A summer outing. Grappling with Google

20220602

Since Ukraine recognizes the three months beginning in June as summer, for us it began yesterday. And today we had our first genuine summer weather, touching 80°.

Oksana asked for a plan, and we made one. We would walk to the playground by the lake where I took the girls when we came back for music lessons on Wednesday. We would then eat at the Georgian restaurant and go to the supermarket across the street.

Eddie would not have wanted to be with the little kids. We left him home to read Ukrainian history and do some writing for me. I told him we would telephone him before we went to the restaurant.

As often happens to our plans, none of the above came off. We got to a closer playground under the shade of a huge willow tree and stayed there. The girls had a wonderful time on the swing and the slide as we sat on the bench built around the trunk of the tree and watched them. I called Eddie at 11:00 to tell him we weren't going to get together for lunch. If he wanted to go out and see his friends in the neighborhood he was welcome to go when he finished reading.

The pictures I took will give you a good idea of the neighborhood we live in. This is the dirt road leading to the station where we catch regional trains. Marianna had dawdled, lagging behind a couple of hundred feet, and this is Oksana welcoming her as she rejoined us.

Here they are walking up the 30 foot embankment to the train station. You can see the platform on the left side of the picture. The footpath shown here is the closest thing to a road approaching the tracks for 2 miles in either direction. There isn't even a path on the other side – just about 30 steep steps going down. These features have given me comfort. There is no way the Russians could drive tanks through here.

Here are Oksana and Marianna cooling it in the shade of the big willow. As you can see, the lake is very swimmable when the weather is right.

The kids spent half an hour on the swing. When Zoriana finally got tired of the swing on the left, I went to take Marianna out of hers. She immediately walked over to Zoriana's and wanted to swing some more. As you can gather from this picture, Zoriana goes as high as she can. She has no fear. Marianna is content to go at a slower pace.

Slides are another issue. Marianna could not get enough of climbing the ladder on the right side of this thing and coming down. Mother is there to catch her this time, but she will do it all by herself if nobody else is there.

There were lots of kids out today. Usually when I'm out with the kids I strike up conversations with the mothers that our kids play with. Today we were rather self-contained, but these two moms made a spontaneous friendship on the teeter totter.

Oksana doesn't go anyplace without some food tucked away. By the time we got through the apples and cheese she had brought we didn't have much appetite for lunch. We took a slow 45 minutes getting home. The high point of the return trip was seeing a log with six turtles sunning on it down by the lake. Oksana and Zoriana navigated through some nettles to get within about 10 feet of them before they slid gently into the water.

I spent the balance of the day wrestling with Google to get access to the ArtTalkers Toastmasters club Gmail account. Paranoid Google wants to verify your identity every time you log on, and the only way to do it is via a smart phone. Since I do not want Google among others to be watching my every moment, I am stubbornly refusing to get one of those devices. I did manage to download the email list, which I matched against the club membership database. With these emails in hand, I'll figure which mail system I want to use for our communications.

That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the man put his strength to use carrying 25 pounds of baby on his shoulders all morning, the good-looking woman making sure that sun bonnets were in place to prevent sunstroke, sunburn or whatever, and the kids had a great time just being kids.

Graham