And now for the rest of the (much less well decorated) house

It's a little late to be posting pictures of the house, but I kept waiting for a perfectly clean house and good light to take pictures in.  But now that we've been here for over a year, I've realized that those conditions will never happen.  So we'll just call the house in deshabille.  It's French, so it's cool.

This is our enormous, awkward, and unfortunate powder room.  Not only is it always messy, but the tiles could possibly cause seizures.  But the good news is that we do have a full-sized washer and dryer.  And lots of detergent.  But definitely no ambience.

Our cloak room and storage room.  I can't complain.  I have a cloak room.  And it's nice to have our consumables on the same floor as the kitchen.

The Mysterious Concrete Space.  This runs the length of the entire house and is below ground level.  There is a door at street level that leads into the space and opens up twelve feet above the floor.  We don't have the key.

The second floor landing.  It works very well for impromptu dance parties, family prayer time, and somewhere to drop all of the random junk that you've been told to clean out of your room.  And it comes with a chandelier!

The master bedroom.

Complete with sparkly floral wallpaper.

Master bath.  Every time I get in the shower I want to tell Scotty to beam me up.  One day I want a bathroom with double sinks.  That day is not today.

The guest bedroom, with a view into the stairwell and matching bathroom to ours.  It is the only other bathroom on the second floor.  Rather inconvenient.  So who wants to come visit?

Another bedroom with a view onto the landing.  We use it for more storage, and a back-up bedroom for Eleanor if we need to use Eleanor's room for guests.

The boys' bedroom.  

The girls' bedroom.

The study.  It has wonderful light and has beautiful sunset views (when I have time to watch the sunset).  It's the coziest (and therefore messiest) room in the house.  

Eleanor's bedroom.  It used to have a carpet until I stole it for decorating the first floor.  But she hasn't missed it.

The stairs to the third floor (and down to the first floor).

The toy room part of the third floor.

The school room part of the third floor.

The TV room part of the third floor.

The box house part of the third floor (that's what nine UAB boxes look like).

And the exercise room part of the third floor.  Can I say that the third floor is large?  It's perfect for homeschooling because everyone has room to do the things that they need to without being on top of each other and I can keep an eye on everyone and break up fights.  It's a great space for us.

And the kitchen, also very large.  When we moved in, the furniture guy commented that the standard four-person table wasn't going to work very well for us.  So they just gave us two and pushed them together.  With the dining room table, two kitchen tables, two school tables, our own folding table, and outside patio furniture, we can seat a. lot. of. people.  It's nice after having five (five!) chairs in our entire apartment in Oakwood.

So, that's our house.  I don't like the finishing details or general construction quality, but the space works really well for us (it's almost 6,000 sq feet, so there's not much to complain about) and we're happy to be here for over two more years.  I don't have plans for a European shoebox any time soon.

What Was in All Those Boxes

I've finally unpacked all of those boxes that landed me in trouble with Brandon (which, by the way is still in force), bought required plants, and hung pictures.  Which means that it's time for the big reveal!  I had to take pictures for the decorator, so I can offer before and after.

I wondered, after getting the finished plans from the decorator, if really all of this money and stuff would really be worth it.  And I can say that definitely, yes, I am really happy with the change that has been made.  Brandon is happy that I am happy, so that means that everyone is happy.

Every time I walk down the stairs or in the door, I feel happy about my space.  I like to sit on the couch, admire my home, and feel the warm cozy glow of being in a lovely, cheerful room.

I tell myself that happiness isn't based on stuff and of course it isn't, but I do like having a space in my house that is so pleasant to be in.  If everything burns up in a house fire or drops to the bottoms of the sea, I'll be a little sad.  But for now I enjoy it.

I've always been hesitant about having all of the knick-knacks that decorators use to make give a room the 'cluttered' look, as Sophia calls it, because of the children.  A bowl full of ceramic balls says "SMASH ME!!!" to any child under the age of twelve.

But I've been shocked at how well the children have left things alone.  Eleanor will occasionally take off with her favorite bronze horse knick-knack exclaiming "Doggie!! Ruff! Ruff!", but all five of the ceramic balls have actually remained intact.  I underestimated the children's self control.  And I also realize that I haven't been laying down enough laws around here.

And the best part about all of this?  We get to keep it for over two more years.  That's long enough that leaving feels like a far-off myth.  I don't know what I'll do with myself when we retire and actually stick around for a decade or two.

