Month: September 2019

Labor Day in Pullman

I have four hours on the Wolverine train to Ann Arbor, MI. I have a comfy seat, an electric plug, and the internet available, so it’s a good time to catch up with everything :). I returned from Wisconsin on Saturday of the Labor Day weekend, so I still had two full days and a little bit for myself. Usually, on Labor Day, I try to do something meaningful, something related to the holiday. And most of the time it means visiting Pullman.

Igor talked me into visiting it for the first time in 2014. I didn’t know anything about its amazing history back then and readily absorbed all the information. At that time, everybody was talking about getting Pullman the status of National Park, and in 2015 this happened.

This year I thought there is no way I can spend almost the whole day on this trip. But then I made some calculations, and due to the new Metra weekend schedule, it all appeared to look doable. So the decision was made, and I told Igor that I am coming.

We were hoping that the new status would escalate the restoration efforts, but the Florence Hotel is still closed to the public, and the factory restoration is still in process.

Continue reading “Labor Day in Pullman” →

Breakfast is the Best Meal of the Day!

I still have lots of pictures from the Labor Day weekend, and here are some of them. Why this is about a Labor Day weekend? Because one of the nice things you can do over the long weekend is to make “Sunday breakfasts” every day:).

The plenty of veggies which are delivered daily presents me with a challenge of adding them to everything:

Chocolate goes for the second course:

Also, it’s blueberry season, time to make Finnish rye blueberry meal:

Food and Travel

There are a couple of places in Madison, which I always like to visit when I am in town. Unfortunately, two of them closed recently, but my second favorite store, vomFASS, is still there :).

I buy a majority of what I buy online because it saves time for the more interesting things, but sometimes buying in the brick and mortar store is a fun of its own, and shopping at vomFASS is undoubtfully a case.

Continue reading “Food and Travel” →

Not My Usual Day, Not My Usual Mood

I am mad about yesterday, and this week in general so here is an unlikely rant of mine. This week Vlad is in Finland, ridiculously precisely at the time when Boris is not. Vlad is flooding his Instagram with the videos of Finnish forests, mushrooms, rowanberries, moonshine, and salmon smoked on the plank.

At the same time, Boris is in Croatia, participating in a workshop which I believe just being an excuse for spending time on the beach :). He is sending me panoramic views of the harbor, the Medieval town and the mountains.

And I did not manage to go to any of four conferences I could go to in late August – September; work is being crazy, and Mom has been difficult. And yesterday I’ve canceled my after-work activity to make sure I am done with one extremely important thing at work and managed to mess up and spent all this time fixing without advancing any further. And on to of that my trainer canceled today’s morning session. 

That’s the day you need to work hard on staying positive and not to yell at people 🙂

Parenting During the Economic Collapse

Another follow-up for my visit with my daughter. I’ve realized that I ran pretty fast through the first months of Vlad’s and Anna’s life, focusing more on what was happening with the country. I didn’t write much about our everyday lives, and how it was – raising baby twins amid the economic collapse. 

There were many aspects of parenting, where I would make decisions in the survival mode, not because I liked a certain approach better, but because that was the only option. I do not have a lot of pictures from that time. I didn’t own a camera, and taking pictures was not an everyday activity. Boris would occasionally bring his camera with him, and then we would have a photo session. 

Continue reading “Parenting During the Economic Collapse” →

Understanding Our Family History

Another topic of my conversation with Anna was about an understanding of people’s motives and preception of the world around them. That’s precisely the reason I started this blog; that’s why I try to be very honest with myself about the past.

Anna told me that she read somewhere on the internet about her great-grandfather, the one who was NKVD Major General, and about his career in the 1920s. She asked me whether she understood correctly, what he was doing in Middle Asia and Azerbaijan, and I confirmed. I think that it is essential to understand what many people were both the executors and the victims of the Great Terror. That is something I am not going to hide. And as Anna put it, she wants to understand, what was going on the people’s heads, how they could justify within themselves all these actions. How could a highly educated and very intelligent person consciously participate in the “kulak’s liquidation.” I can only guess about him. But I remember what his sister-in-law, my grand aunt, was telling me about her joining the Communist Party after most of her family was prosecuted. And I am going to write about it in the future. 

Continue reading “Understanding Our Family History” →

Parenting

Anna was asking me how Nadia is different from her at the same age. I replied that she is different because all human beings are different. But I am finding it hard to pinpoint, what are the exact differences.

Our parenting styles are different. When Anna was two, her life was undoubtfully more structured than Nadia’s. There was no question about what clothes to put on, whether to have dinner or not, and what will be served. There was no throwing away food. There were no reading books on the potty. Part of it was survival, me being a single working mom of three in an unstable economy. But part of it was a starting point. 

I was an incredibly liberal parent by Russian standards those days. I didn’t spend all day disciplining a child. I would let them do tons of things other parents won’t. But by the nowadays civilized standards, it was still very rigorous parenting. 

Continue reading “Parenting” →

About My Stay in Madison

To cover the past two weeks: it was crazy at work. An interesting fact is that it was mostly good stuff. Good things were happening, and some decisions I’ve been waiting for for a long time were finally made and approved. But it was tiresome. When you need to sit at the meetings for 6 to 7 hours every day, and not just “sit,” but actively listen and participate, you are done by the end of the day — so done, as if you worked 16 hours straight.

There was also a lot happening outside work — things related to the December conference in Chicago, which I am heavily involved in. Boris and I were finalizing yet another paper submission. I was trying to make sure my direct report will present our work at another conference, which I am unable to attend. All stuff with my Mom. All things with my volunteering.

And then I took two days off and went to Madison to babysit my granddaughter Nadia. I can’t remember another moment in my life when I would gladly disconnect from my work email, Slack, etc. I checked what was going on a couple of times (literally!), but without any hesitation replied: this can wait till Tuesday.

It still took me some time to relax, but by midday Saturday, when I was leaving, I already felt pretty good.

I returned home to my long weekend to-do list, but I am keeping thinking about everything that happened during this visit, most about my conversations with Anna.
A couple of months ago, I started to write a post about Anna’s and my parenting styles, and then put it aside. I think now I will be able to finish it :).

Love Madison :)