Gone to the mattresses.

A dog is a man’s best friend. And fleas are common dog companions. If you have a pack of stray dogs living nearby it is only reasonable to expect that sooner or later the fleas will follow. The odds of being infested with fleas grows dramatically higher when neighbors in a desperate attempt to free themselves from those unwelcome guests call the exterminator and treat their yard and house. The fleas, naturally, run for their lives and relocate to the nearest quarters. Incidentally, it happens to be our yard and house.

Now, being bitten time after time after time brought our attention to the problem. Since we don’t fraternize with stray dogs and in no way invite fleas to our house, we called the department of our embassy that deals with various problems with the houses and asked for help. What we received was the advice, “Try to mix half water/ half vinegar and spray everything in the house. Fleas don’t like vinegar.”

We didn’t have vinegar in the house at the time of receiving the advice, so at first we consulted the I-net and found out that besides vinegar, fleas are not particularly fond of salt. Why, we have plenty of salt! Stripping all the bedding from the beds, we sprinkled salt under the mattresses, on the carpets and all other places we could think of and left it for a few days. One would think we were preparing to battle some Dark Forces. Dark Forces in the face of fleas didn’t budge, but our carpets and floors acquired a certain crunchiness.

Next step was to try vinegar/water solution. Methodically I went from room to room spraying mattresses, spring boxes, carpets, undercarperts and everything sprayable. It took me the whole day and several bottles of vinegar. The stench of vinegar penetrated the house and frankly wasn’t very pleasant. The army of fleas slowed their march but the victory was nowhere near.

Finally, the owner was informed that I really wanted to invite exterminators to the house. What did he do? He brought me some powder. I thought, “What the heck, I will try it as well”, but then I read the instructions. In order to use this remedy I was strongly advised to wear gloves, a mask, a robe and put it only in the places not reachable for kids. That is when I decided to ring back to the embassy, after all they suppose to look after us. Well, apparently “looking after us” doesn’t include our particular predicament. Having my best interests in mind, of course, how else can it be, they couldn't provide me with the list of the Pest Control companies in Baku. The nadir of my conversation came with, “You have to do it alone, Mrs.”

“You have to do it alone” - it has philosophical ring to it, isn’t it?

Anyhow, if anybody knows of an exterminator company in Baku or, perhaps, a company who can thoroughly clean carpets and furniture, it will be highly appreciated.

Colours

It is challenging to convert a government rented place into a home, even more challenging when a furniture is provided for you too. But there are also some comforting familiarities - the embassy uses the same stock of furniture all over the world and you know what to expect regarding colours and patterns. Plus, we were blessed to be stationed in Beijing a few years ago where markets offered a huge range of fabric, accent details, and reasonably priced tailors, so I stocked on curtains, furniture covers and some interesting decor items. Add to this wise advise of my friend who was an interior decorator by trade and I can say that I am more or less prepared for that challenge, which in no way means that I sail through it with bells and whistles.

This house is unusually big. The first floor consists of a storage room, a laundry room, a foyer and a garage, the second - has a kitchen, a guest room, and a dining room, and the third - four bedrooms. The kids were so unnerved by its grandeur, they requested to share a room. With weeks trickling by and arrival of our HHE the size worked out in our favour - the kids got to have an additional room adjoined to their bedroom, where they can play to their heart content and which can be easily converted to a guest room; my husband had his office; we transferred a big landing on the second floor into a library, and I acquired a wonderful, light lit room where I can write, meditate or just day dream. (Most importantly, I can just close the door and enjoy piece and quiet)

The dinning room caused me the most headache. Its size is around 100 square meters and the ceiling runs up to three meters. As a result what you had is a vast white space, especially disconcerting on the south wall (25 square metres) where it wasn't punctuated by any furniture. In short, the room that was meant to be the heart of the activities - study/dinning/entertaining area- looked cold and hostile.

I looked at it and looked at it and looked at it again and came to the conclusion that the south wall had to be painted. (Ok, I like painting. I think that there is nothing like painting to make the house your own; I even put rollers and trays in our air shipment, so there is a slight chance that I would have found the reason to paint something around here sooner or later.) Anyway, off to the pursuit of paint I went. Hm, it made me sound more adventurous and decisive than I am, let me rephrase - I went with our driver. This is a very important bit because though being originally from Moscow I speak Russian, in Azeri I know only greetings and a bit of numbers, which isn't enough for discussing merits of paint and negotiating prices. And mind you, those prices are definitely lower when you converse in Azeri.)

In the first two stores the choices of paint were limited and the mixing of the paint had to be done by me; not something I was ready to undertake. In the third store choices were much better but three males (two clerks and my driver) got very involved into the process of selecting the colour for me, to the point of trying to sway me into completely different colour family. I aimed for warm yellow tones, they were amoured by something closer to dusty pink. I had to politely disengage myself from the heated debate and strolled around the shop to clear my head. There in a corner I found my colour - calm yellow, exactly what I wanted.

