my texan mother in armenia

My mom is going to hate me for putting up a picture of her without her hair done. But besides just being joyful, this picture is proof of love, that she would give up a multi-decade, never-missed hairdryer habit for me. You're beautiful, Mom.

Most of the past week I think I’ll save for my novel/memoir/perpetually-put-off-piece-of-literature.  That is both a artistic decision, and a way of avoiding the impossibility of putting into words this past week with me, Mom, and Armenia. But, despite the length, consider this a taste.

I saw her at first down the hallway, behind the glass partition, my mother looking much skinnier, a little lost, and washed over with anticipation.  She saw me jumping up above the crowd, waving one arm and holding a bouquet of flowers in the other, this little collection of green, white and lavender, a message to my mom that despite the craziness of her first trip abroad, there is beauty, simplicity, joy and calm ahead.

Of course, directly after the bouquet presentation and tearful hugs came a walk through a dark, cement parking garage guided by a less-than-polished, self-proclaimed taxi driver.  In between waves of joy and disbelief that she was actually here, our hands holding each others hands, my mother said, “This doesn’t feel safe.  Are you sure we’re going to a taxi?”

“Yes, Mom, don’t worry.  I’ve got you.”  I was not 100% sure that this man was legitimate, but I was sure that I was so full of love right then that I would have crushed this little man into crumpled nothingness should he even try to threaten the joy.  Plus my friend Chris was recording her arrival, walking behind us with a HD camcorder.  If the taxi driver took us out, my mother and I would be recorded as innocents, full of life and love, and the taxi driver would be immortalized as a love-killing, evil monster.

We did however end up at the prearranged hostel room, both of us too excited not to walk around Yerevan, taking in the joy which the city wind whisked around us.  We ate falafel at Habibi then walked to the Cafe Rich and drank cafe glazses.  Our conversations circled around a few subjects but always came back to this:

Me: “Mom, I just can’t believe you’re right here.  Right here.  Flesh. Bones. Smile even.  My mom!”

Mom:  “I know.  I know!”

There were, of course, updates on everyone from my sister’s boyfriend to a high school friend’s mom.  I can still see her sitting right there in the outdoor cafe, across the table from me, holding a swirl of coffee and ice cream, framed on one side by a tv playing Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” and on the other side by the artificial Swan Pond reflecting the street lights with Armenian lovers and families and friends circling it.  I imagined their conversations, unique and mundane, all of us sharing the same air while my mom and I sat and enjoyed a dream of mine coming true.

I know this may feel dramatic.  It’s a mom; it’s a visit.  I can try to explain.  Growing up, I thought everyone had the same life I had, going to little brick elementary schools, escaping to the toy aisle in Wal-Mart while my parents shopped, carrying cartoon-inspired lunchboxes, watching flat highways roll by through minivan windows on the way to our grandparents’ house.  High school mission trips to Mexico broke the bubble, and all the sudden the world opened.

The young traveler’s epiphany: for every unique fingerprint there comes an entire unique life with as many variations to it as there are drops of water in the sea.

I told my mother I’d like to spend my first college summer abroad.  She told me, “If you can find the money, go ahead.”  She would later confide that she didn’t think I’d be able to, and was surprised and even a bit worried when I told her I’d spend my summer working for a church in Auckland, New Zealand.

I spent a collective year of my four in college living and traveling through other countries, full of wonder and joy at each new life I got to know and love.  I changed; I saw the world.

It didn’t stop after college, with 5 months in Kolkata, 3 in Panama, and a year working in refugee resettlement in West Texas.  And now I have lived 16 months in Armenia.  What has changed, or what has intensified I should say, is my desire to share these experiences with family.  Let’s bypass for now my hope to find someone who wants to build a family around this kind of world-chasing life.  Since those first trips to Mexico I have wanted to visit these places with my mom, my dad, my sisters, and with my brother’s family.

It has torn at my soul, this feeling of being in love with people all over the world, being pulled to La Laguna, Mexico, missing my Indian family, and being so far away from my Texas loves.  After a short collection of months, I’ll be a mess of collected memories, current tears, and full full full of joy and love for my Armenian home and the friends I cherish here.

And so, here for just this brief, bright week, my mother did what I’ve dreamed someone in my family would one day want to do and make it happen.  My mother visited a distant country I love, experienced every place I love, met souls I’ve fallen in love with and fell in love with them herself.

We traveled by rickety marshutka to my old host family, that summer home of mine.  Within the first five minutes, sitting in my family’s general store, neighbors gifted us with a plastic bag full of live crawfish.  Later my mom cried giving a toast at the feast they set out for us, already full to the brim with the love they showed us.  I watched her during our morning hike, wondering at the dry yellows and silvers and light blues rolling through the valley.  I named the surrounding villages, speaking for her the unfamiliar sounds of a language she’d never heard.

She spent five days in my valley town.  We feasted on khorovats, danced at her birthday party, hiked to my favorite spot in town.  Every morning she’d shower and then head over to my land mom’s porch for a cup of Armenian coffee.  She couldn’t use her low-voltage hair dryer here which led to the blessing of my land mom doing her hair.   She fell in love with my friends at work, visiting their homes for so many cups of coffee and tastes of Armenian life.  At night she came home to more coffee with the landfamily and finally, long talks with me in my little cottage, with cups of tea and desperate attempts to stay awake to treasure the fact that here we sat in Armenia together.

