Just last night I was grumbling about how lucky Putin is, despite everything he does. Something always happens that he can turn around in his favour.

Hosting Winter Olympics and winning to host Football Cup - but of course! No matter how much money mysteriously disappears in the process, - we're a great nation, we deserve it!

Civil war breaks out in a neighboring state - time to say "tut-tut!" to a nation who have been in vain hopes of spurting economic growth, development and quality of life. Set them as a bad example of see-what-happens-to-the-disloyal-ones?!  to your own nation. Feeding the bullshit of some Fascists, NATO, US secretly participating in the war to your own people successfully - definitely requires some tremendous amount of luck going your way.

Actually, successfully feeding your people the bullshit of nearly the whole world conspiring against them for many years - requires some tremendous luck.

Terrorist attacks and violent shooting in developed countries - serve them right!

Annexing part of the neighboring country while it's at war? - sure, we're a great nation, on our way back to being an Empire! (apparently) :)

Providing asylum to Snowden? - Yep, let the world know what the real Democracy is!

EU approaches Russia after having suffered a number of terrorist attacks? - of course, that's because we're great!

But fine. There's a good opportunity to improve relationship with the EU and USA, to unite and contribute and to really do something that counts and can make your people proud. After all - here's a common enemy - a real one! - and you do have resources, and you're the one being approached! A very, very good chance to start off a new clean page!

...Leaving it on this thought makes reading the news at 3am about the shot down SU-24 and Putin's response, threats of sanctions and calling for the Russians to cease visiting Turkey a bit like a... deja vu (deja lu) caused by sleep deprivation.
A big fat vicious circle deja vu.

The world is changing.

On a large scale, major changes are inevitable. The entire human history is the history of new discoveries made, rise and fall of empires, values changes, cultures abandoned, technical innovations playing "survival of the fittest" game with traditions and lifestyle (not in favour of the latter).

On a much smaller, much more selfish scale... I dread these changes. I learnt the world as it was centuries and centuries ago, I know it well the way it is now, and this is the way I want it to stay. I know the existing system well enough to understand and analyze current global events, and make plans for my life and the life of my family accordingly. Is it likely that during my life at least one major geopolitical change will take place and the balance of power at some point of our planet will shift? Most likely than not! Will I be able to adjust and adapt to whatever chain of events this will cause? Absolutely! Will I be able to make new speculations about my life, make plans for education, traveling, work? But of course!

Once again, the mankind has been through revolutionary, rather than evolutionary, change hundreds of times. And yet, on a scale of my single short human life, I want to hold on to science, culture, art medicine, philosophy and peoples just as they are now. One stupid move - and the world does change, people within it change in response,  and it may so happen - that whatever I am used to, whatever I appreciate, respect and value - will cease to exist.

Life as a mother of 2. Month six.

Chinchilla Jr is eating his third breakfast. Or having an early brunch. Or a coffee break. Chinchilla Sr asks for immediate help with potty - he uses the adult toilet because... he just has to.

I stop feeding Chinchilla Jr, put him in his bed, go and help Chinchilla Sr sit on the toilet. Chinchilla Sr suddenly changes his mind, jumps down and tries to run away. I catch him, remind him 5 seconds ago he needed to go, and put him back up. Chinchilla Sr cries <possibly> that life is not fair and I suck, jumps off the toilet again, at the same time trying to get out of my hands, and as I realize insisting is pointless and let him go - he gets into a tantrum, loses balance and falls down on the floor his cheek against the tile.

As he gets air into his lungs to tell me again life is not fair and I suck, before returning to his interrupted tantrum, I quickly walk out, closing the door behind me and instructing him to join me once he's done crying and realized that throwing himself side to side between a toilet, a bath and travertine tile is not worth it and would hurt not me, but him most. Literally.

