Ice, Ice Baby

Alright, STOP; collaborate and LISTEN.

Yup, I went there.

I find it alarming that I was genuinely thrilled this morning when I looked at the thermometer that is glued to our kitchen window and it indicated that the temperature was hovering just below 0 degrees Celcius (which, for you non-Science types out there, such as myself, is the equivalent of being just below 32 degrees Fahrenheit – namely, literally, FREEZING).

This marks the first time in, oh, about a week that the temperature has dared venture above -20 degrees Celcius.  NEGATIVE TWENTY.  That, my fellow Bill Nye wannabes, equals -4 degrees Fahrenheit. (Don’t be too impressed; I had to go here to figure this out.  I’m lucky I can remember how to convert fractions (½) into decimals (0.5) and percentages (50%).  Um, that’s right, right?  RIGHT???)

So, since I practically danced the Dance of Joy this morning in my kitchen (alone; Vlad was on his way back from Kyiv via overnight (and re-routed to the tune of over two extra hours) train, due to the cancellation of his flight last night, which means my losing the Kopeck-toss for the trip to Kyiv this week was actually a blessing in disguise), you’d think I’d have left the house today.

Nope; you’d be wrong.

Vlad finally returned around noon, tired and not wanting to do much of anything and, since the majority of our remaining logistical work (regarding the arrival of our colleagues in town next week) can be done inside of a day, we kind of decided that today would not be that day.  So tomorrow, while he handles logistics, I will do some more fact-finding work (actually, I will ask Lilia to make some fact-finding phone calls; the only fact I would find upon making such calls myself is that the people I’m calling speak no more English than I do Ukrainian) and knock out the report that we need to turn in on Saturday.

So, on to more important issues: our shower.  It starts out scalding, melt-your-skin-off hot, and when you have the AUDACITY to adjust the temperature just a touch so your skin doesn’t melt off completely, the shower cops an attitude and, as if to say, “Oh, yeah?  You want colder water?  I’ll GIVE you colder water, you ungrateful little…,” BAM, the water immediately adjusts to room temperature (which wouldn’t be so dreadful if the room weren’t roughly 50 degrees [Fahrenheit] to begin with).  No matter how far to the left you move that handle, it is not getting any hotter, so you just stand there, soaping and shivering, soaping and shivering.  (Do you know how pointless it is to bother trying to shave legs that are all goose-bumpy from the cold?  Absolutely useless.  I’m glad I’m not a competitive swimmer.  As if.)

(BTW, what the heck is with the label on that package of Goose Bumps?!)

But it gets BETTER!  See, on really special days, if you’re reeeeeeally lucky, you’ll even get the occasional and unannounced cold shot of pure ice water, fresh from what I assume is a GLACIER hiding in our pipes.  Completely at random.  Ha, ha.  Just to make sure you’re up in the morning.  Or the afternoon (don’t judge).

And here, all this time, I thought “Cold Shot” merely referred to a button relegated to hair dryers for the purpose of instantly setting a particular style.  That’s what I get for limiting my horizons; my eyes have now been opened (abruptly, every day) to new possibilities.

So I guess, theoretically, the Cold Shot feature in our shower works in much the same way as the Cold Shot button on a hair dryer, yes?

Word to your mother.

Inernational House of Pancakes

Yesterday, after almost two months of searching high and low in Luhansk for the necessary ingredients, I finally managed to make American-style pancakes!

Here in Ukraine, the term “pancake” refers to what we Americans know as a crepe.  The outdoor stands here that sell pancakes (Blinok stands) sell them wrapped around various ingredients; my favorite to date is the pancake with ham and cheese.  In fact, courtesy of our Interpreter, Lilia, who first introduced me to these Blinok stands in early December, I have developed a pancake-a-day habit (I can quit whenever I want to).  Weather permitting, I get one of those suckers any and every chance I get.  Mmmm…..

Anyway, I was explaining the difference between these crepes and actual American-style pancakes, but a verbal description of them will only go so far (this reminds me of a quote I once read: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”  I have no idea who said it, as it’s been attributed to various people, but it is quite the observation, no?)  Anyway, I determined to make them last month, to share the goodness that is the American pancake, but was missing a key ingredient:

Maple syrup.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: maple syrup is not at ALL an ingredient in pancakes.  And you’d be right… if I let you (which, typically, I don’t do.  Just ask my husband).  But when you think about it, it TOTALLY IS.  Seriously, have you ever attempted to eat a pancake without maple syrup (or some kind of random, flavored syrup, like from that syrup-quad on all the tables at IHOP: blueberry, strawberry, butter pecan, and diabetes)?  It's like eating a kitchen sponge.  I generally prefer my pancake hangover to involve a spike in my blood sugar followed immediately by lethargy, not cottonmouth, thankyouverymuch.

