At Least the Toilet Seat Wasn't Freezing....

So, today was a little touch of reality.

It is cold. Very cold. Not Alaska cold. Not Siberia cold. But it is cold. Down in the teens cold outside, in the low 60's cold inside. Sitting around the house wearing three layers plus an afghan cold. It feels warmer outside than inside cold. I wonder if my fish are going to survive this cold. Cheyenne thinks we are abusing her cold. Shiver me timbers cold - except, I don't think that one quite fits.

Russia and Ukraine continue to argue about gas. At least we still have gas, which is more than Bulgaria can say. We heard that the heating plants shut down completely in Sophia, Bulgaria. Here they have just turned our heat down so low that in public buildings pipes are actually freezing.

Which happened at the place we are currently meeting for church. I, of course, had two cups of coffee this morning, plus drank some water. Church doesn't start until 1:00 now so I thought I was safe. Made sure to do potty stops before we left the flat. Got to church, first thing I see: a sign on the doorjamb that leads to the basement saying the туолет не робетет - or in English - Toilet not working, or Toilet out of order or something along that line.

I knew, right at that very instant, without a shadow of a doubt that I would need a toilet before we got home again.

Sure enough, about half way through the service, sitting there in a heavy sweater over a turtleneck, wearing my heaviest coat and boots and jeans, it hit. Cold. Cold induced bladder overwork. Brrrr - I really need to go right this exact instant help me please!.

Sergei announced before the service started that the toilet was not working and if anyone needed one there was one located next door at the school. So, I understood all of that. I thought I understood which school it was, too. You see, there is a school on each side of the place we are meeting. So, as we stood after the closing prayer and before the singing could start again, I hurried forward and asked Valentina to go with me and help me find the toilet. She is my translator during Sunday School and I wanted to get back before the group of kids arrived for Sunday School. And if I needed to talk to someone about said toilet when we got to the school, I wanted someone who could hurry the process. :) :)

We went outside (she made me snap my coat closed although it felt warmer to me outside than inside). We walked over toward the school on the left, but we couldn't see any way through the fence. So we walked back over toward the school on the right. There was a group of guys out playing soccer in the snow there and she asked them where the front door was and they pointed in "that" direction. We walked around the building. We walked up to the front door. It was locked. She pounded on the door - but no one came to open it.

I was starting to do a little jig by then, but figured we would just have to have a very short Sunday School - or maybe I could find a secluded spot out behind the school somewhere or something......

We went back in to our meeting place. When the service totally ended I asked Sergei where the toilet was at and Valentina explained what we had done and he said, no, it was the wrong school, go to the one on the left.

About that time Jamie left with Timmy and we kind of followed them out the door. And then they went a bit farther than we did and lo and behold there was actually a hole in the fence over there that was the gate and voila! we were in the school yard and walking over across the empty playground toward the school.

But wait! Valentina explained to me that we were not going to the school, we were going to that little building over there at the side. That little building, I asked and she said, no - that one was a garage, no - that one over there inbetween the garage and the school. Oh! Gotcha! THAT one. The one without a door!

And so I was reminded of where I live. I don't live in modern America. I don't live in the wilds of Alaska. I live in Kherson. Where a school has an outdoor toilet without a door. In the middle of a city of 400,000+ people. Yep. For sure.

BUT it was not a little outhouse without a door. No. It was a big outhouse without a door. A 7 or 8 holer outhouse. Without inside partitions. Without toilets. Without water. Just holes in a cement floor on the ground. No heat - unless it's summer time. No electricity, no lights - except for whatever light came in from the doorframe without a door and I think there was actually a very dirty window as well, but I might be wrong about that.

I was very focused, you see, and really didn't waste a lot of time looking around. And to be frank, I've been in much worse toilets here. This one was not too bad. It was not very dirty at all. Just a little unusual in that it could hold so many people at one time, with no partitions between the holes in the floor and no door on the outside door. Community, you know, - living in total community....

The one great thing about these kinds of toilets - at least the toilet seats aren't freezing when you sit down.

ha ha ha (Hysterical laughter) Sit down. ha ha ha No way, Jose! I couldn't help but think of the toilet room - ok, the restroom - at our home church in the States. I remember the last time we were there - winter and it's like someone had turned off all the heat in the restroom for some reason. The toilet seats were, uh, lets just say no one wanted to spend very much time in there. :) ha ha ha

Oh my. I am mentally wiping the laugh tears from my internal eyes. It is halarious to me. But maybe you have to be here?

