My exploratory walks were curtailed yesterday; called on account of rain! It rained on and off all day, when I went out it rained, when I was in it didn’t. Really, I would get halfway to the market with the sun shining and the sky clear and then bang, I was soaking wet. I dried out in the market since it was very hot down there and then headed home with a heavy bag and a six-liter jug of water. Oh my how beautiful it was and how happy I was that the sun had returned and then, bam, the heavens opened again and in two minutes I was soaked to the bone. Luckily, I was about to wash a load of darks so I considered this a pre-wash for the clothes I had on.
I knew Cindy would be late coming home and we were supposed to go out to a party at about eight, so I arranged a cold dinner that could be served at any time with just five minutes’ notice. At the store I purchased another slab of smoked salmon; I’m becoming addicted to this type of salmon. I also saw some fresh blinis, one was the normal buckwheat, one looked like it had chives and the other was green, spinach was my guess. I sliced the salmon quite thin and arranged it on a tray with some capers and a type of egg salad I made with mayo and whole grain mustard and pepper. I also had the rest of the ratatouille ready to be served with some lovely bread. When we were ready to sit down I quickly fried the blini to get them toasty brown and hot. Cindy had already been able to read the Russian and told me they were broccoli and not spinach and it took only seconds for them to exude the familiar aroma of broccoli. We placed the salmon on a hot blini, added some of the egg mixture, topped it with capers and then placed another blini on that and did it again. The warmth from the blini really enhanced the salmon’s flavor and we declared it fabulous.
We headed to the party and I was immediately looking for an exit. It was really crowded and noisy and they didn’t have anything I liked to drink. It was fun to try and listen to the teachers come up to Cindy and thank her for the presentation. Seems that they were really inspired by the talk and impressed by the presentation, which kept them entertained, amused and focused. You really couldn’t have a conversation since the noise level was off the charts. Didn’t seem to bother any of the young folk, but we were a bit distressed. Someone cracked open a bottle of decent dry white wine so we shared a tall glass of that and watched the kids start to dance. These are mostly twenty- and thirty-somethings and “dancing” would not be the word that I would use to describe what they were doing. They were just jumping around and waving their hands, and periodically someone would just yell. It was painful and reminded me again that white men can’t jump or dance! I decided to inject a bit of ballroom dancing into the energy of the evening and picked out one of the more enthusiastic jumpers and invited her to DANCE. She picked it up pretty quickly and seemed to really enjoy dancing. Soon there were lots of folks who wanted to see what the grey haired guy was doing. It was fun to dance but after that song they started playing music that I couldn’t even listen to, much less dance to, so Cindy and I decided to beat feet and head home.
This morning, Saturday morning, I really couldn’t understand why Cindy was up and ready to run at 7:30. It took me a few seconds to remember that she had to go into school today for the New Parent Open House. Ah, the price you pay for being a sought after administrator in an International School. I volunteered to drive her to the school so that she would have an extra half hour for a relaxed cup of coffee and breakfast. My plan was to drop her off and then head to Auchan for much needed basics in the grocery department. It was a glorious morning and the traffic to her school was almost non-existent. The school was jumping with lots of cars and people walking into the school so after we conned the guard into letting me drive up to the main door to drop her off, I headed back to the highway. In the ten minutes it took to drop her off the traffic had doubled and continued to double every ten minutes. By the time I hit the cutoff to Auchan I was in stop and go, mostly stop, traffic. It took me thirty-five minutes to go ten kilometers. I’m told that the traffic on that road, the main road to St. Petersburg and the airport, is always jammed but now with all the road construction, it is impossible. I finally made it to the exit for Auchan and was able to find a decent parking place right away. As I stepped out of the car I asked myself, why did I have on shorts and a short-sleeved shirt? I had basically just dressed automatically not realizing that the temperature was in the low sixties, even though I had gone out for a run earlier in the morning.
Auchan was a zoo! School starts in Russia on September first, it always starts in all of Russia on September first, regardless of whether it falls on a Saturday or Sunday. It always ends on June first, set your watches. So, this was the last weekend to shop for school supplies for little Ivan and Natasha and it was bumper to bumper with the shopping carts. Shopping in large stores in Moscow is a contact sport and not for the faint of heart. I had my list and was damned if I wasn’t going to get everything on it, so I plodded into the masses and just kept on going. I found most of what I wanted and when I came to the wine, I decided I might not get back here for awhile so I purchased ten one liter cartons of Italian white wine and a liter of red and one of rosato. I’ve talked about how difficult it is to check out since they view the cart as the mother ship and the family fans out and gather their groceries in red hand baskets and brings everything back to the mother ship that has been in line for a while.
Well, I got faked out again today. I got behind a no-nonsense guy who had six big bottles of water and a few groceries. No sooner was he starting to unload his stuff when up come wife, mother, father, and two kids, each laden with big red baskets of goodies. I had been had and there was no escape since there were three carts behind me by now. I finally got up and unloaded my cart and started packing things away into my bags, when the cashier tells me the price of everything and I hand her a Visa card. Now I swear I’ve used a Visa card there before but I was wrong and she wouldn’t accept any card. The bill came to 3, 440 rubles and I wasn’t expecting to pay cash so I didn’t know what I had in my pocket. Turns out I was able to scrape together 3,420, which as most of you know, wasn’t enough. So here I am unable to ask if I can go to the cash machine and the lines are very long and the people are looking at me with daggers and words I didn’t want to understand. Finally I looked in my basket, handed her back a 20-ruble chunk of cheese and the crisis was over. I did feel rather silly and you can be sure I’ll be carrying a lot more cash in the future.
I exited the store and entered into a tempest of epic proportions. The rain was coming down sideways and with great velocity and volume. I’m not sure if I mentioned that I was in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt and was pushing a heavy card over pocked asphalt and dirt. Ah, what a rewarding experience. Finally got to the car, unloaded the groceries and headed back to the mall to see how I might get dry. I wandered into a big store called OBI (think Home Depot, right down to the orange vests that the workers wear) that I know is always overheated. It was as warm as usual and I lingered as I purchased a towel bar and hooks. Finally I was dry enough to go get a decent espresso before heading back to the car. I covered my head with a plastic bag from OBI and made it to the car in a flash, turned on the headlights and navigated my way out of there and onto the highway home. It was jammed! It took almost an hour to get home, a trip that would normally take 20 minutes. The combination of construction, rain and stupid drivers made it a nightmare and I’m so happy I bought enough wine to not have to repeat the trip for a month or so.
From CC: The open house was fine, but clearly the parents were there to meet their kids’ teachers and see the school, not to meet people like me. Ah well, when the boss says to show up, you ask what time. The good news was that I found someone who could drive me home and therefore Wm didn’t have to add a side trip back to the school to his traffic woes. I can’t imagine handling all of the household duties on my own like all of the single people who have just moved here have to – it is so nice that Wm is here to do the shopping and organizing, not to mention the cooking and cleaning. Beyond that, he’s my psychological support system and darn good company to boot!
Happy Weekend, Cindy and Wm
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