Pandora's box

It's been awhile since I last blogged, so lot's to catch up on....

You may have noticed that I've changed my template somewhat and added something along the side here called Pandora. It's a website that allows you to create your own radio station by building off one artist or song that you like. My first choice is an R&B type station because I typed in "London Bridge" by Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas, and the second one is more of an acoustic-y, reggae, salsa type of station I got by typing in Lily Allen. You can either listen to my two stations or have fun creating one of your own. (It eliminates having to listen to adverts, at the very least.) I got into it as I've been downloading our entire CD collection onto the computer to have it then downloaded onto our Ipod. So far I've got almost 4 gigs done (2.5 days of listening - which makes being stuck on a desert island with my Ipod a little less boring) and another tower of CDs to go! I don't know if this is another one of those "make-work" projects because somewhere along the way I've forgotten why I was doing it in the first place.
Oh, I know! I was trying to come up with the ultimate "walking playlist". When I walk Jessie every morning, I noticed that I could cover a lot more ground if I could find some up-beat tempos to walk to. After a few days of trial and error, (which included walks where either I was walking as if I were slowly advancing up the wedding aisle or booting it so fast I was getting shin-splints) I finally came up with the ultimate playlist. I even have a built-in pauses in the tempo for those absolutely necessary poo-retrieval moments - which is assuming I can get Jessie to cooperate and do it in the exact same place every morning...

Here's the playlist if anyone's curious to see what gets me moving around the park:

A Little Less Conversation 3:33 Elvis vs JXL
Love Machine 3:25 Girls Aloud
Aint Got No... I Got Life (REMIX) 3:22 Nina Simone
Absolutely Everybody 3:43 Vanessa Amorosi
My time 3:15 Dutch feat. Crystal Waters
Ray Of Light 5:20 Madonna
Cha Cha Slide 3:40 DJ Casper
Follow Da Leader 2:32 Nigel & Marvin
Pump It 3:33 The Black Eyed Peas
Vertigo 3:14 U2
Burning Down The House 3:37 Tom Jones & The Cardigans Huge

Back home once again

Arrived back home on Monday evening (took the day flight back from Canada for the first time). It's been a laid-back week with the kids exploring their toys after 2 months away from them, and just going out when absolutely necessary.
One of the more necessary items on the agenda was preparing for Adriana's 5th birthday party on Saturday. We had planned for it to take place at home in the back garden, thinking that the weather would cooperate (as it had done last year), and that we would have no problem entertaining 30 - 5 year olds for 3 hours.
God must have been laughing at me hysterically as I chewed on my fingernails listening to the weather report all day Friday and seriously hoping that when the nice weather lady said "showers over most of England, Scotland and Wales for most of Saturday", that she didn't mean to include London as well!
"How I am supposed to keep 30 children occupied for 3 hours while not letting them outdoors at all - at the risk of tracking in mud from the rain and windswept garden???" These thoughts kept me awake most of the night.
The next morning was a frenzy of last-minute re-juggling of the Dora Adventure to be held indoors, with the guest bed being Star Mountain (subbing for the trampoline), Adriana's bunk being the Troll Bridge (subbing for the Little Tykes slide) and the upstairs hall being Crocodile Lake (subbing for the toddler pool outside).
As 1 pm approached there was one light drizzle and only 12 out of the 30 invited showed up. So for the last hour of the party, we threw open the patio doors and released the horde to play outside until their parents came to collect them via the side gate. (We still weren't going to let them track dirt back inside - we're not dummies!)
So next year rather than rely on the obviously inept weather reports or the changeable English weather, I'm having her party at an indoor play area.

No more stress for Mama!

Ukie Festival

Our last weekend here and we're spending it at the Ukrainian Festival in Toronto. After finishing up our stay at the cottage with George and Andrea and their boys Kristian and Michael, we drove up late last night to get a headstart for the Festival's parade at 11 the next morning. (Even had time to get Adriana's hair cut at Melonheads - great name for a kid's hairdresser - while she sat in the pony chair.) Here's a picture of her in the bonus helicopter ride after ther haircut.

The festival had the requisite rides for the younger kids, the 2 concert stages and lots of booths selling food and souveniers. Let's not forget the beer tent - which I was unable to spend too much time at since I had children with me...