The only thing - and I mean that - the ONLY thing that bothered me was that Valentina was so embarrassed by it all, feeling like Ukraine was so backward and horrible and how this must have been so awful for me. No! NO! Not even a little bit. I laugh now, but I never thought it was horrid or awful. I'm just glad there was some place I could go! I've seen a lot of outhouses in my life - in campgrounds, in Alaska, in Ukraine, all across the Western half of the US out in the woods. I just wish it had not been so painful for her to be with me.

I also wish The McGowan family had still been here. I think they could have used a little more cultural learning. (Don't you, John and Martita??? You've been 'south of the border' so I have a feeling it would not have been all that shocking to you, just unusual, as it was for me.)

ha ha ha ha ha ha

Oh my. :)

Our Mean Big Sister, Andromeda

So this morning I'm reading the news while I wait for the water to come back on at which time I will head to the kitchen to mix-up another batch of Christmas cookies to take to church tomorrow for our Eastern Christmas celebration. (How's that for a sentence that needs to be divided into at least two, if not more, sentences?)

Yes, tomorrow is Christmas! I'll take down all the decorations after we get home tomorrow afternoon. The tree has been up for a month and I will miss it's beautiful lights. But that is a post for tomorrow.

As I was reading about the Russia vs. Ukraine 'gas war' I shivered a bit and decided I really need to go put my sweatshirt back on because it truly is chilly in here this morning. The turtleneck alone is fine when I am wandering around from one room to the other, making the bed, folding clean clothes and picking up stuff scattered around the room. But sitting here drinking another cup of coffee and reading - well, 64+ degrees is just a bit too cool for comfort. My back and shoulders are cold. Be right back....

Ok, I'm back. I fed the fish while I was at it. Little Fishy in the fish pond was begging oh-so-cutely when I walked past and I realized I had not fed the poor little guy yet this morning. His water is so cold, being unheated, that he spends most of his days and nights floating around on the water side or belly up, looking for all the world like he's dead. I just leave him be now since he is always so startled and looks really scared when I come up and tap the side of the pond near where he floats to see if he is still alive. I haven't seen the algae eater in several days so I'm not sure if he's still alive or if the cold did him in. I'm hoping he's just staying cozy next to the filter motor. The other two fish, in their little tanks on the table, are fine, more active at night when it's warmer in here after a day of people sometimes turning on the electric heater for a few minutes until the electric meter starts smoking again. I'm glad these 3 fish seem to be cold-weather hardy.

All of that to get to the point of why I decided to write and opened up this page to start with! The morning news!

I was thrilled to learn this morning that the Milky Way (the galaxy in which we all live) has recently gained weight. Now we are better prepared for the big collision with our formerly bigger sister galaxy, Andromeda, yes, for the collision that is definitely coming! We may even come out the winners in the coming collision!

"Previously we thought Andromeda was dominant, and that we were the little sister of Andromeda," Reid said. "But now it's more like we're fraternal twins."

That's not necessarily good news. A bigger Milky Way means that it could be crashing violently into the neighboring Andromeda galaxy sooner than predicted (notice that there is no period at the end of that thought. I took it out because I'm going to insert some thoughts here.)

When I read those two paragraphs I laughed. First of all, my dear husband is a fraternal twin. When he and his brother were growing up they were NEVER the same size. Ralph was always several inches and many pounds heavier than Mel. They were, at times, like the twins in the movie Twins (Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito as twin brothers). Until people got to know them they just couldn't believe two boys so different in looks, size and personality could really be twins. But they were - they still are, actually. :) ) So some scientist and news reporters comparing two galaxies to 'fraternal twins' instead of 'sisters' made me laugh. Who said twins, fraternal or maternal, have to be alike? Ha!

When I read those two paragraphs, after laughing I just shook my head and thought to myself, "Why in the world does everything have to be scary, reported in such a way that it is meant to make people frightened?" Good grief! Two galaxies colliding in space is really not something anyone can do anything about after all. We can't set up a government commission to study how best to keep Andromeda at bay, or change the route of the Milky Way. We can't throw billions and gazillions of dollars at the problem in hopes that scientists will make some discovery that could possibly change the course of two galaxies traveling through space. I mean after all we are going pretty fast here. "...Reid was able to determine the speed at which the spiral-shaped Milky Way is spinning around its center.

That speed — about 568,000 miles per hour — is faster than the 492,000 mph that scientists had been using for decades. That's about a 15 percent jump in spiral speed." (Gosh! - that's faster than our taxi driver yesterday!!) And that is just the speed we are going around in circles around a big black hole after all, to say nothing of the speed at which we are hurtling through space toward our formerly bigger-than-us sister.

