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For the first time ever, as soon as we walked into our newly-assigned house, the miracle of the internet was all set up and ready to sink into. But for the first time ever, we walked in to no living room furniture. If I had to choose, I would pick internet, but one week later, we are all ready for some embassy-issued sofas.

Surrounding our house: apple trees, grape arbors and pear trees full of fruit. That's how far out of town we are: we live in a neighborhood of dachas.

Maybe because I'm not working, not in the middle of an MFA program, not in the land of shopping, don't have teeny kids, am not working with a contractor on the house, don't have any of my stuff to take care of, organize, clean or use– or maybe I have just forgotten how to amuse myself–I am at a loss for things to do.

Or all this internet is making me boring. Tomorrow I will try knitting, reading and staring at the apple tree in our yard and see if that helps.

On Saturday, Peter and I had nothing better to do, so we went on a six hour stroll around our new city. We walked past parks and metro stations and the most obvious evidence we are back in the former Soviet Union: kiosks selling kvass, everyone's favorite beverage made of fermented bread.

We walked down one major street all the way to Saint Sophia, the cathedral in the very center of the city. On Sunday, Ukrainians celebrated Independence Day; on the square in front of Saint Sophia's–built in 1027–stalls were set up with handmade items for sale, and everyone was wearing embroidered national dress. Down the road was a street fair, with tons of paintings I wouldn't wish on my worst hotel room and many that I regret not buying.

Along with sofas, the house lacked another crucial feature: wine glasses. Peter and I bought a crystal pair on the street for a dollar from someone selling old stuff, then had a cup of tea from another kiosk–it's fun to be back in a country that understands my constant need for cheap crystal and non-stop tea. On the way home the taxi driver kept saying, "You walked all this way?" –more than seven miles.

The three-day Independence-weekend was a nice bonus, and this weekend is another three-day weekend! If you have to show up with jet lag and a mostly unfurnished house with pillows as fluffy as one cotton ball each–two three-day weekends in a row is a good way to begin.

We pass the four day work-weeks wandering around the bare herringbone-style hardwood floors, listening to Good Mythical Morning all day long and waiting for our lives to start. At night, we lay awake, feeling like it's dinner time. One particularly bad night, I was awake until 7:30 am. 

A couple nights ago, at 2:30 am, not feeling tired at all, but knowing I should go to bed, I made the mistake of checking my email one last time. I found an urgent note from our neighbor in Tahoe. A bear tore down our front door and rummaged through our kitchen. It's the same issue as in Ukraine, someone wants his territory back. Next thing you know, the raccoons who work as guards will be leaving because they've been drafted.

This bear didn't touch the vodka, but did eat tofu corn dogs (delicately leaving behind the sticks), no-nitrate bacon and frozen shrimp. Clearly a Californian and not a Russian bear.

Yesterday I went to the Embassy, which made me miss everyone at U.S. Embassy Bucharest terribly. I started weeping in line in the cafeteria, wishing for the faces of darling people who work in the cafeteria in Bucharest.

In Moscow, I remember telling my friend Erica: When you find yourself crying remind yourself, it's the jetlag.

I honestly don't remember feeling like this in Moscow. (Or Bucharest, or Niger. Did I?) I must have, or I wouldn't have been so full of wise advice for Erica. But in Moscow I had the metro right outside my door and didn't have to think about learning to drive just so I could buy a wineglass! Camille didn't leave after just a few days! Bears didn't break in! We had sofas! 

This has been the most exciting, boring week ever.

On the day we are flying to Ukriane–the war zone you can take your family to!- to see where we will be living for the next two years, we are problem solving massive renting issues with the new house. I needed a reminder of why we wanted a California home base to begin with. Yes, THIS. This and this and this.

I thought it was some kind of plein air poison oak, but apparently, I'm so allergic to biting flies my ankle has blown up like a balloon. A swollen, blistered, festering balloon.

Since we arrived, the house has been doing nothing but creating its own to-do list: hey guys! trim trees, replace railings, install bear-proof box for garbage, remove mismatched track lighting, which does have matching long cords stringing their way to various outlets, install clothesline since it's 85 degrees everyday. Then my mom came to visit. But months ago I had signed up for this outdoor painting workshop with Northern California artist Phillys Schafer. So the timing was perfect to be away, all day, everyday, while crucial decisions were to be made like: which limbs on the trees should be loped off and a bear box that is brown or green?

In spite of the bad timing, the painting workshop has been a refreshing mental swim in the lake. Phyllis spouts excellent advice constantly and demonstrates her amazing technique. She somehow juggles students with advanced degrees in art or architecture or have been painting for years, to students who have never painted before day one of the workshop. Her teaching agility almost surpasses her painting ability, but she's a rockin' painter, so not really.

She whipped this out on Tuesday during one session.