She even tried to learn some of the language, finally mastering shnorakalutsyun but leaving without mastering the french ‘r’ in deghts.  I translated for her, feeling the blossom of new friendship open through me as she sat and talked with the clooker, with my coworkers, with my tiny little landsisters.

She brought a smorgasbord of gifts for me: Rosita’s refried beans, 80 ounces of Reese’s Peanut Butter cups, 9 pounds of brown suger, and my loving Aunt’s hand-tossed Puppy Chow.  She filled my spice cabinet to overflowing and brought more Hanes socks and underwear to try to outlast the wear-and-tear of handwashing.  And she brought so many gifts for my Armenian friends that she was wrapping the last handmade bit of jewelery around my friend Gayane’s wrist while we walked to our marshutka on the way out of town.  A volunteer from our office had accompanied us and without a pre-planned gift, my mom dug into her make-up bag and pulled out eye-shadow, telling her that with such beautiful eyes she should could easily pull of some wild blue and shocking pink.  Gayane, one of the Armenians who fell in love back, waved to my mom and me through the marshutka window as we rolled out of the parking lot and back to Yerevan.

The last two days were a mix of stress and the coming departure.  My mom recalled a Kolkata story of mine, quoting my little Indian brother, who upon seeing the white curb lines that signaled the coming airport entrance, sat back in the bus seat next to me, sighed and said, “Oh, no.”

“What is it, Martin?” I asked, confused as to the change in mood right after a series of goofy-face pictures we’d taken.

He looked out the window again. “This is where the missing starts.”

We stressed each other out shopping in the Vernassage, her wanting to bring back some worthy gifts to our family in Texas, and me at the end of my ability to calmly translate Armenian to English and dollars to dram.  But the moments I’ll remember most about that last day in Yerevan are my mom insisting that we sit with Zeena, our homestay host, while she told us about growing up in Soviet Armenia, about running from Turkey in 1915, about her life hosting Americans with her sister in their home, about her sister’s recent passing, about her brilliant father, about her own career working with the early, room-filling super computers.

And there my mother sat, soaking up all the good, radiating compassion, looking at that old, amazing soul with love and wonder.

At the airport we put off goodbye with two cups of coffee and an apple crumble.  We sat on uncomfortable chairs, holding hands and talking about simple things like my sister’s percussion lessons and her making Armenian coffee for my dad.  We hugged each other some twenty times before she finally walked through through to security.  I watched her through the crack in the glass partition, and when she turned around to catch a glimpse of me, I jumped up above the glass and waved.

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she lives

Before I get to business, look what I got for my birthday:

Yes, I do indeed consider those bright, little weeds early summer’s gift to me, but really though, check out my feet in new Chacos!  Mom and Dad, you are wonderful to me!

Now, the business.  If you read my last post, you have probably sat biting your nails, probably tossed and turned all night, wondering, hoping against hope that the wicked warlock/me has not thrown the poor defenseless Spring Chicken to the bottom of the town ravine.

Well, as many of my friend’s predicted, the sun came out, and my mood swung with it.   I decided not to toss her.  If someone had decided to toss me into the ravine after the millionth time I metaphorically smeared poop on them, well, I wouldn’t be writing this.  So, here she is, still-alive, poop-smearing, finger-biting, lap-napping, Popok-Chutik-Havik-Shash-Spring Chicken-Jan:

I did finally figure out that I love her and so does everyone else in my office and even people at home.  My parents sent her a cutesy, pink-camo leash, which I probably won’t get away with using here in my small town (surely it fits the Chicken, but I’m not so much a pink-camo guy, and neither are all the akhbers/teen-street-mongers who would accost me for using it).  They sent her tiny dog sized tennis balls which apparently were the key to unlocking Chicken’s fetching abilities (!).  And they sent a toy moose, which besides being hilarious to all my coworkers, has become the new love of my little pooch.  See; the poor ungulate (thanks GRE vocab cards!) never stood a chance:

And remember how I told you she was quite the model.  I seriously walked her over to a patch of dandelions, and she walked around a bit and just plopped down.

And, well, you just don’t throw that kind of adorable into a ravine.

In other news, I recently went to a co-worker’s birthday party.  I haven’t been to an Armenian party in a few months.  I walked into the room and was flooded with joy.  What before would have been a wildly cross-cultural experience of toasts and strange foods and flying conversation in a bizarre language has now become an experience something like being at home.  There were bottles of wine, vodka and juice.  The table was covered in plates of salads, horovats/barbeque, cheeses, fruits, candies, lavash and bread.  We toasted to Tigo’s birthday, to his parents, to his new baby.  And I was surrounded by my people.  That’s right; I have “people” in Stepanavan.

I know that “feeling at home” sounds simple, but I have spent so many months here feeling like an outsider, so many parties sitting in my own mental space, daydreaming while everyone talked and laughed around me about things I couldn’t understand.  At last weeks party, I had MY PEOPLE.  I was as much a part of the laughter and joy as everyone else.  Consider this picture:

For you this may just be two people having a good laugh.  For me this is myself without language insecurities or cultural dissonace.  This is the clooker, a woman two generations and an entire culture removed from me.  And here we are, laughing not from humor but from a joy that we share.

We share.