Meanwhile, Chinchilla Jr has grown impatient and wants the rest of his breakfast. Or coffee. Just as I pick him up and continue with him, Chinchilla Sr appears in the bathroom door with a bleeding lip. I freak out, leave Chinchilla Jr right on the nursing chair to run up to Chinchilla Sr and make sure he did not lose a tooth or break his nose.

Chinchilla Sr has his nose intact and his full set of teeth in, and no blisters anywhere on the face, except for the upper swollen lip - which he must have hit his teeth against, when falling. I wash his face, take off the vest with a stain of blood, wipe the blood from the floor and as Chinchilla Sr turns into his highly energetic smart and sly self, hear a boom! sound coming off the nursery.

Chinchilla Jr, apparently having lost us out of sight for a whole minute and started for worry, crawled off the nursing chair backwards. With his legs getting off the chair first. And is now lying on the carpet, telling me life is not fair and I suck.

*******

The following day Chinchilla Jr manages to roll off the changing table. Since he is actually fastened to his changing pad, the changing pad, which is much bigger than him, somehow gets carried down with him and ends up covering him on the carpet. Chinchilla Jr tells me I'm not fair and life sucks and that I need to do better than just milk if I want him to calm down.

After running around with Chinchilla Jr., panicking and googling what needs to be done and what the risks are, I realize I need to give a call to the pediatrician's office to let them know we're running late for the scheduled flu shot for Chinchilla Sr. For some reason my call can't go through and I can't reach anyone in the office. I leave Chinchilla Jr to the nanny - both are giggling at me panicking and the fact Chinchilla Jr has his trademark smile back on his face allow me to breathe a little deeper, - leave instructions with her, grab Chinchilla Sr and drive off to the pediatrician.

Chinchilla Sr gets his thigh poked - it's getting harder to control him, as he's much stronger and smarter than a year ago. He cries that nothing is fair nowadays and everything sucks, but only until the nurse leaves the room. Both Chinchillas do it - must be some sort of self-worked out strategy of getting rid of strangers with needles. Later today, in the middle of the night he will develop an adverse reaction to this shot...

But now I want him to calm down and feel better and walk in the snow in our drive way and across the street with him. He wants to walk in the stream of melted snow: grabs my hand, pull me towards him, hears a crow and says "Varrooon" with very much French accent and pronunciation, and  - I can't say no to him.

Spend the next 20 minutes running in the snow and in the water. I need to be in the office - needed to have been there a while ago - so after continuing taking Chinchilla Sr into coming home, I grab him and walk with him across the house to the patio. The bribe works for a short while. He wants to get down into the backyard, but the stairs are covered with 4 inches of sticky snow and I've had enough of one kid falling down this morning already.

I tell him he can walk around the patio as much as he wants, but block the way to the stairs with a folded patio chair. He gets through just for the sake of it, pretends he does not hear and tries to escape. The rebellious attempt gets him back indoors without boots, hat and jacket and... screaming.

Screaming so hard Chinchilla Jr, who has finally fallen asleep after almost an hour of trying - is woken up. And tells us all life is not fair and we suck.

Rebot.

Repeat.

I'll miss these days.

All petty things always come up in batches but never mean much.

That is, it's not too bad when an espresso maker breaks down all out of sudden or when your bathroom is about to be taken apart and turned upside down, or appliances or plumbing are acting up. All that's negligible, even thought weeks can go by feeling like all you every day is playing tennis against three. All day long.

It's much worse to binge google side effects of spinal surgery or vein removal and hope that everything goes well with the former, and the doctor has enough experience and knowledge and there'll be enough luck in the air at the time of surgery. And trying to decide if the later is absolutely necessary right now, or can wait until thrombosis starts to form and what not.

And then the fact of adding some formula to Chinchilla Jr's breast milk  - that completely throws me off the balance. Although having nursed for over a year now - 5 months of exclusive breastfeeding since birth is way more than I have hoped for, with both babies.  Still.
One day I will look back at this time of my life, and laugh...

October.

