twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?"

  • moving makes me look fat

    Sign_dontpack

    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.

    Sign_lego

    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."

  • concrete work

    Vernisage poster

    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.

    Vernisage stature

    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.

    Vernisage artist

    Vernisage student work

    These oversized portraits are wow.Vernisage wow

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

    Vernisage tiny sculpture

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

    Vernisage elena

     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.

    Vernisage someone that I use to know

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

    Concrete work

    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."

    Lucrare concreta

    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."

  • rose time

    Studio

    Peter makes breakfast

    Bea and kitty

    Stefan caltia says good bye

    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. 

  • funny you asked

    Toilet

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

  • seven days of sicily

    Sicily taomina coastline

    Sicily bruchetta

    Sicily peter

    Sicily siracusa house

    Sicily lemon blossom

    Sicily stef and peter

    Sicily isola bella

    Sicily caves

    Sicily cast in rain

    Sicily statues

    Sicily camille feet

    Sicily all

  • rain

    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.

  • turkish delightful

    Ist_towels

    Just got done brushing the fringe on my towels.

    Along with apple tea, friendly people, fresh air and a gorgeous skyline, one of the bright stars in the starry, starry sky that is Istanbul are hand-woven towels.

    This one store employs and inspires weavers to work their looms like it's a hundred years ago and machines for mass-producing towels haven't been invented yet.

    Jennifer, the owner, understands the instant devotion her merchandise inspires. She thought it was normal when we spent two hours in the shop touching everything but her. "Oh, you'd have to stay another three hours to even approach the record," she said. 

    Jennifer started with one weaver making sustainable, ecological, organically-grown silk scarves, cotton and linen towels and blankets. Now she spends half her time driving around the Turkish countryside looking for traditional artisans with still-operational antique looms who can produce work to the standards her devotees around the world have come to cherish.

    When we visited, merchandise was set aside for a Saudi wife who likes towels in sets of at least six, and a special-order terry-looped robe for a Romanian prince.

    Our first day in Istanbul, on the way to the Blue Mosque we found one of Jennifer's shops, got the story on the towels and bought a pile of them. Later we walked past another of her shops and ended up buying MORE towels. When we saw the third shop and went in and bought MORE, I knew I had contracted a disease.

    Hand-loomed of ecologically grown cotton and colored from dyes made "in the garden" say her weavers, these towels fluff up to an organic whipped-cream luxurious-ness. I bought some textured white towels and some colorful ones, thinking the colorful ones were probably a little over-the-top for me. Now that they live with us, I love the subtly-stripped multi-hued ones best.

    You only need to go to Istanbul every twenty years to buy towels because they are going to last that long, longer if you don't put them in the dryer, says Jennifer. But make sure you buy enough. Because somehow, in spite of visiting all three of her shops, I need more. 

    It's just a towel! But having something you use and touch everyday, especially something you get naked with, to be amazing–these are life-enhancing towels!

    Before using, the towels need to soak for twenty-four hours so the cotton becomes acquainted with water and learns how to be absorbent. Hang dry the first time. Somehow these towels when hung outside on the line, do not dry to a rough, flat board. They dry fluffy and plush with the soul of something made row by row by human hands.

    These are the sports cars of towels–the same way you might find yourself polishing the wheels of your fancy car–you too might find yourself outside on a sunny spring day after a trip to Istanbul brushing the fringe of your towels. Not because you have to, but because you want to.

  • the problem with istanbul

    Istanbul tea

    Ist_teacart

    Ist_teasets

    Ist_rosetea

    Istanbul_spicemarkettea

    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.

  • this too

    Ambulance
    I didn't know the worst part this time would be the lady with a knife sticking out of her.

    Peter was up all night writhing around in pain, whimpering about how something wasn't right. He kept getting up and walking around our bedroom. Sleeping going on last night: none.

    Not trying to score pity points with his mussed look, this morning he made himself pretty for his own med unit and walked miserably to the car, prescribing himself an ultrasound. At work, Gabby, Getta and Ouana, his amazing staff, went into immediate action, taking his temperature, blood pressure and blaming a local restaurant. 

    The med unit crew insisted on an ambulance. "For safety." (I guess I shouldn't have let him take that shower without back-up.) Nothing like a Monday morning, first-day-back-after-the-holidays wheel chair ride to the curb, where flight-suited cigarette-scented paramedics covered Peter-on-a-gurney with a blanket and slid him into the ambulance.

    On the way to the hospital, Gabby, Peter's nurse, formerly head of nurses at the very Floreasca hospital we were headed to, made a phone call to the head of emergency. The perimedics rolled Peter into the shiny new half of the state hospital. Behind us in the old half, continuing her wait, a gypsy lady with impressive sideburns. 

    They stuck Peter with needles–I knew he must be feeling out of it because he didn't even bother to faint–got an IV going, asked the same questions a lot of times about his so-bad-he-threw up pain. Doctors taking histories, nurses–who wear scrubs covered up with bathrobes, while the patients stay dressed–more doctors. Gabby waves at everyone and they come over to kiss her and wish her La Multi Ani, Happy New Year. A technician wheels in a monitor and Gabby threatens Peter with a trans-vaginal ultrasound. In two seconds the tech finds kidney stones. He then spends five more minutes touring Peter's other organs, "There is the apendix that isn't the problem."

    In spite of Peter's entertaining innards, the big show is two beds over. A lady with an eye-catching mylar blanket has her arm wrapped up as if someone hadn't been sure what to do, so they kept wrapping. "She was stabbed," Gabby tells me. Ugh. I try not to look. Me not looking observes, she's lying on her side, wearing an oxygen mask, the flashy mylar has slipped down to expose her breasts. The knife, still impaled, enthroned on a mound of gauzed-up shoulder, points its handle to the ceiling. Her husband stabbed her, Gabby tells me. I send the lady good vibes, prayers, white light, good wishes that she never gets a kidney stone. Poor thing.

    Peter meanwhile has been given pain meds and now makes pee jokes. The head internist checks in, a surgeon comes by to declare surgery unnecessary. Whew. I really didn't want to have to call London to find out how to medivac Peter myself. Gabby gently rolls Peter's sleeves back down and buttons his cuffs.

    On the top of my do-not-want list: kidney stones. But the hospital staff was thorough and kind, Peter got to come home the same day in a car, pretty much all put back together, with a typical European-style laundry list of meds. Every time they opened another tube package or another specialist showed up to shake hands and hear Peter's history, I added, American-style, another line to the hospital bill: cha-ching, cha-ching. In the end, the final cost for the hospital visit: 0 dollars, 0 cents.

    On the way back to the Embassy, Gabby asked for money to buy Peter's meds and I gave her 400 RON, hoping it was enough for the load of antispasmotics, antibiotics. She came back with a shopping bag full of pharmaceuticals and two-thirds of the money. She'd spent $15.

    The worst part last time was that it happened in a hotel room in the middle of the night in Ougadougou and Peter and were so alone.  

    This time, Peter went back to the Embassy for a short time and Gabby brought him noodles with butter and soup from the cafeteria.

    Romania-care. Boom.