“My Milkshake brings all the boys to the yard,
and they’re like, “its better than yours”,
damn right, its better than yours,
I could teach you, but I’d have to charge.”
This song is stuck in my head, so I thought I would share it with all of you, because then it will be stuck in your head too, and you will think of me every single time you hear it! Consider it a holiday gift from me to you…
It’s snowing in my freezer. Let me clarify this statement. My refrigerator has broken. I went to Astana for Thanksgiving and while I was gone there was a power surge (I am figuring, I am not sure) and when I came back, the refrigerator was broken and all the food in it bad bad bad. So I called my landlady, who asked me, “Are you gonna call me every time something breaks? What, am I supposed to fix it?” Well, yes, I thought. You’re the landlady! That’s why I pay you twice what the average Kazakhstani gets paid in a month for rent on this dump. But I guess not. Not in Kazakhstan.
So my food is now sitting on my balcony. Now, I know the word balcony brings to mind sitting in deck chairs watching the sunset. Don’t get any posh ideas. This is basically a piece of wood jutting out of the side of my building that has an enclosed space. The “windows” are covered with old advertisements (as was much of my apartment after my landlady’s “remodeling” before I moved in. I took down the ads for meat covering the dresser top and the ads for shampoo covering the shelf, but left the huge yogurt ad on the floor of the wardrobe because no one sees it.) Anyway the balcony “windows” are covered with advertisements and one of the “windows” is actually a piece of linoleum nailed in place - probably stolen from somebody’s car floor. So needless to say, it’s a very cold place in winter, perfect for me to keep my food until I have the money the fix the refrigerator. I am in no hurry. It’s cold out now, and set to be this way until at least the beginning of May. I remember it snowed for the last time in May this last winter. So my food should be safe for now, on the balcony. Except that now I don’t have a refrigerator and a freezer. At the moment I have just a freezer, which requires a lot of planning if you want to eat yogurt for breakfast, and not, say, frozen yogurt…
Except the laws of physics don’t actually hold true in Kazakhstan. This is no joke. For weeks, people kept telling me, “I can’t wait until it snows, it will be so much warmer!” And I was thinking, “What? Doesn’t it have to be cold for the water to turn to snow? Otherwise wouldn’t it be rain?” But no. Yesterday, it got unseasonably (I thought) warm, and in my head, I said, scornfully, “ha, maybe it will snow tomorrow!” Well, guess what. It is snowing in my refrigerator! Now, when someone tells me I shouldn’t sit on concrete because it will make me infertile, or I shouldn’t lick the chocolate off the knife because I will get mad, or I shouldn’t drink cold beverages (even in the hot hot summer) because I will catch a cold, maybe I will listen. Maybe infertility rates in the U.S. have gone up so much because of all those girls sitting on curbs, hanging out with friends when they are teenagers. Maybe the increase in violence is due to knife licking. Those things may in fact be true. But I am not buying the cold beverage thing. I have had scientific confirmation (from the Peace Corps doctor) and he says, no, unless you are already sick, drinking cold beverages will not make you sicker. This is much like the “wet head” thing in America. (IF you go outside with a wet head you will get sick, which if it had actually been true, I would have been dead by now, not actually being a fan of hair dryers, and until recently, say, oh, nine months ago, I was a once a day shower-er. Lots of wet-head-leaving-the-house happening in my life.)
Everything sure does look pretty in the snow. Except the day after it snows, much of the snow is actually brown. Not brown as in “doggie pooped here” brown, but brown as in, “there’s so much smog in this city the snow turns brown”. After living in L.A. for about a decade, smog shouldn’t bother me. But it never snowed in L.A. that I am aware of, so I never came face to face with brown snow and the heavy smogginess when the smog sits in the valley below the mountains, heavier than air. The smog is hot, so it rises, but as it cools, it just sits over the city like a blanket. Just like in L.A., though, the smog does make for fabulous sunsets! Sometimes when I am walking home from the bus stop, the sky has the cold, soft, impressionist orange color that puts me in a poetic mood. Not that I write poetry. Well, when I was younger I did. I am embarrassed to remember some of my poetry. I think when I was in third grade I wrote, “I cry when I think of rain/gently dripping down the pane/dark grey clouds fill the sky/as misty tears fill my eyes.” Now that is pure brilliance, I know. Watch out Robert Frost. But I must say, I had forgotten the beauty of winter. Don’t get me wrong. It is cold here. Cold enough that I have to leave about ten minutes early for everything because that is how long it takes me to get into all of my clothes for outside. But when I am walking in the snow, warm, my boots making that noise I love so much (crunch crunch crunch) as I walk, and I see the dogs of Almaty, going about their lives as if they were independent beings with little balls of snow gathering on their mangy hair, no leashes and no owners near by, and see all the people wearing huge fur coats and big furry hats that make me think of the “iron curtain” of the 80’s movies I watched when I was a kid, and black icicles hanging from old construction trucks, I have to admit, life is sometimes poetry. You just have to know how to look at it.
and they’re like, “its better than yours”,
damn right, its better than yours,
I could teach you, but I’d have to charge.”
