Dividing My Time

International Womens' Day/Международный женский день: Clara and Rosa Turning in their Graves!

 

When the men are silent, it is our duty to raise our voices in behalf of our ideals.
~Clara Zetkin

This week was of course the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day – or 8th of March, as it is better known in Russia, one of the most important dates in a calendar chocker block with important holidays.   

8th of March was originally conceived as a day dedicated lobbying for equal rights for women, universal suffrage, and the abilities and achievements of women throughout the world.   It was first celebrated in Russia in 1913, and, after the revolution of 1917, quickly became a fixture on the calendar for the new Bolshevik government.    On the 8th of March, men are supposed to take on all the tasks traditionally assigned to women.  They clean the house, make a meal, or possibly look after the children.  Today, however, in this more mercantile post-perestroika era, celebrations have strayed a little bit far off the mark.   8th of March has become an obligatory gift giving extravaganza.  The gross national product of Holland shoots up a number of points due to all the flowers sold on 8th of March, and restaurants do a brisk business for those International men who can’t quite face the kitchen.   

This year, Russia held its national beauty pageant and crowned a “Miss Russia,” and this alone would have the socialist pioneers Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxumburg turning in their graves.  In what are politely called penal facilitates, Russian women prisoners also held beauty contests to crown a “Miss Prison Russia.”   Russia’s favorite redhead spy, Anna Chapman, who for some reason is still making headlines, launched a very silly website, and Russia’s infamously unpleasant traffic cops declared a one day cease fire on pulling women over for minor traffic offences.  This pulled the GDP of Russia down a few points.

Celebrating 8th of March this year was a three-day event thanks to the way the holiday fell in the middle of the week.   For the uninitiated used to bank holidays and first Mondays, this may seem a trifle confusing, but follow me if you can:

Saturday, March 5th was a working day, meaning that Russians worked a six-day week.   We had to work on Saturday so that Monday, March 7th could be a day off even though Tuesday, March 8th was the actual holiday.  Does that make sense? Vintage Russian public holiday stuff.     If the holiday is on a Tuesday, you have to have the Monday off as well so you can get a three-day weekend.  Even though you have to work on the previous Saturday.   Where that gets us, I don’t know, but I’m not sure anyone comes out ahead.    Joe Biden is town this week and he’s talking about Russia’s accession to the WTO but if you ask me (and no one ever ever does) if they let that warped individual who sits in his windowless room in the Kremlin massaging the calendar keep on with this stuff, Russia doesn’t deserve to join the WTO.

On Saturday, I actually came in from London – a flight time of just over three hours.   It took me about that amount of time to get from Domodedevo Airport to my flat in Moscow.  HRH, my “horrible Russian Husband” was unable to meet me since he was at work, so Tolya my driver and I sat in a traffic jam that was more than usually insane.

“Yep,” said Tolya, “Everyone’s out congratulating the ladies.”  

Saturday may be a working day, but most of it is given over to kicking off 8th of March in fine style, with lots of champagne, chocolates and flowers.  Legions of delivery trucks leaned on their horns and tried to cut off their competitors through the gridlock.

Tolya told me he’d heard on the radio that you could hire an official emergency service ambulance as a taxi service for 6000 rubles and hour, which comes to about 200 USD per hour.   

“I don’t approve of it,” he said.  Neither did I, but we both agreed that it require a leap of the imagination to understand that it was actually happening.   

My HRH hates to shop for anything – he becomes grumpy and impatient buying a newspaper at a kiosk, or a loaf of bread at the nice French bakery across the street from us.   But, each 8th of March, he girds his loins and plunges into the maelstrom of baffled men trying to club together ingredients for a home cooked meal.

“Keep it simple,” I advised as we parked the car at a new place I’d heard about, called The Farmer’s Bazaar.  I had high hopes of it turning out to be the Whole Foods of Moscow, which of course was delusional of me.  It turned out to be a token supermarket on the 5th floor of what used to be a perfectly respectable food market on a central Russian street.  Closed for a number of years, it had recently re-opened as a glitzy shopping mall.  Because that’s just what Moscow needs – another glitzy shopping mall.   And who in their right mind puts a supermarket on the 5th floor of a glitzy shopping mall?   

