It happens every year, and every year, it comes as a surprise: winter turns into summer, skipping spring entirely. I know that these balming 70s are not here to stay, and by Sunday, the temperatures will return to normal April mid-50s. But how amazing it feels now! Just getting outside and taking this warmth in!
First time in a long while, I went to the CSO concert alone. I like going to concerts by myself, but recently, it was always either with mom, and then I had to deal with all the unpredictable things she would be upset about or felt compelled to critique. Or with my neighbor, who is lovely, but I realized that sometimes, I need to have quiet time. Just music and me.
It feels differently, and it turned out, I almost forgot the feeling. The music was cripst and fresh, and it was covering me from the outside, and filling inside, to the point when I felt there there is not enough room for music inside me!
The orchestra played four pieces: Liszt Mephisto Waltz (amazing!), Thomas Ades Piano Choncerto (new piece, composed just five years ago, soloist Kirill Gerstein – amazing!); a part from Sibelius’ The Tempest (awsome, but less exciting as the first two pieces) and finally, Janacek’s Taras Bulba, of which I expected a lot, but it ended up being the least interesting piece out of four. When it finished, I was left with the question: is this all? We didn’t even start yet, the topic is not developed! What do you mean, “we are done”?
Still, it was the best I felt after a concert for a long time. And then – out into the warmth of the night under the city lights, and I didn’t even notice when I arrived to my station.
When I got home, I walked into my bedroom, opened the window and let the night in 🙂
That’s how long I waited on a call to Social Security! The good news is that after an hour and a half, it was my turn! Just when I was ready to hang up. That was for my mom: I was receiving an error when I tried to register her on the SSA website.
The result was a complete success: they helped me to figure out what was wrong, and they signed us up for a phone appointment, so hopefully, mom’s SSI will finally become a reality.
It already happened twice with Boris’ iPhone, that it stopped working in a weird way. He hypothesizes that something got messed up when he saved a new wallpaper using the same filename. Whatever the reason, the symptoms are the same: the phone appears to work; however, the screen is not working (the hourglass is spinning instead). Twice, he had to take his phone to the Apple store to restore it to factory settings.
Now, imagine what I felt when last Thursday I went to the weekday solo escorting to the clinic, and five minutes, into my shift, I found my phone non-responsive! I saw a call from my friend coming to my watch, but I could not pick it up on the phone – the screen was black, although I heard the ringing! I tried to press all possible buttons, including reboot, and from the sounds the phone was making, I could see that the phone was functioning, but the screen leps staying black.
Next, I started thinking about what I could do. The nearest Apple Store was on Michigan Avenue. I could take an Uber there, but I can’t because my phone screen is not functioning! OK, I could probably take CTA if the Ventra card would work (it potentially could work, but I had no way to check). And it kept going – having the Apple wallet on that phone, using the phone as a hotspot… I recalled how Boris told me last winter when I dropped the phone in the snow, and it got wet: you entrusted this thing with everything!
That was true! To my huge relief, after about 15-20 minutes of being mute, my iPhone decided to end the strike, and the screen lit up again. However, I kept thinking: yes, I have literally everything on the phone, so what if???….
This Field Museums exhibit tells the story of the first kingdoms on the Balkan peninsular.
The international group of museum curators and historians started to work on putting it together back in 2015. Everybody knows what happened next, but this exhibit faced more challenges than any other, including expiring grants. Now, the exhibit is finally here, at the Field Museum, showing the historical objects from ten different museums in different countries, 700 objects which were never displayed together,
The whole exhibit is set up like a giant book, so that you walk through and turn the pages.
There was a lot going on. Chicago conference remains my major concern: it is just two weeks away, and there are so many things that still should be addressed! I am working them out one at a time, but still!
On the positive side – I am going through my to-do lists, and I am doing a lot of cultural activities! I guess it will take a while for me to compensate for the pandemic cultural desert.
Things I’ve done so far.
Last Wednesday, I went to see “Tina” – Tina Turner musical.
I chose an outfit that I didn’t put on for a while, and my coworker liked it so much that she insisted on taking a picture of me. So that’s how I was dressed on that day:
I liked it, but I was not crazy about it, in part because the music was just too loud to enjoy – the first time in my life I regretted I didn’t have earplugs.
Earlier that day, we had a book club discussion at work. Believe it or not, but that was the first time in my life I participated in the book club, and it was only because it was at my workplace. We chose the book collectively back in February: first, people were just suggesting titles, and then we had a vote on Slack. When the book (“Never let me go”) was chosen, our hR sent copies to everybody who signed up (or ebooks or audiobooks). I already had my audiobook purchased several years ago; I just never came up to reading it.
As I mentioned earlier, I had mixed feeling about that book. Although it is very well written, the whole plot seems to be very artificial. Although I understand that the idea was to highlight how humans make excuses to pronounce other non-humans when it is convenient to them, I did find the book convincing. Possibly it’s because these days, we know that cloning cells and even stand-alone organs are more achievable and less expensive than cloning humans. And I can’t relate to books that can’t make me believe that whatever is described in the book could happen. As usual, the problem might be with me rather than with the books :). In any case, it was a relief to find out during our book club discussion that some other readers shared my feelings.