And by the way, I would just like to point out here: is there anything even remotely “international” about the International House of Pancakes??  Aside from their Swedish crepes (with lingonberry butter and lingonberry preserves – thank you GOD for such food!), I daresay there is not.  And I dare you to challenge me.  Dare.

And no, those “Belgian waffles” don’t count, either.  Having lived in Brussels, I know what an actual Belgian waffle tastes like, and that’s not it.  Now I'm all waffle-snobby.

But I digress….

Finally, after an exhaustive yet ultimately unfruitful (unsyrupful?) search of every grocery store within reasonable driving distance of Luhansk, I finally tracked down a bottle of maple syrup in the capitol, Kyiv, last week. 

With Vlad and Lilia (who was eager to try this much-hyped (by me) American food) at our apartment yesterday, I seized the opportunity (carpe crepe) to make the pancakes using this recipe.  It took virtually no time at all, and even I – not typically what you’d call a “good cook” – could not, DID NOT, screw it up.  (Note below, for the sake of a point of reference, the pumpkin cake I made in November.  For the record, it made up in taste what it lacked in looks.  Well, almost.  Nothing could taste good enough to compensate for this travesty.)

(For the same record, I was planning to cover it with orange fondant, but I a) had not prepared the fondant at least a day in advance, which I believe is required by law; and b) have never worked with fondant ever before, so really the whole cake was a gamble to begin with.  The fact that it remained even remotely spherical for upwards of an hour is itself a miracle.)

As for the pancakes, which fared much better than the Great Pumpkin, this former Bisquick Shake-‘n’- Pour devotee (powder in a bottle; just add water.  What could possibly be unhealthy about this?) is officially a from-scratch pancake convert (Praise the Lord and pass the Mrs. Butterworth's!)

So, after only about 3 minutes’ prep time, I started cooking each pancake, one by one, in a small frying pan.  They weren’t perfect, but they were still fantabulous (probably only because I'd waited for them for so long).  Vlad defiled his by putting chocolate cream on top instead of butter and syrup (who does that?!), which completely defeated the purpose of my sharing with him some actual American-style food in the first place.  His loss.  Lilia and I ate our pancakes the right way, The American Way, and afterwards, were feeling fat and happy.

Here, for my Mother’s sake, is photographic evidence of my having cooked, from scratch, pancakes (note the actual flour scattered about the countertop.  That's my handiwork, I'll have you know!).

Eat this, IHOP.

(This one just to prove to my Mother that I am,

in fact, eating here.)

One satisfied customer!  :)

31 Flavors

Being here in Ukraine, where we are 7 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, I had the somewhat unusual experience of enjoying 31 hours of my 31^st birthday (or, as I prefer to describe it, 31 hours of my twenty-eleventh birthday).  Even weeks later, I found myself still celebrating – kinda.

As far as birthdays go, it wasn’t so bad.  Still a far cry from the days of cupcakes at school for The Rest of the Class, but then again, does anyone even mark the occasion much back home? 

I remember, in addition to the obligatory and awesome cupcakes-in-class tradition (didn’t they ban that practice sometime recently?  The whole world’s gone mad), how my Mom and Dad used to make such a big deal about my birthday.  I suppose that was because they had waited so long for me (15 years), believing they couldn’t ever have kids – so, in a way, my birthdays were just as much a celebration for them as they were for me (until, I wager, my teens, at which point my birthdays, at least to my Parents, were probably more of a Countdown-to-Eighteen-and-Possibly-Emancipation Celebration for them than anything).

Every year, for our little family birthday party, my Aunts and Uncles would come and we’d have a cake (sometimes homemade, but very often an ice cream cake from Baskin & Robbins, or even a Carvel ice cream cake.  Yes, I’m talking about Fudgie the Whale).  My Godfather would always bring me a red rose for each year, up until my Sweet Sixteen (for which my Godparents also gave me, in addition to a bottle of Estee Lauder Pleasures I had been dying for, a stunning pair of emerald-cut blue topaz earrings (my birthstone), one of which I lost a few years ago (the remaining earring I had set in a ring with a diamond as a retirement gift for Mom in 2007, courtesy of John Bosco Jewelers (AWESOME family-owned business, great people!) in Mobile, AL; see it here:

The origins of that diamond… well, that’s another [long] story entirely.).  I didn’t confess the loss of those earrings to my Godparents until sometime last year; I knew they had spent so much on them.  Then, for my second-29^th birthday last year , my Parents visited Florida for Christmas/my birthday with a gift delivered from my Godparents (who live near them in Annapolis) – a new pair of princess-cut blue topaz earrings:

My ears couldn’t believe my eyes!!  What a wonderful birthday surprise; seriously, my Godparents are the most kind and loving people I have ever met... I am so touched that they remembered and are as sentimental as I am).  :)

