On family history, parenting, education, social issues and more
Author: Hettie D.
My name is Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya. I was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russian (actually, back then – Leningrad, USSR) in 1963, and immigrated to the United States in 1996.
I love Saint Petersburg, the city I was born and raised in, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Similarly (but differently) I love Chicago, and can’t imagine myself moving somewhere else in the observable future.
I have three children, Igor, Vlad and Anna, all adults living on their own, and one (so far) granddaughter Nadia. I also believe that my children are the best thing that happened in my life.
As for my professional life, I am working in the field of Information Technologies. When I was twenty, I’ve declared that the databases are the coolest thing invented and that I want to do them for the rest of my life. Thirty plus years later, I still believe it’s true, and still, believe that the databases are the best. These two statements together imply that I think a person can have it all, and indeed, I think so! Keep reading my journals to find out how I did it.
The other day, on one of the NPR programs, they were explaining how the authorities decide on the order of the places being reopened. We often wonder how that order is determined, why WAL- Mart is open while a hair salon is not. They said that there is a way of calculating the impact of opening places, which takes into account several factors. They include the need (to which extent the services are essential), the possibility of infection spread, and the desire of people to have these services. Believe it or not, the big box stores stay the highest on that list, and gyms, liquor, and tobacco stores stay at the bottom! Go figure:)
As our governor said, if nothing drastically bad would happen during the next six days, we are entering stage three. The city will lag behind, possibly two-three weeks behind. And it will be still masks/gloves/distancing.
I hope we won’t need to go back!
The first thing my mom asked when I told her about that was when she can see her grandchildren. I have to say that she was very patient about that, and didn’t complain. We discussed it and decided to plan some outdoor meetings in the beginning of June.
I do not remember how that movie ended up in my watch list. After I started to watch Siskel From Your Sofa movies, all the third parties started to send me their newsletters, so it should have come from one of those. I was intrigued by it’s description and was looking forward to watching it.
Maybe, I had too high expectations, but the movies left me with a question: so what? Everybody should pay taxes? Richer people should pay higher taxes? Yes, I know, I agree, so what now?
Not like I didn’t like the movie, I liked it, but still…
If anybody is interested in watching, here is a list of current and future virtual screenings: Capital Movie
I would think that if I have so much work, I won’t be upset about anything else. But somehow it adds up: my ginormous workload, the overall worrisome situation in Illinois with a still-growing number of cases, being apart from the rest of the family, mom going crazy because of isolation. I am trying to imagine how restless other people are becoming when even I, with all my understanding of the necessity of quarantine, have a difficult time continuing that way.
Last week, I started to bike early in the morning regularly. I loved these very early bike rides for a long time, but now it’s even better because usually there is nobody on the bike paths before 6 AM. However, today, I met several large groups of people walking in the forest preserve. That explained why there were no deers today :). One group consisted of at least ten adults with no masks on. And it was 5-40 AM.
One of the things which makes me feel tired is the fact that I constantly hear comments, both from “left” and “right,” about my behavior. It looks like in the eyes of half of the world, I am not doing enough and endangering myself and everybody around me. And for another half of the world, I am a panicer subdued to the propaganda.
My honest feelings are that none of us have enough information to evaluate the risks completely adequately. And every day, more information becomes available. I do not know about others, but my opinion on what’s the right behavior changes often. I am trying very hard not to criticize anybody’s behavior because I am not sure whether the ways I am handling the situation are better. I am trying very hard not to be angry with people. Success varies :).
I made quiche a couple of times in course of the past two weeks following that recipe. I love quiche, but I always thought that to make it right is a long and complex process. Besides, since I live alone, I was not sure what I was going to do with this huge thing.
It turned out, that humans can make quiche:), and that a large quiche tastes way better than a small one; and also, a slice of a large quiche can be frozen as well as a small one. And it is alway a good idea to share 🙂
Half with ham and cheese, and another half with spinach and mashroomsThe smaller ones were not that good!
I was telling about the University boarding house here, and for the next four summers, we would follow the same routine – staying there for two three-week sessions. It was all the same no hot water and tons of cockroaches situation, but since my living conditions in the city did not improve, it still worked great for me.
After I was fired from Urbansoft, I never had a stable source of income. The University paid close to nothing, and all the gigs were just gigs, but I was always ready for some extra work – more work meant more money. Thereby, even though I had four weeks of paid vacation in the University (and in any case attendance was optional), I had to take extra work whenever an opportunity would present itself.
The gigs tend to appear at a most inconvenient time, such as when I was about to go to the University boarding house, or when I just moved there. It would mean I have no time to relax, and that I have to craft a way to work without any equipment.
Fortunately for me, half a dozen teenage girls who stayed in the same boarding house loved Vlad and Anna and didn’t mind being a collective babysitter. Most of the gigs I had at that time involved technical writing. I had decent English, good enough to write User Guides, Helps, and How-to manuals. At one point, Boris was contracting for an Italian entrepreneur Dr. Conrad (I have no idea what kind of a Doctor he was). They were developing an HTML-editing tool called HighDoc, and I wrote all documentation for it.
