Hello everyone, I’m sorry I’m away all the time with no posts and hardly any comments. Lots of things have been happening, among others: A’s 22nd, my first sort-of-wedding gig, A teaching me to swim, lots of inner turmoil, and mad preparations for the camp we are now leaving to work in.

We’re flying to Odessa in the morning, then taking an overnight bus to the actual place of the camp. It will hopefully be two wonderful Crimean weeks in the mountains by the sea, and when we come back I’ll have stories to tell, pictures to post, and lots of time to catch up on all your blogs.

Make sure you enjoy the summer and eat lots of greens. You’ll regret it if you don’t - December will come and there will be no veggies, however hard you crave them! (Unless you go to the supermarket and buy some mummified imported stuff, but that’s neither here nor there.) Okay, bye now.

A. called me yesterday about lunchtime and announced: ‘We are going to the Frank London concert today!’ This had been discussed quite a while ago, with me assuming, after said discussion ending in complete inaction, no tickets having been purchased, and the concert not having been brought up for over a week, that we weren’t going. Suddenly, though, A. got us tickets; we went.

It was not just Frank London, of course. With Petras Vysniauskas playing sax, Anthony Coleman at the piano/keyboard, Arkadijus Gotesmanas as the drummer, and Brad Jones on bass, this was quite the dream team. They played some of the very obscure sounds I am told are called free jazz, and some wonderfully rich melodies, inspired partly by Jewish traditional music and composed by the musicians themselves.

I was busy running around the church wherein the concert was taking place, trying to get the most out of my D40 with the kit 18-55/3.5-5.6 lens. Obviously, nothing really good could come out of it. However, I did learn things.

So today, I’ve been reading through dozens of LiveJournal communities, pages upon pages of Ken Rockwell’s website, online shops, and second-hand auctions - all to get at least some vague concept of an idea of an understanding of what lens I need to aim for next, and how much it would cost me. And you know me well enough by now to tell that I found out precious little; otherwise I wouldn’t be whining here.

All that can be said for sure right now is that it’s going to be a lot of time and money before I can enjoy myself while shooting a concert in a very dark hall. Word of the day - absolute befuddlement.

Dear diary, it’s been a while. In these past couple of weeks the following things happened:

1) our third wedding anniversary. Last poll showed we are both still pleased with the arrangement, so yeah, staying married for now. If this sounds cynical to you, rest assured we had lots of time for sappy professions of love as we boarded and rode an overnight train to Moscow. How creative is a second-class sleeping carriage for an anniversary venue?

2) we had a seminar in Moscow for work. You might have gathered as much already. After all, we only ever go to Russia, where most of our friends and all of A’s family live, for work. It seems that all we did this week was ride various trains and buses, wait for people, and argue with them. Oh, and goof around, of course. After all, these are the people we love.

3) I turned 22. A gloomy day it was indeed, despite the numerous gifts and celebratory text messages I got. I’d never spent my birthday bickering with people about insignificant aspects of reading texts with children before, and I’d rather it didn’t happen ever again. Oh, and we were hungry most of that day. And I didn’t get a birthday cake, which is plain sinful.

4) I read ‘A Midsummer-night’s Dream’ for the first time from beginning to end, and most of Neal Stephenson’s ‘Quicksilver’, and there are two more books of his Baroque Cycle remaining to read, and Pratchett’s latest, ‘Making Money’. Nothing bad about that.

What did you do? This is not a rhetorical question.

1) Dog is very large. She was brought home as a small puppy, and we hoped she would not grow much. She surpassed all our expectations and is now quite horse-like.

Cat is tiny. She has very long, luxurious fur, which compensates for the fact that she is a puny midget. She used to be skinny, but now has a belly. Ratlike, if anything.

2) Dog is a pack animal. She needs everyone to be home, and if anyone leaves (happens often, what with a 6-strong household), she wails and howls pitifully, and then sits by the window, looking out gloomily, waiting for them to return. She only goes to bed when everyone has.

Cat is a lone wolf. That is to say, she walks around glaring at everyone and is very likely rabid.

3) Dog is very friendly. She greets people with wild jumps, yelling, and licking, and won’t calm down until kissed repeatedly. She likes sleeping with us.

Cat is hostile. She lurks behind corners and takes wild swipes at people as they pass. She has adopted Grandma and bites her hand whenever she talks on the phone. She wants as much attention as she deserves, and she is sure she deserves all of it. She will hardly ever be picked up.

4) Dog thinks we are her superiors. She obeys commands, albeit in the reluctant way of a silly large dog who has too little exercise. She asks for her water, her treats, and her walk. She guards our home by barking and growling at everyone unfamiliar. She knows that taking our belongings is wrong and only does it very rarely.

