Category: Uncategorized

This homeleave has gone SO fast. The blissful QM2 trip home was followed by NYC for a day, then 4th of July fireworks from the very cool lake-front cabin my sister hooked us up with at Donner Lake. We brought my mom up to Tahoe and the first morning here we heard that Peter's niece, our sweet Emily, had died, which has colored our entire trip blue.

Peter took off to see his family, then came back in time for a visit with our "old" friend Gina and her new husband. We all visited the dentist, typical home-leave-work. Then Peter and Stefan flew to San Diego and Stefan's dream: Legoland. A hike in the Sierras and then I got my new blue bike, which I brought to Tahoe. By myself for a few days I rode and ran, I think as much as during the two-week Triathlon! Only outside and with a lake view or surrounded by 100 kinds of Sierra wildflowers.

Peter and Stefan went to a motorcycle race. Camille — with 88-year-old-Grammie at the wheel! — went up to Oregon for a sweaty week with her race-horse training cousin, and got to know some family along the way. A burrito bowl from Chipotle and an Anthropologie side-trip later, I was back in Tahoe, playing Words With Friends, and listening to our friend's band, lakeside.

A couple days later we saw those same friends, Luanne and Evan, and they took our kids to Marin for a few days of constant drumming and s'mores. Then, a last weekend with Ludmilla, Sonja and Mary, Emily's nearest. Blueberry galette, bbq chicken, and today, a final hike around the lake and a swim.

We love it here, the frozen yogurt place and bears wandering the woods and the condo we rented, so clean and cheerful, with a swimming pool that has a resident bunny. I hope we can buy a place in Tahoe someday, but not until the prices have gone as far down as they can possibly go. And then I want a place like this, where in the morning I hear coyotes howling like loons and chipmunks scurrying around and around the pine trees and blue jays.

The Washoe said that The Lake of the Sky rejuvenates the spirit. I think not only the lake, but also the sourdough bread from Truckee Bakery and the zillion stars in the sky.

Summer isn't over, we have Washington DC still to come before the mystery of Bucharest; I hope your days are full of these kinds of blue skies and that like Peter, your iPhone works after you take it kayaking.

Have amazing blue/green eyes that are almost scary.

Crochet gifts for friends and read all of Dickens by age 9.

No matter how late you've stayed up the night before drinking apricot beer, show up to work at the bakery at 5 am with immaculately beautiful braided blond hair. 

Play the bass as a teen-ager.

Have a great stomach and be fabulously thin and gorgeous always, but never think you look good at all.

Look good wearing an apron.

Get a bracelet of poison ivy tattooed on your wrists to hide the scars.

Be a bug-bite magnet.

Remind everyone that everything is bullshit.

Have an adorable lisp as a little one so that 30-some years later we still refer to "pe-othed e-ors" when buying earrings.

Be a technophobe and try to convince everyone you know of all the things you can't do, while doing everything you do impeccably well, including: decorating your house, making croissants from scratch and carving your own temporary teeth out of fimo clay.

Enjoy your infants.

Get your house ready for Christmas like it is the most important thing in the world.

Be a really good hugger.

Thank you for the blog idea thelipstickchronicles.com.

Tsaritisno today was a major check off the list!

First we rode the metro out…if we'd driven it would have taken hours. The metro goes super fast.

Then you have to wear these airport-style booties to protect the newly-made Catherine-the-great-deserving palace floors.

You have to sneak in a photo of the interior before you get called out by a guard. And that will happen, don't worry, that is their job. But you can take as many pictures as you want outside.

After you tour the museum, which was totally recreated by the mayor of Moscow in the last ten years, based on 18th century sketches–and what a great use of space, I must say–each room of the palace is filled with arifacts from all corners of Russia, from classic heavily embroidered costumes to Lapland papooses.

Afterwards, you have to pick your favorite Lomosov pattern in the gift store.

Amazing day, seeing some of Catherine's huge collection of painted urns and mechanical birds in pretty little cages and 100-year-old-postage-stamp-sized books brought from Kazakstan and palace-sized rooms filled with Mongolian yurts

Then, for a dramatic time-travel juxtaposition, we went to the mall and bought Camille clothes at Zara.

I wish everyone I know as weird and wonderful a Mother's Day as this.

My fun, vivacious aunt who had no fewer than four spinach salad recipes, loved to run on the beach when she was 50, and always wore 3-inch heels, now at 84, still has cute legs. Walking down the hall of the nursing home, I saw them sticking out, half-hidden behind a curtain around her bed. Then I looked at the face and said, "That's her. Or it's someone else who looks exactly like my grandfather did at 97."

My Aunt Edie, who loved red wine and the color yellow and to laugh and play pool, lays in bed now and compulsively scratches her neck. She always used a tiny brush to put on her lipstick, seeing her now without make up is a harder adjustment than having her not know who I am. She has the same eyes she always did, the same high cheekbones, skin that shows she took care of it for years, and makes me rethink the need for sunscreen. I petted her arm and asked if that was okay with her. "Yes," she said, which is now her only word. Her biggest joy in life these days is chewing gum.

