Category: everyday life

Maggie Daley Park

Last Saturday, we tried the idea that Anna and I had been talking about for a very long time. Namely, Anna and the girls visited just for a day to do some activities in the Loop without stopping at my place.

That day, the CSO had the very first children’s matinee since before the pandemic, and I bought tickets for Anna and Nadia. Originally, I thought that both parents would go, but that didn’t work with John’s schedule. At the very last minute, Anna arranged to take Nadia’s best friend with her.

Fortunately, the weather was great, so it was easy for me to babysit Kira while everybody else attended the concert.
Kira seemed to be intimidated by the crowd by the Bean and didn’t want to leave the stroller, but she was very fascinated with the chairs at the Pritzker Pavillion and spent good thirty minutes putting them up and down:).

After the concert was over and we all had lunch, we still had three and a half hours before their train back to Milwaukee. We went to Maggie Daley Park. That was such a delight! We never went there before, except for one time during the pandemic when most things there were closed.

OMG! Their playgrounds are so amazing!

This is a big ship with several boats attached
You can make if fell like a storm 🙂
A very detailed notice on the other playground
And that other playground is a steamship!
And yet another playground is a lighthouse with a slide!

I had to leave earlier to go to ORD to meet Boris, and the girls almost missed the train 🙂

Medicaid

Yesterday, mom had her first doctor appointment with Medicaid. It was just how I hoped it would go. I switched her to another doctor right away after we received an insurance card, and I looked up this doctor online. This doctor is relatively close (we walked there), and she is an actual MD, not NP. Not like it really matters, but you could tell she has way more experience with older patients. We didn’t have to wait. In fact, they took us even five minutes earlier than our appointment time, and we spent in total over one hour with the doctor and the nurse.

Mom really liked this doctor (and she told her so) because she listened and discussed all the options seriously and at length. Before mom’s appointment, she had to fill in a lot of paperwork, and I really liked one, which was a sort of doctor-patient contract. This contract said that the providers and other specialists will do their best to explain the treatment plan, prescription, and everything and always have the patient’s best interest in mind. In turn, a patient promises to be honest about their conditions, not hide anything from the doctor, and follow the treatment plan.

That worked great because when the nurse started to fill in mom’s information and asked whether she had any body pains at the moment, she started saying like “this is not important, all these bruises and such,” I told her that she had just signed the paper promising to disclose all her information.

Also, they gave her both a flu shot and a Moderna booster, which saved us a trip tp the pharmacy (here, it’s not exactly the next door, and I do not have a car). And, to her surprise, she didn’t have to pay anything for that.
Now, I think she started to realize what it means to have insurance :).

Fall Is Here

Boris arrived last night, once again in the aircraft barely 1/4 full, and this time, nobody asked him for his marriage certificate or proof of vaccination. Which, honestly, makes me worry! Because it means that the border control does not know anymore what’s allowed and what’s not.

On the good side of things, Uber from ORD does not cost $100 anymore, but somewhat around $35, which is cheaper than before the pandemic.

Today was the first seriously autumn day, with rain, and wind, and cold. From sandals to boots, in a matter of several days.

How My Life in America Started , and About My First CEO

And reblogging this post as well. After all, the longer I live in the US, the more I am thankful to a person who brought me here

Hettie D.'s avatarHettie's Reflections

My move to America won’t be possible without Pam – the CEO of the company, which hired me for my first job in the US. She was an outstanding personality and quite a controversial character, but one thing for sure: it’s only because of her that my move to America has happened.

Granted she was considering the interests of her business first, and for sure I was initially paid on the lower margin of the acceptable pay rate for a position, but she took on herself a responsibility of bringing me over.

In was not only about the money (although if you think about it, with myself and my three children, there were four visas and four airplane tickets to pay for, and as I’ve mentioned earlier, I had no money at all, so all these costs were upfront).

But what is more important, she’d taken on herself a responsibility…

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Our First Day In The USA

Reblogging the post I published a year ago about our first day in the US. That’s what was happening on that day twenty-five years ago.

Hettie D.'s avatarHettie's Reflections

Yesterday, there was a 24th anniversary of the day when Vlad, Anna, and I came to the US. In the past several months, I wrote so many posts about our last weeks in Russia and the first weeks and months in the US that I have almost nothing to add. But today, I was thinking about these first days again, and suddenly I recalled some of my feelings.

