Our visit to DHS today ended with unexpected success: my mom got SNAP. We spent about an hour and a half there, and she got an emergency approval and the actual LINK card, and she will have money on the card by Wednesday. I set up a pin for her, and we are good to go.
The less exciting part is that we will need to go to the SSA office to apply for the SSI (which we did once – unsuccessfully, but there should not be any issues now). Just another time-consuming thing. And only after we apply for SSI she should be able to apply for subsidized housing. This being said, I do not know when this all will end, but I am really happy with today’s results.
Thinking about most of my schooling years, I am retrospectively surprised by how little of the cultural events were there. There was almost nothing going on after school. In the third grade, I started to take piano lessons, which our school music teacher was giving. There was one 15-minute lesson a week for the price of 5 rubles (I was giving the money to the teacher at the beginning of each lesson). I neither liked nor disliked it. I thought the girls who played piano were cool, and I wanted to do the same. Nobody forced me to do piano, so it sort of went on until the eighth grade when I didn’t have enough time to do this and stopped. I didn’t play any sports, and I didn’t have any other extracurricular activities until I started to attend theater classes at the nearby House of Culture when I was already in the fifth grade.
I liked reciting poetry, and I was good at it – I still had an excellent memory and didn’t have a problem memorizing long poems and stories, and I enjoyed reciting all these pieces “expressively.” Like many other girls, I wanted to be on stage, but the teacher in the theater class wanted me to do storytelling – he thought I was better at that. Recalling the details, I believe he was a very good teacher, and he took the kids seriously. The core of the class was several extremely talented boys, and it was apparent to me that I was no match, not even close. In contrast to most of the amateur theatrical groups, our’s was constantly looking for talented girls rather than boys, with very intermittent luck.
These classes were no joke. Our teacher spent time with me one-on-one, going through the text. The first time I would start a new story, I had to copy it into my notebook and highlight the most important word in each sentence (and to be ready to explain why this is the most important word). Then, we would go through the text countless times. He said that this stage was not a creative stage but “craftsmanship.” Only after I passed this stage and learned the whole text by heart was I allowed to start adding emotions and other creative elements. I still remember that my best reward was when I saw my teacher laughing after I finished a humorous story at one of the concerts.
All of this, however, was happening in middle school. All the classes were free, and I went to the House of Culture and signed myself up – no parent’s content was required. As for elementary school (from first to third grade), there was nothing for me except for reading after school. Activities like going to museums or theatrical performances were extremely rare. The only “children’s” theaters were two puppet theaters (and it was hard to get tickets for these performances). Museums didn’t have any children’s studios or any kid-centered activities, and things like “children’s museums” didn’t exist. That’s for all this “most cultural nation”…
Most of the weekends (actually, Sundays only, since we had school on Saturdays) included sleeping in, going for some city walks, and almost obligatory visits to my grandfather. As I mentioned earlier, the apartment where my grandfather lived was very far from the city center. It was hard to believe that it was considered to be “within city limits.” The were multiple ways to get there, none straightforward, and all taking about one and a half hours each way. I can’t believe how much time was wasted so reproductively; I didn’t even read on the tram.
My grandfather, with his niece Tamara, who came to visit him from Beslan.
My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.
I am just out of the screening of this movie. I really wanted to see it, and it was very difficult to fit it into my schedule (it’s three hours long!) The only way of doing it was to rush there directly from the train from Milauwakee, which I did. It’s not what I thought it would be, way more difficult to watch than I thought, and way more powerful.
I am not even sure what my takeaways are, except for “It’s hard to be a woman.” It’s almost unbearable to watch at some moments (I could not look at the screen for at least a quarter of the duration of the movie).
And another surprising fact: while following all these women at the most difficult moments of their lives and thinking about what I, as a woman, was through, I felt jealous: I was never treated with such respect by the doctors as these women were. I might have experienced only a small portion of all the physical suffering these women were through, but the humiliation and disrespect I had to live through were unimaginable. I am so glad that my daughter didn’t have to go through it, and my granddaughters won’t even know how bad it could be.
I spent a weekend in a very non-typical way for me: camping with Anna, the girls, and Anna’s friends in the Harrington Beach National Park. camping is not my kind of activity, but since this weekend was supposed to be girls’ weekend, and since I already cleared it out, and since after twelve days of complete and partial isolations, I was eager to do something outside the house and my comfort zone in general, I went for it.
It was great, although the heavy rain on Saturday night made it challenging, and at some point, we all were unsure whether it was a good idea. Then the rain stopped, and we had a great time by the campfire (and we had a really nice walk before the rain started). there was more rain during the night, but at about 8-30 AM, the sun went out, and life was beautiful again:).
I enjoyed the nature walk and being close to Lake Michigan at yet another point. 🙂
It was close to impossible to pass this apple tree and not to pick even one apple, not even the ones lying on the ground!Continue reading “Camping”→
Several small “fixes” in different parts of my life, nothing special, but feel nice.
Installed a new light fixture in the living room using the same electric company. That was the only one that I didn’t replace when I was replacing “everything.” The usual effect: OMG, how much better it feels now!