We also came down to Peter and Tom's place to celebrate Adriana's birthday with some cake and presents. Peter's cake (as he had warned me) looked a bit odd because the icing refused to stick to it, so we decided it looked more like a muffin top instead. very tasty, in any case.

Family history

I had the oppotunity to visit with my Uncle Vasyl and Aunt Bozena the other day at my step-mum Sophia's cottage and finally heard in detail some of my family's wartime history. (I probably should have either listened better to my father while he was alive - but I was young and stupid and he wasn't really interested in dredging up the past either.)
I knew that my father was captured by the Germans at the age of 20 and was shipped off to the occupied territories, but wasn't sure exactly where and was a bit unsure of the details of how he re-joined his family later. It turns out he was shipped to eastern Prussia (which I know know is northern Poland - near Gdansk) and worked in a factory of some sort. Later, the rest of his family (mum, dad, and 4 brothers and sisters) were captured by the Germans and shipped off to the German/Holland border where they were forced to re-build railway lines which had been blown up during the war. My grandmother and grandfather spent back-breaking days gathering up rocks and then re-aligning the tracks upon their supports. 2 years went by and my grandmother took a chance and begged her German commandant to write a letter to his counterpart in Eastern Prussia to bring her son there to rejoin them; promising that he was a diligent worker, like the rest of the family.
When my father was ordered to the commandant of the camp, he was worried he'd done something wrong and was deeply afraid he'd be shot. When it turned out that he was being shipped to meet the rest of his family, he was overjoyed. As my uncle puts it, it was God's will that he was shipped when he was, because apparerently he was on the last train going west before the Russians attacked and rousted the Germans. If he hadn't been on that train, he might never seen his family again and I certainly wouldn't be sitting here writing this blog! Thank God for Babsia taking the chance and getting her son back.

Holes and ends

I don't know if it's the bug spray, the constant bike riding, or what, but everytime I turn around, Adriana's got another hole in the crotch of her shorts, capris, or underwear! How many times have I seen her lounging on the sofa, absent-mindedly picking at the threads around a gaping hole between her legs? Not sure what to do about it, since everytime I sew it up, it seems to unravel again. At least it's not as bad as the incident that the girls reminded me of when I went to pick up Adriana from school last spring and she met me at the door with a wave. Doesn't sound bad, does it? Well, imagine the wave consisting of Adriana's arm stuck in through the waistband of her trousers and coming out through the yawning gap in the non-existant seam in her crotch. I can remember the sheer goofiness of her pose outweighed my embarassment of her doing it in front of a crowd of mums, so I just had to laugh!

Other than holes everywhere, our summer has been progressing smoothly. Had the requisite trip to Canada's Wonderland, and have been hanging out at the cottage, cutting away decades of tree branches and trimming hedges. Orest leaves tomorrow for London, so he's making the last repairs to the cottage before he leaves. I'll be here next week when I'll have to slowly start packing things up too. God, the summer has flown by!

Green Lake funnies

We just got back from our visit to the Van Dusen cottage, just want to thank Mike and Mary for hosting us yet again. The girls had a great time catching up with Ciana and Elise, and now Adriana has some summer memories of the cottage to add to her winter ones. Speaking of which, Adriana was the cause of much hilarity at one point that I almost bust a gut! Adriana was eating her lunch one day and asked Mary innocently: "Why does your cat not come to the cottage?" I guess her question was worded a bit confusingly, so Mary parrotted it back to confirm it. "Why doesn't my cat come to the cottage?" Adriana replies with "I don't know!" Classic Abbot and Costello "Who's on First" comes immediately to mind, as Mary tried to repeat the question again to make sure she understood the question. Mike and I just cracked up, me so hard, tears came to my eyes.
Another source of laughter (or frustration for Larysa) appears to have come with apparent inability to row a boat. I took Adriana out in the rowboat, at her request, only to find that whichever way I rowed, we always seemed to head into the shore. After several attempts, with Adriana howling in fear ("Mama gonna crash!!!!"), I managed to get the rowboat back to the dock. At that point, Larysa appeared and said she'd be willing to try the canoe with us, maybe we'd be able to successfully navigate around the lake in that. Within seconds, it became apparent that I had no idea what I was doing, and we ended up in the shore several more times, with Larysa's howls of "Mom, I thought you said you could steer?!?!" adding to that of Adriana's. It took about 10 minutes of backwards and forwarding to finally get the canoe into it's mooring place and I topped the whole misadventure off by doing the classic splits of one leg onboard and one on the dock with me in the water in the end. Oh, the shame!

