December 27
A day in a cold room and no work at all is surely a dismal day. Lenic is definitely a guy you can rub along. Linguistic niceties are quite exceptable for an esoteric shoptalk.
The 20-meter-long queue of empty pails waiting for their turn to get filled up by a small-finger-thick dribble of water from any of the Three Taps is clearly a somber view.
The folks marauding the grounds by the CPSU Block and taking home the coils of barber-wire left behind by the pulled out Soviet troops are far and away constructive-minded people.
At home the gas-heater was giving out its final sighs. The mother-in-law ordered construction of an ojakh in the yard.
- Firstly, put a pair of stones on the ground.
- Secondly, make sure the stones are not too wide apart and the bottom of your casserole rests on each of the two.
- Thirdly, build a fire between the stones.
She started cooking on the open fire in the newly erected ojakh in the yard. I retired to our one-but-spacious-room flat to lick the wounds in my male pride pricked by the excessiveness of her instructions. At times, her aspirations to have her finger in every pie on earth do exasperate me. I closely control myself but she is too shrewd not to smell a rat.
Actually, I am vexed not so much by my mother-in-law as by this here situation. So my gravest objective is not to let her feel nor even suspect herself an outlet for my irritation which would mean the direst collapse of my self-esteem.
After a missile attack, I helped Sahtik to take the kids over to the Underground. She also transferred the oil lamp there. Half an hour later the electricity appeared! All of them came back together. A very pleasant family evening evolved.
It's ten-to-ten in the evening. Ahshaut is sleeping in his cot. The mother-in-law and Roozahna are in the Underground. Sahtik stayed home knitting.
I am freshly washed in the tub and utterly hurt by the fact that watching TV (the popular quiz 'The Field of Miracles') was preferred to my most natural suggestion.
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