It's magic how everybody else seems to know and we don't. I just put out the garbage. We missed last weekend – it was New Year's – and yesterday being Christmas we might miss again. We had three bags, so I put them out together.
Ominously, there are no other garbage bags out on the street. My guess is that somebody knows more than we do. Maybe they will collect tomorrow?
The garbage bags clinked. There is broken crockery, one plate that Marianna dropped, another one that grandfather Sasha broke. It is a reminder of the impermanence of material things. I have some lovely China that I bought 50 years ago setting up my first household with Josée. Piece by piece, it is disappearing.
We have some lovely stainless silverware that I brought over from the United States. Piece by piece, that seems to be going as well. I remember my mother's distress that the only thing of value in the household, the sterling silver she had received as a wedding present, also seem to disappear into the sandboxes and here and there. The cost of children is real.
My cousin Jani sent some family photographs for Christmas, which we received yesterday. As I gingerly removed these ancient and treasured pieces of paper, there were 30 small fingers ready to grab them out of my hands. That is family life. I had to get them under lock and key quickly. As a by the way, I was so hasty in making my exit from the family house in 2006 that I didn't bring my photos. My ex has been absolutely uninterested in getting you to my photographs or the family Christmas decorations back to me. We are starting from scratch in terms of both memories and mementos.
I meant to include this picture of the Christmas Carolers practicing. I need to improve my production method so I don't leave things out.
Christmas here is kind of like Halloween in the United States, in that the kids get all sorts of candy. I didn't see the inventory as it arrived, and I don't know where they put it, but they were all munching on candy at breakfast time. I look at it philosophically – once a year isn't going to kill them. Eddie does, however, have a sweet tooth that has cost him a couple of cavities in his deciduous teeth. I would like to warn him about the need to take care of his chompers. However, I note that nothing dissuaded me in my youth, and that dentistry is a whole lot less painful now than then. This is a good one to let his mother nag him about.
I have written a couple of times about my curiosity as to how Russia and China were faring with Covid 19. I did not imagine that they could be as dumb as we are. Apparently wrong – this November article about Russia showed up in my reading yesterday. I had missed it first time around. Between the virus and the problems in Kazakhstan, the heat may be off Ukraine for a while.
I tried to follow my own advice yesterday with regard to reading the comments on Facebook. I found Facebook clumsy even when I used to use it. Yesterday was no exception. Here is the post and the first three pages of comments in case you got frustrated the same as I did.
A friend five years older than me keeled over shoveling snow last week. In ordinary times I wouldn't wonder, but now I do. A fully vaxxed and boosted ex New York Times guy sent me a link to the same article I sent you yesterday. Although we hadn't talked about the jabs, he told me that he had concluded that Anthony Fauci simply doesn't make sense. He felt lousy for two days after getting his booster.
Anna brought back my exercise bicycle this morning. No excuses! Five years ago I thought that my old one had given up the ghost. So I bought another one of the same model. But it kept on going! Anna wanted to work out so I gave the new one to her. However, it turned out to be too stiff for her to use and it's just been cluttering up her apartment. She was glad to get rid of it and I'm glad to have it again. The children love to play on the old one – let's see if they like it if we demoted from something of daddy's down to a toy.
Yesterday I got three quarters of the way through the next chapter of Eddie's history of Ukraine. It has a lot of propaganda value – three references to the solidarity of the three sister peoples, Russia, Belorussia and Ukraine in addition to a few more references to the exploitation of the working class back in days of yore. Eddie and I will have a lot to talk about.
That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the good looking woman has inherited the winter crud, I'm feeling great and ready for the exercise machine, and the kids are not yet complaining about stomachaches.