Balls will drop if you interrupt the juggler. Eddie hits a homer. FB hits a blooper. Substack comes through.

20220106

The WHO shows how to get 20,000 likes on a Facebook post. FB has disabled dislike but they did get 53,000 comments. almost all negative.  Vox Populi.  That's Vox PO'd about these dangerous, obligatory jabs.  Mightily. Let’s see how long that FB post stays up.

Everybody knows the story of the harried mom, doing too many things at once. Dads too.  I have the three children every morning. I have to do the dishes that have collected overnight, resolve the question of what they have for breakfast – always an argument, cook that breakfast, get Marianna's diapers changed, and get Zoriana into her clothes for kindergarten.

The latter is the major issue. Like a lot of four-year-old she dawdles, argues and fights all the way. Most of the time.

I cope with it, meeting what Garrison Keillor called in regard to his own mother a modest standard of excellence. In the eyes of some there always remains room for improvement. I face the following questions:

·       Did I give the kids water before breakfast? Usually not – IMHO if they are thirsty they will drink.  Your spouse's opinion may vary. 

·       Did I change Marianna yet? No, I will do it when I have a hand free. You don't have to worry about a poopy diaper suddenly disappearing.

·       Did Zoriana pee before putting on her snow pants? Only if she felt like it.

·       Is she wearing a T-shirt, a long sleeved shirt and a sweater underneath her jacket? I try to be sure she is.  But she's sneaky.

·       Is everything zipped up? I asked her, but she may or may not have done it.

·       Are her lunch and her pajamas in her backpack?  Only if you put them there,.

Zoriana's ride comes promptly at 8:45. We have to get out the door by 8:40. This morning I was hit by two questions just as I had my hand on the doorknob. Why wasn't Zoriana's jacket zipped? Did she have her backpack?

The temperature was in the 40s. In the interest of getting out the door, I was going to let her zip it up as we walked down the street. But while we were talking about that and I was itchy to get out the door, I neglected to grab the backpack. That would've been serious. As I was halfway down the street I noticed that in the confusion I had not changed from my house shoes is to my outdoor shoes. Oksana is learning of that mistake only as she reads this. Yes, I will track a little sand here and there.

The moral of the story is that there is no perfect husband. You have to be happy for what you get, and recognize that the poor slob is never going to do things to your satisfaction no matter how often you remind him. Some husbands suspect that this business of reminding him may be simply to reinforce your own importance in the scheme of things. We appreciate you! We appreciate you!

We have this discussion as well regarding communication. It is a constant source of frustration that I tell Oksana something, or she tells me something and we simply don't understand. I asked Oksana this morning if she wanted the hot burner that I had used making pancakes. She said yes. I assumed that she would move her pot from the cold burner to the hot one. She assumed I would do it. It didn't happen.

Last night Oksana asked me to bring the camera down to take a movie of the Christmas carolers practicing. I brought the it down. She asked where was the tripod? You didn't ask for the tripod.

And so it goes. You can chalk some of the miscommunications up to the fact that I am a partially deaf old codger who natively speaks a different language. But I think that the major portion of the blame lies with the fact that she is woman and I am man. This is the way it has always been. All you can do is laugh. And accept that some balls will drop.

Two other crises resolved themselves this morning. Substack wrote me back to say that their machines had misinterpreted one of my posts as spam. I assume it was the December 30 post in which I demonstrated my anonymizer software that makes messages impossible for machines to read. At any rate, I am back in business. I uploaded and posted the material I sent yesterday by email. Here it is, in case you weren't on the email distribution.

Secondly, I got a message from the post office that the parcel containing Oksana's passport had arrived from the United States. Although I had used the most expensive means available, at $70 it still took two weeks. And the local post office didn't want to deal with it – they sent it downtown. I will have to go there to pick it up. I thank God that Anna was able to talk to them and get that information. If all has gone well, I will be able to convince the IRS that we were entitled to file a joint return in 2020 and get some money back. And Oksana will be able to travel again, which will cost some money. A fair balance.

Eddie read the first chapter of the text we bought yesterday and wrote 150 words in Ukrainian. What a success! He dictated in English and translated it into Ukrainian. He cleaned it up pretty well, as far as I can tell. I read the Ukrainian, something I couldn't have done a year ago, and it all made sense to me. Here is what he wrote.

Близько 300 000 років тому Європа була тропічним лісом, але близько 100 000 років тому, клімат змінився, і в Європі стало холодніше, з півночі з'явилися великі льодовики, які відтіснили людей на південь до екватора, де земля не була вкрита льодом. Люди були змушені пристосуватися до суворої погоди, і їх раціон змінився з фруктів, овочів, коренеплодів, на більше м’яса, ніж рослин.

І оскільки вони потребували більше полювання, вони винайшли кам’яні знаряддя праці, щоб полювати та вбивати тварин, щоб отримати їжу, у цей час люди приручили собаку, щоб допомогти полювати, кам’яні знаряддя були зроблені з твердої метаморфічної породи, але цей каммінь кромкий, коли потрапили в потрібне місце.

Льодовиковий період закінчився, льодовики відійшли на північ, середовище проживання змінилося, дейакі види тварин загинули, і з’явилися нові, щоб замінити їх, люди почали займатися сілським господарством, щоб вирощувати власну їжу замість полювання та збирання, вони створили племена, а потім вони розвинули торгівлю і навчилися пекти хліб, навчилися утримувати тварин на їжу.

Now I have to continue reading the book. I keep Google translate up as I read. I dictate words that I don't understand to the translator. It understands me about three quarters of the time; when it doesn't I have to type them in. Still and all, it is faster than a dictionary, though there are still some words that I do better with by looking them up the old-fashioned way.

That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the good looking woman is off with her father seeing medical specialists, this man managed to break the pedal off of the exercise bike yesterday, so he has an excuse to lay off training until the replacement comes, and the above average children are feeling more than averagely above average.

Graham