The Sounds of Silence

A soft-baked post because really, I am torn between posting nothing at all and providing a torturous blow-by-blow of the mundane details of our lives these days. Which is worse?

I know if I go too long I will start getting those pesky emails about when the next installment is coming.   (did I really say pesky?)

Oh, the pressure. This is why I can never pursue a career as a newspaper columnist.

We are alone here. Really alone, just the four of us. I had forgotten what it's like. It turns out it goes something like this: stretches of silence that go on for 30 minutes or more and the floors only need to be vacuumed every few days. Do I sound like I'm complaining? I'm not.

When you are a senior (60+) living in a country with socialized medicine you are provided with a once-a-year government funded vacation at the thermal bath resort of your choice. 18 days. If you are disabled from cancer treatment or an accident, you can do this twice a year. If you are disabled, your train ticket, hotel and meals are all free. If you are merely a senior with full use of your limbs and faculties you pay 50% of the cost.

So I have socialized medicine to thank for 18 days of blessed silence and clean floors.

We're continuing with the fence project by default. Although we have an exciting idea to build a permanent bbq and pergola near the shade of the walnut tree, neither Mihai nor I had come up with any sort of workable plan within a reasonable time frame. Instead, we ran off to the mountains one weekend and when we returned a whole new load of sand was being delivered and we realized to our great consternation that we had missed our window of opportunity. So we're reaping the fruits of our disorganization by grilling on a make-shift grate about the size of a laptop, held up by a stack of concrete pavers. But the work crew didn't have to lose precious summer work days due to our lack of foresight which turns out to be good for them so I must find contentment in that fact even while I'm complaining about the rickety and inadequate bbq set up.

These days there are six men here with us. Foanză is the overseer. In July Cosmin took off for a summer job cherry picking in the Czech Republic so there have been some new faces to get used to. Its always fun when Mihai runs to the city to get something or other and I'm left trying to decipher the words for “cutting blade” and “the power drill without the broken handle.” Foanză and I have come to understand each other more or less. He knows its important to use hand gestures to describe what he's looking for and he knows to expect that I will stare blankly for a long time before I come up with something. We've got it worked out. But the new guys really don't know what to do with me and when they come to the door now they just say “is Mr. Mihai here?” and when I answer yes, the relief on both sides is palpable.


And now for the weather...
Lately I've been waking up not knowing where I am.  No sounds of my father-in-law conversing with Titel in his normal volume which is something between a shout and a full-blown battle cry.  ("Titel-e!" he cries and one always expects to hear "rush that machine-gun nest!  Come on, men, to victory!!!" afterward.) 
And there is a flock of chickens nearby suffering from a crisis of identity.  They think they are seagulls.  It's the weirdest thing to be hanging laundry and hear the distinct cry of gulls in the air.  I look around, thinking I've undergone teleportation to the seaside but no, it's the neighbor's odd breed of chickens.  
And I'm sleeping with pajamas and a blanket and sometimes socks.  It's August.  And before August it was July (for those of you who wonder if the months are the same here in Romania as in the rest of the world, now you know the answer).  I get up and take a look around: yep, still in Obedin, and it's still summer.  And it's cool and quiet.


Do I sound like I'm complaining?  I'm not.

Scenes from our impulsive trip to the mountains:

reminds me strangely of the American West

 Our sunflowers. Glorious.

Rummaging around in the attic I found these ventuze - to draw the fever out of the skin.  Yes, really.  I got all Martha-Stewart-y and used them to decorate the table for the crew's lunch.  Their reaction was so underwhelming you would think that grown, hard-laboring men do not care about such things.  If Mihai was embarrassed for me he hardly let it show.