There was a verbal-agreed pay for each portion of that work, and Dr. Conrad would bring payments in cash (in US dollars) when he came to Russia. He always tried to delay payments as long as possible, and I had these cinema-featured Italian arguments with him, yelling and pleading. And not just me, all people who worked for him did the same. The last project I did with him was so interesting that it requires a separate blog post. But now we were in summer 1994, and Vlad and Anna were two months shy of being three, and Igor was almost nine.
I still didn’t own a camera and didn’t take any pictures. Only when Boris came with his camera, we would get some. So all the pictures below show one day when we went for a long “hike” to the Old Peterhoff park.
So, twenty-five year ago we all wore socks with sandals :). Oh, and by the way, that blouse was timeless. It traveled with me to the US, and I only retired it a couple years ago! It was dark purple, with tiny buttons, and I loved it.Anna was always the first to climb a treeContinue reading “Summer 1994: Some Pictures”→
After more than two months break, I am resuming my historical posts. My granddaughter Nadia finally internalized the idea that there were times when her mother was a little girl, and that I am her mother’s mother. Thereby she started to ask lots of questions about what her mother was doing at her age. And since Nadia is almost three, I need to cover the missing period. That being said, welcome back to 1993.
As I mentioned in this post, our first daycare closed in January 1993. All the kids were transferred to another daycare, which was also subsidized by one of the industrial giants of the city. There was no Antie Galya there, but the teachers were reasonably good, and one of the teachers was great, and also she happened to live in the same building with us. That came handy because the new daycare was further away from our house, and to get there, I had to take a bus with two toddlers, and no double stroller. That teacher would occasionally help me to get the kids to the nursery, and sometimes, when only one child was sick, she would take another one to the daycare.
Anna and Vlad were about to turn two in summer, which meant they could attend the “older nursery group,” and one of them was pretty close to our house. That type of daycare was called Kindergarten (Detsky Sad in Russian), and they would take children from two to six or seven, depending on when the child was starting grade school. Theoretically, they all were supposed to have “junior nursery,” but most of the mothers were opting to stay at home with smaller children. Because of the combined reduction in supply and demand, it was challenging to place a child under two to any daycare, but after two, it was much easier.
Anna and Vlad started to attend their “Kindergarten Number 24” in September 1993 and continued until we left for America.
Below is their first official picture, taken October 1993. Colored photos were unusual and expensive, and I only purchased two copies. And I do not have any more pictures till the next summer.
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.
Since we are likely to continue working from home for another two months or so, we are getting additional monitors for working from home. First, I thought I do not need a second monitor, and I am not going to ask for one. I thought there is not enough room on my desk. But Boris suggested to bring my “fitness monitor” downstairs and check how it will fit.
I brought it down, plugged it in, and realized that I completely forgot how nice is it to have a second monitor. I didn’t want to unplug it!
So I signed up. I could choose either office pickup or home delivery. First, I wanted to go to the office for pickup. Then I thought that I won’t be able to carry a monitor in my hands, and signed up for home delivery. And then I realized that I could take my luggage and put the monitor in it. And I changed my preference again:)
Today was the day. I took a 10-25 train to the city, walked around a little bit, and got to the office at 11-45, as I signed up. The building is opened, and there are the same people at the reception, only wearing masks. I got up to the 8th floor to our office. I do not know what I was imagining, but the fact that the elevators were working, and there was electricity in the office, and that I saw my boss, all felt very reassuring.
And overall, the city gave me this feeling that it is staying strong and making it through – not like when I was there in mid-March. Back then, I had a feeling that very soon it will be the scene from the “Divergent” movie.
On the train. There were just two people in my car, but I saw several people with bikes when I was boarding, and the car next to mine had a dozen of passengers. Nobody checks the tickets.
Somebody on our local nextdoor.com forum wanted to have some fun, I guess, or just test the neighborhood, and posted a survey: Should schools in America teach Arabic numerals as part of the curriculum? answers: Yes! No! No opinion.
I know it is hard to believe (especially since our school district, both Elementary and HS, are known for providing excellent education), but … at the time I checked, about 20% responded “No!” some with the comments “we are in America”, and 9% had “no opinion”.
And they were not joking!!!(It was clear from the subsequent comments). The post is already removed, so I do not know the final count 🙂
There was a heavy thunderstorm through the whole night and morning; and when it was finally over, I decided to take a short walk – just to get a breath of fresh air. And I met not one, but six deers less than ten minutes walk away from my house!
There are eight pictures in this instagram post – click on the side arrows to scroll.
One of the many things which are not normal these days is the fact that we can’t come to the stores with our reusable bags. “Until further notice,” as most of the stores as saying.
I washed all my reusable shopping bags and all my reusable mesh grocery bags and folded them on one of the shelves in the laundry room. I hope I will be able to use them again at some point. But each time I am placing a pile of plastic bags into the garbage, my heart wrenches.
Last week, I finally watched the documentary Plastic Wars, which was on my list for a while. It is horrifying to see all the damage that plastic does for the environment. It’s devastating to learn that even when you think you are recycling, you are often not. That makes you to disgust plastic packaging even more. And yet – that’s what we have to do these days…
I still highly recommend the movie – watch it here.
Hettie's Reflections 