Farmer’s Bazaar was definitely not Whole Foods.   Far from it.  It was like any overpriced Moscow supermarket:  you needed to take a second mortgage to afford some of the items.  I clocked a small package of white beans, which are admittedly hard to find here, retailing for just over $12.  A packet of Earl Grey Tea would run you $20.   HRH had that “I knew this would be a nightmare” look on his face as I steered him over to the fish counter.   He was mildly mollified by some fresh fin de Claire oysters, reasonably priced at about 3 bucks a pop, and ordered a few dozen.  These were carefully packaged in plastic takeaway containers with a bed of ice, but the problems was that they only fit 3 oysters to the container, so we ended up with ten takeaway containers.   I then queered the deal by asking if I could buy the heads and spines of some beautiful fish one of the charmingly nautically clad fishmongers was gutting.  This appeared to be the first time anyone behind the fish counter had ever received a request remotely like this, and it was met with a lot of suspicion.

Needless to say, I’ll be back to shopping on my own for the next calendar year.

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This post is part of The Stunt.

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Hello There Male and Female Readers!

How did your 8th of March pan out?  Did you get anything nice?  Did you encounter any baffled men?  Let us know 

Instead of some links to other posts, today, have a listen to a live radio interview I did with Voice of Russia by clicking here.

 

The Imported Locavore

I am a culinary schizophrenic.

I spend half my time in the messy and energetic Russian capital and the other half in Northampton: the politically correct epicenter of the galaxy, nestled in the heart of the bucolic Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts.  I designed this division of time to become a saner human being, but it has completely backfired.

“Have an olive,” I urge Vladimir over drinks in Moscow, “they’re from Spain.”

“Have some hummus,” I invite Caitlin at a poetry reading in Northampton, “the chickpeas were grown three miles from here in a humane solar-powered greenhouse co-operative.”

In Northampton, any invitation involving food necessitates sending out the following code, “Do you or your partner have any food allergies?” This reveals the extensive list of banned substances.  Your guest responds: “We eat everything, except of course red meat, caffeine, chickens and eggs from non-local humane farms outside a six mile radius. No alcohol, of course…no sugar, obviously, and oh, no farmed fish, or processed dairy.”  Which leaves a gourmand like me almost nothing to work with.

Contrast this with a recent exchange in Moscow:

“Come for Sunday lunch,” I email Posey St. Edmonds, mother of three,  “I’m making Bouef Bourguignon.”

“Awesome,” she answers, “what can I bring?”

“Childcare,” I respond.

In Northampton, everyone is a passionately committed locavore, consuming only that food which is humanely grown within biking distance of her own front door. Even the garbage collectors in Northampton go around on bikes.   Imagine chickens being tucked in at night, and you aren’t far wrong.   Ground Zero for Northampton locavores is the Tuesday farmers’ market known simply as “Market.” When I first moved to town, I was totally fired up for “Market.”   I bought the tote bag and hid my car in the adjacent multi-story car park, doing what I hoped was a credible imitation of someone who biked everywhere.  I felt sure the sisterhood of writers, poets, yogis, and fascinating friends I planned to make would all be there.   Two hours (and a desperate trip around the corner for some locally-made rum raisin ice cream) I reluctantly concluded that “Market” was great if you wanted to live on kale salad.  I didn’t. 

I feel curiously off the hook somehow when I return to Moscow, where even the most committed Northamptonite would be forced to agree: you can’t subsist on a diet of local beets, sour cream, and cabbage, and you’d lose face if you tried.  It’s all about imports here in the Big Potato—a sushi bar on every street, a German beer in each refrigerator.

Nothing in Moscow is easy, though, and shopping for imported food at a decent price is an all-day contact sport necessitating stamina, my wingman Tolya-The-Driver, the gas-guzzling Land Rover, and a full water bottle.  Our objective: a large, wholesale cash-and-carry warehouse, catering mainly to restaurants, called METRO, where $100 gets you more than three items.  Cash is king here, so I secure a wad of 1000 RUR notes from HRH, tuck them carefully into a money belt, don my most comfortable shoes and dress in layers that can be removed as needed.  

Oh, the thrill of METRO!  Much harder work than “Market,” but infinitely more satisfying.  I feel like a mighty Neanderthal hunter-gatherer, forging through the jungle of Leningradski Prospekt, stealthily sneaking the re-usable shopping bags (no five cent discount for using these at METRO) past the watchful eye of the armed security guard, and stalking my prey.  

