me that her ex H recently started making sexual advances to her and she told him off, reminding him how he left her with two children without support. She said that she can be friends with him for the sake of children and grandchildren. And, I can totally see how someone would make sexual advances to her!

So basically (b) looks and acts a whole generation younger than (a). If not more.

(b), named Nina, comes from a large family. Her mother had 11 kids. No abortions ever. One infant died, 10 survived. Last pregnancy at 43 and she was really embarrassed! And they have something about female longevity - Nina's brothers have died but all sisters are alive and well. In terms of her good shape and health, she credits regular visits to Russian steam baths where people experience contrasting temperatures. I too used to love them, many years ago. Saunas have dry heat and Russian steam baths have steam - that is the difference.

All of this is so interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Yesterday I ran a dishwasherful of empty cat food cans. When I said to someone in Moscow that I would be doing that when I return home, they were incredulous. The city, which at some point was one of the most expensive ones in the world, still has no viable program of recycling. I took out a lot of trash while staying with bff's family, and it pained me each time to see that about one fourth of it would have been recyclable in California.

***

Moscow has no greek yogurt at all (when I wondered why, D. thought that I was asking about yogurt imported from Greece), no high quality cat food, no vollkorn German bread (we have it in the US and they do not have it being much closer to Deutschland), and no steam-in-bag microwaveable frozen vegetables. So for purely practical day-to-day reasons I would be unable to survive .

What has become much better is the air in cafes. I did not go to restaurants but I did visit coffee houses and all were smoke-free. I did not see signs prohibiting smoking but just as a statement of fact, the air was smoke-free everywhere.

On the plus side, it was the season for the best sour green apples in the world that surpass the Gravensteins for me. And, the best vanilla ice-cream. But on balance, obtaining daily food is easier here than there.