The Crab Chronicles

Burritos, Anyone?

It’s been a weird day. I didn’t sleep well last night so I ended up taking a midday nap, which is rare.

Steve picked up Pasha this morning at 10 and they went all over, shopping at Phipps and Lennox Mall and eating lunch at a Mexican restaurant. Pasha was astonished how different Mexican food tastes here, and the cost. In Khabarovsk, it’s $24 for 2 burritos!

Pasha didn’t get back until almost 4.

I didn’t get much done at all today around the house. Keeping Coco from barking like a crazy dog so Mother could nap ate up more than an hour.

As soon as Michael came home, just after 4, I helped him with his math project, then he had tennis for an hour. We then ate an early dinner with some friends passing through on their way home from a Florida trip, bill and Cathy. They have two kids adopted from Michael’s orphanage and are really nice folks. We had a great visit over hamburgers at Fuddruckers. I just wish we’d had more time to spend with them. I totally forgot my camera, too, which irritates me. Pasha enjoyed meeting Bill.

Tonight after we got home and things had settled down, Pasha said Steve and Bill and all my friends he’s met so far are nice people. I said flippantly, “Well, I don’t have any friends that are idiots…” and Alesia started giggling hysterically. She thinks I am very funny sometimes when I am only aiming for mildly amusing.

Most of the men I know and consider friends, like Steve and Bill, are men over 40 who are highly intelligent and mature, and good listeners. Both Steve and Bill have grown sons, also, which I think helped the dynamic. Pasha grew up without a father, as his dad left when he was small.

Tomorrow night, more friends are coming over, just two. I am either going to grill steaks or have chicken alfredo; haven’t made up my mind yet. It depends somewhat on the weather. Saturday will be busy with Michael’s first tennis match, and then more dinner guests. Sunday hopefully we can relax a bit.

Oh wait, Alesia has a project due next week we will have to work on Sunday…

Low Key Day

Pasha’s first full day with us was pretty low key, for a lot of reasons. For one, it poured rain all day. Secondly, he slept about 12 hours. That’s OK – he needed to recharge his batteries after all the traveling.

When he finally got up, I made him some potato pancakes and he ate some cucumbers.

We headed to Target to find him some clothes. He got some shorts and tee shirts, which are more appropriate for this weather. To my astonishment, they carried size 13 tennis shoes, but he couldn’t find any he liked. We then dashed to Publix before picking up Michael from school.

Pasha kept remarking, with awe, how much cheaper everything is here than in Russia. I knew clothes were cheaper, but he was saying things like shaving gel are cheaper here.

We had dinner with my friends Steve and Melanie, at a Japanese hibachi place. Pasha had not seen the chefs cook over a hibachi, and I think he enjoyed it. There was too much food, of course, and I persuaded him to bring home the excess in a takeout box. The box stayed in the fridge about 10 minutes before he got it out and started eating it, and finished it up.

We watched Moscow on the Hudson, a movie I figured he would enjoy, and he did. We will finish it up tomorrow.

Here are some photos as promised.

 
 
 

He's Here!

Hey, this is a quickie, because I need to get some sleep. Pasha got here and everything is fine. I had to circle the airport about 6 times this afternoon, but I finally saw him. He has lost weight and looked tired but otherwise is doing great.

I think he's still jet lagged from the long travel [about 18 hours on airplanes]. He had a fun two days in New York, he reports, but it's a huge place and rather overwhelming. I think he wants to take it easy his first few days here, which is fine with us. We lock up and head to bed at 9 p.m.

He said he wants to buy some sports clothes tomorrow, so we will probably head to Dick's in Buckhead, since they usually have decent sales. Sports Authority tends to be too pricey, even though they are close by.

As we drove into the neighborhood he said quietly "Everything is so GREEN!"A little while later, Mother apologized that things aren't greener. We do have buttercups blooming, and tulips poking up from the pinestraw, in front.

When we got to the house and got out he just stood there, grinning. It was about 65 degrees. He said he just wanted to stay outside a bit. We sat on the back patio and talked for a while. It's been a very cold winter in Khabarovsk and I know he's enjoying the mild temps. Tomorrow it's supposed to be colder [55] and rainy, but that will still be a lot warmer than he's used to.

