Ex Patria

2007: The saga continues

Did I taunt the gods?  What was I thinking to ask how things could become worse?  I must have been mad, mad!

Today I learned that Alan's school has a little outbreak of scarlet fever.  That's just great.  The last I need right now is three sick kids - hey, they are brothers, they share bacteria much more readily than toys.  I decided to leave Alan home from school for a week.  It's not as if he misses too much, the weather is really bad anyway (snow, snow, snow), and he'll happily go to David's pre-school with him (can you spell, play-date?)

Btw, outbreaks of scarlet fever are apparently not unusal in the former Easter Block countries.  Go figure.

Oh, I forgot to tell you that even before I got that piece of news this evening, I've been feeling really crappy, feverish and with a sore throat.  So, let me go now and check my thorax for little bumps.  It would make sense, wouldn't it?

Go around

So, I'm back.

I also nearly died.

How's that for a captivating line?

Yerevan International Airport, a.k.a. Zvartnots, is a fog hole.  Last night, there was a lot of fog.  At this point,  I had been on the road (or better, in the air) for well over 30 hours.  Snow chaos in Munich, flight to Yerevan canceled, re-routed to London and then again to Yerevan.  So here I was, so close to home.  The plane descended, almost touched down -- and took off again, with howling engines.

It was dead silent in the cabin.  Nobody said a word.  Well, except for me.  I cried.  I was so exhausted, I hadn't seen my family in over two weeks, I had been in more airports and planes than I ever wanted to be, and at the end of all this, we didn't land.  One part of my brain had anticipated this, knowing about the fog situation, and about how bad the automatic landing system in Zvartnots is.  The other, much larger part, despaired. I had asked a flight attendant about what would happen if we couldn't land and she said most likely, since the plane was scheduled for Bishkek afterwards, we would fly on to Alamty, then re-fuel, go to Bishkek and turn around.   Another day, with another uncertain outcome in Yerevan. Great.

But the pilot made a big loop, and tried another descend, and this time it worked out very well.  We all clapped. 

When I left the plane, the cockpit door opened and the pilot came out.  I said, with heartfelt gratitude, "Thank you, Captain, for trying again."  He looked at me, pale and shaken, and said, "It was this close," and his fingers indicated a very small distance.

You know, I didn't want to know that.

But, what counts is that we are all well, just two of my suitcases are missing.  One of them includes the Tuxedo shirt and bowtie and cummerbund that Doug was supposed to be wearing tomorrow to Burns Supper.  I hope the suitcase comes tonight.   But that is not essential.

There is just this one thing:  frozen heating, burst water pipe, horror trip - all within the first three weeks of 2007.  Do you think this is a bad omen for the rest of the year?

Cruising

I turned 40.  That was a little while ago, and I got used to it.  Kids, and lots of them, and very exuberant active ones, are the best way to ensure you cannot brood over stupid things.  So, I didn't descend into the depths of despair over this number, even though I remember both my parents' 40 birthdays in my teens - they were young parents, and I'm an old parent.  That is the only gripe I have with my age.

Anyway.  This is not about age.  This is about my birthday present.  My wonderful soulmate and husband gave me a week-long cruise in the Caribbean with my best friend, without any kids, for a present.  From January 14 on, I'll be on the Millenium bound for the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the Bahamas.  Our room is only a few feet away from the on-ship library, we have a terrace looking out over the sea, we get hors-d'oevres and fresh fruit every day, we have two formal dinners (and I have two new dresses), a day at the spa, plans for our shore excursions...  and no kids.

No kids!

This is both a blessing and a curse.  Before I left, I found myself giving my nanny instructions for the cases of

• severe head injuries,
• fire,
• earthquake,
• war,
• open, bleeding wounds.

Heh, that may be anal but if they have to survive outside at -20 degrees because the house was flattened in an earthquake, it's really important for them to know where the space blankets are, no?  I also left a gazillion phone numbers, including the direct line to the ship. I left five kilos of chicken nuggets, a pile of groceries, kilos and kilos of frozen vegetables, recipes for favorite dishes...

I am at my Mom's house at the moment, taking a day's break in my trip from Yerevan to Ft. Lauderdale (I will also break the trip in DC).  I find myself wanting to walk into rooms to check on various kids, and it's way too quiet and way too clean and nice in the house.  It's never clean and nice when my kids are here.  I slept for 14 hours.  I read for hours, without interruption.  I went to the bathroom and nobody wanted to "be with Mommy".   My Mom and I will go shopping today without having to arrange for various kids to be taken care of.

It's nice.  It's lonely.  It's weird.  And I discovered that it is possible to have a wonderful time with pangs of pain and guilt.  Being a parent is a strange, strange thing.

(I also miss my husband, btw.  But in a different way.)

Ice cream

You cannot get Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream in Europe.  This has been a constant lament in my life.  You can also not get good ice cream in Armenia.  I just don't like the kinds we can get here.  They are perfectly edible, don't get me wrong.  But they are not finger-licking delicious.

