The moment has passed . . .

I’m learning something about myself – if I don’t write things down, I forget them. Grocery lists and to-do lists aside (of which I am an avid keeper), it’s the things my children say, the learning moments and even the hard things, the ones that nearly break me. . .

Just a few days ago I was really struggling with all this housing arrangement business but the emotional heaviness of the moment is starting to dim. I’m forgetting.

Only because I’m happy, quite happy with the mid-week reversal.

So there we were at Valya’s – all tense, all silent (except for my high-spirited children)and it was suffocating. I didn’t know where we would live and from what I’d seen (one house) I was ready to go home to mymother. This was the first time I’d felt this way. I told Nathan how I felt and he was crushed but I felt better after saying it (sorry honey!) This was on Wednesday and later that afternoon we left thebabes with Sveta (Valya’s wife) while we went to the house to pack our things up. After an hour, Valya joined us with his son Pavel (who incidentally is a suspect in the break in) and his fiancée Galina. They began rolling up carpets and removing them from the walls.

When the carpet from the wall dividing our room from thebabes room was removed, Pavel noted the auxiliary stove – the first woodburning stove in the dom before the one in the kitchen was built – it probably hadn’t been used in 30years. But he asked the question, one neither Nathan nor I nor Valya thought to ask, what about this stove? Why couldn’t it heat the house sufficiently? Valya gave him the go ahead to try it out and we all stopped packing. The rest of the day was spent monitoring the stove and adding fuel every few hours or so.

It was working.

The next morning Nathan and I happily departed for the dom. It was decided among all of us that this would work. IT WOULD WORK!!! So we left thebabes again with Sveta and we spent the entire day cleaning the dom, unpacking and getting ready for normalcy again. Oh!! The excitement!! Around 7pm it was blissfully warm inside (while a blizzard was raging outside), relatively clean, and quite cozy. We picked up ourbabes and the rest of our stuff and

WE WENT HOME!!

How grateful I am that we have been able to stay in this house – after seeing the alternative – it is the best for us.

Oh, and it’s warmer.

The stove, remember, is in the wall between our room and thebabes. Before we were the furthest room from the stove in the kitchen and the water pipes didn’t get as hot as everywhere else.

We are SO TOASTY!!!

There will be a lot more work to do. For one thing Nathan is now cleaning TWO stoves as well as fueling them TWICE a day. And the coal dust will now be t h i c k EVERYWHERE.

CINDER-JONESES

But I’m energized and it was actually helpful to spend a little time with Sveta in her dom. She was quite fastidious in her domestic duties and I’ve been newly inspired. We don’t have much, it’s true, but I appreciated an opportunity to see how she used her resources and I feel I can apply her approach.

As an aside, Oleg Petrovich, the cat that came with the house, is now back to looking like his Russified namesake, Oliver Twist. He’s quite scrawny again and gets a little too overexcited whenever we approach his food bowl. Des has begun to confidently take him by the scruff of the neck and oust him when I’ve had enough of him under-my-feet. I HATE stepping on cats.

Oh, and really the cherry-on-top of this nightmare reversal is receiving the package mymom sent stuffed with videos. Since returning to our dom, when thebabes have gone to bed, Nathan and I cuddle up in our warm bedroom and watch “Pride and Prejudice.”

It’s quite perfect.

Quite.