a summer blip in winter: the landsisters

Word has traveled from Moscow to our sleepy town via emigrated relatives of my Armenian friends: THE BIG FREEZE IS COMING.  Apparently, when Moscow freezes over, the same icy hand reaches out to our town in about three days.

This comes to me as a bit of a surprise.  You know what I was doing a couple of days ago? I was with my landdad, moving the nardi board into the house because the sun was beating down too hard.  (I was wearing a t-shirt.) And then I was hanging out with my landsisters on the terrace.  Meri and I built a car out of blocks my mom brought from the States.  We rolled it down a carpet my landmom left in the sun to air out.

In the game, I took on the roll of simple fool, dropping the car down the carpet and watching it crash and fall to pieces.  Meri took the roll of exasperated mother, skipping the now-is-that-the-smartest-thing-to-do’s and going straight for the this-horrid-child-is-killing-me’s, slapping her palm against her forehead and collapsing to the ground.

She did get over her feigned exasperation eventually.

Her sister Greta found me later while I was reading Timbuktu, lying on a bench under the leafless tree by my cottage.  She proceeded to build a fake barbeque by my head.

I love having landsisters.

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a ghoul in winter

I’m home in my little Armenian town for a quick minute and feel the need to send out a tiny message to the blogosphere:  There’s a little monster I like to call the I-Thought-I-Knew-What-Was-Happening Ghoul, and it got me again.

I’m not sure if this is a working-in-a-foreign language phenomenon or it’s just me, but I often find myself agreeing to go places for what I think is a short event only to be gone FOR SEVEN HOURS or so.

I thought I was going to “install a khachkar” and have a quick word about the project I’m going to go do for a few days in the same village starting tomorrow.  I ended up gone for 7.5 hours.  We picked up the khachkar with its maker and drove to the village near the Georgian border.  We waited to find out where the khakar would go.  We drilled a hole into a wall.  We mounted the base and waited for the marble glue to dry.  We mounted the khachkar.  We waited for the marble glue to dry.  We thought of ways to further secure the khachkar.  We waited for a dude to go get some tools.  We waited for said dude to mix cement.  We drilled a hole in the khachkar.  We secured the khachkar.  We applied cement.  At this point I had given up on doing the work I had planned and thus welcomed the village mayor’s invitation to dinner.  The Armenian spread was beautiful and since I hadn’t had the opportunity to each lunch or breakfast, I gorged on tomato and fried potatos and cheese and boiled chicken and home cheese and home honey.  Yum yum yum.

And thus, reader-friend, I am not able to write you the summary of My Week of Epiphanies that occured this past week in the capital.  I’m so tired now that the only epiphany I can relate is that I need my bed.

Also, it’s important that you know that MY TOWN IS ALREADY COLDER THAN DEATH. Seriously, I spent seven hours freezing.  It is the first day since June that I had to wear closed-toe shoes.  Also, it is the first day since June that my toes froze through said shoes.  It was the kind of cold that made it hard to use my fingers.  Here comes winter, y’all.

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