30
November
2006
Four a.m. in the morning,
Carried away by a moonlight shadow…
.. or more likely, having a bad case of insomnia. I went to the bathroom where I heard a constant, rather vigorous dripping sound. Mind you, not that kind of dripping sound. I investigated around a bit, concluded that some neighbor was having an insomnia too and taking a shower and went to sleep.
In the morning, when I visited the bathroom, the sound was still there and when I looked at the water meter I saw that it was registering some usage - therefore the dripping appeared to come from our pipes. Which are old and less reliable than a Ford Pinto. After five owners. All of them angry teenagers with a tendency to get chased by the police. You get the idea.
So I sighed and tried to get myself accustomed to the idea that we HAVE to find a plumber. We’ve been postponing this for a few years now, because there was a permanent shortage of either
a.money or
b. plumbers
Then I got all angsty over the fact that it’s winter, and the plumber will have to break the whole wall to replace the pipes, and the house will be cold and since Betty’s wedding made a big hole in our budget, we won’t be able to buy new tiles to fix the bathroom and we’ll have to leave the bathroom it it’s no-wall / no tiles state and move to my moms house until spring and that will SUCK.
….And then I saw the shower which wasn’t closed properly the evening before and dripped the whole night producing that damn sound.
Posted: housewrecking
28
November
2006
Glossary of terms:
hu:Nasznagy/ ro: nas = Non translatable, very honorable role at the local weddings, sort of a best man / matron crossed with a godparent. Reserved usually for financially stable married couples that are in very good terms with the newlyweds.
hu:Szekely = Hungarian ethnic group mostly living in the counties of Harghita, Covasna and Mureş in Romania, of which Robi is a part of. The older males are recognoscible by their large mustaches and the fact that they always have a pocket knife on them.
hu:Kurtos Kalacs = see this post
This weekend, for the very first time in our lives, we were invited to serve as nasznagy at a wedding. And not just any wedding, mind you, but Robi’s middle sister, Beata’s wedding. We accepted, left Timi at my mom’s and drove the necessary 200 km to Miercurea Ciuc where the event was taking place.
Friday evening was spent visiting one of the grandmas that is in the hospital for a bad case of neuropathy after Zona Zoster, catching up with the latest news about the family, getting a decent manicure (me) and eating sarmale (Robi)
Saturday morning after we cut into small portions 10 tons of cookies, pies and cakes me, the bride and Robi’s little sister went to the beauty salon. The bride was in for a make-up and getting her hair done, while Csilla (aka little sister) and me surrendered to an unexpected outburst of masochism and got our eyebrows plucked.
Here’s Betty, relaxing while her cleavage is made all tanned and shiny:
….while Csilla is laughing, not knowing that she’s about to be put on the torture table.
Soon after we got back home Csilla’s boyfriend Romeo showed up, looking like a younger and more phlegmatic version of Denis Leary.
….followed by the groom himself, who brought Betty her bouquet.
We got going to the town hall where they said their “I do”s in front of the mayor, who gave them a colorful speech about how this was an important day not only for their families but for the town itself and gave them some DVDs and a book about the county’s spas “for when you’ll get older and need it”. Nutty fellow, that mayor.
We, as the nasznagyok, took a pic with the fresh Kassay couple (it’s not me that’s so small - it’s them that are so tall)
Next stop was the church for the religious wedding. Robi dropped a quiet WTF when the altar server disappeared (she apologized later for that, although I still haven’t got a clue why she left) without realizing that even as an English abbreviation, it’s still swearing.I topped that when I wrote my name wrong on the church papers that certified the marriage. To my credit, it wasn’t on the official papers, just the priest’s reminder, but still … the lack of sleep showed.
The party contained lots of food and dancing (see the brown circles on the table? That’s what’s left of a meter long Kurtos Kalacs after meeting a hungry szekely for five minutes).