List poised, I push the oversized, lopsided trolley around, parking it strategically at the end of an aisle blocked by surly staff re-stocking with their forklifts.  On goes my coat for a plunge into the chilly meat room:  Lamb chops from Wellington, chicken breasts from Lille!  Forward to the Dairy Annexe for Finnish milk and Swiss cheese.  Spanish anchovies in olive oil, and real cornishons from France not Bulgaria!  Momentary confusion in the spice aisle: why so very much allspice and no cumin?  Alas, this day is not a complete retail slam-dunk: no Australian wine, but compensation looms in the form of Greek melting cheese and Israeli limes.   

Once the bounty is safely stowed in the back of the Land Rover, Tolya and I celebrate with some local fare:  Quarter Pounders with cheese, from the Avto-Mac, made from beef raised just outside of Moscow.  We don’t want to be accused of not supporting local food producers or anything.

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This post first appeared as an article in Russia Beyond The Headlines and The Washington Post on February 22, 2011.  

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Dear Readers,

Do you get embroiled in the "it has to be grown within a bike ride away from you" stuff?  Did you read "The Poser" where the narrator comes across a woman sobbing in a Seattle grocery store because she can't find artisan cheese to take to her Nursery School's snack thing...only something from Madison, WI?  Hilarious.  Alternatively, do you live in a place where everything is imported?  

Hit the comment button and let us know how your shopping plays out each week! And if you would like some more humor from the disconnect between Moscow and Northampton, try some posts like these:

Day of Russian Policemen/День российской милиции: Do They Know Where My Husband Is?

May Day / День труда: A Day of Solidarity

Oh, Do You Know The Muffin Mom?

If you enjoyed this post, share it with your friends by liking it on Facebook, tweeting it to your followers, or re-blogging it, all available on the buttons below!

Day of the Furniture Makers/День мебельщика: Let’s Hear it For The Swedes!

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. 

~ William Morris

Today is Furniture Makers’ Day!   Although this isn’t an official holiday on the calendar, it has been celebrated for the last ten years by the members of the Association of Furniture Companies and Woodworking Industries of Russia, formed in 1997.

 Most of the furniture in Russia, of course, is not Russian at all, but Swedish.  As we say in Russia:  “If there’s an idea, there’s IKEA,” and there is nothing quite like a day out at that island of Nordic calm to make you feel like the world makes sense again.  For 5,000 RUR ($158.92) you can perk up your house something fierce, with vases, candles, wicker footstools or stacking plastic boxes.  I love IKEA, in fact, my heart went thumpty thump when my cleaning lady told me we needed some new towels!  I’m planning a trip out there next week and I can hardly wait!!   

I love IKEA so much, I agreed to accompany Babushka  (HRH's mother) there to plan her “shkaff” that all-important floor-to-ceiling wall unit for the bedroom in her new apartment, a task neither of her (amazingly self-centered) children seemed willing or able to do.   Patiently, I followed her around the showrooms, marking down the items in the free catalog (“More Copies Read than the Bible”) for further consideration, had her choose the color and make, and then, at home, we logged on to ikea.ru, pulled up their “Build Your Own Wall Unit” program, which is the most fun you can have with your clothes on…well with Babushka anyway.   And for the next four hours the conversation went like this:

“Would you like drawers, here, or wire baskets?” I asked.

She looked baffled; choice never having been high up on the list of luxuries she’d enjoyed.

“I don’t know,” she finally said.

“How about a few of each?” I said encouragingly, and add them with a click of the mouse.

She got into it.   The magic is universal.  We debated whether she needed one long closet or could go double-tier for shirts and pants.   We had cups of tea while we decided whether the entire façade should be of opaque glass panels or solid white.   She deliberated over the wire basket/drawer debate a little longer, added some shoe racks, and moved the full-length mirror panel, but eventually we were done, and I hit the “CALCULATE and PRINT” button.  The printer spewed out a hard copy of the plan from the screen, a list of items with their warehouse identification number, as well as an invoice.

“Now, you just go into the store, and straight to the cashier,” I instructed, “and you pay them.  Then, and this is the most important part, you go to the ‘Home Delivery’ section and you ask for Delivery AND Assembly.”