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a great way to spend a third of my life

I have this addiction, see.

I love sleep.  I love to doze off.  I love knowing my bed well enough to lay in it just right and let go of every muscular tension.  I love the weight of my wool duvet and the cool of my sheets.  I love pushing the balls of my feet against the footboard in a full body stretch.  I love waking up in the middle of the night, reading 2:00am on my watch and knowing I have hours more of bliss.
I love feather pillows and pillows stuffed with cotton. I love wool mats and firm mattresses and egg crate foam.  I love my sleeping bag.  I love jersey sheets and flannel sheets and the old flowery sheets at home that are years-thin.  I love my bed here; I love that I can acclimate to sleeping on the floor for months at a time.  I love my bed at home, and I love that I always feel safe and comforted after a nap in my parents’ bed.

When I was in high school, our Sunday Bible class started with highlights of the week.  It became a joke that my highlight-of-the-week always included a fantastic nap.  I love to sleep in cars; I love being carried while I dream.  I remember a specific doze in the back of a van riding from Honduras to Guatemala with road air blasting in through the open window and Death Cab for Cutie coming from my Walkman.  In Kolkata, naps were best laying flat on the cool marble floor while warm air swirled in from the windows.  My freshman year of college I built naps into my schedule, stealing an hour here and there to run back to my dorm room, click on the box fan, and curl up under my comforter.  I actually planned naps for Anthropology 101 and woke up embarrassingly often with drool-wet notes.  Back home, there is not better nap-holder than the big, overstuffed, dark green, corduroy couch, especially after a Sunday meal when the house is quite and all seven of us have found a place to roost.

My recipe for the perfect doze: a place you can sink into, daylight barely wisping in through drawn curtains, a fan gently brushing cool air across ankles and face and a quilt pulled up around my shoulders.

But here’s the thing.  I think sleep has become a problem.  Or perhaps it has always been one.

In my earliest recollection, school nights became school mornings that started with my dad coming into the my brother’s and my room with a tender, “Time to get up.”  This was ignored prompting another attempt before the cruel light was flicked on and covers were pulled back.  Groaning I would slowly slide out of bed and into clothes, and then I would sit for what I’m sure seemed too long in the doorway next my shoes, thinking and thinking about the labor involved in putting them on and how this contributed to the cruelty of the world.

I am always slow to rise.  Every morning is an end.  After the second alarm rings and I wildly and blindly sling my arm around to hit the off button, I consider how I need to flex the right muscles in order to put feet on the floor, stand and dress.  If I don’t act within a millionth of a second it is already to late.  The idea of turning over, curling back into relaxation and warm covers and is too overwhelming.  On the worst days involve quiet groans of, “I don’t want to get up,” and multiple weak resolutions to rise followed by stronger resolutions to nestle a while longer.  It can be a full hour of this before I get to the day.

Truth is, even if I spring out of bed at 6am, I won’t fully wake up until 10.  There is not coffee in the world that would make a difference.  I am really at my best between 3pm and 2am.  But as you know, the world starts working at 8am.  Blessed am I that my life hasn’t groomed me to follow the light to work-wrenching fields.  But shucks if it isn’t a pain for everyone else who’d like to actually like me to get something done before 10.

My Armenian coworkers deserve a more 9am oriented volunteer.  Any ideas?

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Sidenote: Peace Corps hosted an HIV/AIDS poster competition in January.  Our office helped over 30 village students participate.  But just check out how great this one is.  Maybe it’s the melodramatic Earth that does it for me.  It’s kind of Scarlett O’Hara maybe with one hand on a hip, the other on the forhead, the tear and the giant, “NO!”  Of course, the Earth is much more justified in her melodrama that O’Hara, I say.  I digress.  The poster is awesome.

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how’s the chicken?

I’m starting to get why people like dogs.  Perhaps its all the lap naps.  Or maybe it’s the way they spring at your knees and wag and wag.  Or maybe it’s the huge kick they get out of playing with rocks.  It’s a mixture of things I’m sure.  I will say the whole training business is work.  Following The Chicken’s little butt around while she sniffs is at the least fairly inglorious, and my chanting of the mantra “Go potty… go potty… go potty…”  just makes me want to pee.
She’s getting into a rebellious stage that amounts to me spending half our time together chasing her.  Earlier today I left her in the office for five minutes while I went and mailed something.  And of course, while the entire office was eating lunch around her, she did a big show and pooped right in front of them.  I laughed hysterically at the fact that in a small room full of 10 human beings she can still sneak around and turd them, but overall I’d say that this is working against that endear-The-Chicken-to-the-coworkers-so-The-Chicken-can-roost-by-my-desk strategy.

She’s doing great at home though.  My little landsisters, aged 4 and 6, are finally, after one month, willing to touch her.  The 6 year-old still runs screaming from the football sized pooch but in that conjured fear way that makes a simple game of chase into a run-for-your-life-the-monster-is-after-me feat of bravery.  The Chicken loves the attention and for some reason won’t run from the 4 year-old when she comes calling despite the fact that the littlest landsister likes to tote her like a rag doll.  The Chicken wags under her grip, slides down the tiny landsister’s cotton leggings until she’s got her by the chin and one elbow with hips bumping against her knee.  I get to play older brother, a role I miss beyond words (here’s to you, far away Squishter), and the four of us play in the garden while my landfather turns dirt and plants potatoes.  We play until the landmother calls the girls in from the swiftly cooling night.  After they run inside, I deposit The Chicken in her kennel nest and go inside for a late dinner of pizza rolls and an episode of Heroes.