I made a pound cake this morning and when I got here I asked him if he wanted a piece. He said nope, but he was hungry for veggies, so he ate a lot of baby carrots and sliced cucumbers!  Of course, now I have to keep the kids from going crazy with the cake...

I will try and post photos tomorrow.

Preparing

I am amazed at how calm I have been today, facing a 10 day houseguest. It was a busy day, with lots of last-minute running around and cleaning, but I wasn’t hyper.

Then again, I almost forgot to eat lunch. That's rare.

The living room has been been completely rearranged, and Pasha has his own area of it. I hung blue and green sheets over the doorways so he can have some privacy. I SO wish we had 5 bedrooms instead of 4…

Michael asked me if he would get homework help while Pasha was here. I assured him that he would. I hope the kids don’t have too much homework tomorrow, as they are so excited. Regardless, Pasha will just have to relax and read or watch TV or something while Mike does homework. He’s better than he used to be, but he still needs supervision.

Our piano had gotten badly out of tune, we think due to the humidity, and we got a piano tuner out here this afternoon, an older man who was very nice. He reminded me a bit of Burl Ives. He didn’t break into Holly Jolly Christmas, however.

At one point Alesia had just taken a pan of homemade blueberry muffins out of the oven, and I hollered downstairs and told her to offer Mr. C a muffin. “He’s been smelling them cooking for half an hour, so now offer him one!”

It’s not been all blueberry muffins.

I cleaned to such an extent, I had Alesia give Coco a bath. Coco will jump in Pasha’s lap and lick him half to death as soon as he sits down, so we wanted her to smell nice. Her special hypoallergenic doggie shampoo didn’t leave her smelling like clean human hair; we will use something more perfume-y later. Right now, she just looks like a clean mop head…

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Italians have great proverbs. One of my favorites is: “Those who don’t love you make you laugh. Those who love you make you cry!”

Today I read a comment on Facebook and loved it. Here’s what Tony P had to say: “My great grand mother use to say "If you and all of your friends put your problems on a table you would scramble to get yours back'”!

Amen!

Traveling Tales

I’ve been tense all day, wondering if Pasha got to New York yesterday and if he was OK. He landed in New York and stepped into a place so incredibly different from everything he has known before, he must’ve felt like Dorothy glimpsing the Emerald City for the first time.

I remember the first time I got to Russia, and that first day. I was with a choir, and we were well-shepherded by a guide and translator, but it felt absolutely surreal to be in Moscow. I’d spent a lot of time in New York and London, but Moscow is a unique place, huge and confusing. I couldn’t even read the signs, since I didn’t speak but a couple of words of Russian. People looked different. The streets were filled with expensive cars, signs for American and Japanese companies, and trolley cars. I was over 40 and had traveled a fair amount, and I was floored by Russia. Pasha is 28, and by himself, in a huge and confusing place.

I prayed all day for him.

Finally, tonight, he called. I was so relieved. He said he got in fine yesterday afternoon late, and he spent a lot of time yesterday just walking around the streets. Fortunately he’s staying on the west side of Manhattan, a pretty nice place, if memory serves. He has a huge advantage over most first-time travelers to America – he speaks fluent English.

I can’t wait to see him Tuesday.

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 Alesia got in from her Girl Scout weekend about 1:00. Mother and I were going through the piano music because we have a piano tuner coming tomorrow and we needed to clean off the top of the piano.

Alesia looked a bit tired and pale but she was in good spirits. After visiting with Mel for a while, we left and picked up Mike, who was at his friend Colton’s house, and I took the kids to see the new Bruce Willis movie Cop Out.

Ine the car, I asked Alesia if she had fun over the weekend and she said “There were no GUYS!” I had to chuckle. “Alesia, if’s called the GIRL scouts, hon. You didn’t really think there would be boys did you?!” Apparently she hadn’t thought about it.

She was also bereft because her phone had died and she had forgotten to take the charger. So she was stuck in the wilderness [cough, cough] with no phone and no guys. I told her I admired her bravery in the face of such a rugged wilderness.