“Oh,” she protested in that demurring Soviet “Assembly is not for the likes of me” tone, “I think Dedushka (HRH's father) can – “

“No no!” I said emphatically. “Dedushka and your son and a case of beer is not the way to go.”

Dedushka and HRH had often attempted to assemble IKEA furniture and the procedure was always the same: I bugged HRH about it three or four times, which he ignored.  When I started to become more shrill, he’d pull out the well-worn excuse that he’d lent the drill to his extremely slimy friend Ilya.  Changing tactic, I’d attack his weak flank, threatening to call in “Husband By The Hour,” a small service company that sends you a handyman to do all the things your lazy husband refuses to do:  hang pictures, paint a wall, remove an old sofa (for which you need two Husbands By The Hour) and that kind of thing.  HRH maintains that they are useless, which he pronounces “You-zzz-e-less,” and blames them for the fact that Velvet’s closet door had unmatched handles.  He cannot stick the Husbands By The Hour, so he gets in the most “You-zzz-e-less” person in the solar system – Dedushka – to come and help him assemble the furniture.

Dedushka tends to arrive in a suit and tie, which is how he was dressed during our entire move to a new apartment.  I think he thinks this is a clear indication to anyone who is interested that he is not accustomed to manual labor.   He and HRH change into the Russian guys–doing-chores uniform:  shiny tracksuit bottoms and striped navel shirts.  They have three or four beers while they unpack the boxes and lay out the parts.  

“There aren’t enough of the XYZ,” HRH informs me 37 minutes into the exercise.  Without even looking up from what I am doing, I say:

“Check again.”

Signs that they have found the missing parts and are getting on with it emerge from whatever room they are in:  heated arguments, the intermittent sound of a drill, and Velvet who trots into to the kitchen to ask for more beer.  It took all day.  But that is now a thing of the past.

Delivery AND Assembly: Because I’m worth it.

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This post is part of The Stunt

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Greetings Readers!

Are you an IKEA fan?  How could you not be?  Have you ever unpacked a box from them and found bits missing?   No, I didn’t think so.   But, if you have an IKEA story, and everyone does, click on the comment button below and let us know about it!

Or stick around and enjoy more posts like this one:

Hide and Seek

A Hymn to Him

Russians En Route

Добро пожаловать! Welcome BlogTrotters!

Today I’m the featured blogger on Blogtrotting!  This is very exciting and it is my pleasure to welcome you to my blog and the country where I spend a lot of my time: The Russian Federation.   This post will give you a little bit of the skinny on me and Russia, as well as Me & Russia: a long-term, somewhat choppy relationship, which for better or worse, and richer or poorer, is set to last a lifetime.  I've left a few breadcrumbs to follow to some classic posts via links, and I hope you'll stay a while and browse.   

I’m an American who fell in love with Russian language, history, and culture when I was a bored 13 year-old and read Robert Massie's “Nicholas and Alexandra.”   After The Wall came down, I majored in 19th Century Russian Studies, graduated, and set sail for Russia just in time for the main act of perestroika.  To my extreme shock and horror, Russia in 1989 looked nothing like “Nicholas and Alexandra."  You could have knocked me over with a feather.   I almost left, but it was all too compelling to give up.  So, here I am, 17 years later.

In 1992, I settled down in Moscow with the man who would become HRH (which, in addition to meaning “His Royal Highness” can also mean, depending on my mood, “Horrible” or “Handsome” Russian Husband.”) After a suitable interval, we were joined by our daughter, Velvet, who, at the age of six months made it abundantly clear to us that her life would be dedicated spending as much time with horses as possible.   To better facilitate this, we’ve sent her to school in rural Massachusetts and we now divide our time between Northampton, MA and Moscow, and when people ask me what I do, I tell them, I'm a Pony Mom.  We have many frequent flyer miles, but not enough to fly through volcanic ash.

We are an eclectic extended household, which includes some stock characters such as HRH’s parents about whom he says:  “They’re trying,” to which I respond, “and that’s not all they are…” our housekeeper, and our long-suffering driver. If that seems like a lot of staff, well, Russia is a human resources rich country.

“How do you like living here?” Russians ask me all the time.  “It’s never dull,” I tell them, and it isn’t.   Everything you try to do takes strategic planning, on-the-ground know-how, and sheer guts.    What for example, would you do if confronted with this situation? 

