I am running, I am running

Do you ever feel, like you have no time to stop? Do you ever feel overwhelmed?

Thinking of the next month, I feel like I will loose it soon.  Next 4 weekends, I am out of town. On one side, I will be doing fun things, I will spend time with my hubby and my friends, though on the other side, if all of my weekends are spent “abroad”, who will do the cleaning, grocery shopping, laundry?

Most of the time, my apartment is a mess. I clean it up during the weekends and feel disappointed that my precious time goes into vacuuming, when I’d rather be doing something, anything, more productive.

And what if I have a kid? How will I manage all this, and take care of a baby?

Thus, I either do not sleep, do not clean the house, do not spend time with hubby, do not see friends, or do not see my family.

Do you guys also feel like there’s not enough time in a day? Do you sometimes write your personal blog during work hours?

Well, at least I will have plenty of stuff to write about every weekend now. And though we’ll be out of fresh underwear, we will be full of new experiences.

So long friends, till the next week, get ready for the stories of Dilijan and Bakuriani.

I am running, I am running, catch up with me life.

Birthday Existentialism

A wise friend told me tonight: twenty-eight is the worst. Twenty-seven, you’re still in the young category. Twenty-eight, you understand that you are headed towards thirty. But when you’re thirty, the fun starts. Cause you can begin an another decade countdown. I shrugged my shoulders. He said:”call me when you’re thirty”.  

These benchmarks are so artificial, but at the same time, they do have a meaning. We ritualize them and celebrate them. So this goddamn time, gathered folks I call friends, put on that dress that is too fancy to wear anywhere and thus has been sitting in the closet for a while, piled on make-up and as, my friend likes to say, I aimed at McQueen and resulted a drag queen.

Actually, I’ve lost weight and looked fabulous.

Now, I am snuggled in new pj’s, thinking about what I thought I’d be by now, and what I’m not and what I’ve left out and what I’ll never get. Of course, at times like this, one is bound to remember the days long passed and shake one’s head and regret that the time has stolen one’s youth. Actually, I kind of regret my youth. I regret being so rule-abiding, so normal, so well-adapted. I should’ve had red hair, I should’ve sneaked out of school, I should’ve had more boyfriends. I should’ve kissed more. I should’ve broken more rules.

In the end, in the real, honest end, I am still ordinary, I have an ordinary job, an ordinary apartment, ordinary hobbies, ordinary looks, everything is well, but nothing is outstanding. I have no special talent, I look cute but not beautiful, I have not achieved any distinctive career position, I have not made a difference, I read, but just enough to qualify for an educated person, but not enough to actually know literature, I watch films, but I am an amateur film-lover, I know little about everything and in the end, I know nothing. There’s nothing I’ve done that differentiates me from others.

When I was twenty, everything seemed possible. College was exiting, I thought I’d graduate to do great things, but I never got to them.

Sometimes I wonder if my life makes any difference, since I am important only to one person and one cat. Which is an achievement. I can’t deny that. Those two mean a lot.

Anyway, done with the blues. Tomorrow, I’m gone to Armenia, to compete with my team in What When Where tournament, I’ve been looking forward to that. God, I wish I could stop being good at this game, and start being outstanding. I miss the time, when I was in ninth grade and won the title of the best speaker in debates, among the whole country. I was such a boring, but such a successful teenager.

Maybe we have rituals to make us look back, to evaluate, even to feel bad for ourselves for one night, feel some sadness, feel some remorse, so that we can improve our life in the next decade countdown. Or what’s the point of sitting around long narrow table, gathering people that barely know each other, participating in this communal eating?

Or maybe, we need these rituals to keep us from sulking too much and to remind us that we actually have a lot of friends that like to give us gifts to keep us happy.

Thanks friends. God knows, without you, I’d be long swept by my imaginary misery. 

An Epic Beating

Our political life continues to amuse us. Just when we thought that life got boring, townsfolk found some dusty forks and damp torches, marched to the national library and beat the crap out of our city Mayor.  Yes, that’s right, this Friday, sane citizens of our fine city physically stomped all over the Mayor.

Not that I like the Mayor. I've been saying that he’s an ass for a long time. Few people doubt that he’s an ass. It is a common knowledge that he's an ass.

But Holy Mother Georgia, does that mean that we should rush and beat up the asses among us (that came out wrong, didn’t it?).