On the positive side, she said all the little girls in her troop wanted to walk right next to her and hug her. They thought she was cool. Well, she’s 18 and beautiful and exotic, so duh?! I’m sure that was good for her ego.

I told her if she becomes a teacher, she will be the cool teacher all the kids like.

[BTW, do NOT see Cop Out unless you are drinking beer, and/or you like stupid movies…]

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I sure hope The Blind Side wins more Oscars. I loved that movie.

I hated Inglorious Basterds – what a cartoonish treatment of a very serious subject. I can’t stand Quentin Tarantino but I gave in to the pleas of my kids and wasted part of my life watching a Tarantino film. He’s an overrated basterd, IMHO. He needs to learn how to spell, too…

Paranoia and Power From Above

Every once in a while, we find a word that Michael doesn't know, but it's rare. He has an amazing ability to learn new words.

We were driving home from shopping this afternoon and passed a hair salon cleverly named Hairanoia. Mother and I laughed. It occurred to me Michael not know the word "paranoid" so I asked him to define it.

"Um, that's if you can'd go to the bathroom?" he opined. Mother and I laughed, of course. We've had paranoia about not being able to find a clean bathroom, but that's a whole other thing.

We explained it.

Michael spent a lot of time this afternoon playing tennis, which was great. It was a beautiful day - sunny and in the 60's. We did run to Target and I got a new shower curtain and mat for Alesia's bathroom.

Life is much less dramatic without Alesia. I miss her.

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My friend Angie sent me this touching article about a boy with cerebral palsy adopted from Russia. I urge you to read it. 

I think sometimes about the fact that I would not have my precious son if he had two hands. The ladies at the orphanage worked hard to get him adopted because they knew a handicapped child would never be adopted in Kaz and he would be viewed as completely incompetent all his life.  

We watched an odd movie the other night called The Invention of Lying, starring Ricky Gervais, who I usually think is very funny. [Warning: the rest of this paragraph contains spoilers!]  It wasn't very funny. It was thought-provoking. I must admit. It's about a man who lives in a world where nobody lies, and he tells the first lie, and his life improves. He indicates religion is a big lie. Once I read that Gervais was an atheist, it made sense. He wrote the film. He isn't mean-spirited about it, but there's a definite condescension there.

What really annoys me is when people say God causes bad things to happen. I don't believe that for a nanosecond. I don't believe God causes war, or murder, or anything like it. I don't believe he caused Michael to lose the hand. However, I believe God's power is so great he can fight The Evil One by simply taking a terrible situation and helping folks through it. My kids had a terrible start in life but now they have a loving family.

Now, does every terrible thing have a flip side, a positive side? Not always. I wish. However, I do know that people with faith have more fulfilling lives, and are generally happier.  I have several friends who are unemployed right now, but those of us with faith handle it better. I know that for a fact.

Faith makes life bearable.

Well, that and chocolate...

Cleaning House and Marveling at Coco

I dreamed last night about composting, taking a huge bowl of vegetable peelings and coffee grounds and putting everything in my garden. I hope that's symbolic - that out of the fallow land and rotten scraps, comes new life. [cue dramatic music, hahaha]

I wish there were more fresh produce to find in the stores. Right now there isn't much. I need to make a run over to the farmer's market at some point. I want to have plenty of fresh fruit and veggies available for Pasha. It's really hard for Russians to find fresh produce and fruit in the winter.

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I am totally focused on getting ready for Pasha's visit. I sit and plot things that need cleaning and/or organizing in my house. I have developed an entire strategy for dealing with our very hard to clean kitchen floor.

I moved two small tables yesterday - well one was an antique black wicker tea cart, actually - and I spent a fair amount of time just quietly being tickled that the family room and dining room look so much better.

There's a LOT more cleaning to do.

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I want to tell you something that illustrates the incredible vocabulary of my dog Coco. I was sitting at the table the other day quietly feeding Coco tiny bits of bread from my sandwich, but I had put a couple of pieces of turkey in her bowl. I finally said to her, without raising my voice or pointing, "You've had enough bread, now. You need to go eat your turkey before I will give you any more bread."