Cat is sure she owns us. She bosses Grandma around, doesn’t mind using everyone as ladders for a more comfortable reach onto a shelf, and takes everything she deems worth playing with. She will only snuggle when she’s in the mood, and as soon as she’s out of it, she leaves, leaving deep scratches in her wake.

5) Dog is very very silly.

Cat is very very smart.

6) Dog is a neurotic creature and she smells. However, she is very cute and loved by all.

So is Cat. Go figure.

This post by Crystal Ross-McKee seems very relevant to me right now. She writes about the way her young children speak and act like adults when it comes to relationships. I am just back from work at the Hotline, and I can testify to that and more.

When we were kids, we always said we wanted to grow up. Adults led exciting lives, most of which took place when we were asleep. They spoke foreign languages so that we wouldn’t understand them as they discussed their fascinating secrets right before us. They smoked, drank hot-tasting liquids, and sat around for hours, talking. We wanted that; when we played house, we imitated that as best we could. But we never thought we could actually do it.

Now I sit for two point five hours at a time having conversations like this:
Me: Children’s Hotline, hello!
Squeaky voice: Hi, babe! Will you go out with me?
Me: Do you know what the Hotline is for?
SV: Yeah, for you to suck my…
Me: If you talk to me this way, I will need to say goodbye.
SV: You wouldn’t dare, bitch!

Or like this:
Me: Children’s Hotline, hello!
Girl Who Sounds Thirteen: My boyfriend broke up with me!
Me: How did it happen?
GWST: Well, we were at this party, and everyone got drunk, and we went to his bedroom, and he said would I have sex with him, and I said no, so he yelled at me, and the next day he texted me to say it was all over!
Me: … … … uhh… … So how are you feeling right now?

Or even like this:
Me: Children’s Hotline, hello!
Eager Boy: Hi, I think I am attracted to boys! Am I gay?
Me: So what if you are?
EB: That would be fucked-up, don’t you understand?
Me: What do you find fucked-up about being gay?
EB: Bwahaha, you don’t get anything! You stupid idiot!!

Most of these conversations, especially the ones like the latter, are made up to shock me. Now I do not think that teenagers are not entitled to experiment and learn about sexuality, or that people with squeaky voices shouldn’t call other people ‘bitch’ (wait, no, that I do think). All I’m saying is that it’s strange how children nowadays think a good prank call must be as crude as they can make it. It surprises me how much they know, and how, with all this knowledge, they still think sexuality and relationships are a forbidden area in which they long to be allowed - and, quite differently from us, elbow they way right in. They are adults at the age of ten. Small, strange, not very smart adults, but adults nonetheless.

As a girl who’s being called names, I’m affronted. As a hotline worker, I remain polite. As a quiet home person, I’m bemused. As an educator, I’m concerned. As a citizen, I feel they should do something about this. As myself, I understand that ‘they’ is actually me.

Hey there. I didn’t get to be a Plus Sized Model today because of rain, so there’s nothing much happening in life. I ought to be working, but I have no brain, oh did I just say that out loud, yes I believe I did, oh no, well what are you gonna do.

So this weekend was ingeniously spent meeting up with my school girlfriends and watching miles of Whose Line Is It Anyway, a show where everything’s made up and they used to have a Lithuanian version, but it wasn’t as funny. Thanks God for the diligent Polish YouTube users who apparently have no lives lots of time on their hands, which they use to subtitle and upload episode after episode of WLIIA. In fact, I’m watching and learning, due to an inborn disease causing my eyes to be drawn of their own accord to any writing of any sort, including the crappy subtitles on complicated movies like Shrek.

And speaking of complicated movies (my, what an elephant elegant segue), we saw You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, don’t ask me why. You know how they say something is burned into one’s retinas? Well, this burned my retinas right off and would proceed to get etched in the brain were it not for the circumstances mentioned above, so it bypassed the empty space inside my head and went out the back like a bullet. Boy oh boy that was one huge, painful waste of time.

By all means avoid watching it, and if you do watch it, don’t come complaining to me because I won’t hear a word about that absolutely horrible, stereotype-spewing, lacklustre (and lack-everything-else for that matter), so below the belt it doesn’t even come up for air, disgraceful crapfest, pardon my Polish.

Hello from the nineteenth century, where no man has a computer except for my unbelievably lucky father. Things have been happening here, most of them - of a highly unpleasant persuasion. Words have been said and information has been relayed, and I have learned things that might seem quite amusing had they been said about someone else.