For a few weeks now I end up sitting in the same Light rail car as a big man in large headphones, humming and talking to himself. His humming is so loud, long  and deep-in-the chest, it keeps all the passengers who have not heard it before confused by  the sound ' s origin, and when I first heard it myself I thought the train car was going off the rails.


Today's the coldest day of this semester, with drizzling rain and gusty winds developing as I am already waiting for my train at the stop. sitting in the car I catch myself thinking my shoes are two light and thin for such weather. This thought flows into trying to remember the last time I was wearing weather-incompatible shoes. Must be when working at La Reserve - I did have to take train and walk to and from train stations. Good times!.. Where did I keep my work shoes then? Must be my locker - yes, I did have a locker in the staff changing room. Was it also where I would keep my German study book for the times I arrived to work too early in the morning? Must be.


It's amazing how such details escape conscious mind for so many years - not that I needed to refer to them daily, and because I needed to constantly keep my mind clean for other... thoughts. But they've been somewhere deep down my memory all along. As I pass downtown, I take a different route to the building my class is at, and when glancing in the window of a hotel I walk by I see a team of waiters circled around a Maitre-d'  and realize they're going through their instructions, and their shift is about to begin, and it's going to be a pretty busy evening with such nasty weather outside.

Dear Chemists, Chemical Engineers, Environomental Scientists et al!

On behalf of that luckiest part of the present day human kind who live in permanent accommodation  - and therefore, have to run a household,  and who also have children - and therefore, deal with a number of items and objects meant to ease up the process of raising up children, I seek your help in inventing, creating and making available:

1. A THING working on neutralizing the chemical part in gels, powders, creams, liquids used either for house cleaning or for personal hygiene. When a toddler squeezes out shampoo on the carpet, scatters dishwasher detergent all over the kitchen floor - it would be great to... pick whatever you can and put it into a THING  to make the end product less harmless for the environment. If you need to dispose off of a 1/4 bottle of hair conditioner  that by no means work for you anymore - instead of flushing it all down the toilet, it would be much better to run it through the THING and minimize the overall amount of the chemicals run in the sewage waters because of waste. 
2. STUFF for turning the contents of the baby and (especially) toddler diapers into all-natural organic fertilizer. All you need to do is to throw  in a filled up  compostable diaper. Just imagine - a Diaper Genie size STUFF that stands near your changing table or in the bathroom and keeps those extra... few pounds a day from going into a landfill,  but rather to actually benefit land. Priceless for those who have an excess of used diapers at home, and their green thumb spouses' little garden in the backyard. 
3. A SOMETHING that composts kitchen waste of organic origin in matter of days. I believe works on the prototype that used bacteria were already carried out, but please - come up with a SOMETHING affordable and available to the middle class, kitchen-size and  fully baby proof.

To any Chemists and Environmentalists that are in fact genius scientists: is there any way to design an exothermic THING, STUFF and SOMETHING? On the household scale, we could all use some additional energy...

I'm sure for many this will be an easy and logical step to contribute a small improvement to the world by "starting with themselves". On my end, I am willing to volunteer for the projects as idea contributor and the final product tester ;)

Sincerely,

Rita.

Second postpartum recovery is complete:



Ran my first 5K postpartum - which technically indicates I'm back to pre-prenatal shape - without killing my ankles and lungs. And judging by the photo it only took me .02 mile to get my phone ready and document the achievement.

 

#26. Martin Eden.

On one hand, I feel frustrated and embarrassed I didn't pull myself together to make time to read this novel earlier. On the other hand, it does leave me with mixed feelings I doubt I would have had even a year ago. On the third hand Just as I could live every line talking about all the effort required for learning and all the challenges of self-improvement (and I love works about and biographies of autodidacts!), the last few chapters completely smudged the integrity of Martin's personality, leaving very much under doubt the phenomenon of adverse change in such a short period of time for a person of extraordinary will and abilities. I couldn't even explain what exactly does not seem true; maybe I already have Man's search for meaning too deep in me, overwriting the possibilities of fatal disappointments and apathy...