I enjoy reading articles like this one. First of all there is interesting information sandwiched in-between sentences written for the purpose of frightening the populace. And second, they make me laugh and brighten up my day. After all, why should I be concerned that Ukraine and Russia are fighting over the price of natural gas, gas with which I cook our food, gas which heats our flat, gas which in many ways actually keeps us alive here in Ukraine - why should I be concerned about that when, gasp! Andromeda and the Milky Way are going to collide and we'll all die in the collision when both galaxies are torn apart and a new galaxy is created "billions of years from now."?? (Notice that this ended with a period because is the end of the previously quoted sentence.)

Well, the water is back on - time to go make Christmas cookies. I think I'll make them ALL stars and frost them in a bunch of pastel colors because stars do come in a variety of colors in space, and then I'll sprinkle them with multi-colored sprinkles and think of all the planets and moons which surround all the stars in space. And then I'll put them in a container and call that container "Space - The Final Frontier."

But I promise - I will NOT shake it, drop it or otherwise cause my stars to collide with each other in there!

quotes from FoxNews article: Milky Way Galaxy Suddenly Much Bigger, Heavier (Even the headline makes me laugh! "Suddenly" ha ha ha - Put it on a diet!!!)
(This is NOT the Milky Way, but the people at Hubble Space Telescope say it looks like the Milky Way...) Spiral Galaxy NGC 3949: A Galaxy Similar to the Milky Way

This IS Andromeda - looks pretty safe to me... Andromeda Galaxy M31

Gas - A Hint At What Is To Come?

According to FoxNews this morning, Russia has cut off gas supplies again to Ukraine - Russia's Gazprom Cuts Gas Supplies to Ukraine. This is not the first time, nor the last time would be my guess. Sigh.

It has been cold all winter because our ZhEK/privitization group has not turned the gas up enough to keep it even 65 degrees in our flat. Each morning when Mel gets up the temp in our living room is between 60 and 64 degrees, depending on how cold it is outside. It could soon be much cooler than that. I am finally starting to get accustomed to temps in the mid-60's so maybe my body is readjusting from the surgery last year back to the way it used to be. I sure hope so!

Here is a photo of the flame in our kalunka: Looking back at a couple photos I took the last time our gas was very low (see my post, And I Wonder Why...), it appears that so far after 3 hours our gas is still better than it was before. But it's only been 3 hours. :) :) :) We'll see what the flame looks like in two days or a week, if the crisis goes that long.

This is Russia's way of saying to Ukraine: Happy New Year!

And I Wonder Why....

it takes so long to simply boil a pot of water to cook spaghetti or macaroni! These 3 photos show how bad our gas is tonight. What doesn't show are all of the hissing and popping sounds from the air that is mixed in the gas being released, and the little sparks from substances that are in the gas and catch fire as they are released. Gas is paid for by the amount used, supposedly, so adding air to it means someone is making money somewhere!

pilot light in the kalunka (a kulunka is a water heater that hangs on the wall above and between the sink and the stove)
(ignore the string, it sneaked up there and hid until after I'd already finished cooking dinner and couldn't retake this photo without it! silly little thing)

The Water Saga Continues

Water.

The water came back on Friday morning. Just a trickle at first. By noon it was a stronger trickle. Mel decided to attempt a shower.

We have a kalunka. I just love that word! Saying it sounds a lot like imitating an old fashioned cash register. You walk into the store and look at all of the items for sale on the shelves behind the counters, or in barrels placed here and there throughout the room. The warm smell of dusty floorboards and vinegary pickles fills your nostrils. You decide you need a can of beans, a spool of thread and maybe some ammunition for your .22 rifle (rabbit hunting, you know). You tell the person behind the counter what you want and he or his assistant gets everything off the shelves behind the counters (except the ammunition of course, it’s under one of the counters) and piles it next to the cash register. He picks up the first item and turns to the register. With authority, he pushes the lever marked 5 cents down and that wonderful sound happens as the price pops up in the little window on top of the machine. Ka-lunk. (Or maybe it is ker-chunk – but that doesn’t fit in my imaginary story!) This is one of those funny words that I enjoy saying – it just kind of rolls off my tongue in a mix of hard and soft sounds - kalunka.

What in the world is a kalunka and why am I going on and on about it? {smile} I can’t find the word in our Russian-English dictionary this morning and Mel thinks it’s been adopted into the language here from Polish or some other language. The speakers that are used to amplify the music at church are also called kalunkas, but usually when I hear the word I think – water heater. Now I have finally made it back to my first paragraph.