We've painted up on Mount Rose at 8000 feet, along a creek–where I had to make little paper ankle protectors to keep the flies off–and at Star Harbor on the Nevada side of the lake. My little easel has taken me places away from the demanding house that I never would have visited if not for the class.

Tomorrow I will be "finding the edges" and "not getting too noodle-y" –some of Phillis' words to live by–near the creek. Then we go back to our location where I lost my mountaineering sunglasses that Stefan hates, and then two days later found them in the grass where I'd painted a pine tree's portrait.

"If it gets too much to deal with where you are, go somewhere else for a while," says Phillis about details in painting, but also my life.

Starting Saturday I'll devote myself to visitors and home-improvement. And I'll have six paintings and fly bite scars to remind myself of a week when I went away for a while.

The last three houses we've lived in: Niamey, Niger, Moscow and Bucharest, we saw photos before we moved in, but didn't actually see the houses. We are in the foreign service, man! We have never been to the city in which we agree to live for three years, let alone choose the house. Shopping for a house on the internet didn't scare me; so what if we can't actually visit it before we buy it? At least we, not the post's housing board, get to choose which one it is.

I've been looking at properties in Tahoe since all there were were glossy property magazines. Since I splashed into the water from a slide in Meek's Bay and sat at a card table playing Aggrevation with my brother-in-law (and I think that was on he and my sister's honeymoon–which my parents and I totally crashed!) this place smells like home to me. 

Peter and I honeymooned here as well, my newly-wedding-ringed hand holding down the crossword puzzle in a cafe by the lake.

Pine needles, rocks, stars, the moon through the sugar pines, crazy crows answering Stefan's "Ca-caw!" Freezing cold, clear water, an altitude head-ache, a bright blue sky.

My somehow inner family is here, in the horse shoe pit next to the house and the chipmunks scrambling around and around the cedar trunks. My sister and neices visited first, my sister's cabin is just a few miles down the road.

We aren't even going to the lake it's so much fun to play house! Peter removed 100 screws from the walls, painted and did things with a hand saw. Turns out all those lego kits were actually putting-together-Ikea-furniture-training for Stefan. We are making Camille's room pretty.

Stefan plays harmonica by the fire, a bat flew into the house at sunset, and Peter and I came home to a place we'd never been before. 

When the movers finished with the house our final weight was thirteen hundred pounds over our maximum of 7900.

The shipping office couldn't tell us what the cost would be to pay for the overage to shipped, but I'd heard nightmare amounts of $8 a pound. The detritus of our lives or my antique art table wasn't worth $10,400– even if it was only one dollar a pound, it wasn't worth $1,040.

Going out to the warehouse and having the movers open the crates so we could go through each and every box and throw stuff away sounded like a nightmare.

Meanwhile the car's differential light came on and the car started making a strange noise.

And we couldn't go out to the warehouse until later because I had a job interview. 

Peter dealt with the car, I did my interview–not my best interview I must say–and we headed to the warehouse, way out in Corbeanca to throw literally half a ton of our personal items in the garbage.

We waited an hour while they rearranged the containers and lined up all eight of ours. They opened the first one with a crow bar, and started opening the packed boxes. They made a dumpster-sized box for us, and we started pitching stuff in: books, papers, my head of Hera statue, half empty boxes of stationery, empty boxes and mostly-used-up candles. We got rid of our mattress when I pointed out that it was over 17 years old and even the Embassy only keeps mattresses for 15 years.

My antique table weighed 100 pounds for the top and 100 pounds for the legs. We left behind an Ikea dresser with wonky drawers, and a ton–well, one-twentieth of a ton–of shelves. I parted with shoes, doll clothes, old postcards and a huge stash of fabric. And like a needle in a haystack, in a wad of paper with a seashell and a hair-tie, we found the missing back door key! (Which saved having to have to pay to have the door re-keyed.)

Going through the boxes and throwing stuff out was surprisingly easy. Detached from the house, the items wrapped in paper had less emotional pull. Much of the stuff, like massively-heavy step-down transformers that never worked, we'd meant to get rid of anyway. 

We kept kid's drawings, all Stefan's legos, all our clothes, which we'd already culled numerous times in the last month, our antique cabinet, artwork, everything from Camille's room becuase she lives light on the land, and most importantly, photos. 

Sitting on an ice chest in a warehouse, having four movers open every box at your feet with a huge trash container next to you is the most efficient way to get rid of stuff!

By nine p.m. we'd gone through six containers and had gotten rid of 1500 pounds. We went through one more container. Peter gave his bike rack to Vlad, I unloaded some shoes and we found the vaccuum cleaner that belongs in the house here in Bucharest. And rice! Why did we have so much rice? One box we opened was a case of packing tape the movers had mistakenly left in our container.

With the last round we purged 100 more pounds, and  I traded it for just the top of the antique table. I never liked the legs anyway. I'll buy new, better legs. After I throw something out of equal weight.