Coco just turned, trotted over to the bowl, ate the turkey, and came down and looked at me like OK, some more please?!

Mother was astonished one day a couple of years ago when Alesia said to Coco very calmly, without pointing, "You go on upstairs and wait for me in my room," and Coco obediently trotted up the stairs.

We think she has a vocabulary of 100-200 words. She truly knows a LOT of words.

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Alesia is at Girl Scout Camp weekend. I hope she's having fun. When Melissa came to pick her up yesterday, Michael and Melissa carried Alesia's bags and sleeping bag to Mel's van. There was a little girl in there who didn't know Alesia. She looked at Michael and said "Are you Alesia?"

We all thought that was very funny. I said "The perfect response would've been [in his deep voice] Yes, I had a sex change operation last week!"  OR maybe "Yeah, but I pee standing up!"

I have a warped sense of humor.

Michael with his braces and sports clothes and big feet a girl?! Child, you need glasses...

 

Breakfast Choices

Yesterday was a return to the kind of beautiful weather we are used to seeing here in March - the high was around 60. Still needed a sweater, but it wasn't bad. My cucumber seeds [inside] are sprouting. I am excited about that!

Dinner was meatballs and baked beans. Not together, separately. I am not a big fan of baked beans but Michael likes them. We prefer Bush's beans because they are made in East Tennessee and we know the Bush family. They make an excellent product. The factory is very near where we had a little cabin on Douglas Lake years ago.

I told Michael after dinner, "Maybe for breakfast tomorrow you should try what the English eat, baked beans on toast!"

He looked at me and grinned. "OK, but let's have a Plan B, just in case!" [Just fyi, he said this morning he preferred an omelet!]

I have written here how difficult it is to get my kids to eat breakfast foods like cereal. I asked Alesia what she had for breakfast this morning and she said "I had a hot dog, an apple, and a piece of bread." She gets up early and fixes her own breakfast. That's not a bad one. Cold pizza is highly favored.

The blueberry muffins she made lasted less than 24 hours.

Alesia is going to Girl Scout Camp this weekend, as a troop leader. I tried to get her interested in scouting a few years ago but she wouldn't do it. Now my friend Melissa is taking her girls [both adopted] and Mel is the troop leader and needed another "adult" so Alesia gets to go. I think it will be fun, even if it's too cold to swim. Mel said the camp is brand new and they have nice cabins. It will be good for Alesia to be with girls doing something wholesome instead of waiting around for some boy to call her for a date.

Here you see me and Alesia in front of the Kremlin in 2004 -

 

My friend Pasha emailed me from Moscow, where he is staying with a friend. I hope he has fun there. It's a great place to visit. Huge. I don't think he has ever been there before. he was going to see Red Square, St. Basil's [the church they always show on the news] and The Kremlin. I really enjoyed the Kremlin. It's got a rich and fascinating history. There are several churches in the Kremlin compound, and it's awesome to stand in a place where Christians have worshipped for hundreds and hundreds of years.

 

Homework and Blueberry Muffins

After snow two days ago, yesterday it was sunny and gorgeous. That’s our bipolar weather, as some wag on Facebook remarked.

I had to go to bed early last night and get up early this morning to get Alesia to school. We had a long talk last night about the importance of school, and she needed to go in early so she could talk to two of her teachers. She is having a hard time in Algebra II, due mainly to not liking the teacher. I had to reiterate, for the umpteenth time, that she has to have at least a 3.0 in her core classes in order to be eligible for the Hope scholarship here in Georgia. I simply cannot afford college tuition right now, even at the little community college down the road.

“Alesia, do you realize that if you don’t get the Hope, you will have to go to work as soon as you finish school, to make up your own college money?!” I explained. I also told her college tuition is in the thousands of dollars, not the hundreds, and Bruce and Granny are not paying for it, as they don’t have extra money right now either. I sometimes forget how naive she is. It was a hard conversation.

“You have to grow up now, Sweetie, and understand that your choices and actions right now are gonna affect the rest of your life. I can’t change that. If you don’t go to college you will find yourself working jobs that are very low-paying and physically difficult, like washing dishes.”

