Let's See, Where Were We?

It's been awhile. Things have been happening, some too fast, some not fast enough.

Our friend Hasan has come and gone. You need to have a Turkish farmer as a friend: he didn't want to sit around doing nothing, so he rebuilt our brick front sidewalk, helped with some of our painting, and painted his friend (and ours) Beth's front porch. He and I visited his friends on a farm near Woodville where he worked nearly thirty years ago - this was to be a one hour visit, but it lasted five and a half hours. Other friends came to visit him. We dined out, we had dinner guests, we had picnics, I managed to not gain weight. Today the three of us took him to the Mall of America and then to the airport.

Three of us? Meet Yelena Chikulaeva, Lena (Lee-ehna) for short, 15 years old, from Petrozavodsk, Russia. That's several hours' drive north of St. Petersburg, so she'll be ready for the cold weather. She is in an exchange program, and we volunteered to be a "paper" host family, and the paper has taken human form. We don't know how long she'll be with us before the program can place her with a family with school-age kids, but we're getting her set up for school as if she's here for the year. She has been here for a week. It turns out that she and I have similar tastes in music. We had to pry her out of the Mall of America. Seems like a great normal kid.

We still have no furnace or air conditioner, but we have some shiny sheet metal and some hope. The laundry is going great. Most of the exterior paint is done, but we have some stain to apply on the porch deck and steps. Someday we hope to get some more dirt, and get it leveled for proper drainage, and start some grass, and replant the garden. And, just maybe, the contractor will show up and put up acceptable screening on our front porch.

It's all too much. I tend to shut down a little bit when too much is happening all at once, and if I'm in the middle of something I've been told is important, like painting, I might keep doing that or go back to it too soon instead of visiting with friends or family. Now, give me one thing to do, and one person to go have a beer with instead of doing it, and my priorities straighten out right away. But two or more things and two or more people, and forget it. Gimme the brush.