The last straw on the back of the sleeping dog, as it were, was today at the gym, where I dragged myself, or rather, was dragged by my enthusiastic friend, at 9.30 am, which is a very early time indeed for Body Sculpting of any sort. There will be some filming next week at our modified and martial-art-buffed-up Tae Bo class, for advertising purposes. The instructor has been asking certain people personally to be there, including my friend and myself. Today he stopped us after class to re-emphasize the invitation. And such words did he utter, as I live and breathe: ‘Some people come to this class to lose weight, get into shape, so your… er… (flowy hand gestures) full figures would be a good example, you know, for them to see how well you’re doing… okay?’

Okay it was certainly not. Now, I have no illusions about myself. This is an Advanced class, so most of the people who come are either stick-figures or just in really good shape. And we are, in fact, doing really well. But I will not be the proverbial ‘fat girl who does well nevertheless’! There will be no nevertheless in my life story. I will not be used as an exemplary full figure. I am not fat, not as such, though I am what you might call curvy. Still, I take an S to M size! My friend is somewhat heavier than I am, and she took this to mean that her considerable weight loss in the past months has not gone unnoticed. She is actually pleased and does not understand my sulking.

But honestly, on top of everything I’ve heard this week, this was too much. Especially considering the enormous amount of effort I’m putting into working out. This is the exact sort of thing that makes me say ‘What’s the use? I’ll be fat whatever I do!’ and stuff half a cake into my mouth. Although of course I would never eat half a cake. Not even a quarter of a cake. I have my full figure to watch!

On a house not that far from my own there is a graffiti: A.V. + J.U. 4EVER? Just like that, with a big fat question mark. It strikes me as deep and tongue-in-cheek at the same time, like someone challenging eternity with a can of spray-paint. ‘Oh yeah,’ they seem to be saying, ‘you think you’ll be together till death do you part? I bet there’s an expiration date here somewhere.’ I wonder whether the question mark was pirated on to the love note, or if it was there originally.

It’s summer break, which is weird, because there is nothing much to do, except the daily workout and the two-and-a-half hours I will spend at the hotline every so often. (My first unsupervised shift was today, and boy am I glad that there was a mix-up and I didn’t have to stay for five hours!) I am reading a book or two a day and not really sleeping or eating enough. There is only so much boredom a girl can survive, so I need to come up with somewhere to put myself quickly.

Our laptop is broken again, and no amount of soldering wires to microchips helped this time, plus we lost most of the tiny little screws, so A. took it down to the service shop, and I am browsing on borrowed time. Dad’s laptop is newer than ours and it runs Windows Vista, which is sleek but excrutiatingly stick-prone. It keeps slowing down as if it has forever. Well, a question mark would be right in place there, so please don’t rush to alert the blogging authorities if I’m absent a lot.

Of the numerous design and advertising websites that I follow religiously, not one has mentioned http://www.thisistheindexpage.com, which is Converse’s new web campaign. It is, in fact, true to its name - an index of other websites with transparent names.

One of them is http://www.onashoestringfilms.com - one of the best cinematic efforts I’ve seen in a long time. Maybe the best one.
Another is http://www.iseverythinggoingtobeokay.com - I encourage you to visit this website if you are in need of passionate, unconditional support.
And of course there’s http://www.youshoulddoitnow.com - a wonderfully inspirational message, unmarred even by the giant Converse logo at the end.

All of them are short, most of them are funny, they made my day, which was otherwise packed with grim things such as the House season finale (made me weep), and a book from my childhood which I re-read, oblivious to the fact that everyone dies in it (made me weep too).

In short, I recommend.

This trip turned out to be a learning trip. It was so rich with revelations there was practically no room left for much else.

I learned once again about real friendship, which doesn’t always need to involve personal presence, but is all the more exciting when it does. A friendship I value is a lucky, tricky, strange, full, and happy convergence of two people who couldn’t be more different or more alike. I am lucky to have several of these.

I learned about being the object of the emotions other people usually evoke in myself: concern, kindness, incomprehension, puzzlement, impatience, endless patience, affection, and a desire to share. I haven’t thought much about the way I react to these, and it is probably time to give it more consideration.

I learned a very important lesson about coping with loneliness. I was by myself a lot on the trip, however this was not the self-sufficient solitude of choice, but rather the desolate loneliness of choicelessness. The hours I spent this way left me despairing, with nothing to apply myself to, scared. I want to avoid these.

Finally, I learned something about writing. Someone gave me ‘Lost in Translation’ by Eva Hoffman to read, and the slow, soft, reflective style of someone who went through assimilating a whole new language as their main means of self-expression is an epiphany for me. There is much food for thought in this.