I have been scanning the want ads to find her a job doing something like being a salesclerk in a local store, or a waitress, and even those jobs are tough to find right now.

I also had to tell her that a college admissions counselor doesn’t care if her Algebra teacher was ineffective or mean – all he sees is a grade, and if it’s less than a B, that’s all he sees. He doesn’t care if she’s nice, or has a lot of community service, or whatever. The first threshold test is GRADES.

We have said this to her before, but I don’t think it ever really sank in. She has been having fun with her friends and her phone and I had to tell her, playtime is over. Time to get serious.

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Michael successfully pulled one over on me yesterday. I had been to Target to get several things and while there I picked up a blueberry muffin mix. Alesia was so intrigued with it, she asked me if she could make up the muffins to have for breakfast. I said sure. While she made them, I was upstairs with Michael doing homework. After a while, he went downstairs, lured by the lovely aroma of baked muffins, and came up a little while later eating a muffin. “Good, give me a bite of that,” I said.

He looked horrified. “But this is the LAST ONE!” he protested.

 “What? You mean Alesia ate all the rest?” I asked. She can eat a lot, but what the….?

He nodded with great sincerity. “Yes. I was lucky to get just one.” I swear he could be a great actor. The next DeNiro.

I went downstairs a while later and – surprise surprise – there were 10 muffins in the pan. Little stinker.

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When I dropped Alesia off at school a little while ago there was a Mom-van ahead of me with a license tag that said this: MWAHAHA

Is that a person who loves Halloween, or what?!?

Freaky Weather Day

We’ve had a freaky weather day here. First, it was just cold. Then it sleeted when I was taking Michael to school. Then we got big fat wet snowflakes for several hours. Then sleet. Now it’s just drippy.

Here’s the freaky part – yesterday it was 60 and beautiful.

I had to get Michael to the social worker appointment across town for his post placement visit this morning. I had tried it last week and the traffic was so bad we had to turn around and come home, and reschedule. Today went better. He left school in late morning and got back at lunch, and only missed his elective classes, no core classes.

I have to file a post placement report with the Kazakhstan government every year until he is 18. There is only one more to be done through the social worker, though - after that I can do them myself. It always ends up with me answering all the questions. Mike gets tongue-tied, even though the lady is perfectly nice.

Michael was highly irritated that school didn’t cancel because of the snow. I patiently explained that all the hoopla is about the snow in North Georgia, up in the mountains where it’s always colder than here. We got a nice dusting on the grassy areas but nothing stuck on the ground.

The temps tonight are supposed to go down into the 20’s, so tomorrow’s commute may be an icy mess. I am glad I don’t have to drive far to take Michael to school. Then I can come home and do something fun – pay bills! If the road is really a mess I may bundle him up and let him walk. Then again, if it's really a mess they may delay school...

The rest of this post will be a mishmash of stuff in my head. Hang on for the ride.

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I got another household chore done, at least well enough for the moment. We cleaned out the linen closet, Alesia and I. We have so many extra towels from combining households in 2005. I hate to give away or throw away towels, though. I am putting the extras in a box in the clean garage.

For instance, we have half a dozen tiny Christmas hand towels. We have about 4 sets of regular bath towels, and a dozen ginormous bath sheets. There are probably 100 washcloths. We have about a dozen towels we call Dawg Towels because they are used for bathing dogs. (At one time my parents had 3 large dogs!)

We have linens galore, too. We could put clean linens on about every bed in Biltmore House. Many don’t coordinate with the current bedspread or comforter, however, so they are banished to the closet. Who knows, we may use them some day?!?

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Michael is learning about bar graphs and line graphs. It’s one of the few really interesting and useful things to do in math, I think.

He has tests in History and Science on Friday. Why load him up? Sixth grade is hard enough.

We are slowly transitioning Michael to doing his own homework, without constant supervision!! I am SO excited about that.

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I saw this recipe  on PW for Coffee Toffee bars and swooned. My thighs expanded just at the sight of them. I will have to make them, maybe for Pasha's visit. Anything with chocolate is improved 5,000% by the addition of almond extract and coffee granules. Michael and I both are coffee flavor addicts. I don't even drink coffee any more.