Let’s recap the beating-up event. Saakashvili and friends were to give a speech at the library. Crowd of newly-freed prisoners gathered by the library. They hate Saakashvili for placing them in the prison. They love the new government for taking them out of prison. And as their hate stores up and as their anger erects, Ugulava the Mayor and other similar asses scattered among the masses yell and scream at each other. The ex-prisoners and now proud freemen of the great city Tbilisi grab his majesty the Mayor and shower him with “love”.

If this was a movie about repressed classes bravely revolting against the usurping ruling class, I would be moved to tears. The movie had to be set in the beginning of 20s. Maybe even earlier than that. Maybe it could be of the French revolution time. Then, we would all cheer for the crowd.

We could even make a balck and white film out of it. The sailors find maggots in the meat! Down with the ship’s captain! Let’s push the stroller down the stairs in Odessa park!

However, dear friends, the times of Patomkin have passed. We live in the time of national and international courts, contracts and agreements, I don’t know, civil society, rules, laws and regulations, we live in the time when people pretend to be respectful towards each other.  People pretend not hate each other to the point where inner instincts take over and they physically beat other people. We have passed the time of yelling and stoning and fire-burning at a stake. Alas, not here, not yet!

My salary is late and I am broke. My wounds are healing and they itch. I don’t get enough sleep ever. Maybe, some other time I would've written how uncivilized and horrible it is to actually physically beat the Mayor, no matter how much of an ass he is. But right now, I feel cynical. Beat along, my dear citizens, beat away. Whatever works for you.

And that’s what happens when asses like those harassed politicians don’t legalize peace-inducing substances.

“Everybody needs to get stoned”, sang the great philosopher Bob Dylan.

Burn

As I was complaining about minor shit on fb, a grelka, this hollow rubber vessel one fills with hot water for warmth, burst and sprayed me with hot, just-boiled water.

Life is all about the priorities.  Thus, my first reaction was to save my computer from the water. God knows this keyboard has suffered enough. The second reaction was: holy shit, I am covered in burning liquid! I promptly leaped out of my nighty and my bed, ran to the mirror and saw that half of my face, my neck and my upper body was alarmingly red. Part of my face, on the other hand, seemed that nice blue color of the walking dead hue. Looking like a giant red lobster, I ran out of the room to a computer with a better keyboard and googled further instructions. I kept thinking of that girl in the Girl Interrupted, the one who burned her face after her parents took the puppy away. Anyway, the search engine vomited tons of advices and the giant red lobster dislocated to the bathroom, unwilling to hop into the cold water, as advised by the wise internet. I did put my hands and face under the faucet and took the clean towel, wet it with cold water and put it to various parts of my body, according to the pain signals it sent. I also called and yelled at my hubby to bring me an antiseptic and anti-burn cream.

So, imagine you’re frantic. You rush into the pharmacy and demand antiseptic, anti-burn stuff, quick. And the elderly lady there goes to the back and looks for the medicine forever. And then she comes back with two different tubes of cream and claims that one is antiseptic and one is anti-burn, but you need those two together in one tube, a concept beyond her cognitive abilities. What would you do? Instead of mentioning her mother in a bad way, hubby ran out to the other pharmacy, where another person couldn’t get it that some creams actually carry anti-infection and analgesic effect together, until hubby lost all his patience and explained that when a person with crazy eyes rushes into a pharmacy asking for a burn relief cream, well that means that someone got burned, goddamnit. So move.

He came home after all the pharmacy tours and scared the shit out of me; I was pretty calm before that, planning my own rescue and all. Finally, we went to a center for burn treatment. The wise internet said I couldn’t put clothes on the burn before the doctor dressed the wounds, so I had to wear shirt that is even big for my big-enough hubby, and it kinda looked like a trench coat, which I opened widely, for all the interested medical staff at the hospital and felt like an exhibitionist scaring the kids and old ladies.

The next morning I came back to the hospital, where under all the gauzes a broil size of my breast formed atop of my real breast. I considered the exiting possibility of walking three-breasted, a bit of a bra problem, but the doctors punctured it mercilessly and I will spare you the details.

Anyway, my extremely loyal hubby has been disinfecting and medicating my wound for several days now, and I predict that it would be a long time before he decides to see me naked just for the fun of it. That’s what love is. In about three weeks my skin will return to  its prior state.

Also, I have to wear his shirts now, cause my tops are pretty tight and I can’t stand the touch of a material against my body. I’ve decided to embrace this fashion challenge and pair hubby’s oversized shirts with torn jeans and colorful bandanas. After all, beauty is just skin–deep; in this case, a burned one too.

p.s. gauzes and bandages, my new friends.