Busy preparing and enroute to Green Lake

It's amazing how your body gets used to the lethargic days of just lounging around the cottage. It's not until you have to actually DO something that you realize how little you've done. Like the other day where we had to pack our stuff and get out of Toronto early enough on a Friday before the long weekend in order not to get caught in the holiday traffic. We'd decided to spend the day at our cottage before heading off to Mike and Mary's cottage. I, however, could not spend the day at the pool, but had to do a load of laundry in town (that one of my daughters had inadvertantly left at the cottage a few days before), do a load of grocery shopping to take to Mike and Mary's, and buy a swimsuit for one of my daughters (3 guesses as to who forgot both the dirty laundry and the swimsuit - rhymes with Farysa) who felt that packing rocks in her backpack was more important than making sure she had something to swim in.

We left our cottage at 5pm and stopped along the way at a diner that we've always thought we should stop into, every time we drove up to the Van Dusen's cottage. So even though Stefa was desperate to get to see Ciana & Elise as soon as possible, ("Don't they have a drive-through???") we forced her to sit through a meal at Kelly's diner on highway 37, just north of Tweed. Although this place was in the middle of nowhere, they had a good menu and quaint atmosphere. They had liscence plates on the walls from just about every province and a few states as well, so that kept the kids occupied for the entire wait for food trying to figure out which ones were missing. The one disparate piece of the rural decor was a head shot of Natasha Richardson, with her autograph saying: "Thanks for a great party, it was fun! All the best, Natasha." Who knew that in the wilds of rural Ontario lurks a party swank enough for the likes of Natasha and her fellow thespians?

Shopping and diving

Last week we spent from Wednesday on in the city, catching up on clothes shopping, movies (Over the Hedge, Pirates of the Carribean) and city living. People often ask me why I shop for clothes here in Toronto, when London is much more fashionable. Well, I aint my Mama's baby for nothin'! Even though I resisted the tactics of the 'Queen of the Bargain Hunters' as much of possible, some things have stuck. Like not spending double the cost per item. I picked up a cute tank and shorts set for Stefa at Jacob Jr. that cost me $14. Tell me where I could get the equivalent in England for 7 pounds? Maybe the bottom of a bin in a charity shop, but who's got the time to rummage around for something decent.

Another reason we came back to the city was the influx of people coming to visit. Orest's brother Roman arrived on Wednesday afternoon, and then Orest himself arrived on Friday evening for his 3 week holiday. The males got together for a day of golf at the cottage on Sunday and we've stayed on from then. Good thing, too - there was another heat wave in the city, with tempareatures reaching 37, or 45 degrees with the humidex. We're sitting around the pool with the warm breeze coming off the lake and the water to cool us off with. We both know there's things we should and could be doing around the cottage, but the weather is just too damn nice. At least I can claim I did one job today: I helped Orest turn the grip bars around on the diving board. Apparently, every year, there's a 50/50 chance that these bars get installed correctly. So I guess this year, we're on the wrong 50% this year and we had to take them off and install them back so that they were actually of some use when going up the ladder. I'm surprised the Health and Safety Inspector didn't catch that earlier, but as it's already caused two accidents (including one to Adriana), we knew it should be fixed.
When Adriana fell off the diving board, it was a classic parental moment. First someone else's child slipped, hooked her leg onto the rail and ended up suspended upside down until we could assist her off. As we're trying to assess her injuries, I can see that Adriana is still running on the diving board and call out to her, not once, but twice: "Stop running, can't you see it's slippery and dangerous on that board??" Two seconds later, Adriana slips off herself. (Luckily she landed on her feet, but there was a bit of bump in behind her ear where she touched down on the concrete diving block.) It is just so satisfying to say: "See! Didn't Mama tell you not to run? Are you going to listen to your mother next time?" It's like providing the ultimate justification for my role as mother.