Sunset almost soaks in my Light Rail train as it is rushing south, away from the Downtown.

The last car is full of people, yet the sun rays find their way through the windows, through the crowd to my little green book lying on top of my backpack. On my way to the seat I managed to drop my lipstick and nearly the backpack itself. I'm lucky I got a seat though and am now able to try to focus on the revenue recognition principles. I've actually been pretty damn lucky recently.

A few days ago a potential nanny called to accept our offer. She was my first and most preferred candidate, and, having discussed some details on the work hours, I hung up and slowly breathed out...

Almost at the same time as my nanny seeking quest came to an end, our garage door, front door and frames were painted - finally putting an end to almost 9 month long house repair and maintenance process that followed last September's hail storm. Next project - bathroom remodeling, which I now feel less annoyed about and more like putting an end to.

My Ethics class, as it turned out a couple of hours ago, will focus on decision planning and planning. This couldn't have been more useful and timely - I will need to make quite a few serious decisions soon. Sure enough, the Universe is conspiring to provide enough resources to help me finish my most important project in the next six month :) Besides, the International Organizations' Management class just had to be available for me now, so I could make up timing for it and work out that if I listen to the online lectures at gym during my workouts - I will be able to follow the course and complete assignments according to the schedule. So far it works like magic. And when I complete the quizzes at home, in my own study space on a full size laptop, and the University logo pops up and the course picture show as I sign in - I bet I can smell the blossoming chestnut trees, forming a maze of shady alleys in the park this University is located at.

2/3 of summer 2015 is gone.

If I had to describe what the past 2 months looked like for the most part, I'd say, something like this:

Despite completing a Master level course with a solid A, enjoying the course, and staying alive and sane in the progress, this was an experience I could not have recommended to any new mom!

The Ethics class starts August 18th. Then I will be done with the education part for good.
Sooner than this, on August 10th, starts my online class in International Organizations. Can't believe it all worked out well and I actually got access to it!

The first draft of the Business Plan calculations is done. There is much more to it than I expected, so it will require a couple of updates.

Early July Von Zobel and I managed to get out for next-to-last Kurious performance in Denver. First and foremost, God bless sisters as good as mine! Second, it's amazing how once you put a goal to go out/ have a date every month, you actually come up with opportunities and ideas to do so, and are less afraid of leaving your kids for several hours (less afraid for the person babysitting that is! :) ).

The reading goal is 50% complete - 25 books read, and 25 more to go. So many more interesting books on my list, and I have absolutely no idea if going through them at the same speed I'm going now will help me cover them all before year end.

Did some home improvement, changing the carpet in boys' and guest bathrooms to tile. No more carpet drowning, Dr. Chill Sr! The funniest thing was - the tile installation started right when I was in the hospital with Dr. Chill Jr. Having disappeared for a couple of weeks after receiving the payment from me, the company called me a few hours right after giving birth saying the team can be at our place to start working on the floor the next day, and that it is important I agree on this as they are not sure when the next availability would come up. Drugged and exhausted as I was, I was still able to understand what they meant and coordinate the installation with Liz and Nanny, instead of using my right of a woman who just gave birth to lose it and yell at them to pull their shit together, which once again proves I'm a Wonder Woman. 

Traveling still does not look realistic until end of this year, International travel for sure.

How I can most effectively combine studying and taking an exam with the rest of the goal on my list, and still spending as much time with my family as possible still remains a mystery. But I'll sure find a way.

Adding to the agenda - finding a new good nanny; putting together a new Fall schedule.

My body is happy, my body is singing, my body is back to gym!

 It is an amazing feeling to have your body under control again, do what feels good, do what you know is right. Surprisingly, I'm not even half as much out of shape as I thought I would be after pregnancy. I would like to believe that all those yoga classes, walking and swimming during this last few weeks of pregnancy are finally paying off. 