And here's a picture of Joseph.  Because Joseph loves having his picture taken.  And who can resist that smile?

Snow Day at the Park

A few weeks ago it snowed during the week.  Dushanbe doesn't get much snow - I think three snowfalls total this winter - so when it actually does snow, the children like to go out to play.  There's something magical about playing in falling snow and I'm much more okay with going out in the snow now that I have the proper gear.

So after everyone had finished school we went to the local park.  Tajiks aren't much fond of snow because they're sane people and snow makes your life difficult when you don't have central heating and have to get everywhere by walking and marshrutka.  It makes sense.  This means that we have the park to ourselves while everyone else is staying inside, wisely trying to stay warm.

When we showed up the park was, as usual on a snowy day, empty.  The children got to work trying to sled (the snow wasn't quite deep enough), playing dogsled instead, and building various iterations of the snow castle.  I love that the children always have somebody to play with; it's a definite perk of large families.

As the children played, I sat and watched.  Like I said, everyone has someone to play with, which means my job is sitting.  After awhile I noticed a mom walking through the park with her child.  Within a few minutes, the child had dragged her mother over to play near my children.  Before long she was happily making snowballs and depositing them in an equally happy Eleanor's lap.  "Ball!" Eleanor would exclaim each time a new one appeared.  I'm not exactly sure how this was fun, but they both enjoyed it.

Ten minutes later, a boy showed up on his bike.  We had passed him on our way to the park, and he must have been bored enough to wonder what these five brightly dressed children carrying sleds were up to.  Before long, he was pulling Edwin on a sled followed by the girls pulling him.

Next was a group of teenaged girls.  The came over to ask if they could borrow an unused sled and left with Sophia in the sled.  Another came in, enticed by all of the fun, and pretty soon a snow party was in full swing at the jog track.  The girls were pulling the boy, Edwin and Joseph were being pulled by someone else, Eleanor was surrounded by snowballs, and my girls were practicing their Russian with everyone they met.  Where there was once an empty park there were now friends-for-the-afternoon all enjoying a snowy day together.

In time everyone slipped away, heading back to class or home or riding the streets alone and we left last to warm up with hot tea, leaving the park empty again.  But the snow bore record to our party, once pristine and now covered with footprints and sled tracks and snowballs, never used.  Perhaps we may never meet our snow afternoon friend again, but everyone will remember that afternoon every time they pass the park, the afternoon of the snow party.

Hiking Fails

So, it's spring here in Dushanbe.  Two weeks ago we were sledding in sub-freezing temperatures and now all of the fruit trees have literally burst into bloom.  The temperature, right now at 6:39 in the evening, is sixty-eight degrees.  My walk this afternoon was in cropped pants and flip-flops and I was thinking pretty seriously about sweating by the end.

I think this is awesome.  It's like I've suddenly been transported to a crumblier, less expensive California.

Brandon, however, is grouchy about our early spring.  He likes a nice, decent length winter and he's had about four weeks less winter than he was expecting.  I know I would be grouchy about missing four weeks of spring, my own favorite season, so I don't blame him.

All of this warm weather has meant the beginning of hiking season.  Because when it's too warm to sled, it's time to hike.  This year we have a much, much better idea of how to go about hiking in Tajikistan and so have had much fewer I'm-not-your-friend-right-now moments.  The children, after hiking all last year, have finally resigned themselves to being dragged up into the mountains every Saturday for the next two years, and have even flirted with the idea of allowing themselves to maybe enjoy hiking.  It's all been quite pleasant.

But still, we have our moments.  Because who would like just nice pleasant experiences all the time?  Not me!  That would be boring!

One of our recent hikes was past the village of Zimchurud.  The drive in was very tame - there were no sketchy bridges, the road occasionally was paved, and we never drove any closer than two or three feet to any steep drop-offs.  The parking was even easy.  I had read about this hike before, the description had noted this hike as having several 'stony bathes' that are nice for swimming in the summer.  I'm always a sucker for 'stony bathes' and so had saved this hike for a hot summer day last year, but when one of those days made it around, we were grounded from hiking and the Zimchurud hike never happened.

So, even though it's not the right time of year for stony bathing, I decided to try the Zimchurud hike, mostly because it's within a 30-minute drive of home and we had started late in the morning.

The hike started out nicely - the day was beautifully sunny, the weather pleasant for hiking, the grass a brilliant spring green, and we were greeted with sprinklings of yellow crocuses telling us that yes, spring really is coming.

