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.

We Just Turned One!

Yesterday was exactly one year since Dian, Anna, and I incorporated Prairie Postgres NFP. Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine myself being a founder of a not-for-profit, and even less could I imagine how it would change my life and shift my priorities.

We celebrated in the best possible way – the Illinois Prairie Postgres meetup attendance skyrocketed (I think we had more than forty attendees). We had long, deep, and engaging conversations, and we had cake!

Medea

One of the best shows I have ever attended at the Lyric Opera!

It often happens that when you listen to an opera, you don’t get engaged with the plot and mainly focus on the voices, but that wasn’t the case this time. The show was really dramatic, and it felt almost inappropriate to applaud between musical numbers because a tragedy had been unfolding on stage.

Also, I loved this gigantic mirror on stage, which allowed to see everything what was going on from another angle:

The video and the rest of the photos are from the Lyric Opera website.

It was my first time listening to Sondra Radvanovsky live, and I so-so loved her! Most times, I am not super-excited about sopranos, but she is so versatile, and so artistic; definitely my favorite soprano from now on:).

Oh, and one more thing: the guards were wearing ICE masks! And I am sure it was not a part of the original design!

Mindfullness

On Saturday, I participated in the program, which was called “Mindfulness in Nature at Leone Beach. The person who led this program was guiding us through the process. We stayed on the lake shore, looking forward at the lake, then looking up close. Then we closed our eyes, listened, and were instructed to think about an experience when we felt “at home” in nature.

There were several other activities, and also, what we thought about, what each of us heard and saw, and which memories came to mind.

At the very end of the program, the Mindfulness Teacher asked each of us to say one or two words that would summarize our feelings of that day. Almost everyone said something about “the end,” meaning that fall is associated with the end of life. And I said: a new beginning.

And it’s not only because fall in nature is strongly associated with mushroom picking, and later with harvesting the wild flowers’ seeds, and then sowing in new places. There is something more fundamental: fall was always a new beginning for me. Everything good started in the fall.

To start, all of my relationships started in the fall, and although not all of my dates were great, it was always the beginning of a new and exciting chapter. My children were born in the fall (well, Vlad and Anna were supposed to :)), and it was in October that I came to the US. And even though I met Boris in the spring, our relationship started at the end of September.

So, that’s for October! My luckiest month ever!

Meeting With Friends

During the past week, I had chances to catch up with three friends with whom I hadn’t met in person for several months. And, to a different degree, I can say the same thing about each of these meetings: the changes that started to happen in me and with me during the past year, and especially during the past six months, are more significant than any changes ever happened in my life.

I started to notice it in late spring: for years, there were friends with whom I could always “start from the place we left last time,” as if we didn’t speak for months and years, and it’s not the case anymore. If people follow me on social media, they at least have some ideas about how my life changed, and how my priorities changed. But otherwise, I do not know how to start a conversation.

When we met with my friend Maryann who knows me almost since the time I came to the US, she asked: so, what’s new with you? What happened since we last talked in spring? I took a deep breath and replied: tell me what’s new with you first!

I do not know where to start, how to say that yes, there is work, and there is family, all generations of it, and travels, but that’s not the most important part of my life. It’s especially difficult, because the things I am doing belong to a very narrow professional niche, and you can’t quickly explain “what is Postgres.”🤷🏻‍♀️

Still Blooming

I am leaving on Saturday, and will be gone for two weeks, so I can’t imagine that my balcony flowers will survive, but they are blooming now, and I do not have the heart to discard them…

Glenwood Market

Today was my last market day of this season – I will be gone for the next two weekends. I had no time and no reason to go but went anyway, especially when I saw their Instagram post this morning:

I had breakfast at the Common Cup

Got my flowers at the market:

Made an apple tart:

Took my mom to the Above the Law Crimm Brothers:

As usual, my mom said that she didn’t understand anything, but enjoyed the acting. I told her that the plot is twisted enough so she might not have understood it even if it were in Russian 🙂

New Skill

I finally learned how to make cappuccino!

Night of 1,000 Jack-o’-Lanterns at Botanic Garden

TIt was the first time I attended this event at Chicago Botanic Garden. I thought I should take more advantage of my membership, and also I thought that’s something my mom would enjoy (and she did). There are only fifteen nights when the Jack-o’-Lanterns walk is open; each time from 6:30 to 10:30 PM.

Honestly it was hard to believe that each of the pumkins was actually carved; that they were not some plastic models! But the artists were at work, so you could actually see the artworks in making!

I am not sure whether there were indeed 1000 of pumpkins, but there were a lot, so I collapsed some of them into collages. Enjoy!

From Chicago Front Line

Copying today’s Court decision about blocking National Guard deployment – one more reason to be proud of Chicago!

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How Single Women In Chicago Lived in 1900s

One of the recent WBEZ Curious City episodes was about women living independently in Chicago in the early 20th century. I didn’t know the term “women adrift,” and to be honest, I thought that women were not even supposed to live on their own back then, so all of this was incredibly interesting. Sharing here.

Continue reading “How Single Women In Chicago Lived in 1900s” →