Summer reading

7 16-grid Su Dokus
8 books
4 back episodes of CSI
4 back episodes of Without a Trace

I just wanted to share some of the books I've read. Not all of them have been good, but these 4 I can recommend. Frank McCourt's Teacher Man (if the author sounds familiar, he also wrote Angela's Ashes) is an autobrigraphy concerning his time spent as an English teacher in the NYC school system. It's a must-read for any one in eduction, and for me it's a confirmation that you don't have to be young when you start writing - Frank was 66 when he wrote his first novel. Next, I read Wicked (on which the new musical is based). It's interesting how the author fleshed out an entire world from the shell of the Wizard of Oz. Even the witche's name; Elphaba, is a tribute to Frank L. Baum, the author of of Oz. The novel is quite a dark analysis of the nature of evil, and it's hard for me to imagine it as a Broadway musical. My next recommendation it The Birth of Venus, a story of a woman in 1400's Florence, who becomes Michaelangelo's lover. It would be lovely to see the city to see if anything remains of 15th century Florence. Lastly, I've just finished The Devil wore Prada, which was not as good as I thought it would be. I thought there would be less suffering and more revenge. The heroine seemed to be a glutton for punishemnt and humiliation and it went on for alomost 400 pages. By 200, I was ready to smack her and say: "Why are you putting up with this?? Give the woman what for and get out of there!"
I'm fresh out of reading material and was forced to read the newspaper (yuk!), I'll have to get into town toute suite!

TV-land

I've been watching North American TV in the evenings here at the cottage and I have to say that I am appalled at the of the adverts sposnored by the drug companies. For 30 seconds they try to promote some new drug, but 12 seconds out of the 30 is taken up with warnings of risk and possible side effects. 'Lunestra', a sleeping pill, was the most amusing, with warnings to "be in bed" when taking it. The untold story here is that if you take it standing up - you'll fall over like a ton of bricks a few seconds later. You could be anywhere, doing anything at the time. I could see Orest coming into the kitchen the following morning finding me with my head firmly lodged in the refridgerator, with the rest of me sprawled behind. Pretty strong stuff! Some of the other drug adverts are plain scary. When you hear "possible liver damage" or "anal leakage may occur", would that induce anyone to take these things?
Another major difference in television over here is the timing of the commercials. In London, I'm able to load the dishwasher or make myself a drink during the breaks. Here, I've just gotten up from the sofa and the program's started already.So the dishes have suffered, because the soap keeps caking on before I have a chance to rinse them during the break. I'm sure by the end of the summer, I'll have this licked. Or, worse still, I'll get it so speeded up that I'll have to sit through more advertisement crap in London. Horrors!
The girls have been out of camp for a full week and for one reason or another we've stayed at the cottage the whole time. This has made staying clean a bit more difficult, due to the amount of unwashed clothes around here. Already, I've been forced to do a laundromat run and purchase new knickers at Walmart to save having to launder them all again.
We've had lots of visitors - Marta, Peter (my bro) and Tom. We've also had a chance to reconnect with lots of friends whose kids are at the camp: Zaraskas, Dmytryshyns, Kos's and Dubczaks for example. But it's transient in nature and eventually we all have to go back to the city, for work, or in my case, clean clothes.

Same week - Different Stuff

Just wanted to complete the news of 2 weeks ago with a visit from our cousin Marta. It was nice to have the company, even though the weather was not nice enough for Marta to tan with, and the pool was yet opened (a catastrophe of major proportions!) to hang around at. Hopefully that won't stop her from visiting again.
The weekend came with Orest visiting on his round-the-world ticket. (He'd been in the Far East on business and came North American-way instead of back across Asia.) It was only a 48-hour visit, but he managed to pack in a lot. Visited his parents and trimmed their hedges, went to the cottage and saw his daughters at camp on parent's day, put up the badminton net (bright pink, no less!), fixed various bikes and helped get the pool up and running. I'm hoping for more of the same when he comes at the end of the month for his proper holiday.
The second week was much better - weather-wise and pool-wise. By the end of the week, we were in a full-on heat wave, with the pool helping to cool us down.
Now the girls are out of camp, so I'll have less time to blog and have to spend more time entertaining them. In fact as I sit here, the 3 of them are arguing and causing me 'styd'! Can I return them to camp?????