This song is stuck in my head, so I thought I would share it with all of you, because then it will be stuck in your head too, and you will think of me every single time you hear it! Consider it a holiday gift from me to you…
It’s snowing in my freezer. Let me clarify this statement. My refrigerator has broken. I went to Astana for Thanksgiving and while I was gone there was a power surge (I am figuring, I am not sure) and when I came back, the refrigerator was broken and all the food in it bad bad bad. So I called my landlady, who asked me, “Are you gonna call me every time something breaks? What, am I supposed to fix it?” Well, yes, I thought. You’re the landlady! That’s why I pay you twice what the average Kazakhstani gets paid in a month for rent on this dump. But I guess not. Not in Kazakhstan.
So my food is now sitting on my balcony. Now, I know the word balcony brings to mind sitting in deck chairs watching the sunset. Don’t get any posh ideas. This is basically a piece of wood jutting out of the side of my building that has an enclosed space. The “windows” are covered with old advertisements (as was much of my apartment after my landlady’s “remodeling” before I moved in. I took down the ads for meat covering the dresser top and the ads for shampoo covering the shelf, but left the huge yogurt ad on the floor of the wardrobe because no one sees it.) Anyway the balcony “windows” are covered with advertisements and one of the “windows” is actually a piece of linoleum nailed in place - probably stolen from somebody’s car floor. So needless to say, it’s a very cold place in winter, perfect for me to keep my food until I have the money the fix the refrigerator. I am in no hurry. It’s cold out now, and set to be this way until at least the beginning of May. I remember it snowed for the last time in May this last winter. So my food should be safe for now, on the balcony. Except that now I don’t have a refrigerator and a freezer. At the moment I have just a freezer, which requires a lot of planning if you want to eat yogurt for breakfast, and not, say, frozen yogurt…
Except the laws of physics don’t actually hold true in Kazakhstan. This is no joke. For weeks, people kept telling me, “I can’t wait until it snows, it will be so much warmer!” And I was thinking, “What? Doesn’t it have to be cold for the water to turn to snow? Otherwise wouldn’t it be rain?” But no. Yesterday, it got unseasonably (I thought) warm, and in my head, I said, scornfully, “ha, maybe it will snow tomorrow!” Well, guess what. It is snowing in my refrigerator! Now, when someone tells me I shouldn’t sit on concrete because it will make me infertile, or I shouldn’t lick the chocolate off the knife because I will get mad, or I shouldn’t drink cold beverages (even in the hot hot summer) because I will catch a cold, maybe I will listen. Maybe infertility rates in the U.S. have gone up so much because of all those girls sitting on curbs, hanging out with friends when they are teenagers. Maybe the increase in violence is due to knife licking. Those things may in fact be true. But I am not buying the cold beverage thing. I have had scientific confirmation (from the Peace Corps doctor) and he says, no, unless you are already sick, drinking cold beverages will not make you sicker. This is much like the “wet head” thing in America. (IF you go outside with a wet head you will get sick, which if it had actually been true, I would have been dead by now, not actually being a fan of hair dryers, and until recently, say, oh, nine months ago, I was a once a day shower-er. Lots of wet-head-leaving-the-house happening in my life.)
Everything sure does look pretty in the snow. Except the day after it snows, much of the snow is actually brown. Not brown as in “doggie pooped here” brown, but brown as in, “there’s so much smog in this city the snow turns brown”. After living in L.A. for about a decade, smog shouldn’t bother me. But it never snowed in L.A. that I am aware of, so I never came face to face with brown snow and the heavy smogginess when the smog sits in the valley below the mountains, heavier than air. The smog is hot, so it rises, but as it cools, it just sits over the city like a blanket. Just like in L.A., though, the smog does make for fabulous sunsets! Sometimes when I am walking home from the bus stop, the sky has the cold, soft, impressionist orange color that puts me in a poetic mood. Not that I write poetry. Well, when I was younger I did. I am embarrassed to remember some of my poetry. I think when I was in third grade I wrote, “I cry when I think of rain/gently dripping down the pane/dark grey clouds fill the sky/as misty tears fill my eyes.” Now that is pure brilliance, I know. Watch out Robert Frost. But I must say, I had forgotten the beauty of winter. Don’t get me wrong. It is cold here. Cold enough that I have to leave about ten minutes early for everything because that is how long it takes me to get into all of my clothes for outside. But when I am walking in the snow, warm, my boots making that noise I love so much (crunch crunch crunch) as I walk, and I see the dogs of Almaty, going about their lives as if they were independent beings with little balls of snow gathering on their mangy hair, no leashes and no owners near by, and see all the people wearing huge fur coats and big furry hats that make me think of the “iron curtain” of the 80’s movies I watched when I was a kid, and black icicles hanging from old construction trucks, I have to admit, life is sometimes poetry. You just have to know how to look at it.
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