Or this one?

 Or indeed, this one?

Though I am pretty sure you would know what to do in this situation...

 

 “What has been the best thing about living in Russia for seventeen years?” asked an American lawyer.  

“Smoked salmon,” I replied promptly.  

“What can’t you get in Russia?” people often ask. The answer used to be everything from A-Z, so much so that I would play that game “I packed my grandmother’s trunk…” when I couldn’t fall asleep.  Today, it’s just zip lock bags and Eileen Fisher.  Yes, I’ve seen a lot of changes.

My blog is about finding the funnier side of life in Russia, which isn’t always easy, but incredibly satisfying when you do. Even the Russian TV Guide is funny.   I found a guy so desperate to find a girlfriend that he dressed up in absurd clothing and was photographed in a truly tacky 18th century palace.   You don’t see that every day, but you can see him here.  

I have a thing about the Uniformed in Russia.  I also am on a mission to chart all of Russia’s professional holidays, which include everything from the Day of the Cosmonauts to Customs’ Workers Day (and how I am going to find anything nice to say about them, I don’t know...stay tuned!).

Moscow is a huge sprawling city that has very beautiful parts of it, like the Moscow Kremlin, and some really awful parts of it, like the raw open wounds of chaotic construction all over the city.   It’s a brusque, businesslike place, where traffic is often gridlocked and the weather is often grey.   Moscow doesn’t welcome you with open arms, but you can find a lot of interesting things if you are willing to look.  I take a lot of pictures in Moscow of the things I see – mainly the things that stand out at me as very ironic, very funny, very sad, or very typical of the Russian approach to life, which is often a combination of all of the above.  I hope you enjoy having a look around.

I love to cook, and living in Russia, oddly enough made me a good one.  I prefer to shop at the Farmers' Markets, which isn't for the faint of heart, but the best place to get fresh produce, meat and fish.

 

 
  
 

  

It is hard being a photographer in Russia, because very few people want to have their pictures taken, especially people in uniform, which is why I really treasure these shots:

 
Moscow cityscapes:

 
 
 

 
 
 

 The women who made Hitler cry...

 
 
 A man who helped...

 And the most enduring image of them all...with the ubiquitous crane...

Author's Notes:

Photos by Jennifer Eremeeva, with sincere thanks to the administration of Dorogomilovskaya Market for allowing me to take pictures of the farmer's market.

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Dear Reader:  I close my posts by thanking readers for stopping by, and telling them how much I value their feedback about Dividing My Time. If you would like to leave a comment, please feel free to click the comment button below.  This is especially true today, when I look forward to welcoming new readers!  I would also like to thank Blogtrotting for their interest in featuring this post:  Большое вам спасибо: Russian for Thank you very much!

 

Siberian Pel’meni for a London Yummy Mummy

My friend Susan casually asked me if I knew how to make Siberian pel’meni, which she, bathed in the innocence one who has never attempted them, wanted to make.  “My daughters had a Russian nanny who used to make them these incredible meat dumplings,” she said, “and after she left us, we haven’t really found anything else they like quite so much.”

I could not imagine clever, chic, artistic Susan, who works as a TV producer, up to her elbows in flour and pel’meni filling, nor indeed, that Susan could spare the entire day and a half the process entails.  Pel’meni and Susan didn’t seem like a match made in heaven when I looked at it objectively.   Susan’s life little resembles that of the women of the ancient Finno-Ugric tribes who brought pel’meni to the Ural Mountains. Although she’s often on the go, she’s not necessarily on the move; so is not forced to carry her entire food supply on her back, which means she isn’t choosing pel’meni because of the protection they provide to her family from savage animal predators: the dough on the outside of the dumpling masks the smell of the meat inside, an early, and indeed enduring appeal of pel’meni to the local tribes of the Ural Mountains. 

The climate Susan lives in (Fulham, London) doesn’t get cold enough to facilitate the natural flash freezing capability which made pel’meni such a hit with Siberian housewives.  These sturdy women gathered after an animal had been slaughtered to create an assembly line Henry Ford would have envied: parlaying the fresh meat and simple dough into hundreds of delectable pel’meni, which they then buried in the snow.  This locked in the freshness of the meat and provided an ample stockpile of food for the long Siberian winter ahead.  What does a chic yummy mummy need with this kind of fodder?

