Need to raise your spirits today?

I came across this video on Facebook courtesy of Expat Mum.  I don't know what to say about it, other than that it will at the very least make you smile, and - be warned - may even bring a tear to your eye.  Technology sure can be a wonderful thing.

Happy Friday!

It's snow joke...

It's snowing.  As in, properly snowing.  This is unusual so early in the season; normally we don't see a fall this heavy until around Christmas and possibly not until January, but this year it appears Dyed Moroz (Father Frost) has come early and gone more than a little overboard with his white special effects.

At this moment in time we've gone past this morning's annoying little crystals which swirled around stinging cheeks, and moved onto the pretty, fluffy type of flake that falls picturesquely from the sky before joining zillions of others on the ground.

It looks very picture-postcard like, a good preparation for the festive season.  I should find my camera and get busy.  But you know what?

I am not impressed.

On the one hand I want to wrap up warm and never go out again, and on the other - I want to wrap up warm and never go out again.  Oh, OK.  I'll get over my temporary mood (which may, I'll concede, be more than slightly hormonal), and no doubt by next week I will have unearthed my cross country skis, re-mastered the Moscow Shuffle*, and rediscovered my usual state of very British awe at how Russia's climate refuses to be ignored, but in the meantime I am somewhat melancholy over the fact that I may not see grass again until next  Spring.

Which is - in case you're interested and before you mock my dramatics - due sometime around mid-April.

To cap it all, I will need to pick the boys up from school on foot this evening because the snow ploughs are not keeping up with the weather and the roads are not really safe to drive on, so will no doubt end up pulling the pair of them up the hill on the sledge behind me. (This was quite good fun when we arrived here 3 years ago and they were 4 & 6, but a little more challenging now they're 6 and 9).  On the plus side, however, I'm sure that by that time my inner Mummy Pollyanna will have resurfaced and I'll be making the best of it for their sakes,

It will probably sound something like this:  "What do you mean, it's cold and it's wet?  Come on!  It's snowing!  It's beautiful!"

Yes.  That should do it.

PM squares her shoulders and sets off into the blizzard** on the school run.


*the art of walking on icy uncleared pavements / sidewalks without going head over heels.
** 'Blizzard' may be a slight exaggeration, for effect...

'The chicken & the egg', or 'The Day I Realised Creating Driving Law is Like Parenting'

Hallelujah! Rejoice, brothers and sisters, for this morning what is nominally 5 marked lanes where we join the highway on the journey to drop Husband at the nearest Metro station became not 6, not 7, not 8, but - count 'em - 9 lanes of tailgate to bumper traffic.  I think - I think - that is a record.  I'm used to counting Sixes and Sevens and, on occasion, Eights, but today was the first time in 3 years that I've seen a Nine.

The only silver lining was that for once Husband was driving, thank the lord.  This in itself is unusual on a weekday and has been so for most of our sojourn here.  It's not that he can't drive, or doesn't like to; more that invariably I am dropping him somewhere so it makes sense for him to be able to hop out of the passenger seat quickly.  Given, you know, the traffic (did I mention that already?) and everything...

Being driven by Husband through the morning rush hour was an interesting experience.  I wouldn't say I manage to achieve a zen-like state of calm when behind the wheel these days, but petty annoyances like a big 4x4 edging in in front of me, the truck and mini-van collided in the centre lane forcing the traffic to execute complicated balletic manouevres around it, or the predatory militsia lying in wait at the edge of the road for the unwary driver moving into the bus lane too early, all of these things are now simple facts of life for me.  You just have to suck it up if you want to sit behind the wheel in Moscow and let it all wash over you.  Put some easy-listening fm on the radio and simply get on with it.

Husband, however, has not had quite such a long apprenticeship as a rush-hour driver in this city. (Why would he, when muggins here will do it for the price of having the car all day?)  So as you can imagine, his running commentary on the state of the road was a little less relaxed that mine normally is.  It was after his rantings (and no, I don't think that is too strong a word) on the matter of yet another lane being created out of nowhere by chancing-it drivers that I suggested perhaps he didn't drive enough here.  It was also when I commented that the road system in Russia is very much a chicken and egg situation.