Back in the Old Country

I'm sitting here in an internet store in downtown Cobourg (pop. 12,000), trying to update you all in less than 15 minutes, so here goes.

The girls and I arrived in Canada July 1st, and all the flight over, we listened to England get clobbered in the World Cup by pilot updates. It was a bit unnerving to know that the pilot was passing this information to us. "Shouldn't he be flying this plane, or something equally important?", I thought to myself.

The morning after we arrived, the older two were off on the camp bus for two weeks of mosquitoes, dirt and sunburn. They weren't completely on their own however, as Adriana and I joined them up at our cottage, which is next door to the camp.

This was the first time I had to 'open' the cottage on my own, as my in-laws had normally taken care of that before we arrived. What an eye-opener! The mouse droppings were prolific, and the pile of mouse fur and skeleton in the doorway of one of the bedrooms a clear indication that someone, had a great time over the winter and expired after gorging themselves on Saltines (which were hidden in the stove) and sesame snacks (left in the open fridge). Adriana and I were so grossed out by the party left-overs that we huddled together on the only clean sofa in the place and fell into fitful sleep, interrupted only by the racoons coming to the back screen door to see if we had left anything delicious for them.

By Friday, we were ready to pick up Orest from the airport for his whirlwind weekend with us. I'll have to tell you more later as my 15 minutes is up.

World Cup Man!

My friend Daryl found this cool website song for World Cup widows like me. How many times over the past weeks have I had to forgo a CSI or Will and Grace so that we can watch tiny men kick a tiny ball into a gigantic net? (I've even lost a daughter to it - her school sponsored some sort of betting pool - organized gambling at a Catholic school, for shame!)

Check out www.worldcupman.com to hear or download the song.

I've also linked Daryl's website - if you want to find out what's cool in Belgrade.

I forgot to mention...

I forgot to mention how the trip back from Prague was marred by a couple who accused me of rudeness. I know! Hard to believe, isn't it?

It happened when we got to gate, Orest went with Adriana and Larysa to stand right beside the gate to precipitate boarding, while I fell back with Stefanie because I was searching for something in my bag for her, and wouldn't you know they picked exactly that moment to announce boarding.

I struggled to get through the people who were moving towards the gate, saying "Excuse me, I'd like to rejoin my family.", but at the same time, realized my bag was now gaping open, leaving access to the contents for anyone in the crowd to lift. As my head was turned, trying to zip up said bag, saying "excuse me" all the time, I inadvertantly jostled a woman who said to her partner: "How rude!"
"I did say excuse me," I said to her as I was moving towards the front.
"You did not!" she replies.
"I did!" I respond, although I cannot believe we're engaging in this purile argument, now across 20 feet of people's heads.
At the point Orest joins in, trying to be helpful,
"My wife is just trying to re-join her family, do you mind?"
Then the other husband joins the fray:
"Well, we're just trying to teach your wife some manners!"


Ouch!
Now at this point, normally I would freeze up with confusion at the jibe, then kick myself for hours afterwards thinking of what I should have said, but, having righteous indignation on my side, I had the presence of mind to finish them off with:
"I did say excuse me, but my head may have been turned the other way, so I'm sorry if you didn't hear me!"

Now that should have been the end of it, since we started moving towards the plane, but me being me, I agonized over it the whole plane ride home. If I was guilty of anything, I thought to myself, it was trying to do too many things at once. My whole raison d'etre came into question in that hour and 10 minutes. The worst of it was, the same couple were sitting right behind Orest on the plane, so I had no opportunity to discuss my soul-searching with Orest to gain an objective opinion. (I tend to veer towards paranoia, so it's good to have someone like Orest around to say: Snap out of it, you silly woman!)

So you decide, if you were in a similar situation, what would you say or do?

Prague Rocks! (not like E.L.P. or Yes)

(Finally I've been able to load photos!!! I was photo-less for a week and it wasn't until I installed Mozilla's Firefox as my internet browser that I cheived success. Down with Microsoft! Big up Mozilla!!)

Another opportunity to catch up with old friends came along this past weekend.