After Val picked us up at O’Hare, he drove us to Des Plaines, where I would sign the lease for my first ever apartment. I was tired; I barely understood what was going on. In addition to Val, one more VIN.net employee was waiting for me in the leasing office. His name was Art; he was a sales rep, and he was supposed to help me understand what I was signing; apparently, Pam didn’t trust Val to explain it to me :).

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Flying to America for the First Time

Today is the 25th anniversary of us (Vlad, Anna, and I) leaving Russia to fly to America. Reblogging the post about that day 🙂

Hettie D.'s avatarHettie's Reflections

Before I start, let me tell you a couple of words about how my children have reacted to the news that we are going to go to America. First of all, they were very excited to tell everybody around, and the funny thing is that nobody believed them! They would be at the playground, and would tell other parents: we are going to America for two years!!! And other parents would be yea, sure… And then I come and say that it’s true!

When Anna and I were talking recently about these weeks before our departure, she told me that she remembers there was one thing she was sad about, but she can’t remember what exactly it was. But I remembered! The Fall play in their daycare was in rehearsal at that time; it was a modern version of the Russian folk tale “Репка” (“The Turnip”). Both of them were…

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Things Happen…

Here is what the plan was. After almost two years of living in crisis (due to various reasons), Boris and I agreed to try to return to normalcy, and as a part of it, to try to live a week without any special events, just doing our usual things.

Boris’s school usually has a midterm week at the end of October, so there are no classes. Also, there are no actual midterms for the courses he teaches, so he didn’t need to be online. That being said, we planned for him to come on Saturday the 23rd (he has classes on Friday) and leave next Sunday.

When I talked to him on Sunday, he said: you know, there is one complication… It turned out that he never checked his schedule, and the actual midterm week was not the last week of October but one before last! There was already too late to exchange the tickets (and in any case, the airlines stopped doing the unlimited exchanges), so now he will have to teach at night!!! Or rather in the wee hours of the morning, both Thursday and Friday, and another long meeting on Wednesday. So much for careful planning!

Open House Chicago 2021 – Part 2

The next neighborhood we visited was Bridgeport. I never knew Chicago had a maritime museum, but there it was! The building where the Chicago Maritime Museum is located is a former Spiegel Catalogue Warehouse, on the banks of Bubbly Creek (Now, it’s a Bridgeport Art Center, and the Maritime Museum is in the basement).

The museum is wonderful; honestly, it’s a pity it is so far from the Loop! If it were closer, I would take more people there :).

One of the curators explained to us how the large ships could not sail in the Chicago River because it has so many bends
Continue reading “Open House Chicago 2021 – Part 2” →

Open House Chicago 2021 – Part 1

OHC is an event I try not to miss. Although some years I was in Helsinki that very weekend, and some years, the weather was really horrible, I would make it more often than not.
Each time we go together, Igor comes up with a route we never did before, and each time we explore new places (at least, new to me :))

Last year, there was no OHC due to COVID, and this year, there were way fewer sites than in pre-COVD years, which Igor declared to be a positive thing: planning became easier.

On the first part of our OHC tour, we went to the Back of the Yards neighborhood. The first stop was The Plant – a former slaughterhouse and meat-packing facility converted into a green technology site, housing 20 businesses, including indoor and outdoor farms, beer and kombucha breweries, a bread bakery, and other emerging food producers and distributors. Bubbly Dynamics, who owns the facility, tried to preserve the features of the original building. You can see the signs on the walls identifying different stages of meat processing. Also, the toilets are located in the former walk-in refrigerators. That might sound funny, but I felt very uncomfortable closing a heavy door behind me and putting the latch down. It almost felt like the temperature was about to start dropping right away.

Approaching The Plant
At the entrance
Algae everywhere!
Continue reading “Open House Chicago 2021 – Part 1” →

So It Was The Last Summer Weekend

That’s – last weekend. I am so glad that after returning from Finland I still caught several summer days. It was 47F when I left the house this morning, and I believe it’s the first day of the season when the temperature would stay in the 50s for the whole day. So, a week later – my last summer morning of 2021 🙂