Then we reached the first ford.  And I say first because there were several.  In the beginning we were fastidious about crossing, choosing a narrow place where Brandon could hand the children across the stream.  But then we reached one about twenty feet wide (and only five or six inches deep) and Brandon slipped off his carefully planned rock route and just sloshed across the whole thing with two or three children on his back.  I had my Vasque Gortex hiking boots (thanks for that present fifteen years ago, Mom and Dad!), so my feet weren't wet.  But that didn't salve my conscience.

When the fords started occurring every eighth mile and we had to hike through a five-inch deep snowy portion of the trail and Brandon was wet to the knees, we decided that really, this hike is only good for a hot summer day.

So we turned around, hiked back through most of the fords to a nice picnic spot, and had a picnic.  Because, really, that's what everyone hikes for anyway.

Last Friday night we got a text from a friend who wanted to tag along on our Saturday hike.  I had planned to find a new hike that I had read about, but rearranged the plan to go to a hike we'd done before.  Because you don't take friends on wild goose chases on sketchy roads.  It's just not nice.

The hike itself it a nice easy hike with no fords (the hike is called Seven Bridges) and a supposed waterfall at the end (not that we've ever made it to that far), but the drive to the hike isn't so nice.  There are spots where our car tire is about six inches from a drop-off into river and six inches from a rock wall.  These spots are bad, but the worst spot is a bridge that gives our car the same six inches of wiggle room on either side combined with a steep approach followed by a wall, sharp turn, and another lovely drop-off.  I'd take pictures, but whenever we go over this bridge, I'm too busy playing guidance crew in front of Brandon as he attempts to not wreck our car in the river.  It's very nerve-wracking.

We made it over the bridge, our friends did too, and we went on a lovely hike.  The children found an abundance of sheep bones and Kathleen is now the proud possessor of one sheep skull (why can't I have two?  Because you don't need two).  We stopped for snack at yet another perfectly beautiful spot with a rushing crystal-clear river, bright sunshine, and brilliant green grass.  The adults chatted while the children threw rocks in the river (an official part of every hike), poked sticks in the river, and almost fell into the river.  Everyone reluctantly headed back after an hour or so, but really I could have stayed there all day.  There is no end to the idyllic mountain beauty of Tajikistan.

Everyone made it back to the car with no dunkings, and we even got the cars successfully turned around (although it was a little dicey when the car started sliding backwards down the hill) and headed in the right direction.  Then we hit the bridge.  Our friends, driving a Rav4 made it over the bridge after having their back tire literally halfway off a sheer drop-off.  Brandon decided to take the way of caution and hug tight next to the jutting corner of somebody's dacha wall.  Taking lessons from our time in Baku, he folded the mirror in before starting.  I guided him in, heart pounding, and praying that our car would stay out of the river again and maybe promising that we'd never go on this hike again.  The front of the car cleared the wall with inches to spare and then I watched as the back of the car didn't.  Brandon and I cringed as the cinder block corner scraped across the car, but there was no going back and he just drove forward, hoping for the best.  We made it a across the bridge (again!) with a new set of scratches on the car.  Thank heaven body work is so cheap in Dushanbe.

All of these mishaps haven't, of course, stopped me from planning out next hike this weekend.  I'll pretend to be good so that Brandon will agree to go, but we both know it's just a show.  Poor Brandon.  And poor car.

A Conversation, In Russian

The girls and I are plugging along in our Russian lessons.  Our long-suffering Russian teacher (Why didn’t you study the words I assigned you last time?  You’re not going to learn these words if you don’t study them! [Well, we will eventually learn them, but probably not as quickly]) continues to show up three times a week and we continue to dutifully learn what Russian she has to offer.

But still, there’s not been that much progress.  Because really, as I’ve said before, Russian is not very high on our priority list.  Which I’m okay with, because I generally need Russian to: 1. Communicate with my housekeeper.  Since she does such a good job, usually we don’t say much beyond “Good morning,” and “Goodbye.” Those are the best kinds of housekeepers.  2.  Communicate with my gardener.  This one is a little trickier.  I was very proud at being able to tell her to go buy more tulips.  There was a lot of gesturing, but I did use Russian for ‘buy’ and ‘money.’  So it counts. 3. Tell people at my door to go away and I don’t speak Russian.  Not that they listen, but at least I can know that it’s in a language they might understand.