Sue and Tony Cabral celebrated their joint 50th birthdays in Prague and celebrated in style. Their friends had opened up their castle to them and it was just perfect. (Doesn't that sound pretentiously posh? It's not really, if you know Sue and Tony, they are the most down-to-earth folks you can find and they have great friends who take care of them. Plus the fact, that when you live in Central or Eastern Europe it's probably easier to get a venue like that than anywhere else. It reminded me of similar parties at some of the castles in Warsaw when we lived there.)

The Lobkowicz Castle is on the grounds of the Prague Castle, with fabulous views of the Charles Bridge and the centre of Prague. It was confiscated from the Lobkowicz family by the communists, and was finally returned to the family in 2003. This was the first event planned after remodeling and renovating some of the rooms.

We arrived in Prague Friday evening, and even though it was late, we still took the opportunity to walk over to the Charles bridge with the girls before going to bed. We stayed at a lovely place, called the Santini Residence, at the bottom of the Castle, with a newly remodeled apartment/suite for the 5 of us. (Check out www.santiniresidence.com if you're interested in staying there.)

We spent the day on Saturday touring Prague with the children, and their most memorable moment will be getting lost with their mum trying to find Tynske Square. But we found it in the end, saw the famous clock strike 5, and the little pieces move around (See the photo above).

While Adriana was being baby-sat at Sue and Tony's, the rest of us went to their party. The dinner was one lovely creation after another, and the drinks were prolific in number. They had a band playing music, which I thought would interest the girls, but they were fascinated with the long table cloths on the tables which allowed them to create their own "clubhouse" underneath with the other children.

We spent Father's Day back at Sue and Tony's so that Orest could watch a replay of Game 5 of the Stanley Cup playoff. We had to be in news blackout mode up until that time, which wasn't too difficult as everyone here is focused on the World Cup football at the moment. The Oilers won 4-0 against Carolina, so Dad was a happy camper. Last game will be watched on Tuesday afternoon with other Canadians here.

Check it out

I found the coolest website (cool for me, that is... you decide if it's cool or not)

It's called 'A Dress a Day', and it shows exactly that... one dress every day. She's got some vintage taste. It's www.dressaday.com/dressaday.html

Sunday, bloody hot Sunday

Man oh Man!

It's been like an oven here lately, and not the Easy-Bake kind-with-the-stupid-light-bulb-for-heat oven, but the real honest-to-goodness triple edged heatwave!

On a day like that, you just want to push your kids out of the paddling pool and wade in yourself, turning your body on a rotational basis to bathe each bit of skin properly. But no, we decided to go out. First to a Sunday brunch at Mimi and Owen's, where the boys kept cool by watching the World Cup football match on the telly, while I made iced coffees for everyone.

We then had to go get beat at tennis, since I had scheduled a match with another couple from the club as part of their annual club tournament. Orest and I lost 6-0, 6-3, by Savita & her husband. Pretty humiliating, but I always say: "It could have been worse!" It was acually, down in the other court where my friends got slaughtered 6-0, 6-1. We all sat down to some Pimms and lemonade afterwards, and it turned into a lovely social evening, with the alcohol dulling the pain and embarassment of our drubbing.


Now Larysa insisted that I tell a funny story about her since she's seen me do one on this blog about Adriana.

We were sitting down to do a verbal reasoning practise exam (this is preparation for Larysa's secondary school entrance exams next fall) and she does a lot better when I sit next to her, so she can pointlessly ask me for help, while I tell her "Remember, I won't be there with you when you're actually doing the entrance exam!". Personally, I think she just likes to have someone to complain to when she doesn't get the questions right away, and as we all know mums make the best whipping posts!
She was busy working on a section where you had to take one letter from the first word and somehow create a new word from the second; i.e. carp & flit become cap and flirt.
The words were horse and cad, which should be easy enough to see that it should become: hose and card. But, Larysa must have had some sort of brain fart because it took at least 3 minutes for her to figure out that the 'r' should be moved to create card, but then spent another couple of minutes repeating "Ho-say, ho-say. Nope, that's not a real word. Ho-say...."

In the end, to alleviate my teeth grinding into nothing, I advised her that perhaps she had the accent on the wrong syllable, and instead of calling out for some Mexican boy named Jose, she should try making the e silent.

I just hope to God she can figure these out on her own by November, otherwise no school will have her!

Out at night

Summer is here full force, with hot days and warm evenings.

