unofficial moscow bucket list

I made a Moscow bucket list for the newsetter, but I put a whole bunch of stuff in there that I think I am suppose to want to do. I'm sure they are things totally worth doing and I'll miss out by not seeing the icons in Chirst the Savior Cathedral and the Cat Circus, but these are some of the things I really want to do before we leave Moscow:

Drink more of this  tastes-like-marzipan tea (made by the tea-makers to the Tsars). I'm sure that now that I've discovered it, it will no longer be available.

Eat more actual marzipan. I never liked marzipan much before, but now I'm totally into this one. Except I'm not really eating sugar right now. Except for this marzipan.

Go back in time and watch Eurovision with Nina. Gosh that was fun.

Drink wine and have dinner with friends and laugh until I almost wet my pants.

Buy more silly paintings like this one that we got for Stefan's room at Ismailova.

Find the bird etchings that I adore that I think I threw away in the trash. 

Savor having supportive, creative friends.

Hang on Peter some more in our ugly "one-butt" kitchen.

Enjoy the sound of Stefan having his piano lesson with his Tchaikovski-Conservatory-trained very serious piano teacher.

I really do want to see Tsaritsino, Catherine-the-Great's mad-cap idea of a little get-away-place. You can take the metro there from our house, for goodness sake. Peter's sister Alex and his cousin's daughter Ana (in Africa I got to just call her my "little sister") are coming to visit. I'm hoping the weather is nice and one day when they are here we make a day of Tsaritsino. Maybe a picnic with ham and deviled eggs and vinigarette salad and all the food of Peter's childhood? On Easter?

Buy a samovar. And take it on an Easter picnic to Tsaritsino.

Write/paint/draw/make stuff. Yesterday I made more pillowcases from crazy Russian fabric and a little stuffed bird. Then I put the bird in a branch. Tomorrow I'll put the bird in the trash. This is my life. The pillowcases turned out nice though. But the best part about them is that Geri came and sat and talked and knitted with me while I sewed.

Enjoy my quotable co-workers. "If people can't write, they have no business being a lawyer." And: "If I make this email pink, will people not read it? Or will they read it becaaaaauuuuse it's pink?"

Not forget a thing.

A winter's worth of snow has packed down, and I walk Bea on a frozen glacier of ice now. The last snow of our last winter in Moscow runs in sweet rivulets, down into big, black scary storm drains. Everything I wanted to do here, everything I will do, there it goes. Bye.