But then I thought: Susan is, after all, a mother, and mothers through the ages have known that you’ll never be stuck if you have some frozen pel’meni on hand: be they buried in the -40 degree Siberian perma-frost, or tucked in the back of your SUBZERO freezer.  So, Susan, if you can find a two-day break in your hectic life, here is your pel’meni recipe:

If you are going to go to the trouble of making pel’meni, so the Russian saying goes, you might as well make a lot.  And, take your time, because, “pel’meni ni terpyat speshki,” or pel’meni don’t tolerate rushing.  And, take a leaf from the Siberian villagers, rope in some like-minded friends, and make it a community effort.

Ingredients: 

For the dough:

3 cups of flour

1-teaspoon salt

3 whole eggs

1/3-cup warm water 

For the Filling:

250 grams of beef

250 grams of pork

1 yellow onion

1 tablespoon of salt

3 grinds of black pepper

A pinch of marjoram or spices to your taste (note: classic Siberian dumplings do not have any spice, but rely on the garnish to give the dumplings their flavor, but the Baltic version of pel’meni does include marjoram, and I think it adds much to the meat, so I include it here.)

To make the dough:  Sift together the flour and the salt in a large bowl.   Create a shallow well and add the eggs and the water into the flour.  Work the dough together and turn out on a floured surface, kneading with your hands until the dough holds together.  Cover with a bowl and leave to set for an hour.

 
 
 
 
 

To make the filling:  For ancient nomadic women, this was the labor-intensive part, as they minced the meat into tiny slivers.  I used my food processor, which took about 45 seconds.   Process the meat, onion, salt, and spices together in the food processor until smooth.  Cover and set aside.

 
 
 
 

To assemble the pel’meni: At this point, I put “pasta roller” on the list of things I wanted for Christmas, and if you have one, by all means, dust it off and use it.   I rolled my dough out with a rolling pin until very thin (no more than 2 millimeters).  Using a cookie cutter or the rim of a glass cut out circles approximately 7 cm in diameter.  Into the center of each circle, place a ball of filling.   Fold the dough circle in half over the filling, and crimp the edges together.  Then fold the crescent into half again, and pinch the two edges together to form the final dumpling.  The comprehensive web site dedicated to the history, art, and traditions, pelemeni.ru notes a time-honored tradition of sneaking a “surprise” into the last pel’meni of the batch: and the one who gets this dumpling, receives the good fortune implied by it: a small coin for wealth, sugar for love etc.

 
 
 

 To cook the pel’meni: Bring a large pot of cold, salted water to a vigorous boil.  Add a tablespoon of oil to the boiling water, and then drop the pel’meni in, one by one, taking care not to overcrowd the pot, and keeping the pel’meni from sticking to one another.   Cook for 4-6 minutes, or until the pel’meni bob up to the top of the water.  Drain.

 

To serve, garnish, and eat pel’meni:  Siberians eat pel’meni with tangy vinegar and hot mustard; Russians in the western part of Russia smother them with melted butter or sour cream.   Pel’meni are also often served in broth as a soup, in which case the cooked pel’meni are gently lowered into the hot broth, and stirred gently to warm them through, serving immediately.

 Priyatnogo Appetita!

Author’s notes:  

This article first appeared in French in La Russie d'Aujourd'hui, a supplement in Le Figaro on April 21, 2010.  A link to this article's pdf version is available by clicking on the link.

Recipe adapted from A Gift To Young Housewives by Elena Molokhovets’ and A La Russe, by Darra Goldstien.  

I'm indebted also to www.pelemeni.ru.

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Dear Reader:

Thank you for visiting my blog and reading this article.  It means a lot to me, as does your feedback.  Tell me, did you try the recipe?  Did it work?  Are you a Yummy Mummy?  And if you are, do you think this recipe would fit into your repertoire?   What other Russian classics do you challenge me to try and publish here on Dividing My Time?

Leave a comment by clicking on the comment button below, and I'll attempt it next month!

