11/04/04-A very special visitor...

Today, we had a special visitor. The cleaning lady came. OK, before saying we don’t have it so bad, please keep in mind that we have nothing with which to clean this place. I broke down and bought a small broom and dustpan because of all the dirt on the floor. (Proof, Mary Jo, that I am not a complete Oscar Madison. Oscar would never have bought a broom.) Apparently, our friend the cleaning lady doesn’t have the common cleaning devices either as she got on her hands and knees and scrubbed the entire floor. S must be connected to the orphanage because she knew Grace. She kept talking to her and calling her “Tania”. I held back my arrogant American fatherly instincts to scream, “LISTEN LADY, SHE HAS NEW LIFE NOW! HER NAME IS GRACE!” and just smiled. Hey, she obviously had real affection for my daughter, so I couldn’t hold that against her. And she was on her knees cleaning my bathroom.

Today’s other big event was a trip to the GROS market. I basically go to the “market” every day to buy some little thing we need. It is part of my daily ritual to avoid cabin fever. But, once or twice a week, Lena schedules a trip to the bigger market to really stock up. This time, Joe and Amika came with Damir. It was nice to see them and catch up. We are both tied up in our little lives, so we don’t talk much. Joe commented that it was nice to have a little adult time.

The trip to the GROS market is always an adventure. I know where everything is now, so I have my little list and hit all the main aisles to get water, juice, cereal, etc. Then I branch out and look to see what thing we want to give a try. I’ve started to drag Lena to certain sections and ask here what things are. The hardest thing about shopping in an all Russian language store is that I don’t know what is in some of the things. I think I shared the experience where Mary Jo and I “took a chance” on some “raviolis” only to get back and find they were basically periogies. (Hey, if I wanted periogies, I would have stayed in Pittsburgh.) Gma and I have discovered a couple “local” items we like, but they have different things in them. One is a type of tortellini which usually has a mixture of beef and pork in it. The other item is Blinchikis (Blintzes). They can come with meat, cheese, fruit, etc. We like the ham and cheese ones. I also have branched into trying different meats. Gma is game for anything, so I pick something out and she figures out how to serve it. Tonight, we had a great ham, topped with some Heinz BBQ sauce. (Mr. Heinz comes to the rescue again.)

The oddest moment was when I tried to by Gma her dill pickles. I found the pickles, but I had to pull Lena over and ask her which ones are were the dills. Her response was, “What is dill?” I was quite surprise that she didn’t know what it was, especially since the café in our hotel used dill in everything, so I figured it was something common here. Since holding fingers by my head and saying “moo” wouldn’t work as it did in a restaurant one night when ordering beef – how does one act out a dill – I tried to explain what dill was. Then I remembered the spices in that market have English on the labels. So I drug her to the spice aisle and found the dill weed. Once she saw that, she knew what I was talking about. So, back to the pickle aisle to find ones with dill in them. After much debate, we settled on a jar that looked to be the correct size for snacking and obviously had dill in them. (Lena pointed to the dill picture on the label. So that is what a dill weed looks like.) Apparently, we picked the correct ones, Gma said they were delicious. (and kosher too.)

The kiddos are great. They were basically only children in the morning as they were both on different sleeping schedules. Grace got up first, then Jack at which time Grace went down for a nap and so on from there. They got back on track in the afternoon and took their naps at the same time. We had to stall them at dinner time as the cleaning lady was still here, but they were fine. Jack was getting irritable, but was fine when he finally ate. After that, we gave them baths. We’ve been giving them baths every other day, but tonight they were a mess so we gave them another one. In that long list of changes we’ve seen in them, the bath is a complete difference from the first week. When we gave Grace her first couple baths, you would have thought we were torturing the poor girl. Now she goes in with no fuss. I won’t say it is fun, but it is definitely better.
Here’s a couple pictures to satisfy your Jack and Grace jones.