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really gross and really upset and really glad that i can kiss and make-up in armenian

You will not see any pictures in this post, and once you read on, you will know that pictures are NOT something you want right now.  But first:

I had one of those moments today. I’m walking home on a road I’d never walked before.  Raindrops are finding their way through my jeans.  The broken part of my umbrella is slapping me in the face with irregular rhythm.  And as I reached a long, wet stretch of road, I thought, “I really love my life.”  Because despite the weather (which hasn’t outrained it’s Spring Rain charm), I had the most amazing afternoon at a coworker’s house making ganachov hats (herb bread) and hanging out with her incredibly warm and kind family.  The whole family, Armenian males included (BELIEVE IT!), was gathered around the table slicing handfuls of aromatic herbs.  I joined in the ganach-chopping just so that hours later I would still be carrying that smell on my hands.

Really, I feel it shows great personal progress (with communal credit humbly given), that I can say “I really love my life,” after yesterday:

Yesterday starts as my days now do: with The Unnamed (puppy).  I take her out of the well-built hovel she lives in (remember, landfamily will not allow her inside but built her this nice little shack outside), and give her the morning bowl of soggy cat food (my Sanity’s leftovers).  She then proceeds to do her morning void, and I notice some irregularities.  I call my animal-loving PC Volunteer friend, aka substitute for a veterinarian, who says the dripping is probably a result of the deworming pills.  No worries.

We walk to work in the snow.  I try to tell The Weather that we should really be progressing forward with offerings of precipitation and scoop up The Unnamed as we hit the main road.

At the office, I give the The Unnamed another chance to void while I stomp around the cement to knock off the mud that lies deep in the crevices of my hiking boots.  This mud is a source of one very sore spot for both myself and the Armenian cleaner/cook/clooker.  For all these muddy months The Clooker has chewed heavily on my esteem, breaking into hysterics when I leave behind dirt clods on her shiny tile.  Fair enough, but during those same months I have spent a lot of time and effort perfecting my stomps and my doormat scrubs with some minor success.  I am now performing those morning duties while The Unnamed performs hers.  We go to the door.

After walking in The Clooker follows me, and upon seeing a dirt clod exclaims something along the lines of, “How can I live?! You are killing me!!”.  I have little patience for this in the 10th month of my service, and I exclaim back, “Really?!  What can I do?!” to which she says “Go! Go!  You’re killing me.”

I huff off to the morning coffee/meeting with the staff and afterward find my way to my desk to set things up.  If you do not want to read something horribly disgusting skip the following section.  Skip straight to the second line.

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On this morning I decide that The Unnamed cannot spend the entire day in my lap.  I lay out her towel under my desk and drop her to the floor.  She considers the towel but decides to traipse back towards the doormat.  I sense a potty-time and speed to her just in time to catch her in mid-aim.  Recalling her irregular, and I will now say yellow and slimy attempt at poop this morning, I swing her up and push open the door slinging The Unnamed’s butt mucus onto the glass.

Making a mental note to clean that before anyone sees it, I drop her into the grass and see the most horrifying sight of my life: round worms exiting the body.  It is the most foul mess of butt mucus and writhing white spindles.  It’s like play-dough coming out a squeeze machine but the play-dough is live spaghetti with burnt ends and the squeeze machine is a dog anus. I will never fully recover from this.  It’s the new eggs-out-a-frog-back.

I am then naesous for the rest of the day.

I tie-up The Unnamed outside realizing that the day after she takes deworming pills should not be the second day she spends under your office desk.  I type her up outside; she commences a days worth of screeching.

I then try to clean the glass door with toilet paper (no paper towels in this country) and fake Windex.  The Clooker catches me and says, “You are being shameful.  What are you doing?  You can’t do that.  This is TOILET PAPER!”

“I’m just trying to help.  I made this mess.”

“Shame on you.  You can’t clean.  Shame on you.”

Fine.  Butt mucus all yours.

_______________________________

(The easily, or even hardly ever grossed-out, can rejoin us here.)

Later, when my computer dies I realize I have forgotten my computer cord at home and make the long walk back to get it.  Upon returning I check the tethered Unnamed’s circumference to see if she’s voided any of her “problem” where she might be able to sniff/eat it (I know you would think she wouldn’t do that, but after what I saw, I realized how little I know about what the biological world can accomplish).  No “problem”, but I’ve awoken the screecher which gets me some sideways glances from coworkers.

I proceed again with the demudding ritual, having walked there and back over the muddy road to my house.  Into the second minute of scrubbing, The Clooker sees the fresh mud on the doormat and exclaims, “What are you doing? Oh, you’re killing me?  What will I do?!”  Boiling point reached.

“Seriously, what can I do?,” I screech back, “I’ve asked you a million times. I don’t have any other shoes with flat soles.  I don’t have any other place to walk.  I try and try.  I want to be clean for you, but what do I need to do for you if I can’t use [the doormat]” (I don’t actually know the Armenian word for doormat; I just pointed and said “this”).  She huffs and gesticulates and waves me off continuing the, “You’re killing me,” exclamations.  It is such a scene that the break-room full of people turns to look and even the accountant comes out to see what is happening.