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Hide and Seek

    Here I am, once again, playing a reluctant game of hide-and-seek-in-my-own-home.  HRH’s parents have come from Russia to stay in Northampton for a week.   Funny thing about time.  HRH’s and my tantalizingly just-around-the-corner week on the beach in St. Croix will be woefully short.  This post-Christmas week with HRH’s parents is flowing like cement.    I’m exhausted from single-handedly pulling off Christmas, and I am having trouble womaning up to single-handedly pull off New Year’s Eve.   But I have to, because New Year’s Eve is the main event for Russians: as I pointed out in one of my columns, the Orthodox Christmas is on January 7th, and was not widely celebrated in The Soviet Union.  All of the Christmas trees, gifts and their emaciated version of Santa Claus, Dedushka (Grandfather) Frost have shifted to New Year’s Eve. 

    I cannot look to our own “Dedushka,” HRH’s father, for much practical help, although his entire time and energy is devoted to seeming busy, looking important, and asking us if he can help.  He can’t.   I feel he is a prime candidate for the chill-pill line of pharmaceuticals – like a quadruple hit of Zanax or Valium, which I yearn to slip into his morning muesli.   These might perhaps cut down on his constant fidgeting, the restless pursuit of a purpose or occupation, or his insistence on mixing the thirty-some English words he knows in with the forty German ones, no one else understands, with Russian, which is so clearly the lingua franca of this particular group.   I’m not sure about drugs though, since he is my prime suspect in the case of the rapidly disappearing cooking brandy, and alcohol it seems to have only further hyped him up: He’s underfoot everywhere, offering suggestions or authoritative supervision on the execution of things he can’t do, like drive.  Or cook.   He drove me straight to the cocktail shaker this afternoon as he tried to direct me backing the grocery-laden Subaru into our garage.  Backing automobiles into narrow confined spaces is not my primary skill set, but I don’t need a hyperactive non-driver getting in on the act.

    If Dedushka could use a chill pill, his wife, Babushka, (Granny) might find life a brighter proposition with the pharma forklift provided by Prozac or Lexipro.  Unfortunately, neither would even consider ever discussing mood enhancers with their primary care physicians, because that generation just didn’t do that kind of thing in Russia. You didn’t talk to anyone working for the State and keeping records about feeling a little down. Pity.  Babushka seems to bear the weight of the world’s sorrows on her back, and qualifies every noun with the adjective “poor.”  “Poor trees that were cut down and turned into firewood!”  “Poor oysters we are about to eat,” or “Lovely snow, but the poor stuff will melt later today.”  She is savvier than Dedushka, though very self-effacing, and she has wisely retreated into the abject misery of a stuffy nose.  I may teach her to Neti Pot just as a diversion. Still, she seems very appreciative of what she’s found here in Northampton.  Like Eileen Fisher and some really nice fish pate.  We had a longish time at my beauty salon where a very patient and nice stylist worked for about three hours to turn her Russian-salon florescent henna with green highlights into a lovely auburn with caramel lowlights.  This was ultimately successful, but she whispered to me somewhere into the second hour, “Is this going to be way too dark?”

    Babushka is more helpful because she can, and, unlike the men in her family, is prepared, to make a bed or wash a dish.  True, my new kitchen clearly intimidates her.  The pots are heavy, the knives are sharp, the gas stove is menacing, and most of the food she finds in the fridge is unfamiliar.  Still, she’s determined to be helpful, so I’ve ceded her the kitchen.  This, as any woman who has ever married a man with a mother still living knows, is the right and proper thing to do.  This is the right and proper thing to do even if you are way better at cutting up the baffling items in the fridge with the scary sharp knives, then cooking them in the heavy pots on the intimidating stove.   Even Nigella Lawson should do this.  I’m gritting my teeth as she drapes dirty napkins and soiled dishcloths across clean surfaces for reasons I can’t fathom, and I sneak in at night to put all of the inadequately-washed wine glasses through the dishwasher, but in general, I just give it all a wide berth.

So, I’m playing reluctant-hide-and-seek. In my own home.

    My friend Victoria, who also has an HRH, and three children under the age of seven, in Moscow knows all about hide-and-seek-in-her-own-home.    She is usually hiding from her own children or their many and varied nannies, trying to finish an article or get over a bad case of the ‘flu.  She barricades herself in the Master Bedroom.

    “En-suite bathrooms,” she says, nodding, “are the key.  If you can access a toilet and manage to stockpile food and drink, you need never see anyone.”