So, Russian.  It’s not that necessary if you’re a house-bound homeschooling stay-at-home-mom who has a bevy of people who do set tasks for you and a husband who speaks Russian and works for an organization that does all household maintenance for you.  See, it’s really easy to live overseas!

I’ve lived this way at our other posts and it’s worked out just fine for me.  I live with the children in a little American bubble that follows us around everywhere we go.  People occasionally intrude to ask us if we’re British or German or to ask if those are really all my children (I love being congratulated for having a large family), but they are only brief visitors to our bubble.  Then they leave and we’re back in little tiny America-land all by ourselves.  For some people this is ‘missing out on cultural experiences’ but for me it’s what works. 

So a few days ago we went to the ‘park.’  Whenever I say park, the children always correct me with ‘jog track.’  Park is a generous word for an old crumbling track surrounding a weedy soccer field with a handful of Soviet-era workout structures off to the side.  But, it’s a place outside the children can play at, so we go.

Usually the park is either empty or host to young men playing soccer.  I don’t see many ladies here taking their children to the park.  I don’t know if it’s because they’re working and the children are in day care, or they’re busy at home doing what I pay my housekeeper to do, or it’s just not what women do, but I’ve maybe once seen another mom with her children at our park.

But that day there was a mom with her little girl.  Our children are usually the center of gravity wherever they go because there are five of them.  And when you’re one child, five children look like a pretty interesting place to be.  So this little girl started playing with the children because you don’t need to speak the same language to play together. 

And in the awkward way that happens at parks, the mom and I stood and looked at each other and smiled.  “How cute they are,” we smiled to each other, “playing so nicely together.”  Finally, after fifteen minutes of smiling, I took the first step.  “Сколка лиет?” She smiled back and replied, “Пяты.” 

And then I had my very first actual conversation in Russian.  We discussed the ages of our children – she had another daughter, eight – who was at piano lessons.  I mentioned that we lived near the music school and she said that she did too.  We talked about families, how big my family was, but how much bigger my husband’s family was.  I told her that yes, I chose to have all of the children and how much I loved my children.  She asked when we moved her, and it turned out that she had moved to her neighborhood, in a house she was renting, about the same time we had.  I told her that we had lived in Cairo and Baku and we would be staying until 2018.  She said that they were moving to Russia at about the same time. 

Then, after seeing Joseph and hearing him talk, she told me that her house looked on our back windows.  She said that Joseph, who likes to stand in our back window and shout at all the children who play on the street, is known by everyone who lives behind us.  Her sister has three sons and the middle loves to tell stories of what Joseph has been up to and what he’s been yelling out the window lately.   We both laughed at the insanity of little boys.

Eventually she had to pick up her daughter from piano lessons and I had to go home to cook dinner and we parted and went back to our own lives.  But for half an hour we were just two moms, watching their children play at the park and chatting about the things all women chat about.

Except, of course, it was all in Russian.  Because I’m awesome.

Adventure Weekend

A few weeks ago we had a three day weekend.  This year all of our three-day weekends seem to include a Monday, which is really too bad.  When you have church in the middle, three day weekends aren't very useful for things like going on camping trips or leaving your children with the housekeeper and checking into a hotel.  Oh well.  I really shouldn't complain as we not only do we get American holidays off, we get Tajik ones, too.

For the first part of our weekend, we went sledding.  I'm pretty sure I've posted sledding pictures two other times, so you can just go here and imagine that we're doing the same thing again.  It seems, in my limited recollection, that it's snowed/rained a lot less this winter than it did last winter.  Which isn't something to complain about, but it makes for less sledding.  But that's okay, because if we can't sled we just hike instead.

This time the snow had fallen several days before and had reached the sandy stage, with four or five sandy inches of snow on top of crusty snow that had partially melted and then refrozen.  This combination made for some pretty fast sledding, which was lots of fun.  And even better, nobody got hurt.

On Monday we went for a drive to see something new.  We had never been down to Nurek, the reservoir that was one a mountain valley and now is a turquoise blue lake.  So, being in possession of a newly gassed car, we took a drive.  The lake itself was beautiful, but entirely inaccessible.  So we just looked.

Then we found a nice place for a picnic and had one.  

Sophia had complained earlier of not celebrating holidays in our stated holiday style, so we finished off our day with an extremely rare dinner out.  Taking five children out to dinner is almost always more work than feeding them, so we generally only go out to eat when we're on vacation.  But it was a holiday, so we splurged.  Twenty-five dollars bought us a tasty Indian dinner at a tasty local Indian restaurant, and even better than the dinner, it bought me a clean kitchen when we got home.

