Category: Uncategorized

Why am I so depressed?

It's raining.

After a house in tahoe being on the market a year (way over priced, so it never showed up on my radar) then last year for six months, then back on the market recently with no one even going to look at it, the day we put in our offer, so did someone else. And the seller took their offer.

And now we are all hung up on Meek's Bay vintage houses with a lake views. And how many of those are there in our price range? Ever? 

Wanting causes all suffering. Budda was right. < new bumper sticker idea

We are moving in two months.

Camille and Alex are here and I should be happy, but all we are doing is staying home. I feel badly that Alex came for a week and during a week of dreary weather and tons to do at work so I couldn't do much tour guiding.

I need to throw half of what I own away.

Camille is in a math class that is out of her league and I don't see how she can pass the IB test. Which means she won't pass the IB. Do the U.C. schools care about the IB? 

Stefan ordered pizza and 2 liters of coke without asking permission. I paid for it all and went and put it directly in the trash.

A week later, it's still raining.

All the women walking around in headscarves and Prada sunglasses in Istanbul look so badass I want to start wearing the hajib myself. I had no idea a city of 14 million could be so hip, so welcoming, so cool. But it's not without its problems.

We took a taxi out to the famous Chora Church built in the year 500-something, which turned out to be half-closed for renovations–thanks website for not telling us. I could have lived without seeing the mosaic-covered narthex, but it would have been nice to have not paid $50 for the taxi ride back that because of traffic only took us as far as the metro.

I might have enjoyed the metro ride if we'd known where the metro WAS. Instead we walked around the plaza of the new mosque where a political rally had just ended. Looking for the metro we got swept away with a crowd heading down some stairs, hoping it was the metro, but no–a crush of hajib-and-Prada sunglasses-wearers swept us into the bowels of an underground shopping street? Passage to the bridge? I don't even know. Finally we dragged ourselves out of the riptide of people and regrouped.

And I wouldn't have minded going back up the stairs, against the flow of humanity to the body-slamming plaza if the vans there weren't screaming political statements from loud-speakers.

After demanding directions from an unsuspecting waiter, we found the metro station, and then figured out the metro's magic-token system. I love it when the metro is so crowded it hurts, and then at every stop, no one gets off, but a ton of people crush themselves on.

That experience, together with Peter shouting from the ATM "IS 500 DOLLARS ENOUGH?" on the most crime-ridden plaza in the world made me feel like a savvy-traveler.

Later, wandering the Spice Market we bought loose Turkish black tea. The tea vendor filled a cup with dried roses, pomegranate flowers, jasmin and chamomile, poured hot water over the whole thing and handed it to me.

Half-closed churches, over-priced taxi rides, screaming loud speakers and crushing metro rides? Istanbul's got the anwer for that problem and it's one of my favorite things in the world: tea.

I have to remind myself that this blur will so soon be Christmas past. 

Last year we roasted coffee and gave the packages to the neighbors–walking around in the cold and dark giving something away has become a tradition for our little family-away-from-family. This year we made fresh-baked dog treats. We interrupted one Santa-hat-wearing family while they wearing singing carols! How cute is that? Cheers to you, we hope the holiday reminds you of good times in the past and brings you warmth and joy and happy surprises today.

In the same way that I like Thursday better than Friday, anticipating rather than surprises, Christmas Eve better than Christmas, I have realized I may like the week before Christmas better than the week during Christmas.

Stefan and I Christmas shopped today–he is a great shopper, he finds the most perfect thing in about two seconds. Then we made gift tags together, which after the tree and the music may be my favorite part of Christmas. 

Camille comes home tomorrow. It will snow eventually. I am savoring the looking forward.

Advice from my professor:
Work on the backgrounds, make them shimmer. (Can I use glitter?)
Do at least five paintings at a time.
A square landscape is difficult.
Look at the work of Rafael.
Use less oil, more turpentine.

Advice from my student-collegues:
Don't do them too big!
Use the overlays!
Look at the work of Alexandrine Hristov–the Moldovan singer-painter–your work looks like hers! Listen to her music while you paint!
You have the concepts, now you just have to do the painting–the easy part.
Your hands know how to draw, now you have to teach your arm to paint.

Remember when I told Camille to appreciate AAS because it was probably the nicest school she was EVER going to go to? I was wrong. At TASIS, Camille says it's like later Plato will be having a Q&A at the fountain on the marble steps in front of the fresco. Her room is teeny, but you can see the lake out the window. Her uniform fit perfectly and she's going to get in great shape going up the stairs to her dorm every day. 

She and I like the Rumi quote ouside the art building: Let the beauty we love shine in all we do. So there she is, our little lady at boarding school, ready to shine.