So, we got an ice cream maker.  Carlos gave me a Ben & Jerry's recipe book.  And I set to work.

The first recipes I tried still in Germany, with suggestions from the Internet.  I had left the ice cream recipe book in Yerevan,  you see.  I made a simple strawberry ice cream which was fine, and a coffee ice cream with a hint of Armenian brandy which was very good.  But the bases for those ice creams didn't render a good creaminess.  I'm a very creamy-loving person.  I don't like sorbets for just that reason - ice cream has to be smooth, creamy, rich, luscious in my book.

Back in Yerevan, back in the ice cold house.  Yesterday, I decided to fight the cold with the homeopathic principle:  same with same, and set out to make ice cream. 

I discovered that the sweet cream base of the Ben & Jerry fame works fabulous.  2 eggs, beaten into a fluff.  Add 3/4 cup of sugar, 1 cup of milk.  I vary the recipe by cooking this until the mixture becomes thickish, for the simple reason that I don't trust raw eggs.  Then, I added 2 cups of heavy cream - voila, a sweet cream base that is fingerlicking yummy.  Let cool and start playing around with it.

First, for the kids, I added a cup of mini Oreo cookies and a hint of vanilla flavor.  For myself, I made a Butter Pecan variation by browning 1 cup of pecans in 1 stick of butter, and added 1/2 tsp of salt.  Salt seems odd in ice cream but it really brings out the flavor of the pecans.  However, next time I will reduce this to 1/4 tsp - the ice cream turned out just a tad too salty.  Let cool, add butter to base and pour into the ice cream in maker.  Add pecans shortly before the ice cream is done.  Done!  Yum.

The result?  I have a husband who begrudges my sons their Oreo ice cream.  They shared.  After a fashion.  I will have to make more tomorrow.  A quart of Oreo ice cream gone in a day.  In a house that hovers around 15 degrees Celsius.  I'm lucky nobody likes my pecan ice cream.

COLD! Brrr, really cold

It's cold in Yerevan.  We had -20 degrees Celsius when we arrived this morning at 4 am.  The arrival was, let's say, sub-optimal.  I ended up shrieking like a banshee at a bus full of Armenians, but that is a story for another time.

We went directly to the house to assess the damage.  First, it didn't look all that horrible - some radiators were missing, it's was bitterly cold.  Then we found the first open-fire heat source in the living room - an open gas flame, totally unsupervised.  Then we found the gas stove in the kitchen burning brightly, fighting the heat with its measly weapons.  I was not amused to have unsupervised open fire in the house but this seems the only way to defreeze the pipes and get all the water out.

Today was much worse.  The workers (being men, and to boot, Armenian men) strung their soldering equipment and their hoses around my Christmas decoration (like, it's impossible to ask the woman in the kitchen to take it all down which took, all in all, five minutes).  They broke four of my favorite, NY Met artsy Christmas balls which I have managed to bring all the way to Yerevan unscathed.  Then they opened a water pipe upstairs in the kids' room without removing furniture or toys or clothes and soaked everything.  A fine spray of water over your kid's mattress in a house that is barely above freezing -- is that enough to warrant a very upset mother?  It was enough for me.

The house is a mess.  Those guys don't care for anything but their stupid radiators.  Not for the beautiful wooden floors, not for the walls which now have a nice new pockmarked look to them (radiator dragging through narrow staircases, is my guess), not for our belongings.  We are camping out in the nearly frozen house with electrical heaters because I don't dare leave those men alone in here.  Also, the kids would go on a destruction rampage in the hotel.

After the heating works again, we'll have to plaster and paint the walls in, oh, five rooms.  And find a way to remove those marks on the floors (not too optimistic about that one!).  And assess water damage.

But, here we are.  I brought our suitcases home, and am repacking the things we  need for an overnight stay in a hotel, rather than a weeks-long stay at my Mom's in utter comfort (and warmth!).
Food stuff, cereals, and all that what you don't get in a hotel after 11 am for breakfast (we're still jetlagged).  So, we survive.  It's not pretty but it works.

Armenia, though, is not warming my heart.

And then the radiators burst

... or How not to begin a new year.

I think I've mentioned before that our heating system is rather erratic and needs constant supervision.  It's something about the gas pressure - whenever that goes down, the heating shuts off, which is not a good thing in the winter.  So before we left, we had a system set up for our nanny and maid to come and check in regularly and make sure that things are OK.  This morning, our nanny came in for the umpteenth time, to turn the heat up some more and make it nice and cozy for our arrival tonight.

Unfortunately, that plan went poof - literally.  The heat must have turned off in the night, and the ten degrees minus were enough to freeze and explode the radiators in the living room, the hall, and all the bedrooms.  Nice and cozy is something different.

And you know, not only will we arrive tonight, but I'm also planned to leave again on January 9, for two weeks, all by myself, to do my birthday cruise with my best friend.  There are three things I cannot see: 

1. The workers finishing the repairs in less than a week.
2. Me leaving my kids behind while they are staying in a hotel.
3. Me cancelling the cruise.

Can you see my dilemma?

Happy New Year to you, too.