I know it's a rough life, but somebody's got to do it.  It might as well be me, right?

Mystery Hives

It's been a very slow week here in Dushanbe.  Most weeks are slow, but this week has been even slower.

So I'll tell you about Edwin and the hives.  It's a very boring story.

First of all, none of our children are allergic to anything.  I'm not allergic to anything (not even poison ivy or mosquito saliva), but Brandon is allergic to cats and I think something else plant related.  I don't remember.  So obviously the children got their good genes from me.

Edwin was allergic to high protein food (walnuts, eggs, lentils) when he was a baby, but only mildly so.  We fed him small amounts of the difficult foods and the allergies cleared up before his second birthday.  Which is good.  Because I'm not a very adaptive mother and get grouchy about special circumstances.  I'm not sure what would happen if someone showed up with a milk intolerance.  It would be very inconvenient.

So now nobody has any problems with anything.  It's very convenient for me and also makes filling out the twenty-five forms that come clipped to those clipboards any time you show up at a medical office (seriously.  It's time for doctors to hit the digital age.  Can't they store all of that information in your fingerprint or something?  Then I don't have to feel like a very bad mother every time I lose someone's *&%$*&# yellow shot card ["Oh.  You don't have his shot card?  Well we can't do a single thing until you give us that extremely important piece of paper.  It's like their permanent record but permanenter."]) much easier to fill out.

Monday was a very normal day.  We had school, went to the park, ate chickpea soup - a recipe I've been using since before Edwin was born - and had chocolate chip cookies (recipe from my freshman year in college) for dessert.  Then everyone went to bed.

Tuesday morning Edwin woke up covered in hives.  His hands, his face, his neck, his torso, his legs, and even his ears had bright red blotches covering them.  I checked his breathing and, thankfully, it was normal.  So I gave him Benadryl.  I usually keep a stash of Benadryl for long airplane rides, and this was one of the few times I actually used it for allergic reactions.  Edwin had complained of itching, and within half an hour or so it cleared right up.

The hives, however, didn't and he spent the day looking like a plague victim.  Being the responsible, concerned parent I am, I did call the medical officer to consult.  She said to call her in the morning if the hives were worse, but otherwise keep pushing the Benadryl.  That night Edwin went to bed without a peep.

By the next morning, however, he was worse.  The blotches on his arms and neck had turned to patches, and it was hard to find much white in between the red.  He still didn't seem to mind it, but Brandon left me the car so I could take him in to the health unit.

And so I did.  They, after asking about anything new or unusual in diet or exposure, were just as mystified as I was.  But, despite the mystification, they sent me home with a different type of anti-histamine, Zyrtec, and prednisone, just in case.  I started Edwin that afternoon, and in the morning the hives looked much better.

Tonight while we were eating dessert, Sophia commented that Edwin didn't have any more spots.  "Yes I do," Edwin replied cheerfully, "but they're called freckles!"

So that's the story of the mystery hives.  I have no idea where they came from and no idea what will bring them back.  So I guess that means I'll just live my life as normal and break out the Zyrtec if or when the hives show back up.  And if not?  Then I'll have Zyrtec for someone else's mystery hives.  It's always good to be prepared.

Eleanor, the Family Mascot (and the Most Favorite Child)

I love Eleanor.  Brandon loves Eleanor, Kathleen loves Eleanor, Edwin really loves Eleanor, and even Joseph occasionally takes the time to enjoy his little sister's company.

It's pretty hard not to love a wispy-haired baby that toddles around the house babbling to herself all day long.  Sometimes she gets on our nerves when she wants something desperately and can't tell us what it is, but most of the time she's just adorably cute.

All of the other children were just as cute when they were Eleanor's age, but they aren't the baby anymore and so they're no longer cute.  Which, of course, makes Eleanor the Cutest Child, the Most Beloved Baby, and The One That Everyone Wants to Love On.

It's really hard to resist the sweetly lisped syllables asking for 'mo' milk' or 'hi five!' or 'choc'lat' when they're coming out of a button mouth surrounded by chubby, pinchable baby cheeks.  My favorite is when she asks for 'up' and then nestles her little head into my shoulder for some mommy cuddles (after carefully clearing away any hair that might be on my shoulder).