Having gone through this almost every day for the last 4 months, I realize talking to her isn’t working, so I take off my boots (thank god I was wearing nice wool socks (thanks mom and dad)) and storm to the bathroom to wash the possible worm-eggs from the The Unnamed off my hands.

A co-worker comes out from the break room and says, “Brent, you need to put your shoes on.  This is shameful.”

“But what can I do?  I have no shoes that don’t have crevices in the soles.  I clean them every morning, but I just can’t clean them enough.”

“I know, but there are people from [our national office in] Yerevan here.  You could (he imitates cleaning off mud with a stick). This is shameful.  You should put on your shoes.”

I nod.  Take some deep breaths and cross the now revealed Yervanians’ line of vision to put on my boots.  Outside I slip them on and walk across the road finding a twig along the way.  I sit brooding and proceed to dig out every last possible fleck of mud.  The Clooker comes out banging the doormat against the steps.  I am brooding and digging out mud from my shoes; she is brooding and hand-scrubbing the doormat.

Despite the anger, the rational, peace-loving part of my mind, the one that knows The Clooker is from a very different culture defined by both geography and time, propels me to make a kind gesture.  Dropping the twig, I walk to her, give her a hug.  I say,  “I love you, but I don’t want you to talk to me like this.”

She says, “Keep your dog at your house.”

“What?”

“Keep your dog at your house!”

“Why are you talking about my dog?  The problem is with my shoes.”

“You went to see the dog and you brought back mud,” she says.

“I walked to my house!  THAT’s where the mud is from.”

“Well you need to walk on the dry parts of the road.”

“I’ve told you this a million times.  There IS no dry part of my road.”

“On one side there is dry, and one side there is wet.”

“I know MY ROAD.  It’s my road; I walk it every day.”  I am starting to seethe.

“I am going to walk home with you,” she says, “I am going to show you where the dry part is and where the wet part is.”

“Are you calling me stupid?!  Do you think I don’t know what is dry road and what is wet road?”

“I didn’t say you are stupid.”

“You said I can’t tell dry road from wet road.  You are saying I’m stupid.”  I’m done at this point.  I walk inside and try not to break everything I see.

I sit down and try to read something on my computer.  I am boiling.

A Yerevanian I have met before comes up to my desk.  He has been to our office many many times.  He is balding and wears sunglasses inside.  His head is large.  I know he is about to say something aggravating.  It’s his way.

“Ay Brent jan, is that you’re dog outside?”

“Ayo,” I confirm.

“Don’t you want a big dog?  Why did you get such a little dog?”

I am trying desperately to gather the popping tethers of my temper.  “She’s fine.”

“But she’s so falkjwelkj.” ‘Falkjwelj’ is a russian word that I don’t know and forget immediately. I limit my reply to, “What?”

“She’s so,” and he whimpers and pouts his lip and droops his eyes and tries to mimic a little weakling.

In earlier times this man has chosen to make similar comments during times when he could rely on my foreigner’s ingratiating patience.  I suppose he assumes that such patience abounds.  It does not.

I look at him squarely, “Why do you want to come to my desk and say mean things about my dog?”

“It’s not mean.  She’s just so,” and he again makes the weakling face and accompanying whimpers.

“That is mean.  Why do you want to say mean things about my dog?”

“It’s not mean.”  He laughs.

“She’s just right for me.  She’s a good dog.”  He leaves, seeing he is getting nowhere.

Later at lunch, I eat with another coworker of mine.  We have boiled potatoes with salt, red pepper and onions.  I am still angry, but she actually helps me work my brooding face into a smiling one.  The Clooker, having seen how unhappy she made me, is now all smiles and helpfulness in the genuine way of a person who is trying to make-up but is not gifted in the art of Talking Through It, Especially With Someone Who Speaks a Different Language Despite Having Someone In The Seat Next To You Who Can Interpret.   The Clooker and I, outside of all things shoe, actually get along very well.  She was the one who gave me The Unnamed.  And here, as we have before, we make up; we actually bond over the ridiculous comments of the whimpering Yerevanian.

And right on cue, the sun comes up and the snow melts, and it’s ice cream weather again.

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my day keeps going back to cat.

I’m sorry that all my posts seem to be about my cat.  There are more interesting things that happen during my day, I promise.  But she receives the blunt force of my inner turmoil.  Let me see if I can give an example.

Yesterday was downright blizzardy.  I’ve never seen so much snow blowing around.  And in the middle of the deluge, Arman, a guy from my work, and I drove to a village in the far north to see buildings we may possibly renovate for a women’s initiative.  The meeting turned out to be somewhat counterproductive and ended in my getting yelled at by the woman who’s partnering with us.

Frustrated by the afternoon, my dismay brewed on the snowy 1.5 hour drive home.  I was then further perturbed by an exchange over a ride home and a candy bar (something I won’t relate because it makes me look stupid).  Then upon arriving back at the office a Yerevantsi (people from Yerevan sometimes come with an aire of superiority) looked at my ‘Word-of-the-Day’ desk display, and rudely said, “You’re not going to learn Armenian like that.  You at least have to learn 10 words a day.”  To which my emotionally cranked self replied, “Well then I guess I’m just not going to learn Armenian then.”

