Trekhprudny Lane

Pesky case of walking pneumonia has got me down. (Groggy doc on the night shift at EMC accidentally prescribed a triple-strength dose of my antibiotic; does anybody need some Augmentin?) I'm starting to remember now how last fall and winter went, how we never felt quite completely well, for months. Nothing serious, just a long, variable drag. One of the girls has a fever about every third day now, which resolves, then reappears; their runny noses come and go; their coughing, especially at night, is more or less frequent but never really disappears. EB's school is understandably adamant about keeping sick kids home and collecting doctors' notes for absences, but the rules are difficult to follow when the illness waxes and wanes for weeks.

So... the news is that we will leave Moscow by the end of November, if not sooner. Not sure where we will go yet; perhaps the US, perhaps Central Europe, perhaps (slim chance) Singapore or Hong Kong. I am anxious, but the displacement feels familiar too. EB, not yet four, has lived in at least three languages (and thus worlds) for months at a time. Ours is a traveling circus, and it's time to take this show on the road again. 

Book log: Stephanie Zweig's Nowhere in Africa, a Holocaust memoir that, except for some splendid passages written from the viewpoint of a wise Kikuyu, blocks out much of Kenya's color and beauty and dwells instead on the morbid, incurious minds of the author's parents. A bit like being stuck in a tour van with a stubbornly quarrelsome couple while driving through a gorgeous, exotic land they never look out the window to notice. Then, Natasha's Dance by Orlando Figes, an examination of Russia's obsessive self-redefinition over the last few centuries... not so different from any other nation, except that here it was frequently state-managed, handicapped by the inert weight of millions of illiterate peasants (who were alternately reviled and idolized by city folk), and it played out on so epic a scale. 

Well, it looks like another gray day. Lula is toting the new foster kitten (Hans) around by his scruff, and the breakfast dishes are waiting...