To the girls, Eleanor is their living baby doll.  They dress her up, wed her to Joseph (he's the prince and she's the princess), make her box houses and thrones, take her for carriage rides, and read her stories.  At the end of Eleanor's nap, the girls vie for whose turn it is to get the baby up.  Sophia usually gets her ready for bed each night, reading her a story and tucking her in.

My little brother was like this too, acting as baby doll, mascot, Most Favorite Brother (there were only two, so it's wasn't that hard), and pet.  "We don't need a puppy," we'd say, "we've got Mikey!"  I'm not sure how my brother felt about this, but we thought it was great fun.

One afternoon, Joseph showed up with his backpack, a handful of sticks, and his blanket.  He took Eleanor by the hand, sweetly beckoning in his high little boy's voice, "Come on baby, come with me!  Come to my room and I'll take you camping!  We can build a tent together and have a fire!  Then we can roast marshmallows!"  I let them go, of course, because what mother can resist a big brother teaching his little sister about the pure joy of roasted marshmallows?

Eleanor is my little companion, busily making messes each night while I cook dinner.  Her favorite spot is the plastic dishes cupboard where she will pull all the cups, bowls and plates out before toddling over to the dry goods cupboard and dish herself a tasty dish of dry black beans.  The beans will go back and forth between the bowls and inevitably get spilled, but it keeps her happy and lets me cook dinner with some cheerful company.

Every morning when Brandon leaves for work, Eleanor climbs into the tall window next to our front door and beats on the window while he pulls out of the gate.  She beats and waves frantically, yelling "see ya! see ya!" until he is out of sight, and then toddles off to her own baby work or exploring and making messes.

I know that one day she'll turn three and the clash of wills will begin and years will pass before we can be friends again, but for now she's my sweet adorable baby.  I've always been happy when the others have grown up, less trouble and more help, but now I have plenty of help and Eleanor isn't that much trouble and so I'd be pretty okay with keeping her a baby quite a bit longer.

But of course, she gets the exact same length of babyhood that the other children had, and then it will be gone forever.  I'm not the type to mourn things passed, but I think for Eleanor, I will be a little sad.

Living in Dushanbe - Winter

Did I ever mention to you that I hate winter?  I was raised in North Carolina where, as one clever wit once put it, winter is like running through a freezer naked.  It’s uncomfortable while it lasts, but it just doesn’t last that long.  Coats acted as fashion accessories more than protection and half an inch of snow was enough to cancel school.  It was great.  Just enough winter to make spring pleasant, but not enough to make snow clothes a necessity.

Our first post in Cairo suited me perfectly, and I loved taking the children to Maadi House in February in seventy-degree weather.  It was disorienting when the plants stayed constantly green (under the layer of brown dust), but I wasn’t complaining when my Facebook feed was filled with snow pictures while I drank mango juice on the patio.

However, after two years of warm and hot as the seasons, I actually found myself liking the four seasons that our next post, Baku, had to offer.  It turns out that variety actually is the spice of life, and spring is very nice after a little bit of winter.  But Baku, situated on a peninsula in the Caspian, only ever has a little bit of winter.  Occasionally it would snow, but Baku just didn’t get that cold.  Which was just fine with me.

So when we got our assignment to Dushanbe, I was pretty sure that I was going to freeze to death.  “Most mountainous country in the world” with “one of the longest glaciers in the world” and “tallest peak in the former Soviet Union” sounds like a pretty cold country to me.  And wasn’t helped when Brandon’s Tajik teacher in FSI told Brandon how much people in Tajikistan hate winter because it is just so cold for so long.  So I did some preparing.  I bought an ankle-length down coat and warm snow boots, snow clothes for the children, down comforters for the children, and looked into space heaters on Amazon.  I considered buying a bouncy house to keep inside so that the children could have something to do during the long, cold winter.  I got prepared.

It turns out that I needn’t have worried.  Much to Brandon’s disappointment, winter in Dushanbe is much closer to winter in North Carolina than winter in Moscow.  It does snow here, occasionally.  We got four of five inches last week, the first snow since the seven or eight we got before Christmas.  But by the time we made it to the park to sled on Saturday, there was hardly enough to sled on and the green grass was poking through sled tracks by the time we left.  Most of the winter, it just rains.