A traditional part of any wedding around here is the “stealing of the bride”. A few inebriated youngsters take away the bride when she’s not properly looked after, and release her only after a ransom (bottle of whisky / case of beer) is payed or the groom / nasznagy/ groom & nasznagy perform some idiotic task (strip on a table, carry around the mother in law on the back, shouting that they have the best mother in law on the world, sing a silly song ..you get the idea) In our case, we as the nasznagyok had to dance a Lambada. Robi didn’t want to have anything to do with it, but I convinced him to dance normally and threw in a few hip rotations for the delight of the audience. No one was harmed during the dance and so the bride was returned.
I asked Robi a few times to dance when some nicer songs were sung
……and he accepted every time, although the expression on his face says enough about the suffering I was putting him through. The man HATES dancing .
After midnight, the cake was served ..
.. and people started coming to the young couple to give them their gifts (in Romania, mostly money, so they can buy themselves something substantial from the cumulated sum). After all the money was in the basket, me and the nasznagy lady from the groom’s side retreated to a small room where we counted it and made a list with everybody’s contribution (it’s sort of an investing system - you’re supposed to give roughly the same sum when you go to their kids’ wedding). The lady was fast as lightning with the counting - turns out she used to be an accountant before retirement. After we finished, we told the couple how much they raised and they seemed pleased, so me and Robi made a discrete exit after kissing the newlyweds.
We left Miercurea Ciuc the next day in the afternoon, drove half of the distance in a thick fog which made us to take the wrong exit from Medias. Our luck was that we asked for directions two gipsy peasants that were walking on the side of the road and they were kind enough to tell us where we took the wrong turn in the town and what would be the right one, bless their hearts.
We arrived around nine PM, picked up an extatic Timi (Mamaaaaaa! Tataaaaaaa!) from her grandparents and finally went to bed around eleven, happy to be home.
Posted: on the road
24
November
2006
Hi Internet!
I’m going through a rougher period right now - we lost Timi’s very good nanny (she found a less demanding, same payment job) and it seems that I’ve lost my consulting room at work (space shortage in the Neurology ward, which determined them to transform my place into a 3 bed patients’ room). That’s more or less the explanation for the lack of updates - I’m tired and in a quasi - permanent foul mood. I won’t blame you if you lose interest and stop visiting, but heck, I cannot force myself to write nowadays.
We’re leaving tomorrow for the wedding in Miercurea Ciuc. See you on Monday.
Posted: chestii
15
November
2006
I’m still on vacation from the hospital, therefore I get more bored with each day that passes. And when I get bored, I bake.
This one has a brown spongecake base. That means eggs, flour, baking powder, sugar and cocoa - beat the eggs with the sugar until they cry for mercy. Add the rest of the ingredients carefully. Pour into greased cake ring, put in pre-heated oven, bake until a toothpick inserted in the cake goes out without anything sticking to it.
Leave the base to cool, peel the mandarins/tangerines and cut them in smaller bits. Prepare some gelatin according to the package, leave it to cool. Mix cream with sugar and lemon zest until it gets fluffy, add the gelatin. Put the cake ring back around the spongecake. Place the tangerine pieces on the cake, cover with the cream. Place in the fridge for a few hours. Decorate better than I did.
Posted: chestii
10
November
2006
I know I haven’t written anything lately. Sorry Internet. I’m writing now, see?
So .. hospitals. And my phobia of them.
Not a phobia of the building per se. I go inside Neuro and Psychiatry wards every day to see the bedridden patients with a real smile on my face . Heck, I even walk the corridors of the big concrete block where the rest of the County Hospital is located without breaking in hives.
It’s all about being admitted in one. You get there in the morning, your bag packed with PJs, shampoo, toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, towels, underwear, chocolates and coffee for the cleaning ladies, 5/10 lei bills for the nurses, a few heavy envelopes for the docs, something to read and a telephone card, if you’re one of the freaks that don’t own yet a mobile, like I am.
You go into a small dark room where an angry granny directs you to undress behind a locker’s door, along with the other three ladies already undressing behind their respective locker doors. You put on your pyjamas, give her your clothes and she gets a cleaning lady to help you with the bag. You get the mandatory elevator ride from a liftiera even if you’re perfectly capable of walking on the stairs. You’re directed to your bed in a room with 1-9 other people, depending on how much money the first envelope you gave contained, you say goodbye to your family on the hall and then ..you’re on your own.
