Hettie’s Reflections – Blog Posts

Remember These Chocolates?

The ones I bought in Amsterdam, carefully chosen from an insane variety?

As with any properly made chocolate, it had to be consumed within 10-12 day, the mission which I successfully accomplished. However, i regretted not taking the pictures inside the store – although I remembered which flavors I chose, I couldn’t always tell which one I was about to consume. I enjoyed them anyway, but I had a moment when, after the box was emptied, I found a tiny black square on the bottom, which unfolded into a complete chocolate inventory!

About Mom, Life, And Other Random Thoughts

Mom wants her freedom, and it’s scary. I understand how she feels, and most likely, if I were in her place, I would feel the same way. I also understand that she can’t really process any new concepts, and I remember what the doctors in the hospital told me: at the end of the day, you do what you can do. I talked to one more potential caregiver last week, and I was trying to talk to my mom about bringing in one more person when I was away, but she was turning the conversation into her usual spiral, no matter where it would start and no matter how hard I tried.

Today, I took her to the matinee concert at the CSO, and she was upset, I am not sure with what, and then she didn’t like anything at the concert, starting with the first piece that was performed and ending with Christoph Eschenbach not wearing a bowtie. I am trying to distance myself from such situations, but at the same time, I always start to worry whether I am moving in the same direction.

I know that I have already started to forget words, and for the past two years, I have been trying to record all occurrences of forgotten words. I believe it was once in two months two years ago, then – once a month, and now almost weekly. The funny thing is that most of my forgotten words are food-related:). The rest are names of people (not the people I knew in the past, but celebrities) and names of places. Boris has nothing of it, and he remembers the names of my former co-workers better than I.

***

Another topic my mom brings up frequently is a statement that she feels sorry for me because although I am an accomplished professional, I didn’t have “magical moments” in my life. I know exactly what she means because she often speaks with pride about some super weird relationships she had, when a guy from her work invited her to a theater or a concert once a month, and sometimes, they went to one of the imperial parks around Saint-Petersburg (actually, Leningrad at that time). She keeps saying that “these days, nobody can even imagine such relationships when there was nothing except for talking.” According to her, the best and most magical part of this relationship was that there was no kissing, no intimacy. They would go out once a month, and he would record tapes for her, and that was it. I can’t imagine why not having something like this in my life makes me “unhappy.” I honestly and truly believe that my life is as close to a fairy tale as possible, and the number of magical events that happened to me is way above the average :). Boris threw a dozen hypotheses, trying to explain what was behind this statement and what kind of reasoning could lead to this conclusion.

I might make a separate post about these hypotheses because I believe there could be some historical reasons for that.

Did Summer Forget To Go, Or Did Fall Forget To Come?

Still early morning biking, only know the sunrise catches up with me only when I am turning back from the most distant point:

And a brown sugar peach popsicle at the Sunday Market!

And if the stars align properly, I might have one more swimming day this week!

Avios Saga

This lasted for way too long! First (and I believe I mentioned it) I realized that I didn’t add my Finnair Plus number to my September reservations and for some reason, the BA website didn’t allow me to add it. I had to call BA and go through a very long wait, but in the end, they made the change, and I started to see these reservations on my Finnair Plus app.

After my first flight, I didn’t see my Avios, but I knew that with the partner points, it might take a couple of days. When no Avios appeared after a week, I called Finnair and asked what was going on. They promised to investigate, and I saw a “pending” message on the app, but a day later, all four flights showed “rejected.” When it happened a couple of times before, I let it go, but this time, there were four flights, and my end-of-tier-points period was fast approaching, so I called Finnair again. They said that it looked like my loyalty number was not on the reservation (which was not true), so I asked them what I could do to claim my points. They said it was a good question and they would send another email to BA.

Still, nothing happened. I called BA, and they said they had my number and everything; it’s just that Finnair never requested them… Everything started to look Kafkian. I called BA and Finnair every other day, and every other day, it was the same story: BA said they had all the information, but Finnair didn’t request it, and Finnair said that BA didn’t reply to their email. I complained on X and received a number of false agents’ responses plus one actual Finnair response: “We are still waiting for BA to email us.” Out of complete desperation, two days before the end of the tier points period, I called BA again and asked whether I could change the loyalty program on the tickets to the BA executive club (then I could transfer them myself). They said I could do it, but it would take up to six business days, so it wouldn’t solve my problem of receiving my missing point before the cutoff. The lady was super nice, and she said that she would try to escalate my case (although technically speaking it was not their case!), but she can’t promise.

Now, I was already Finnair Plus, and I already had enough points to maintain this status, but since I flew a lot this year, Finnair Platinum was within reach. I knew I wouldn’t have enough tier points, and I would need to exchange some of my Avios for tier points, but I was hoping to get it to the minimum.

A day before the end of the period, I asked Boris whether I should wait for another day or make the Avios exchange, and he replied that it had already cost me more time than the Avios was worth (which was true) and that I should exchange and be done with it. It turned out that I needed to change just a little bit less than the maximum allowed amount, and so now I have FInnair Platinum.

