Mothers are the same all over. Ditto to-year-olds. Power outages
20221119
There is a universal belief among mothers that if they don't force a child to eat that child will starve. Here's a picture of Mariana sitting at the table. I was too slow with the camera to get grandmother patiently forcing her to eat.
I was the first one in the kitchen this morning and I set Mariana down with a bowl of cereal. I heated it up to the proper temperature because of course it will bring on grave illnesses if she eats cold milk with cold cereal.
I slid her up to the table, got everything ready and left her to eat by herself while I heated some tea. She did eat by herself, but of course that is a totally inadequate solution.
I was a chubby child because my mother fed me the same way. As I'm sure her mother fed her, also a chubby child. I'm pleased that my girls are properly formed. They have the opportunity to eat as much as they want. I’m equally pleased that they know when to quit.
Here are some signs of the season. We had our first snow blanketing the back yard. Edward, the young Thomas Jefferson, remarked that in 2018 the snow came three days earlier.
Here's another sign of the times. Unlike in America, the pumpkin comes from the backyard, not from Safeway. A departing American 10 years ago gave us a can of Libby's canned pumpkin that he had gotten at the commissary. It sat on a shelf several years before we gave it away. We make our pie from scratch. It is really very cheap and easy. 20¢/lb to be exact – less than potatoes.
Here is an example of what happens when you leave a pie sitting on the counter with a two-year-old nearby. Those are Marianna’s fingerprints all over.
The changeability of women is legendary. Zoriana asked to walk to school again today. She had been ready yesterday at 8:30, a first-time occurrence. With lots of time, we had a very pleasant and leisurely walk. She thought she would like to do it again today. We got out on time, after putting mom to some extra work getting lunch packed that early.
When we got to the bus stop Zoriana changed her mind. So as I dictated this that we were waiting at the bus stop. She made snowballs and throwing them into mud puddles having lots of fun. I couldn’t object.
The light was out from 6 until 10 this morning and again this afternoon starting at 3. It is now 6:20. I was just typing this article on the laptop, with the display turned down low to conserve the battery and candlelight just sufficient to enable me to find keys on the keyboard. I looked up and happened to notice that the power supply on the other computer was lit up. Looking at my own display, lo and behold it told me I was on city power again.
I get used to navigating these outages. Returning to Livoberezhna from the bank I had planned to go clothes shopping. Nope – that mall was closed. The escalators don’t work without power. I use the time instead to go to the post office where I found my Reed College alumni magazine and to go to the butcher shop, conveniently located at ground level and apparently with a generator.
Cars and pedestrians manage the lack of traffic lights just fine. Both drivers and pedestrians here are generally courteous. We graciously make allowances for each other, and my bet is that traffic is flowing better than it does when the lights are on.
Grandma and I heard a loud explosion about 4:00. Probably the Russians taking another shot at our infrastructure. I asked her to fill the bathtub when the power comes back on so we have water to wash with just in case it’s out for a long time. Maybe it will bring us luck. We had a full tub of water from March through June that we never needed.
That’s the news from Lake WeBeGone, where it feels rather like London during the blitz. Although it’s not an attractive proposition being targeted by Putin’s rockets, from a global perspective it is satisfying to see him waste a billion dollars worth of scarce ammunition for such marginal results targeting civilian objectives. We can stand the cold as our soldiers continue to push the SOBs back where they came from.