Last week was busy socially (I know, doesn't happen often here in London), so I didn't have a chance to post this then. We were out on Tuesday night with ex-Warsaw friends, Meredith & Jean-Louis playing bridge and catching up, as they are on their way to Miami. It's the first time I'd actually seen their flat in daylight, which just goes to show you how long it's been since we've seen one another. (In the short daylight hours of winter, we'd always get to their place when it's already turned dark.) We were complaining about just that; that it's easier sometimes to see people who live farther away, than the ones just down the road. You keep thinking to yourself; "Oh, I can see them anytime, they're just down the road..." And next thing you know, they're moving!
Oh well, perhaps we'll see more of them in Miami.

Wednesday, we were at the Kensington Roof Gardens, a lovely secluded green space, 6 floors up, which had been converted into a massive party venue. Since we were there for a business function it was all very boring for me, but I know that Orest got quite a bit out of it, so I was happy to be there with him. The lobster tails were an added bonus.

Thursday was my one night in, as Orest flew to Stolkhom for the night for business. Apparently he missed his brush with greatness that evening as his colleagues met Mats Sundin (the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey player) in a club and got his autograph. It's ok, Orest got one in absentia.

Friday, we were with the Hampstead Women's Club on the London Eye for a wine tasting. I was surprised how quickly we went around, because frankly it didn't look like we were moving at all in some places. Something to do with physics, I imagine. Thankfully it wasn't too hot in there, it was well-ventilated, and being able to go around twice was kinda cool too.

Saturday, we were double-booked with a Ukrainian zabava first with the children, followed by a grown-up party for us later. The dance unfortunately was a bust (not enough tickets sold), but the girls had fun in their own way...Adriana sliding on the floor and playing tag with the other kids and Larysa just messing about with the older girls. The second event was a 40th birthday for a friend I play tennis with. It was good fun, but by 1 am, Orest needed to get to bed, so we departed. Shame, that...I had heard that Grace's parties normally ran until 3 am.

BTW

Went to Tesco on a Sunday and was transported back to my Auchan in Warsaw days.

Does every Pole in Finchley only do their shopping on Sundays? Everytime I turned around, there was another one, yapping on their mobile, filling up their basket.

I suspect that most of them work 6 days a week, so the only time they have to shop is on Sundays. Either that, or Sundays are the days when they start putting the food in the clearance section.

I was late picking up the girls from school yesterday, and as I was rushing down the street, another Mum from Adriana's class approached me.

"I'm so sorry to hear about your loss...Adriana was telling the class about it today" she said.

"Excuse me?" racking my brains to figure who had just died.

"She said that your cat died" she explained.

I must have looked like a lunatic, but I started to laugh and said: "But we don't have a cat!"

At that point, I wasn't sure what had happened. Maybe everyone misunderstood what Adriana was saying, maybe someone else's cat died and she made it sound like it was her cat. Or maybe she's just practicing her Munchausen-by-proxy delivery, in order to gage the sympathy she can get out of people.

I had a chat with her and explained how she shouldn't be making up stories about dead cats, and I hope that's the end of that.

I'll know it's something more serious if next time I come walking down the street and another Mum says: "Adriana told us you were dead!"

Half-term hi-jinks

I hate half-term!

No I don't, it's just a major hassle. The house becomes messier, the laundry triples in amount and I have to spend a lot more time in meal-planning. ("What! You expect lunch too??")

Thankfully, I booked Stefa and Larysa on a week-long drama course, after the two of them have been haranguing me non-stop with: "I wanna be an actress!"and "I want to have my own agent!". This, after meeting a few children who have been in television shows and movies, like Eastenders and Harry Potter. They had a lot of fun, but at the same time realized how much work it is to be rehearsing all day long. The end of the week, they put on their performance of songs and bits from movie musicals. Stefanie was great as Tallulah in Bugsy Malone, (that's the part Jodie Foster played in the movie) and Larysa played prim and proper as Sandy in Grease.
What a great idea to have a real performance at the end of the course, it gives the kids a real sense of achievement.

Adriana chilled out with me for the week, taking Jessie out for her walks, seeing Curious George at the movies, doing the shopping... makin' messes around the house for the most part.

In any case, I'm glad they're back at school this week, I can get back to a routine.