So, here, and here, we are: inaugural post

I have always wanted to “divide my time.”   

I wanted to divide it geographically between Moscow and…somewhere other than Moscow.  I would like to divide my time wisely, as I attempt to write a book about my life as an American expatriate living in Russia, married to HRH (my “Horrible Russian Husband”) and bringing up Velvet, my horse-obsessed daughter, while actually living that life.  

I would like to divide my writing time evenly: between the book and my monthly columns in Russia Now! and my other interests such as reading contemporary fiction, my weekly podcast line-up, European Royalty from 1837 – 1918, cooking, hunting for antiques, photography, and my next big travel adventure.    I spent too many years procrastinating by scrutinizing book jackets, all of which seemed to feature tasteful black and white photos of smooth-haired successful women authors, all of whom seemed to “divide their time,” between two enviable locations:  Oxford and Sydney, London and New York, Berkley and Paris.   

So, now I’m dividing my time between Moscow, Russia: a massive, magnificent and messy city of 12 million which I’ve called home for 17 years, and Northampton, Massachusetts, a small, beautiful, artsy New England college town, which I’ve also called home for 7 months.  This doesn’t exactly fit the chic author prototype, but nevertheless, there -- and there, HRH, Velvet and I are – some of the time all together, and a lot of the time one of us in one country and the other two in another: this blog is dedicated mainly to writing about our crazy “trans-cultural” life in Russia and Northampton, but also making time to explore all my favorite things and write about them, instead of just looking at book jackets.  

I hope you enjoy!