Anyway, I also remember wearing a corsage on my birthday, every year.  Mom would run out and get it the night before from the florist in Canarsie (Forever Yours Florist on Rockaway Pkwy and Remsen Ave?  No, wait, I think it was somewhere on Avenue L), and the morning of my birthday, before I went to school, I put on this corsage that announced to the world that TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY, and got tons of attention all day and, for awhile, I absolutely loved it (it was the only way to get any birthday notoriety, what with my birthday being right before Christmas – that Jesus guy gets all the attention).  The corsage always had some metaphorical symbol of the year on it – if not simply a plastic number reflecting my actual age.  For instance, my Sweet Sixteen corsage had, in addition to a plastic "16," fake sugar cubes on it (get it?  SWEET 16?  Geez, I crack myself up) – which were made, if I recall, out of Styrofoam.  In hindsight, it was cute and an adorable and loving gesture on the part of my Parents, and I secretly loved it.  At the time though, mostly I was just MORTIFIED (hello – this is HIGH SCHOOL...?!  Did Brenda and Dylan ever wear birthday corsages?  No… at least one of them was too busy wearing anti-wrinkle cream).  I think that was the last year I wore – or agreed to wear – a birthday corsage; maybe it's just that  nobody could imagine another person wearing a birthday corsage into adulthood.

Nowadays, at this advanced age, it’s more customary to let the day go by unobserved (a challenge for an observer), but the folks I’ve come to know here made sure my away-from-home birthday was just as good as any I’d have had back in the States.

My work partner, Vlad, was out of town until late that night, so I had the day to do some actual work-work, have some clothes tailored (for cheap!), and then come home and make myself micro-cheeseburgers (not microwaved, just micro – about half the size of normal “sliders” like you’d get at Chili’s… and that’s only because that’s how big the rolls were.  American cheese, ground beef, ketchup, salt and pepper… but for the lack of pickles, they were awesome!!).  See for yourself:

Our Interpreter, Lilia, arrived early for work that morning with a gift bag including a bottle of bubble bath, a pair of angora socks (which I’d been wanting for some time), and the CUTEST stuffed toy – a cat, named Vasa (short for Vasiliiy), with a FUNCTIONAL BELLY BUTTON (lint-free).  My immediate reaction?  To put my finger directly into said belly button.  (Apparently, this is a common reaction.)  Freakin’ adorable. 

Our landlady, Galina, who’d been at our house with the repair man for the hot water heater for the umpteenth time (actual figure), had asked the day before my birthday [after I’d told her that the gifts of heat and hot water were the best pre-birthday gifts of all] what my Zodiac sign was (this, for the record, required a Phone-a-Friend to my Interpreter).  I told her I’m a Capricorn, and then we moved on to other topics (namely, smiling at each other, because she speaks no English, and I speak barely more Russian than Vasa the Stuffed Cat, above).  The next day, she and Lilia were phoning each other all morning, arranging to meet (unbeknownst to me), and when Lilia and I emerged from a meeting around noon, there was Galina, with a bouquet of flowers, and a little gift bag.  Inside the bag was this little velvet, bell-shaped gift box, with this tiny golden Capricorn charm!  What a sweet surprise!!

Then, several weeks later (this week, in fact), when we had a farewell dinner for some of the people we were working with who were departing the next day, Vlad kindly and loudly made it a point to note that my birthday had just passed.  Also having recently passed was a large amount of alcohol, right past the lips of one of these colleagues of ours… which meant not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR rounds of “Happy Birthday,” sung by the whole group, with our lubricated and jovial colleague as the leader (if you're reading this, Roman, thank you!).  It was hilarious – and the gift of his “meat and red balls” (some kind of lamb thing and some peeled tomatoes) was just… well… let’s just say I was speechless (and I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard as we all did that night!!).

On top of the meat you might notice two packaged pink pills -- we were told they're some kind of digestive pill (always a good sign in a restaurant when Pepto is served literally on a side dish along with the appetizers).  Most of us, though, thought for sure it was a generic version of Viagra... hence their appearance on this suggestive belated-birthday dinner "gift," for which I was abundantly grateful and only moderately mortified.

I suppose it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Nothing says "The King Is Born!" like...

…The Christmas Rat! 

Here he is with Santa (I suppose the reindeer were frightened away...?), in Kyiv:

Well, finally, I feel right at home.

It’s just like Christmas in New York, only the rats in New York are bigger and their English is better.  

Rock Around the Clock

Just to be clear:

Rocking motions do not necessarily always lull crying babies to sleep.

Sometimes, in fact, the rocking motion provided by, oh, I dunno... say, a Soviet-era train making an overnight cross-country trip lasting SIXTEEN HOURS in the dead of winter -- you know, just as an example I'm pulling out of thin air here -- will keep an infant not just awake, but awake and screaming all night.

ALL.
NIGHT.

Just to be clear.