Vera made silk scarves?! Gotta be one good dress in all that! Dishes for my imaginary cabin. And, Nest, San Francisco.

Before we left for R&R, the first time back to the U.S. in a year, I didn't so much feel like I was going home as much as I felt like I was going to visit a country I know really well.

Once we'd been there for 5 weeks, I didn't want to leave and was thinking, do we HAVE to be in the Foreign Service? Do we really want to live overseas still? Why not live in the U.S? They have:

• Frozen yogurt galore. Preferably the no-sugar-added Valrhona Chocolate flavor from Fraiche on Filmore.
• Sugar free carmel syrup at Starbucks.
• Second-hand stores. Thrift stores. Overpriced, eclectic boutiques like Nest, in San Fransisco and Stripe in Santa Cruz. Goodwill. Used book stores.
• Baby carrots.
• People asking "How can I help you?" and even better, a form of good-bye I've never heard anywhere else in the world, "Have fun!" Can you imagine a French store clerk saying "Amusez bien!" 
• Dogs on leashes.
• Clean air and drinkable tap water.
• Bogle Zinfandel.
• Chaou Firecracker chocolate which is a fancy way of saying spicy chocolate with poprocks, omg.
• Sensible drivers. Except that guy who got mad at me at the Y in Tahoe and stopped short so he could swear at me and then got rear-ended by the guy behind him. Car-ma.
• How many kinds of laundry detergent do we need? Wow.
• Wallaby's non-fat greek yogurt. It's like it's whipped! I was buying it by the LITER or quart or whatever those huge tubs they have at Whole Foods.
• Grinding up honey-roasted peanuts and taking home warm, freshly-extruded, addicting peanut butter from Whole Foods.
• Okay, just Whole Foods in general. 
• Except today I went to Tia Market (down the street from me in Bucharest) to get bread and milk and I got bread and milk and okay, some bananas and I spent $4. Not once did I go to the grocery store at home and spend only $4. 

It's easy to love being in the U.S. 

This summer we had our daughter's bf with us, the intelligent and hilarious Alex. He observed that Americans fly the flag from everywhere, although none of us are sure of the point of it. Are Austrailians or Russians less patriotic for not painting their national flags on the sides of their car dealerships? Alex also noticed we have a lot of dentists, and he doesn't understand why, since everyone already has such nice teeth.

Then after spending July to mid-August at "home," the circuit of Paradise-Davis-Santa Cruz-Tahoe, I didn't want to come back to Bucharest. I had to remind myself of Bea and my own bed. Then just one day back at work, and I was all, "I love it here!" I hate leaving home for work, hate leaving work to come home. I think I just have a transition problem. As Alex said, when he was small when his mom asked him if he wanted to go to the park, he always said no, and then he cried when they left the park.

I miss how hilarious I find my sister. When I pointed out Stefan's pre-adolenct paunch, she says, "And you were how thin at that age?" I miss the blue, blue sky of Tahoe and Marin. I miss Torrie and Jon's swimming pool lapping outside the bedroom door. Hummingbirds darting at each other, then sitting in trees, having no idea of their own tininess in this world. 

I miss the rural-ness of Northern California, the wild beauty, the constant of hills in the distance, seeing hawks during the day and deer in the evening. Finding blackberries to eat, nearly every time I go running. Sitting outside in the morning to watch the birds–in Tahoe, squawky blue jays and at my mom's house, little quail families, looking like they are rolling on wheels.

I feel like my kids don't really get enough time in the U.S. We are turning into weirdos. We don't want any kind of "club card." I can't get my ticket punched enough in the time I have left, so why try. I don't care if I can save 3% today or get a free frozen yogurt on my birthday–I won't be here! U.S. city cups at Starbucks are a novelty. Camille doesn't know how much U.S. coins are worth.

Camille goes away to school in Switzerland in a week or so. By the time she graduates she will have lived overseas half her life and not bothered to learn the value of coins in any of them. She likes the U.S., and is devoted to Chipotle, but otherwise has a cool detatchment about the country in general. Stefan however, is ready to go to U.C. Davis and get a job (or create a business is more like it) so he can shop at Target.

I knew I was back in Romania as soon as I got to the airport: two men were assisting passengers with procuring luggage carts. And the luggage carts are free! Do you hear that Minneapolis-land-of-the-$5-luggage-carts?

Free luggage carts, cheap groceries, sunny skies, good work, painting projects galore, home, one of many. This is our job (Peter's job anyway) and this is our life. I do miss that yogurt though.

The walk out Tennessee Valley road is my favorite hike in the world. Two miles out and you come to the beach. Heaven.