Ex Patria

Advent

If you are lucky enough to have two parents from different cultures and those cultures celebrate different holidays....  well, then you might just get a lot more presents and sweets than other kids.

Our holiday season looks like this:

31 October: Halloween (US, sweets)
11 November: St. Martin (Germany, sweets, fun)
November: Thanksgiving (US, food)
1 December: Beginning of Advent Calendar! (Germany, lots of presents and chocolates)
6 December: Nikolaus (Germany, chocolates, sweets, and presents)
Four Advent Sundays in December (Germany, mainly cake and cookies)
24 December: Heilig Abend (Germany, presents)
25 December: Christmas (US, presents)

What's not to like?

For a bit of holiday feeling, here are our Advent calendars of this year.  For those who are anal and counting: yes, there are only 16 presents for the older boys.  We do leave for Germany on the 16th and I have the rest of the presents in a little bag for the flight.  Because I fly all alone with three boys and we leave at 5:10 am and we have to change planes in Prague.

Lucky me.

David and Alan's calendars are the same - I know how to avoid fights over toys!

Jacob's contains 24 nice building blocks from HABA.  I am sure he'll pull them all off before a day is over but that's all right.  He's too small to understand and if he has fun, that's all I'm asking for.

The older boys, now, they will have to exercise self-constraint.

Hah.  Who am I kidding?

On the other hand, some people are doing something

The trash really gets to me.  There are waste removal trucks but they don't come to individual houses, they only collect the trash in the dumpsters.  Those dumpsters are omnipresent, in every neighborhood, and you take your trash there and dump it in.  Theoretically. In reality, people dump their trash in the general vicinity of the dumpsters, and those are the public minded ones.  Others just leave their trash wherever they stand and go.  So the garbage collectors come, and often or not, they only take the trash in the dumpsters, not the acres of trash strewn about.

Every once in a while, someone will lose their patience with this, and end it all by setting the trash on fire.

Right.  All that plastic, all those chemicals, all that dirt, going up in flames and finding its way directly into my children's lungs.  Delightful.

I'm glad I found an organization that is trying to do something about this.  Kudos to them!

 

Check out the Armenian Women For Health and Healthy Environment's website.  These women rock!

Hell has many circles

Someone recently asked Doug why we don't blog much about Armenia.  He relayed the question to me, and my spontaneous answer was, "because we don't like it here".

And that, I fear, is at the bottom of the truth.

It's not that we hate it here.  We have a nice house, we have found some friends, we get by and it's OK.  The city of Yerevan is not exactly what one would call pretty but there is stunning countryside all around Yerevan, in relative close distance.  Mt. Ararat, while technically not in Armenia, is one of the most beautiful sights ever.  We found some excellent restaurants, and the brandy is good (the wine less so, but you cannot have everything, eh?)

So, why don't we like it here?

Two reasons:  It lacks any and all charm, and the political reality is so grim, it scares the shit out of me.

There is this (also here). There is that. There are the traffic policemen who only stop you to press money from you.  There  is the fact that when you are in a hospital and come out of surgery, you have to pay the person who pushes your guerney and you have to pay the person who pushes the buttons in the elevator.  Otherwise, nobody pushes anything. There is the fact that we have been warned about listening devices in our house.  There is Zvartnots Airport which has been built without any heating or air conditioning.   Bad enough in the summer when the sweltering heat beats down on this the concrete nightmare of an airport -- but in the winter, the airport is an icebox, with only a single little café in the departure section that is not enough to keep you warm when you have to wait for your three-hour-delayed flight in the middle of the frigging night.  And they want 20 USD from you for the privilege of leaving the country via this prime spot of travel.

Of course, he remains an utterly stupid idiot

Shows Disregard for the Health and Safety of Underserved Communities

Statement by Cecile Richards, President, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, on the Bush administration’s appointment of anti-family planning Eric Keroack, M.D. as deputy assistant secretary for population affairs

WASHINGTON, DC — “The appointment of anti-birth control, anti-sex education advocate Dr. Eric Keroack to oversee the nation’s family planning program is striking proof that the Bush administration remains dramatically out of step with the nation’s priorities. Keroack was the medical director of five so-called “crisis pregnancy centers,” whose policy was not “to distribute or encourage the use of contraception.” This politically motivated appointment is certainly not in the health interest of women and families.

“Last week Americans overwhelmingly rejected an extremist agenda, and sent a clear message by choosing candidates who make women’s health care a priority. For three decades, Title X has fostered healthy families by helping millions of American women plan and space their children through access to birth control services."

A new beginning

Lots of things to do now. Every Democrat knows that those numbers don't reflect affection but disgruntlement with Bush and his cronies.  Rumsfeld was the lamb Bush had to sacrifice in order to calm the masses (and this a mere week after he touted that Rumsfeld would stay another two years -- well, he's lied bigger lies).  Now it's up to the Dems to enamor those who voted for them by cleaning up the mess in Iraq, re-introducing responsible fiscal policy (hah!  A Republican value!), restricting nepotism and corruption in the government.  They will have to find a common ground, a red line, a theme - a moderate theme - and hammer it into people's heads.  That's the only way they can reclaim those voters in 2008 - and they will need every single one of them.

I know.  I can talk.  Actually, I do more than talk.  I am considering (considering) taking a drastic step (aka citizenship), so I can do more than just talk.  I am trying to make my mind up about who to support for 2008 - Hillary?  I'm not sure.  Obama, should he dare to run?  Not sure either.

I'll keep you posted.  And you, get to work.  It takes all of us now.  There's a lot of work to be done. Better start now, eh?

It's been a long day

 

To bed with us.  Good night.

Oh, Virginia, I beg you

Via Daily Kos:

      Sen House Gov
Dems: 50   231   28   
Reps: 50   204   22  
D+/-  +5  +28   +6

Oh, please, Virginia.  Please, please, please.

To all non-Virginians: thank you all fom the bottom of my heart.  I still think banning civil unions is shameful but then, we can work on that one, right?  Right. Now we can.  On to work.

House, check

Breath of relief.

Good? Bad? Who can make sense of this?

Does it look good or bad for the Dems?  For Bush?  I can't tell you.  Nothing much has been decided yet and I'm very much reminded of 2004, and I hate those memories.

I'm cranky and depressed because those people I secretly counted on, the ones I thought might finally find it appalling that torture is now sanctioned and that the consitution is being violated, who might finally come to the realization that there have been enough deaths and that Iraq was, after all, a huge giant mistake, that we have to do something differently to give our children a future that's worth living in -- well, they voted Republican again.

I can't say anything to that.  At the moment, it just makes me violently sick.   

Good outcomes: 

• The abortion ban in South Dakota seems off the table.
• Arizona seems to come around in respect to civil unions.

Bad outcomes:

• No to civil unions from
  

  • Colorado

  •  South Carolina

  • South Dakota

  • Tennessee

  • Virginia

  • Wisconsin

That's all bad.  Very bad.

How I relieve tension