The weather will flirt with full-on winter, dipping down to the low forties (you can now laugh, everyone in Moscow) for a few days, before deciding that really, fifties is a much nicer temperature.  Last Sunday it was sixty-five degrees and sunny.  We had the kitchen windows open while cooking dinner to let some of the eighty-five degree heat out.  Brandon is, of course, very much grumpy about only getting a faux-winter and makes grumbling threats that sound like ‘Astana’ and ‘Helsinki.’  I, however, take the children to the park and enjoy the beautifully green grass.

Most days my ankle-length down coat stays in the closet, and the children don’t bother with much more than a fleece for our trips to the park.  I’ve had to shut off the radiator in our room after we stifled through a couple of seventy-eight degree nights.  My housekeeper likes to clean with the window open in whatever room she’s in.  Edwin’s long-sleeved shirts still have their tags on.

I can’t help feeling like I’ve dodged the winter bullet again, which is pretty good when your husband speaks Russian.  I know that eventually I’ll have to actually face a real winter, but I also know that it won’t be for at least two more winters.  Brandon can grumble all we wants about ‘Reykjavik’ and ‘Ulaanbaatar.’  I’ll just keep on enjoying my Dushanbe winters.

Busted

I’ve been doing some decorating. 

I’m not really much of a home decorator; spending money on stuff whose only purpose is to sit around your house and collect dust has never really appealed to me.  I’ll buy artwork and carpets, but home décor accents aren’t my thing.

However, last summer a check showed up in the mail.  My grandfather, who passed last April, had left some money and my parents generously shared it with my siblings and me.  Brandon and I are in the boring but really nice financial situation that no longer needs generous checks to keep us afloat, and so the money that showed up was just an extra deposit in our advisory account.  

But before sending it off to our financial advisor, I carved off a little chunk (with Brandon’s permission) to decorate our first floor.  It just seemed wrong (or rather not very much fun) to not do anything self-indulgent with the unexpected money, and so I splurged.  I hired an interior decorator, spent several months filling out questionnaires, making diagrams, consulting, and finally ended up with a floor plan, wall elevations, and most importantly, a shopping list.

If I lived in America, I could have headed to Target, Pottery Barn, Pier 1, and all of those places that sell things whose only function is to make your home look cluttered (as the girls call it) before passing into obsolescence in a year or two.  The forays would have taken place while Brandon was at work and the things would have quietly found their places until, a month or two later, Brandon would notice that something looked different about our house and ask me what had changed.

But I don’t live in America, and the only way anything ever gets here is through personal pouch.  This means that anything I buy is delivered to a facility in Virginia, bagged up in large mail bags, and sent on commercial air flights to eventually make their way here in an undetermined amount of time.  And then Brandon has to go and sign for them at the mail room, haul them out to our car, and haul them into the house for me.  So anything I buy – whether it be dishwasher detergent or formal dresses – is brought home in a box carried by Brandon.  Which means that I can’t hide anything.  When Brandon’s Christmas present came, a set of Mucha prints, they came in boxes with two-foot high letters spelling out Art.com.  So much for surprises.  When I ordered a hundred pounds of oats, Brandon got to wrangle two fifty-pound boxes of oats out to the car and then into the house.

It’s very inconvenient.

I have to be in the right frame of mind to spend large sums of money on non-essentials, so when I finally got down the ordering the Chinese vases, ottomans, lamps, console table, centerpiece, candlesticks, bookends, sculptural objects, removable wallpaper, pillows, trays, table runner, fabric, and fifty other things that are evidently essential to making your home look like a magazine picture, I did it in a few credit-card filled days of commercial glee.

Which meant, of course, that everything came in one week-and-a-half span.  This is really fun when you’ve been waiting for second Christmas to show up at your door.  This is not fun when you’re playing Santa Claus day after day (the pouches piled up and then all came at once, as they often do) and personally hauling each and every box out to the car yourself. 

The final straw came last Wednesday.  Mid afternoon, Brandon sent me an email, titled “Congratulations!”

“You have won the prize for actually filling the Pilot to capacity with packages.  We received 18.  There is literally no more room in the car.  The good news is that if I am in a wreck I will be cushioned from impact by packages.  Either that or crushed by them. “

Then he dropped the hammer.

“Having offered congratulations for your singular achievement, I now hereby invoke a moratorium on purchases via the pouch.  This moratorium will officially begin after everything that is currently (meaning as of 14:50 of January 26, 2016) en route arrives.  After the arrival of these items, I will no longer authorize purchases to arrive via pouch except under extraordinary circumstances that I vet personally.”

Looks like I’m going to have to be a good girl for the next little while.  Blast.