The necklace my aunt is wearing in this photo, my uncle bought for her in Clearwater Beach, Florida for their one year wedding anniversary. Soemthing like twenty one-carat diamonds form a heart-shape, with one larger diamond in the center. From the day she got it, she never took it off. She showered in it, wore it with gowns on New Years Eve and running on the beach. She wore with her bathing suit while working on her tan. Her smile and that necklace, Aunt Edie lit up our world.

After wearing the necklace every day since May 1967, around 1990, in the grocery store, my aunt felt around her neck and realized the necklace was missing. She searched everywhere, crying, put ads in the paper but never saw the necklace again. She believed she lost it while walking across a parking lot.

Wednesday my sister and I visited my aunt in the convelencent hospital and talked about how adorable she was. "If there was anything of hers I ever wanted, I would have loved to have had that necklace," my sister said. I knew exactly what necklace she was talking about, no one forgets bling like that.

While my sister and I have spent the last few days holding my dad's hand in hospice, my uncle has been searching his house for the combination to his safe. He invited my sister up to her house the other day and surprised–or absolutely freaked her out, given that we'd just been talking about the necklace–her with a gift. She walked into my dad's room and at his bedside, I looked up to see the diamond heart-shaped necklace around my sister's neck and screamed. My uncle says he found it in a jacket pocket of my aunt's, without the chain.

Of course, I'm only somewhat insanely jealous, but I am so happy to see the necklace, and I love seeing it on my sister.

Difficult as it is to believe it's her, her legs twisted in a blanket, unable to have a conversation, scratching and chewing gum, seeing my darling Aunt Edie in her dramatically altered state is still seeing her. I'm going to go see her again while I'm home. I think I'll take lipstick to put on her, and some lotion to smooth where she's been scratching.

Update: I spent most of the time during my second visit with Aunt Edie telling her about her wedding, I was her flower girl. I told her every detail I could remember, she seemed to enjoy hearing about her velvet and silk dress, the tiara she wore and the rose petals I put in everyone's champagne. I found out this morning, before I had a chance to publish what I wrote earlier, that my Aunt Edie died yesterday.

We've had a couple of visitors, we insisted Helen extend her stay from two weeks to three weeks. We did all sorts of fun stuff with her, like visiting a doll workshop–which is a whole blog post of its own. Then Aleen was here for a week and we went for a few wanders–we found a couple of really quirky shops, both of them hidden in apartment buildings. We would have made her stay longer if we could have, but she left yesterday. She probably thought we were trying to kill her with Glee and Modern Family and trips to the grocery store and the forced bus-drivers holiday of constant psychotherapy. I've also been working on a brochure-turned-36 page booklet outside of my regular job that kept me busy when I wasn't newslettering. Camille had exams. A bomb exploded at the airport. Oh, and today is the last day of the Two-Week Triathlon, I swam my last 26 laps and spun away my last 12 miles.

Peter wrote an Overwhelming To-Do list of things we have to accomplish by the time we leave Moscow, like renew our passports–including some doggy passport we need for Bea–and schedule our travel and pack out, all the usual. Plus we are in negotiations to sell our house in Portland. I'm having a hard time falling asleep at night. I wonder why?

Took down the Christmas tree today–everything had to be carefully put away this year since it will all be moved this summer. I put the tree outside with the lights still on so we can enjoy it a few more days.

Every day Stefan crosses a day off his homemade countdown calendar, not counting today to make Christmas seem sooner. "Today is Chirstmas Eve Eve Eve Eve," he tells me.

The days are swirling past like snowflakes and I'm dazzled by all the sights–the lit up Urkraina hotel, the Christmas tree on the embassy compound with the Russian White House as a backdrop, the stunning dacha-in-frost sets last night at the Snowmaiden ballet. I want to knit a hat like the costume, I want to keep figuring out Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring on the guitar, I want to listen more closely to the new Pink Martini Chirstmas album, bake merange cookies, call my mom. Appreciating Stefan's anticipation makes my time slow down to his for a second and lets me think I can maybe do all that. And still shop for stocking stuffers for Camille. 

As much as I adored going home for Chirstmas last year, this year snuggling into Moscow's Chirstmas spectacular feels like a gift. Watching the wind roll the snow into a cloud and blow it across the windows, is like a show. Getting in the car and seeing Moscow go by through windows frosted over in a million sparkly stars and flowers, it's like an effect for a movie.

Christmas is New Years here, and the holiday goes on for eleven days afterwards, they are just getting geared up. I still want to take photos of Red Square and see the Diaghalev window displays at GUM. I need as many Christmas Eve Eve Eve Eves as I can get.

Spaso House Christmas party followed by Ikea followed by buying the prettiest fresh Christmas tree.

As a favor for me, Stefan learned to play Hark the Herald Angels Sing, which he calls, "Gloria" like the Van Morrison song. Here, he's playing the Ambassador's piano. A new lego set bribe may or may not have been involved.

Stefan hedged his bets by telling both American Santa and Russian Santa his Christmas wishes. I feel like mine have already come through.