I arrived home, finally smiling at the sight of my legs disappearing into icy powder.  I got inside, changed my frozen jeans for sweatpants, and then, forced by smell, slipped my shoes over naked feet and headed outside to replace the dirt in Sanity’s poop tray.  The snow quickly found its way into my shoes and down to my toes, and here, I had an epiphany.

This is my life. Here I am, feet wet and freezing, digging in the snow with a tiny bowl, dumping cat poop into an icy hole, digging elsewhere in search of fresh mud to carry back in for the cat to defecate on.

Upon returning inside, I changed pants again and went to cuddle the cat.  She of course merely clawed my hand.  Ungrateful rassafrassin’ idjimtin’ clapsnake.  (That by the way was NOT what I said to her.)  And then I realized that I may never have wound free hands again.  And then I decided that the next day (ie: now) I would write a post about how my cat is a demon.  Which honestly is not true, but you see, I have to keep my head up when it comes to my cross-cultural exchanges.  It would be a mistake to let myself go on and on about my frustrations about business or otherwise cultural exchanges I’m having.  Gotta keep my head up.  So… well… the cat recieves the brunt of my negativity.  (Quite a personal revelation if you take it steps and steps further.)

Still, Sanity better watch her claws, or I’m going to become a dog person.

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lunch sanity

I’ve been looking for grants all day.  All day.  One site says it wants to fund human rights projects for Bangladeshi women.  Another wants to dig wells.   Another is dedicating all it’s funds to democracy initiatives in struggling republics.  Fantastic.   But what I need is somebody who’d like to help a bunch of old ladies in a village refurbish an old house and make it into a cultural center/tourist opportunity for interested travelers.  And I’m finding zilch.

So after a few hours, I got hungry, looked around for my lunch buddies and found out that I’d have to wait another couple of hours until we’d all eat together.  Tick, tock, tick, tock, stomach grumble.  And then when my lunch buds do show up there’s a fifteen minute conversation in which we mull over the same uninspiring old lunch choices: fried potatoes, bread and cheese, scrambled eggs, eggs with beans, mashed potatoes, cheese and bread. With sauce.

Frustrated over the grant search and the lack of lunch options suited to my Texas pallet, I snapped.  When Guyane inquired about my lunch preference, “Lav, Brent, inch es uzum?”  the tension finally wrenched tight enough to send a slight fizzure through my sanity.

“What do I want?” I bit back.  “A bean burrito!”

“What?” Guyane said.

“Look.”  Sitting in front of my computer I immediately Googled up this image:

“Isn’t it beautiful?” I said.  “The beans… oh lord… and the cheese melting, and the heat from the beans squishing into cool sour cream that bursts over my tongue when bite through a warm tortilla!”

Guyane and Arpine give me a quizzical look.

“I’m losing it,” I say, but continue the Google image search. “Look!”

“I used to work here,” I tell them in a flurry.  “Oh man oh man oh man oh man.”

“Doesn’t it look wonderful!?” I gawk at the screen.

“What is it?” Guyane asks.

“Vay, Brent!” Aprine exclaims.  She knows I’m on the brink.

“It’s a Sharky’s Burrito!” I exclaim.  “I used to work here.  I ate it every day, but different.”  I close my eyes, and my hand reaches for an asbsent spoon full of imaginary black beans. “A kid’s veggie.  Black beans. A little bit of rice. A smidge of,” I run my fingers, imagine the feeling of those old latex gloves, squishing, “potatoes. If the boss isn’t looking, a scoop of queso.  Both cheeses. Pico. A little lettuce. One slice of Jalepeno; I like the suprise. Spicy ranch. AND A LINE OF ROASTED SALSA! OOOOOH!”

“Ay Brent, chunenk.”

“And the next morning,” my fingers move with enormous speed and dexterity, typing in the search box, devouring the images on Google with voracity, ” it would be two carne guisada burritos and a bean and cheese at La Pop’.

“For lunch, Taco Bueno.  Mexi Dips and Chips and a Beef MUCHACO!”

“Brent,” Guyane says, “What is ‘muchaco’?”

“It’s fast food.  Tex-Mex.  DELICIOUSNESS!”

“Ok, so maybe you like beans,” she says.

“Absolutely, I do.” I am still madly image searching.

“Maybe we can have lobiyov tsvadzegh (green beans and scrambled eggs)?”

“Oh… ok,” I whimper. “But oh my lord, LOOK!  Can’t we just have my mom’s roast and potatoes!?

“Or spaghetti and meatballs!” I have to dig through my own files for this one. “Don’t worry, it’s only green for halloween!!!”

“How about pizzza?” Guyane asks.  “Alvart jan, pizzan unen khanutum?  Inch chargi? … Yerek hat kberes?” And they leave me to my slobbering, my gastropornographic wanderings over every possible thing I’d eat right now.

“Oh pizza sub.  Oh chips and dips.  Oh chips and SALSA!  Tostadas… Little Caesars… Hot’N'Ready….

“Oh. My. Gosh.” My fingers go absolutely nuts.

“CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I still have 21 months to go.  I think I’m in trouble.