Definitely, any woman who takes her health, physical capabilities, mental state of mind for granted - should have at least one kid in her life to fully appreciate being in harmony with herself, strength and self control.

Heading towards birthday party on Saturday evening all by itself seemed unreal:

All the way along  E470 where the road sides are neatly landscaped with multi-color pebbles and the open space on both sides is just too vast and bright. Big mall on late Saturday afternoon is heated all the way through and filled with people. I find myself standing near a crossroad with with my phone in hand, trying to figure out where the painting studio is, when I suddenly notice fountains to the left of me and kids trying to jump into the upright stream of water, and their mothers sitting at street cafe tables nearby, and the pretzel booth right in front of me, and a group of guys in their thirties wearing shorts and sandals throwing a glance as we walk past each other... and the sun keeps heating and heating up the pavement under my feet, and the Sun dazzles.

The feeling of a realness comes back to me. I feel like being on a mall on a Saturday evening,  where everybody is just relaxing, having fun and wasting time - is not right for me. It is just like being lost somewhere in time, being several years back, where nothing of my presence life exists.
Or maybe, it would make sense to live this very moment in time at a different place right now: for example, celebrating the birthday of Switzerland, being  there to live through this vivid outdoor experience right now. 

But then, here I am. Scary to think what would become of my feelings and perception of reality should I not force push myself to normal life as soon as possible, following crucial and significant changes in my life.

The Universe conspired in giving me another quick life lesson:

Always entrust services and assistance that concern your family to professionals. Always outsource to professionals. Don't be nice to friends of family, don't be nice to friends of friends; don't buy their rushing to get out of a tough life situation and unfair employment conditions right now.

Always. Use. Professionals.

I thought this hard earned wisdom is so important I should put sticking to it on my 2016 resolutions list. Then I realized  there was still almost half of 2015 left, so I'd better start sticking to it now.

One call home - and within a second an emptiness grows deep inside.

The person who taught me to play chess, told the plot of the whole Le Comte de Monte-Cristo before I read the novel and the plot of Gaidai's comedies before I watched them, who was doing math lessons with me, told me jokes about his work when I was a kid and shared the memories of his service in the army and bomb testing after, who came up with the name for my sister and could have been a successful scientist had he been born in a different country - died. 

And now deep inside there's nothing but emptiness, sorrow and worry about Dad and Grandma. They're coping ok now, but what about when the shock and stress fade?

Now I only have Grannies left. 

I'm only happy he feels good now and does not suffer anymore, and that he had seen his both great grandsons.

All I feel like doing this first month of postpartum recovery

is eating, sleeping and watching distracting movies or tv-series.
Of that the closest I can get to is eating, and even that is an irregular and chaotic activity.

Instead, I ended up with an MBA course to complete, two bureaucratic systems to fight, a toddler to entertain and maintain good relationship with (never mind the order of appearance, that's #1 priority), a crowdfunding campaign proposal and grant proposal drafts to write, scanning job market for some challenging and rewarding job opportunities, - that's not to mention non-stop cleaning, cooking, laundry and other secondary, life supporting activities.

One interesting child-gadget that's new for us - is the Bob Duallie stroller with a car seat adapter. There's something incredibly fun putting both little Chinchillas in the same stroller, and watch them give the proud important looks of CEOs in BMW-7 series from their seats (one can have this look being few weeks old). Top this up with ankle weights and a good audio book in the smartphone - and having two small children is getting better and better!

Grant and crowdfunding proposals are very interesting projects; even though they were new to me when I started - I found it easy to put them together. Probably all business plan writing became useful :)   Speaking of which, there is another business plan I owe to myself, which I get to finish this month...

***
Dark clouds and sporadic sunlight beams outside cast strange light on the branches of the ash. The branches bend in the harsh gusty winds. The whole tree seems to shake from side to side. I have Dr. Chill Jr in my arms, he's looking straight into my eyes. All this creates a weird feeling of the surroundings, time and everything else in my life now being surreal.