So the movers came at 9 am. I left to go to my thesis defense–which turned out to be a meeting ABOUT my thesis defense–boy, was I well-prepared! Peter watched the movers while I was gone. Then I watched them from noon to 3. Then Peter came back so I could go to a last hair appointment at the fabulous French place. When I got back, Peter couldn't be found and the movers informed me that we are 1300 pounds over the weight limit. 

I don't see how this is possible since we have gotten rid of bikes and books we came here with.

Ugh. And the Embassy contact-person has some weird formula with our car and can't tell us how much the over-the-weight-limit charges will be. And the movers wouldn't unpack the crates right then and there like I wanted them to. So Peter is driving out to their warehouse–in Buzau?–to lose 1700 pounds. Actually only 800 since some can be switched to HHE and medical shipping.

Have to talk to Stefan about that apostrophe usage. But maybe this sign he made is why we are overweight–maybe they put every lego piece in its own box? Nah…they'd still be here packing if that were the case.

Also, today the differential light came back on in the car, after just spending $2000 to have it fixed. 

Who knew we were living with all this dirt in the corners of the house? It's disgusting. And we have no broom or vacuum now, even though we had someone tell them in Romanian to leave them.

A Romanian friend says the house looks like "after the revolution."

At least they did a lovely job with my hair.

This guy's father and my great grandmother's great-grandfather were half brothers.

"My name is Pierriche Parenteau. I was sentenced to 7 years in jail in 1885, mainly for political reasons. The constitutional crisis we are undergoing with Canada and Ottawa, I felt deeply in 1870 in Manitoba and again in 1885 at Batoche, in Saskatchewan, twice at the side of Louis Riel. I am a Metis and proud of it. My father was a quebecois, born in Montreal in 1776, in the Faubourg St-Laurent. He was married "in the custom of the country" to a Manitoba Metis: Suzanne Cree. He was the grandson of Pierre-Louis Parenteau and Madeleine Rondeau anad great grandson of Pierre-Louis Parenteau from the Petit Chenal d'Yamaska. My descendence is mainly in Saskatchwan and Alberta. To be brief, my first political involvement with Louis Riel was in Manitoba, at Red River. Our lands were on a territory owned by the Hudson's Bay Company.
Canada took possession and immediately, Ottawa sent surveyors to divide the lands in lots, without any consultation. We patiently demanded:
1) a legislative assembly.
2) French and English as equal official languages.
3) the respect of our traditions.

We won our cause and in 1870. Manitoba became a province. The next year, in 1871, I fought against the Americans who wanted to control the West. I was personally thanked by the government who came to shake my hands. Around 1883, I came to settle in what was not yet the province of Saskatchewan. Once again, we had to defend our rights. We called Louis Riel, because Ottawa did not want to hear our demands. Louis Riel named me president of the Provisional
Government of Saskatchwan. We took arms, but after harsh combats, we had to surrender. On August 14, 1885, at the age of 74 years old, I was sentenced to 7 years in jail. 3 months later, Louis Riel was hanged."

This week was the opening of the student art show for the National Fine Arts University. I was super excited to see my work displayed in public in the Sala Dalles in downtown Bucharest, and to get a glimpse of something I had done next to so much amazing work.

I had to do a painting like that last year, a pixalated frame from a movie, repeated. I couldn't wait to be done with mine, but I think my classmate's turned out well. Or as well as it could.

These oversized portraits are wow.

 This painting totally creeps me out, and I think it's great.

 And what about this tiny table and chairs on a huge plate?

 My classmate Elena's work. If you look closely all the strokes and smears are actually tiny people, or horses, or people on horses, or bears or birds. She's insane. In the best way.

Oh, there is someone we know! It took me a while to find her hiding in a corner. 

Not only is she hiding in a corner, she's in a special corner. My painting hangs next to a patch of torn up floor and a sign that says "LUCRERE CONCRETE," which means of course, "concrete work."

I don't know if I should be embarrassed or humiliated by this placement, or just go with awesome-ness of people wondering if my painting is a comment on…the state of the worker? I noticed people read the lable on my painting a lot, looking to see if the title explains the "installation."

The title on my lable is "The Begining," which explains nothing and everything.

Stop by and see the show. There is a lot of amazing work. Be sure to check out "Lucrare Concreta."

What the painting looked like at the beginging of the day. Then:
a lovely, sunny day of yummy eggs
Bea chasing a kitty
a wander to the salon at the end of the street for a "pedichuire fara programa,"
Stefan ran away from a spider
heard about another shamefull shooting in the U.S.
put away groceries
toasted almonds on a skillet
lots of tea, a glass of wine
Peter got picked up by a security detail to go to a movie with the DCM
and then, at 10 PM, I finished the painting. 

My mom's first night here, she spent quite a while looking for the handle so she could flush the toilet.