What did I mean by that?  Well, there are various draconian rules and regulations here such as those about not turning left, not crossing an unbroken white line unless you want a fine, not crossing an unbroken double white line on pain of death, or not overtaking on a bridge or in a tunnel (no matter that they may be 6 lanes wide).   After much study time spent in jams pondering this situation it recently occurred to me that this authoritarian approach is counter productive.  The Russian driver is, you see, famously resourceful and will find any way they can to speed their journey up.  Like, for example, the creation of additional lanes on the highway.  Or the not infrequent sight of a car reversing down the hard shoulder of a motorway because it has missed the turn-off.  Or even better, reversing back onto the motorway because it's taken too early a turn-off.  None of these things are actually illegal - unless they cause an accident, of course - so they are 'respectable' driving tactics in some people's minds.

But it seems to me that the road chaos is the result of an impasse.  It's a bit like being a parent, really; if you assume your child is untrustworthy and will behave badly unless you rule them with a rod of iron, chances are that the moment they are let off the leash, that's exactly what they'll do.  So it is with the roads in Moscow: the authorities have imposed a set of rules that assume the average driver is an idiot and unable to think for themselves.  But because the law assumes the average driver is an idiot, and that an individual is unable to make a rational decision about whether it is safe to overtake or turn left etc,  guess what some people behave like the first opportunity they get?*


* Of course this theory does not in any way take into account what is often a lower value placed on human life (widely recognised as an issue for some here) or what is currently still a high number of incidents of DUI, but it's my blog and I'll deal with those issues another time...

Silent Sunday

Russia; grey, boring, uninteresting?

I don't think so...

Oh, alright.  It is grey sometimes.  But - thank heavens - not today...

When someone else says it all for you...

Parenting posts.  What's the point, really, when there are videos like this one that already say it all?

(Full disclosure - I happened across this on Facebook today after it was shared by @LauraAWNTYM and @CafeBebe  Thankyou ladies, for brightening a grey November day).

A sobering realisation that living in Russia can be a bit like visiting a wedding fair...

How do you know you when you have been living in Russia too long?

Well.  If you had a white wedding, you may have visited a wedding fair during the planning process.  Remember that? Go on, you can do it; reach back into the farthest vestiges of your memory and try to recall those halcyon days pre-children when finding the perfect name cards for the table, or the exact shade of cream for your invitations was important to you.  (OK, it didn't happen to me either but I'm sure there were plenty of things that would seem insignificant to me now which at the time I got married assumed a wholly disproportionate level of importance.  But those are subjects for another post...)

Anyway, imagine yourself entering this long-ago wedding fair.  Everywhere you look there is an explosion of white tulle, glitter, fluff, dresses, flowers.  As you walk into the hall your eye is caught by a wedding dress stand, and you walk nonchalantly over, hopeful that you will find the dress of your dreams just waiting for you to discover it.  Doesn't happen, of course. In fact it SO doesn't happen that as you thank the proprietor of the stand and walk away, you have to work hard to stop your lip curling in horror at how over the top the dresses are.  "Who wears these things?" you wonder as you set off to tour the rest of the exhibition, confident that somewhere you will find something that is more 'you'.

2 or 3 hours later, exhausted, clutching a bag full of pamphlets, samples, business cards and ideas - but still with no idea of what on earth you are going to wear for your Big Day - you return to the entrance of the hall. The first stand that you visited catches your eye.  You wander over and take another look at the dresses that you so readily dismissed earlier in the day.  As the stand owner - who has seen it all before and knows that excessive exposure to wedding madness is enough to break even the most understated bride -  watches indulgently, it turns out your parameters of tasteful have moved somewhat over the last couple of hours. Actually, you think, this dress isn't so bad.  And neither is that one.  And that one - if you lost the lace train, could actually work...

So - how does this equate to living in Russia?

Today I was at a Christmas Fair.  I remember first visiting this same event a couple of years back; everything seemed so blingtastic, so unnecessarily shiny, so excessively gold, just so damned... over the top.

But on this visit, nearly 3 years into our stay here?  I actually heard myself saying to one of the vendors "Do you have something like this - but with a few more sparkles?"

To quote Jean Luc Picard*, I have assimilated.


*Star Trek, The Borg.  Tut.