I haven’t played hide-and-seek-in-my-own-home yet in Northampton, but I play a great deal of it in Moscow.  Russia is a human resources rich country, and so I have a lot of “Help” in Moscow.  And I have to hide from them, due to an architectural flaw in my apartment.   With 20/20 hindsight, I see now that I should have been firmer about the – admittedly stunning – but completely transparent glass walls of the little study, where I am supposed to write The World’s First Funny Book on Russia.   These glass panels are a green light to anyone to rap softly, gesture wildly, and come in saying, “I’m not disturbing you, am I?”  And this happens all day long.   Even when there is a sign, in Russian, taped to the outside of the glass wall, with only two or three spelling errors, but nothing that would confuse the reader as to the general thrust of the message, which is to PLEASE let me get on with writing the World’s First Funny Book on Russia undisturbed.   

    Tolya-the-driver bustles in and out on HRH’s errands, which mainly consist of escorting electricians into my en suite bathroom (removing that iron-clad hiding place).  They all stop to have a cup of tea with the long-suffering Raisa, our cleaning lady.   Raisa, like any Russian cleaning lady worth her salt, is always up for a lengthy one way chat about her current automotive disasters, the deplorable state of her dacha, how expensive everything is, or the details of the latest in a series of endless acquaintances who are diagnosed with really gruesome fatal illnesses.  I never know what to say in these situations, except to repeat every synonym I can think of for “how awful!”  Russian, as the Russians say, is a rich language, so there are a lot of synonyms.   None of them ever seems quite up to the magnitude of Raisa’s tragedies, so I’ve got in the habit of dodging the bullet, by being up and dressed and out the door before she arrives.   Where to go was sometimes a challenge until the next-door Starbucks opened, and then where to write the World’s First Funny Book on Russia was painlessly and somewhat stereo-typically solved.   

    “Just ignore them!” HRH says.   “Write your book in the study, for Chrissakes!”  He, child of the “classless” proletarian revolution, has no qualms about behaving like Ivan the Terrible to The Help.  If he and a cadre of rust belt factory directors have had a long hard night with a case of vodka, he simply stays in bed until noon.  Rising, he dons his dressing gown and parades around the apartment, like a medieval boyar, smelling like a distillery, yelling at people on the phone, sending Raisa and Tolya scurrying away to avoid bothering him.  It’s dead impressive, and I’m deeply jealous.   Raisa will make him a three-course meal from scratch if he only hints that he’s hungry, whereas I’m next door paying 660 rubles for a “Venti skinny latte c dvumiaya dop shotiy.”  (Venti skinny latte with two extra shots).  But you know, at Starbucks worldwide, after they give you that latte, they leave you alone to get on with it.  They don’t start vacuuming the parquet floor just outside the glass panels of your stupidly designed study.

    This doesn’t seem to be an issue with the people who work here on the renovations to the house in Northampton, which is traditionally a place to which hedge fund managers flee to become contented stonemasons.  So, the electrician here is a really cool lady from Noho with a killer tool bag, the husband and wife team who have painted the entire house are really musicians, and my contractor (a sculptor) and the cabinet maker (also a sculptor) spend the day comparing Italian trattoria they know and love. I’m very fond of the sheet rock guy, who shares his thoughts on how sex when you are with your partner in the Caribbean is outstanding (a correct assumption I’m clinging to).  He really does need his own reality TV show.  I’ve got no problem wandering around the house if they are there, making them coffee, writing up in my loft as they work away, and I’d be delighted if they stayed all day.  “How wonderful,” I say, as they enthuse about the latest gig or exhibit, and then go and look up synonyms for wonderful.

    I’ve ceded the new kitchen to Babushka, but I still can’t work out what Dedushka should do.  Neither has he.  I feel its somehow not quite right to ask him to bring in some wood, although this is what I expect of any male guest over the age of 12.  I fear Dedushka will take offense: think I’m confusing him with the Help.  He clearly wants to have a long one-way chat and tell me all about New York, or San Francisco or some other place I know a lot better than he does.  So, I’m hiding.   I don’t think HRH’s parents have worked out where our bedroom is, and they can’t be sure if I’m up in the loft where HRH and I have our desks, which is where I’m hiding.  But Dedushka has wandered up, so I may need to go to Northampton’s wonderful public library to look something up.   Like the length of every single river on the planet.  And hit a Starbucks. Hard.