To make the long story short I spent around five hours the next day going up and down the ladder with a roller in my hand (they didn't have an extension rodes that fitted my instruments) but the results are well worth it. The colour warmed up the room, created an illusion of smaller space, and made it looked much more inviting.

Now, what can I paint next?

What do you think?

Do you have any tricks to transform rental quarters into home? Do share.

On the Bus

On the bus from the downtown to Hafnarfjörður I sat near a young teen. All black outfit adorned with skulls and holes, sweet face where roundness of the cheeks hadn't been replaced yet by angles and hard lines.

He stared at the window, I - at people. Either out of boredom or anxiety he brought his right hand to his mouth and mindlessly started to bite his nails. Automatically, I snapped, "Stop it. Right now!" He jerked his hand from his face, casted me a "what the f-ck" glance and glued himself to the window.

For the remaining 15 minutes of the road his hands laid still in his lap.

I Love You, No Discussion.

No, it isn’t a deranged proclamation of undying love; it is actually an item from a menu of “Pure Lotus”,a very atmospheric vegetarian restaurant in Beijing. (I unearthed it today while sorting through some boxes.) It had a picturesque decor with grottoes, cascading curtains, tables made from ancient beds and absolutely unique presentation which at times made actual process of eating slightly challenging. The food there was excellent but the menu titles were out of this world:

• Birth No Death (konnyaku and kelp slices)


• The Sea of Sensation Has No Limits (soy protein vegetarian duck)


• A Little More Love, A Little Less Misfortune (tomatoes and cauliflower stir-fried in clear sauce)


• The Wind Stirs between Heaven and Earth, But There is No Coming or Going, No is There Rest (wild yam in coconut milk)


• Contemplating The Inner Self (spinach with herb sauce)


• I Shall Absorb Whatever Comes My Way (eggplant or pumpkin casserole with black beans and shitake mushrooms)


• Imperial Kitchen Buddha Jumps Over the Wall (brown mushrooms, day lily flowers, vegetarian protein strips, cabbage, corn)


• I Love You, No Discussion (Deep Friend Eggplant cake in sweet and sour sauce)
  

What would your rather try World of Azure or Mustard Greens and Taro?

Useless Knowledge

Think about vast amount of knowledge we collect each and every day from the moment of our birth. Some of it has practical purpose; some of it is being used once in a while and some is just lurking way in the background never being recalled. Is there such a thing as useless knowledge? It seems like knowledge that doesn’t have any practical purpose or doesn’t bring pleasure can be easily dumped in that category. Easy, no? My husband’s example of useless knowledge was a telephone number of one of the places he once rented. He still remembers it but cannot recall even location of the apartment. My older son came up with, “The memory span of gold fish is three minutes.” The younger one insisted that every bits of knowledge were useful given the right circumstances. I also appeared to be having the hardest time to file any knowledge as useless mostly because odd facts delight me. For example, this little bit about a gold fish is amusing to me. And, if someone does decide to teach a gold fish new tricks he can save himself a lot of trouble by knowing it. So, aside from the junk that media feeds to people (honestly, even if you don’t pay much attention, some of it still sinks in), I am still searching for my piece of useless knowledge. But while I am searching I succeeded in creating a perfectly impractical post and acquired a new odd piece of new information.

Did you know that after spending a night in the water dried fruits bounce back to their normal size?

How to Lose a Loose Tooth

How to lose a loose tooth:

• You can patiently and persistently wiggle it with your finger until it comes out on its own;
• You can go to a dentist and let him pull it out in a clean and safe environment;
• You can allow your mom to wrap a string around it, tie it to a doorknob, hold your breath and wait till the door will swing open;
• Or, you can go to play baseball, try to catch a hit that isn’t meant to be caught and let a ball get rid of you tooth.
  
  And that is exactly how my younger son lost his loose tooth yesterday.
  
  (I am utmost grateful that it was only a loose tooth. For some time there on the field with him crying and blood gushing from his mouth I thought that emergency room was in order.)

Life is Beautiful...

“Life is beautiful and full of surprises”, - an old friend of mine used to say when things were looking up.
“Life is beautiful but full of surprises,” – he used to mutter when things were going undeniably wrong.

Today is my “and” day. The kids came home from school and as usual we sat down for a cup of tea and a snack. Alex told me about his upcoming dinosaur presentation; Anton tried to figure out the quickest possible way of finishing his homework before going to the chess club.
Absolutely out of nowhere came “Mom, we really need to learn Russian more, I started to forget it”. I lost my speech for a minute there but quickly gathered my bearings. Tea cups and saucers were moved to the middle of the table; flash cards and a reading book took their place. Both, Anton and Alex, were really excited about this improvising lesson. They tried to recall old words, twisted their tongues around new ones, helped each other to find the right way of saying them and giggled at each other mistakes. On the wave of this unexpected enthusiasm they started to put letters together and ended up actually reading several pages of the reading book. Granted, there were fairly short, small words and phrases but it was the first time ever the boys initiated such thing all by themselves.
I am thrilled!

Now, if only I can find a way to keep them interested.