However, I didn’t want to leave the case as it was (after all, I still could use missing Avios for Avios), so I decided to find a way to complain. It took me a while, but I found a place on the Finnair website to leave feedback and share all the details about my case. The following day, early in the morning, I saw that all my missing Avios magically appeared on my Finnair Plus, so I guess this method worked :). Several hours later, I received an email from Finnair, saying: “We are sorry there was a delay, but your Avios are now here.” I emailed back, saying: “Thank you, but I also want to ensure you have better customer service in our New York office.” They replied formally, and I decided to stop.
In retrospect, I do not regret I spent that much time. The previous time I had points rejected, the number of points was small, and I didn’t want to spend time trying to resolve the issue, but that time around, I wanted to protect my consumer rights 🙂

The Pawnbroker

In between the two operas, I watched The Pawnbroker, a 1964 film directed by Sidney Lumet. I learned about this movie from one of the kino-websites advertisements related to Lumet’s 100 anniversary. Then it was my usual movie story: I need to find time; the movie is so captivating that I can’t watch it as a background to anything, etc. Actually, after the first ten minutes of watching, I realized that I won’t be able to hit the stop button….

How many Holocaust movies did I watch? Many! How many books? How many photos? A lot, but still, this movie was unbearable to watch even though it shows very little of actual Nazi atrocities. We do not even know the whole story of Sol Nazerman. We only see flashbacks of past events triggered by something happening in the present. Still, it’s striking evidence of unmendable damage done to a human. When I was watching the movie, I physically felt Mr. Naserman’s suffering. I just do not have the right words to describe how I felt. A naked truth. Immense sorrow.

Mom’s Updates

It has been a week since I posted the last update about my mom. In short, things are fine, although there are still many unknowns.

A PT is coming once a week (the original order was twice a week, but Medicaid only covers one). Mom is doing the exercises twice a day and is making good progress. She is still not allowed to go outside on her own, but a PT said that he hopes to get her to the level when she will be able to walk without a walker and without a cane, but it will take weeks. I hired a person to walk with her for an hour once a day, and she was fine with it for the first two days. On Sunday, she made a scene accusing me of “making decisions for her without consulting her,” and we had a pretty ugly conversation. She refused to recall that I asked her first and that she agreed

A Russian-speaking nurse will be coming once a week.We had a first visit with her on Monday, and she ordered a new blood pressure monitor and a wearable so that mom could push a button if she falls.

Also, the nurse said that she would put a request for home help, and that’s where my mom exploded again. We had another ugly conversation, and finally, I figured out what it was about. For some reason, my mom got into her head this idea that “I want to send her to a senior home” (she even thought about it when I was trying to sign her up for subsidized housing). So now it’s a new development: she got an idea that when I offer to hire help or when I want to request a social worker for her, I am doing it to collect the evidence that she can’t live on her own and should be placed into a senior home, so pretty much the opposite of what we are trying to do.

The more I think about it, the more it feels like that cynical approach to life that I talked about in one of my recent posts. She has a deep belief that “everyone is evil,” and everyone thinks only about their own well-being, not their neighbor. It’s extremely unsettling (I do not know how she can say that “she respects me” and “I am the best daughter ever.”

I still have no idea how to provide coverage for the time I will be away, not even in terms of finding additional help but in terms of convincing her to accept that help. I think that at some point I will have to let it go as PT doctors at the hospital told me.

Rigoletto

On Tuesday, my neighbor and I went to our second opera of that season: Verdi’s Rigoletto. In contrast to Fidelio, it was a very traditional production, and it was astonishing.

I saw Rigoletto multiple times back in Russia, but like with many operas that I thought I knew, it turned out that we had a severely reduced version of it. My first eye-opener was Carmen, and Boris told me that he had a similar revelation with Faust, and now Rigoletto.

Beautiful. More tragic than I ever thought.

Summer Never Ends!

Twice, I washed my swimsuit and beach towel “for a season,” and twice, I stashed them away “until next summer.” And on Monday, I took them out for the third time :).

I was in the office for half the day and then rushed to my mom’s house to meet with the nurse. After the nurse’s visit, I had a long and not very productive conversation with my mom, and it was still relatively early when I left there house.

While I was walking back along the beach, I realized that it was still warm, and even with the shorter days, it was still enough time! I rushed home, pulled my neatly folded beach towel from the top shelf along with my just-washed swimsuit, pulled a pair of shorts from the bottom of the summer clothes box, and quickly walked back to the beach!

It was warm! And the water was warm! There were some people sitting on the sand, but nobody in the water. I don’t know why – the water was warm, and there were no lifeguards, and oh my, how perfect it was to be there at that very moment!

Thank you, Lake Michigan!

The Harm Of Cynicism

I didn’t want to add anything to the previous post because I felt it was important on its own. But there is one more thing I wanted to add. I think that cynucisn, he belief that people in general are greedy, dishonest, and untrustworthy, was (and still is) deeply engraved in Russian society, and in the heart and soul of every Russian. That’s where this belief of “stupid Americans” is coming from. And that’s why people are so unhappy, and do not believe that something good is possible. And don’t make any strides for change.

And that’s why I was the only smiling mother on the pictures which Igor’s classmates drew in his preschool for the Women’t Day.

And that’s why I felt immediately at home when I came to the US, despite of all financial hardships.

And that’s why I am so furious about PostgresPro. .

Hidden Brain: Cynicism and Scepticism

You 2.0: Fighting Despair

This Hidden Brain episode is called “Fighting Despair,” but I became really focused when it came to the second part: the cynicism and the skepticism as an alternative. Before I heard this episode, I never thought about a formal definition of these concepts. Here is how the psychologist Jamil Zaki defines them:

Continue reading “Hidden Brain: Cynicism and Scepticism” →