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Morning and the office…

In the morning I usually turn the alarm off at 8:00am and then fight with the morning for fifteen minutes before I actually get up. One of the reasons I don’t like to get up is that it’s cold like Texas December in Armenian August. The other is that I just don’t like mornings.
I pull on clothes, slip on slippers and leave my room. Host Mom brings out breakfast which is always tea, bread and honey, and sometimes includes some fried potatos, steamed buckwheat or eggs & green beans. I would say that most mornings are tea, bread & honey mornings taken in the living room where we eat every meal.
The floor of the living room is painted a barn red that is worn, not flaking, but smoothed away. Certainly the paint is slowly giving up its fight in under the chairs and in the most trafficked places where the dark wood is the most prominent. The floor is cold, necessitating the slippers. If I don’t wear them, there is an instant and rapid, “You’re going to catch cold. This is not acceptable. Where are your slippers!?” from my host mom. It’s kind of nice really.
The floor is the same through the house, and its hollow which is why the family can hear me walk from the breakfast table, to my room for my toothbrush, and to the bathroom. While the whirring of my electric spinbrush scrubs my teeth, I walk into the kitchen to turn on the house’s water pump which stores water from the few hours a day it’s actually running through the pipes. The bathroom and the water closet (the tiny place where the tiolet stays) are tiled a dandelion yellow which is actually a very soothing color to be surrounded by during your most vulnerable moments of the day.
After brushing my teeth, I return to my bedroom, gather the book I’m reading (currently Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury), my journal, my notebook and my work folder into my bag. Upon leaving I shut my doors which close like french doors over the half the space. Locking the door to my room actually requires me to pull the knob at a full body lean, using the my weight to counteract years of the half-door’s warping.
I leave with a ‘hajogh’. Our family here in Armenia lives only on the second story of a two story house. I think they are slowly cleaning out the bottom half which currently holds old funiture, books, and a christmas tree. The stairs are outside, and when I walk down them in the morning, I reach down to my knees where Koki and Kutik, our dogs, are usually whimpering for a little love.
Out the front gate, I present myself for the 15 minute walk to my office. The air is always cool, reminds me of waking up outside on camping trips, putting up with the discomfort of cold air knowing that warm will follow soon enough.
I sometimes pass a friendly butcher whose eyes are always red, whose always smiles at me, who is sometimes drunk, who shouts his salutation if he is across the street. I pass the school where my host dad works, a stationary store, a barber, and stray dogs who are chewing through the morning’s trash, put out by main street tenants. I turn left just before a 20 foot Soviet-style statue of a communist leader, walk through the town square and reach my office.
My coworkers gather every morning for coffee, thick and rich, poured into tiny cups, Turkish-style (although I would never use that description here). The day is discussed; the group feeling is individually assessed by all. I sit and try to listen for words I know.
A note on the ‘catching of words I know’: It’s like that game in arcades, the one with a jackpot that goes up with each play, with the light that spins like mad around and around, with the button you mash when you think the light is on ‘JACKPOT’. The tension, the spinning, the always being off just a little, the feeling that maybe this next one I’ll get. It creates some incredible anxiety, but every once in a while I’m on the money.
After coffee people split up. Lately my mornings consist of me waiting for one of the project facilitators who said he would take me to one of the villages he works in. In my waiting time I generally try to talk with our office cook who helps me pick up Armenian words in exchange for English ones. Then the facilitator beckons, and I hop in his World Vision issued Lada (an old russian four-wheel drive jeep) and head out to a village. I go to the school, meet directors, go to the village clinic if there is one, go to town hall and meet the mayor. Again it is a situation where my struggling Armenian allows only the most basic of conversations with these leaders, but I’m certainly learning the phrases I hear the facilitators say often: “This is our Peace Corps Volunteer. He works in our office. He doesn’t understand Armenian.” I usually pipe in with a “I’m happy to meet you; I’m still learning Armenian. Kamots-kamots.” I really enjoy this time, and though my Armenian is terrible, I’m getting to know the facilitators fairly well, what their proud of, what they like most about the communities they work in.
Back at the office, I check email, read program guidelines, and brainstorm projects. In general my office is my favorite spot in my new place. The people are friendly. We laugh together around coffee and lunch. I can rest on the breakroom couch with a book. I can look forward to a warmer winter because of the office’s heating system. It’s a warm, clean, kind place.
And that brings me up to afternoon. This is enough for now. If you’ve read this far, stay tuned for afternoon in the park, evening at home. Guaranteed to be riveting; I promise.

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I found myself today shrink wrapping and considering my position in a love triangle.

What’s to be said about living on an island for two months.  A lot.  But there is so little time for writing.  Or maybe I’m terrible at making the time.  That’s it.  I’m terrible at making time.  I like to use it though.  For movie watching lately.  And working as well.  And this last weekend a friend, a sister, and I made Christmas cards.  So, when can I write?

Now, I suppose, sitting here at the fire, stockings actually hung, feet propped up next to my little sister’s, her reading a book, and me, slightly altering the cliche winter night with my blog writing.

I lived on an island.  I think about it most in the bathroom, measuring lessening degrees of difference around my tan lined waist.  It is cold here, and windy, and just a couple of weeks ago I was laying on a beach in the sun, slightly sweating, and reading and reading.

I found myself today shrink wrapping and considering my position in a love triangle.

I am living at home and working in a community college bookstore.  Oddly, after working a ‘career’ job, and then laying on the beach for a couple of months, I couldn’t be happier than at my current workplace.  I am a temporary stock room clerk.  On a team of other temps that make my people-watching instincts wiggle with association.