Renewed Siskel membership. I forgot to renew it almost a year ago, and they changed the system and everything, so I could not even renew online. I went there just before I got COVID, and now I have an online account and everything, and I can even put my tickets into my Apple wallet. Hurray! And I already started using this membership again!
Emailed OMD and told them I decided against participation this year. I told them I realized I did not have time, but the real reason was that I sat through the orientation and realized that nothing changed. All the issues I observed several years ago, the ones which prompted me to leave, are still there.
It looks like two other mentoring organizations that I applied for and was accepted to are going to do better and more meaningful jobs. I am giving it a try, and we’ll see.
It is going to be a very intense week. I was planning for Labor Day to be a fresh start, but the Universe decided differently. Well, I guess Rosh Hashanah is an even better start :).
Both Mom and I are negative, and since I had my second negative today, I am finally heading to the office (and now I need to pack two days in one for the observable future).
It does not look like I have any photos taken during my second grade. It could be partially because my mom was a lot into the home movies at that time. In fact, pretty much all home movies I have were filmed in 1971 – 1973 (See here, here and here).
When I was in the second grade, I started to develop myopia, and for some reason (although everybody in the family wore glasses), it was a world-class tragedy. The ophthalmologist wanted to try some new methods on me. I do not know what was the logic behind these methods, but both of them were essentially building more obstacles :). The first was that when I was reading or writing, I had to wear bifocal glasses, which had “plus” instead of “minus” on the bottom. I believe that the idea was that I would “try harder” and my vision would become better, which obviously just made things worse.
Another torture was of the opposite kind. Three times a week, I had to come to the ophthalmologist’s office and spend twenty or thirty minutes staring at the table for vision checking while wearing more “minus” than I needed. Again, I think that this way, I was supposedly “training” my eyes “to try harder.” It took a lot of time from my life (fortunately for my mom, she didn’t have to take me there; the doctor’s office was on the same street where I lived, but still, I remember how annoyed I was by the fact that I had to waste this time and by the torture itself).
Other than that, my life was pretty dull. I walked to school in the morning, walked back home at 1 PM or 2 PM depending on whether I had English class on that day, warmed up my late lunch, did my homework, which sometimes was very time-consuming and always boing, most times (unless I would forget), I did my chores, which included watering the house plants, dusting the surfaces and sweeping the floor in our room (if you already lost the context, mom and I shared a room in an apartment where my father’s family lived). I also had to shine my boots, because mose of the year, the weather outside required boots.
Whatever free time I had, I spent on reading. During my elementary school years, my mom started to attend different evening classes, and as far as I remember, she had something almost every evening. I remember that one year, she studied French, and another year, she studied German (I do not think she succeeded much in any of these languages, but she tried). Also, she was attending sewing classes and knitting classes. I was quite happy to be left “unattended,” and spent all this time reading. The bulk of my reading was Alexander Dumas, Fenimore Cooper and Walter Scott, with occasional Conan Doyle.
Good books, or just decent books were difficult to get, you could not buy the books you wanted in the bookstores, and you could not get the books you wanted in the library. Since my aunt worked in the publishing house, she had access to the “special” library, which is why I had a chance to read “The Lost World” and “Pippi Longstoking” (do not ask why the latter one was also “a deficit.” )
For a while, we only had one TV set in the apartment, which was placed in the “dining room” (actually, one of two rooms where my aunt and my great aunt lived). Sometime in the early 70s, my mam got a chance to purchase a TV just for us, so we could watch it in the evenings sitting on her sofa. She also got earphones (probably form work), and sometimes she watched something when I was already asleep, or at least was supposed to be asleep).
The radio (combined with the vynil disk player) was located by my mom’s bed, and one of our Sunday morning activities included listening to the “Good Morning!” show while still in bed. I know it is hardly possible to believe that there were times when I would get out of bed way past 9 AM!
There are not that many things happening in your life.
COVID updates: My mom got it light; I’d say she didn’t have any symptoms, or they were so mild we didn’t register them. However, both she and I are still positive, and while I would expect it with her, I am really annoyed that nothing changes with me. I feel 100% fine; I go biking long distances, and I am not getting tired through the workday. But I really have to have this negative test! There are things happening next week for which I absolutely need to be in the office, not to mention a lot of other activities that are on hold at the moment. I am trying really hard not to be depressed by that.
As it always happens these days, a bulk of my emotions are work-related, and as always, I can say exactly zero about what’s going on. I did a couple of cool things I had never done before, which brought me aesthetic pleasure. Also, I happily resolved one personal conflict at work in the best possible way. Two more are in progress :). OK, I should stop even trying to talk about work here – it’s not much I can tell!
There was a ginormous effort with the book, and now submitting all the chapters by October 2 looks like a possibility.
And the last thing I wanted to mention is my volunteering activities. After long hesitations, I decided against returning to OMD and to try another mentoring program. Actually, two of them :). I will tell more about these programs when I actually start them, but I think both are better in terms I will be able to do more good.
Meanwhile – it smells like fall, the sunrise is later in the day, and I can barely catch it when I bike in the morning:
I have the official photos for a couple of weeks now, but there are too many, and they all are too awesome to choose any reasonable number to display. Thereby, it’s hard for me to tell how many wedding photos posts will follow. This one will be most definitely not the last one 🙂
Hettie's Reflections 