We had a stronger trickle of water on Friday at noon, so Mel decided to try to take a shower. He turned the water on in the kitchen. The water comes into our flat through a pipe in the toilet room that comes up through the floor and disappears into the ceiling. About a foot from the floor there is a T intersection where a second pipe attaches to that main little pipe. The second pipe travels behind the toilet (where another T intersection diverts water to the toilet), through the wall into the banya (bath room) where the third T intersection occurs, diverting water to the sink and to the bathtub/shower. Finally, the pipe travels through a second wall into the kitchen. In the kitchen it hides behind the sink for 3 feet or so before taking a 90 degree turn straight up the wall for another 3+ or 4 feet and disappears inside the kalunka. The pipe is clearly visible the whole way, except where it goes through walls and behind the bathtub and sink cabinet. I just love pipe décor – not! But I’m glad it is out in the open because so often pipes spring leaks. When Mel turned the water on in the kitchen, the water started flowing through the kalunka and out of the kitchen sink faucet. Very carefully, he then turned on the kalunka.

The gas pressure has been very low (Ukraine and Russia continue to argue about Ukraine stealing gas and not paying enough for what she legally uses – and the gas is so bad that often it produces only a sputtering and hissing yellow flame with just a tiny blue dot at the base of the flame). Because the gas is so low, the pilot light is tiny and does not always immediately light the flame. Gas builds up inside the kalunka until it finally reaches the pilot light and explodes in a whomp that can be felt all over the flat at the sudden changes of expanding and contracting air pressure (but I hope not in the flats above or below us!). It always scares me when it happens because that thing could really explode and we’d all meet each other in heaven afterward. The kalunka whomped and Mel set the dial at the lowest possible setting. If the flame is high and the water pressure is low, the water does not move through the pipes inside the kalunka fast enough and it begins to boil. If it boils it will turn to steam very fast – at the blink of an eye fast. Then the kalunka starts shaking on the wall and one of us lets out a yell. My heart starts racing and I panic and the one who is not showering at the time dashes madly into the kitchen to turn the flame completely off (this is another possible “I’ll meet you in heaven” situation). It takes several minutes before the pipe cools down enough that steam stops coming out of all the faucets. Steam coming out of the shower head while you are taking a shower is not fun, believe me! It’s happened to me twice and I thank God I realized fast enough what was beginning to happen that I turned the shower lever off quickly enough not to get burned (screaming for Mel the whole time to turn the kulunka off – I very seldom ever take a shower if he is not here for this very reason). The other option is to keep the flame low enough to match the water pressure.

Mel went into the bathroom and opened the hot water faucet in the bathtub. Then he returned to the kitchen and closed the sink faucet. Water began pouring out into the bathtub – or it should have since the hot water in the bathroom comes from the kalunka in the kitchen! Instead it began to trickle out. He turned the lever for the shower and slowly water began to trickle out of the showerhead. After 3 days in above 90-degree temps and fairly high humidity, we were both desperate for a shower. The flame was high enough to take the chill off the water, but not high enough to actually warm the water. I decided to clean the toilet while Mel showered (usually there is no problem with flushing the toilet or turning on the bathroom sink while the shower is running). I scrubbed the toilet with a super duper bleachy smelling cleaner and then flushed. Mel let out a yell – and even though there were still cleaner bubbles on the “shelf” inside the toilet, I did NOT flush it again!

He finished his shower and then it was my turn. I got in and the water pressure came up just a tiny bit. But the gas pressure remained the same (set on the lowest setting of the kalunka) and I began to shiver. “Mel!” I yelled, head covered in shampoo. “The water is too cold!” He went back into the kitchen and tried to turn the flame up. But the next notch was too high of a flame for the water pressure and the water got so hot I couldn’t even put my hand in it, much less other parts of my body. So, Mel had to stand there in front of the kitchen sink, arm up, hand holding the dial about half way between “too cold” and “too hot” until I finished my shower. I just love that man! The things he does for me!

By evening, we still had low pressure water. But Saturday morning it was full strength.

Today is Sunday. We have no water again today. Mel is preaching later out at Tsurupinsk. He is not “a happy camper.” He wants his shower before he goes out to preach (we walked to the city center last night and by the time we got home, the water was off – no shower before bed). Maybe we’ll heat up some stored water in the electric kettle, mix it with some cool water and he can at least wash his hair. Or maybe by noon it will be back on again….

Water.