The whole place is full of characters.  The newly hired manager who is still finding her authority.  The panda-like gentle giant who is accepting her fate as an assistant manager in a small college bookstore.  The tiny blonde nymph who is typically young looking and whose tiny frame was only highlighted by her complaints that she was turning into a “fat lard” with slowly pinching pants.  The tall easy going black guy from D.C., who is admittedly too cool to be working here and plays small jokes to entertain himself.  The black girl in the back with the new weave who has no motivation, who sits for hours scraping at terribly used “used” stickers, spraying them with lighter fluid from slick yellow bottles.

They are all certainly notable but my favorites are by far my team, the temps.  I honestly wake up everyday glad to be spending another day among them.  They are as follows:

-The mom, Californian, black, dreads and two kids.  She ogles the college boys, referring to one regular passer-by as “Eagle” in regard to his apparel.  When she is flustered by one of them you know it; she is self-incriminating and overeager.  Her harmless, “I knew I recognized you from somewhere,” turns sour when she follows it directly with, “I’m not a stalker, though. I am SO not a stalker.”  Nearing our lunch break last week I revealed my craving, “I really want some pad thai.” In reciprocation she offered her revelation, “All I want is a man to love me for who I am.”  Poorly timed, but sincere.  She is more helpful than anyone else in the store, constantly looking for her own usefulness. She sometimes helps (stocking books) and sometimes missteps (stocking expired sodas).

-The post-pimples, pre-Navy SR, tall, white, long-faced, typically wearing a zippered hoodie.  He has not yet refined his customer services skills (“I gotcha ova here”, “Fill in the stuff there”), but most often he smiles which is worth more than proper manners.  Especially in temporary work.  After one week however, his zeal is wearing thin, and he has pendulum-swung into aimless wandering.  Last Thursday, after much of his open-mouthed, sleepy-eyed waddling through the isles, I found him in some kind of combination fetal-position/kneel, sleeping in between racks of books, hand wrapped over his head.  I suppose he thought if he was caught, his hand could protect him from the initial disciplining blow.  I walked on.

-And finally, my favorite, with early ’80′s rock hair, he looks something like Ichabod Crane with a beer belly.  He is farther along in years than the rest of us, so in the first few days he kept his distance, standing at the edge, watching customers, then walking around the isles looking for some way to pass the time.  If I was a customer, I would not want him to help me find my textbooks.  He is a foreboding presence.  However, on day three I was assigned to work “the back” with the guy, and he is not surprisingly much cooler than initially perceived.  He is a drummer for three local bands and filled me in on his musical history, from the time he got kicked out of marching band at 15 for not showing up for the Christmas parade (he was the only drummer, but didn’t want to wear the “3 foot hat” on his already tall person) to his current inner-band political initiatives to get the bass player to leave without having to ask him.  He talked to me about upcoming gigs, the night he recently spent with his ex-wife, and the job which he held as a sub-contracted bank courier before the ‘financial downturn’.  Lately he walks down book racks and stops to read textbooks.  We have an understanding.  If I see a manager leave the office I walk by him and say, “The big lady’s out.”  He then slips off his reading glasses, tucks the book back on the shelf, and does some look-of-productivity walking.

They are my team, and I am happy to be among them (myself likely to be perceived as well-meaning or as judgmental as any of my coworkers).  At times I am the only one working at a consistent pace, and I think that, should the manager get the wiser, she would see that I am doing work for at least five people, while the SR is napping, the drummer is reading, the nymph is chatting and the lighter fluid girl is staring at a pile of books waiting for motivation’s whim.  And knowing myself as I do, I would usually complain about the inequality of workload.  But I don’t mind doing their tasks because without them, I would be reading or chatting or staring.  I can’t pass eight hours that way, and I want them to have a job.  Plus there is so little work in the first place that we all spend at least half our days wandering the small store, and I take whatever chance I can get to break up the monotony.

For instance today, the gentle giant gave me a “special project”: shrink-wrapping class packets.  I jumped on it.

I had never before shrink-wrapped and after a two-minute training, the nymph and I got to work.  The plastic sheets sucking their sides in closer was fun to watch.  It reminded me of two things: microwaving snack-size potato chip bags for 10 seconds to see them spark and shrivel (in high school I poked keyrings through the concentrated trash) and watching a slug wriggle under salt.  The process is fairly simple, cutting the sheets with a hot clamp and zapping them with a heat gun; it is also time consuming and fairly satisfying.

While I zapped and the nymph cut, Too-Cool came to the back to tell me that one of the regular workers, a young girl, 19-going-on-15, brunette, moderately cute, thinks I’m hot.  A complement I took and sat in for a moment.  Of course, in my current station in life, there’s no hope for an inter-bookstore romance, but the flattery is nice.

Then, waving the heat gun, I remember that the SR thinks she’s hot.  Ah, drama.  He likes her.  She likes me.  I find them both pimply but smiling.  A triangle in amongst the most interesting characters I’ve been around in a while.

While working my career job a few months ago, I spent some moments sitting at my desk, processing clients and wishing I could just work at Domino’s with regular unassuming people.  Here I am now, working as a temporary store room clerk on a team of misfits.  A dream come true.

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