On Friday, it was “Cry it out” – a play written by Molly Smith Metzler and presented by Above The Law – a small theater just across my house. I’ve been to one of their performances before and loved it, and wanted to see another show. Since it was so close, I suggested that my mom and Igor also come, and I invited my friend MaryAnn. Since the theater is so tiny and each performance is sold out, I booked our tickets back in February. I was glad that everybody, including Mary Ann, could make it! I found a play synopsis from some other theater just to give an idea of what this play is about. The “Above the Law” theater cast was amazing, as always :).
On Monday, I listened to Bach’s St. Mattew Passion, presented by Music of Baroque. I remember hearing this piece for the first time – in the spring of 1991 when I was pregnant with Vlad and Anna. I believe it was the first time it was performed in the Leningrad Philharmonic, and listening to unmistakable religious music felt very revolutionary. It made such a profound impression that I still remember what the soloists looked like.
This time, it didn’t feel revolutionary, just a beautiful music. I didn’t stay till the end because I knew I won’t get enough sleep, and I had the whole week of cultural events ahead.
On Tuesday, I went to the Member’s Event at the Field Museum for the opening of the new exhibit “First Kings of Europe”
I will blog about it separately because I want to show more pictures.
And finally, yesterday I saw “A Soldeir’s Play” at CIBC Theater. Although this performance was a part of Broadway in Chicago, it is not a musical (several musical numbers are included, but overall it’s drama based on the movie of the same name).
Chicago Tribune noted in the review that it was very symbolic that the play premiered on the night when Brandon Johnson won the mayoral elections!
I joined Igor and other Russians in support of the Ukrainian rally condemning the kidnapping of Ukrainian children. As almost always happens at the Ukrainian rallies, I felt powerless and hopeless and unable to help. In general, I always believe in the power of the voice of the people, but today, possibly because of the continuously uncertain situation at the front, it was not the case. Nothing that our senators can do. Nothing they can vote on.
And, as a bit of a bonus, the subtitled version of the video Chicago dissidents put together about the rallies that took place across the world on February 24-25, including the February 25 Chicago rally.
(Because of some of the Discourse taking place in the dissident groups, I want to point out that when I say “Russian” I mean citizens of the Russian Federation. Russia is a multi-ethnic country, which over a 100 ethnic groups calling the county home – but while Russian language has separate words for Russian citizens and ethnic Russians specifically, that distinction gets lost in English).
Several new developments with mom. First, in February, I submitted an application for her citizenship. That was as long and tiring a process as you can imagine, and because of all the other things I had to do, it took me several weekends to complete all of the paperwork and to get the required documents from mom.
Originally they said it would be a nineteen-month-long process, but then they suddenly sent us the fingerprint appointment and said it would be a total waiting time of nine months. That sounded much better, only that the date for fort fingerprints was scheduled for one of the days of my European trip, and in addition, Igor could not take time off work on that day.
Fortunately, Anna was a savior: she came to Chicago and took mom for that appointment, But three days later, they sent us another notice telling us that the fingerprints could not be processed and we needed to come one more time. This one more time ended up being a Good Friday, which was very disappointing since I have it off once in a lifetime! But what can I do?!
We managed to get through several of mom’s medical appointments, including tuning her hearing aid (Igor took her there while I was away). The timeline in short: call the doctor’s office, schedule a tele-visit (mom has to be present, so I had to take time off work and come to mom’s place). Getting the referral, scheduling the audiologist, taking mom there. Scheduling her ear cleaning, taking her to that appointment, looking for the audiologist referral to the audio lab (finally found it), and taking mom there. And lots of calls in between.
She is still complaining about her left wrist, and now she is saying that she never said she did not want an x-ray, and I am making it up. I started by requesting a referral for occupational therapy. Mom’d doctor said that she would try to request the home visits and if not, then “we’ll see.” When I looked at the referral, I saw that there was no provider name or phone listed, so I had to call to find out (waiting, leaving a callback number, they call when I was in the meeting, etc.). They looked for the information, then gave me the name of the place, and then we got disconnected. I did not want to wait on hold again, so I googled the place, called, and left a message. Nobody called back, so the day later, I called again and asked to connect to the reception. They found the mom’s referral but told me that since she is on Medicaid, not Medicare, the house visits are not covered. They said they do not do office visits, which was a pity since this office was very close to mom’s house.
I had to request another referral, which meant another office visit. Fortunately (?) I had to take her to the doctor anyway because she needed the ear cleaning, so we saved one visit. I finally had the name of the place and the phone number, but the next available appointment was in four weeks (I accepted it), and it was very far from where we leave. I am contemplating ditching Medicaid and asking what would places close to where I live charge uninsured people.
Also, in the middle of my trip, mom started to email me that I was hiding from her where I was, and because of that, she had no idea.
I know that these days, people do not blog about the event three days after, but I think it is still better to blog about a great event than not.
On Thursday, I attended PG Day Paris for the second time; it was the first time I presented there. Also, this year, it was a two-day event, with a training session on day one and two tracks on day two. And also, one track was all-female :).
My personal milestones it was my first presentation of something I developed while being with DRW and the first time I came back from the conferences not with just “I learned some interesting things,” but with “I learned something new which will be useful for us, and I want to implement it right now!”
I am on my way to Helsinki from Paris, and tomorrow, I will fly back to Chicago. There are 400+ photos in my picture gallery, and I know that the moment I am back in Chicago, other things will take priority. That’s why I will try to show more while I am still en route.
Going back to my first day in Dublin, I discovered that the air temperature felt different than in Chicago, and what I thought of as late spring weather was anything but. The first day was the warmest, even with the strong winds from the sea.
Hettie's Reflections 