The day in the hospital consists of getting up at 5:30-6 when the nurses come to give the first round of pills/ injections/ whatever. Around 8 you’re woken up again to have your temperature taken. Urine samples will be requested from you / your kid even if you’re there because your kid put a piece of rubber toy up her nose and she’s just under observation for the day (our case) . After that, hunger sets in so you either try your luck with hospital food (macaroni with bread crumbs / macaroni with unsalted cottage cheese/ macaroni with potatoes were my three personal experiences)or go with what Mom/ the husband brought you. Since the hospital food resembles wallpaper glue with unidentifiable lumps in it, it’s wise to do the second.
After breakfast, comes a long, boring succession of discussions with the roommate(s), trips to the sink, reading whatever book you brought with you, looking out the window, getting your medicines, occasional snackings, trips to the toilet, visits from the family and more looking out the window. Oh, and the doc’s visit (”And how are we feeling today?” *Insert anything from “Just ducky” to “I coughed out my spline 5 minutes ago, the liver seems to be next”* “Mmhmm, good, good”) In the end you go to bed only to be woken up, invariably, two hours later to get your medicine/ be poked with something. Lather, rinse, repeat
It’s not the very idea of hospital that brings me down . It’s the small details - the constant wearing of PJs, the fact that the bloody light has to stay on all night in the hall, and the upper part of the wall has been replaced with glass, so that it shines in your eyes. The never ending poking. The condescendence with which your questions about the medication, the actual diagnosis and the length of your staying there are met. That oh-so-shy “why, you shouldn’t have” said when you give the chocolate/ banknote/ envelope and the following attitude change. The big, fat cockroaches you see on the wall when you’re woken up for poking, lazily fleeing from the light under your bed. The too high beds when you have an abdominal incision, and no stool anywhere. The bathrooms full of smokers. The crushing lack of care non-envelope giving people get.The lack of sleep. The lack of dignity.
Somewhere in the next two years I’ll go back there to bring kid 2 to this world. The title of the post describes accurately my feelings about this perspective.
Posted: hospital
4
November
2006
Posted: Timi
2
November
2006
I’m beginning to hate insurance companies.
You see, once upon a time, when this millenium just started and I was living in Timisoara, freshly in love with Robi, he moved to the town to be with me, leaving his incredibly well payed job as a games developer in Budapest. We were young, careless and love made trivialities like food or sleep not matter .. however after a while he had to look for a job. Ads for a webdesigner position at a company called Zoom were everywhere around the students’ dorms those days, so he decided that it would be a good start.
Off to Zoom we went, me going with him because he wasn’t too sure about his Romanian language knowledge. We found another candidate there, a nice guy called Ciprian, and chatted with him until the would-be employer arrived. After discovering he was from my town, the three of us became instant friends. The head of the company ended up hiring them both, and they both left after discovering he intended to scam them.
We kept the friendship over the years, then we moved to my hometown, got married, he got married and moved back too. Their first girl was born a year after Timi, and we visited them a few times. They didn’t find time to return the visit - having two kids a year apart from each other tends to rob people of most of their free time .
Imagine my surprise then when after a year or so of no contact, Robi tells me Cipri messaged him. “Yay! They probably missed us! I’d love to see them again!” went my naturally bubbly train of thoughts. “Don’t be so glad. He wanted to talk about making a life insurance for Timi”
Ouch. That sounded awfully familiar. The neighbour I got along with best, who married a year ago and moved out pulled the exact same thing with me in June. Phonecall out of the blue, desire to meet, a short asking about how things are going around the house since we last saw each other and then - wham! “Would you like to hear about this revolutionarily new investment plan?”
So Cipri messages me today to ask for a meeting. This time I knew what to expect though, so I turned down the offer. I hope I’ll remember him as the silly guy in the suit at our engagement, not as someone who recalled my name only when he didn’t meet his quota of contracts for the month.
Posted: chestii
