Day 4 of 'The Wait,' Friday

Hello! Anyone care to join me for dinner? This is what I ate tonight. Spaghetti, a croissant, and pomegranate juice. It is the first meal I have ever made in Ukraine. It was lovely. ish.

Tonight I took a little trip to the store. I'm not exactly utilizing the four food groups, so I thought I ought to at least attempt to make myself something to eat. Also, I know that I would be disappointed in myself if I did not try to cook while I was here. When I travel (haha. that makes it sound like I travel a lot.) I like to try to get a feel for what life is like for those people who live in the place we are visiting. I think it is more fun to experience the true culture of a place rather than stay at a nice hotel and eat the same food you always eat. That being said, I made myself spaghetti. hahaha. In my defense, they really do eat spaghetti here. In fact, they have an entire pasta and pasta sauce isle, just like back home. The pomegranate juice was really good. I had a hard time choosing cookies. I don't even know why I wanted the cookies. Maybe just to have said I bought some and ate them? Who knows. They tasted how I anticipated they would, pretty good.

This is the popsicle I ate last night. Pretty good! Good enough that I bought another today. Interestingly enough, the stick on the first one was round. The one I bought today, same brand, same store, same everything, when I opened it up, had a flat stick like the popsicles back in the States. hmmmmmmmmm. Such deep things to wonder about. I don't know if my brain can handle it all.



This is the inside of my kitchen cupboard. That's right. There is only one cupboard on the top. There is another cupboard under the sink where the garbage can and a couple pots are kept. Let me tell you so that you don't have to try to count, there are five cups (there is no way they hold more than 6 oz each), 6 plates of varying sizes, 2 bowls, and an odd assortment of mismatched silverware. And guess what. It works just fine. This mentality is something I wish I could take with me when I go home. I don't know if I can though. I really love baking and cooking and love all my different pots and pans and the different jobs they do. It will be something I will have to work on. Maybe I'll hang this picture on my refrigerator to remind myself.




This is the bathroom. I cannot remember if I posted a picture of it before or not and, bored as I am, I don't want to go back and read my own blog of my mindless days here to find out. So, if I already posted it, oops. The washing machine is in there too. And, it is really only that deep. It doesn't sit back behind that wall. One pair of jeans would fill that baby right up.

So, now for the exciting part of the post. Crazy dreams. I have debated waiting to dedicate an entire post just to the subject of my dreams while I was here in Ukraine, but I'm running out of material, so I thought I'd grace you with the past three nights dreams. And they are good.

Night one of being here alone. I was exhausted. Emotionally and physically. When I finally finally finally went to bed, I was beyond tired. The type of dream I had was the kind where you are trying to wake yourself up and move your body, but you just can't and then you think you actually are awake, only to realize maybe you really aren't yet and it goes back and forth like this the whole night? Instead of waking up feeling rested you feel like you just ran a marathon? Yeah. That's the one I had. In my dream I was in this apartment, Huz had just left and I was all alone (can you kind of see why maybe my body was confused at the reality of the dream as this was all real?!). The only difference between reality and the dream was in the dream, in the bedroom was a second door. It was a 'lock out.' Like the kind of room you sometimes see in condo rentals where you can rent the entire thing or just the smallest part of the condo, or the bigger part of the condo while 'locking out' the other room? So this second door was a lock out. Except in real life, these lock outs have locks and doors on both sides. Nope, not in the dream. In my dream the lock and door was only on the other guys side and he was trying to come into my apartment. And he was a terrorist. With a gun. At first I jumped out of bed and tried to hold the door shut, except there was not a door knob to pull on because, you know, the knob was only on his side, so that wasn't working so well. So then, I decide that I'm going to try to hide underneath the bed. Except in Ukraine. There aren't really underneaths to the beds. I haven't really figured that one out yet. I mean, obviously there is space under the bed, it just isn't accessible. And here, of all places, they could really use the storage space, but whatever. Anyhow, so I couldn't hide under the bed. Then, I had one of those brilliant ideas that you only have in dreams: I would lay back down and pretend like I was asleep and maybe he would just leave me alone. So I hurried to lay down and pull the covers up to my chin and try to keep my breathing steady and my eyes shut just enough that I could still see him, but that it looked like I was asleep. Because, after all, if he thinks I'm asleep then there's no reason to blow my head off. It makes perfect sense. But then the frustration from the day must have taken over because I decided I was not going to let him get away with this. He cannot just come in my room. What a jerk! So in my dream, I devise a plan where as soon as he looks toward the door (which would put his back to me) I was going to leap up out of bed and hit him with my pillow. That would do the trick! Only when he turned to the door, I couldn't get my legs to move and I was doing the thing where you have to pick up your own body parts and put them where you want them to go and then I couldn't get myself to stand up so I tried to hit him with the pillow while I was sitting down, which didn't work out so well. It would have of course, had I been standing up, because we all know that when you hit someone with a pillow standing up it does a lot more damage than when you are sitting down. Anyhow, he was kind of pissed that I hit him with the pillow so I decided to hurry and lay back down and pretend I was asleep so that maybe he would think I was sleep walking. Finally, finally, I realized, in my sleep, that this was THE DUMBEST dream EVER and woke myself up.

Night two. This dream I was on vacation again, only not in Ukraine and I had my family with me. We were staying in Florida in a little neighborhood community that had its own gated entrance and pool and beach access. I totally know where I got this part of the dream from (because if we ever go somewhere like that it WILL be a dream). I had read some random person's blog post about their vacation, in Florida, blah, blah, blah. So that's where the setting came from. So we're in this gorgeous furnished house and it is dusk and we get a phone call. It is the neighborhood guard letting everyone know that the tiger and the lion have escaped and that they had not been fed, so they were very hungry and on the loose. Because, you know, neighborhoods like this always have their own lion and tiger?! What in the world is wrong with my brain?! So, we hurry and get all the kids inside. We hurry and close all the windows. Strong winds start and people are running all over the place outside to hurry and get indoors so as to not encounter the lion and tiger (who by the way hang out together). The kids are watching a movie and I'm making dinner. Huz is not on this vacation with us. Not sure why-sorry honey. You didn't miss anything, though. The phone rings again only this time it's just someone wanting to chit chat. I happen to look out the window and see the maid (yes, I had a maid in the dream!!) walking down the street. I drag the phone to the sliding glass door (I'm on the phone that we all had back in the 80's with the really long curly cord) and open it up and yell to her to quick get inside, the lion and tiger are loose! She hurries and comes back inside. Then my dream skips to a few hours later. It is starting to rain and it is dark. Can you hear the creepy music?! I am checking all the windows to make sure they are locked (so that the lion and tiger don't slide them open and come inside?! seriously?) and I see another woman outside. I run down the stairs to the door. This one is a glass door, but swings open instead of slides. I yell out to her, "The lion and tiger are loose!! Quick, get in here!" Just then, the lion and tiger come around the corner, snarling. She says, "oh no." Not OH NO!!!!! Just, oh no. I reach out to grab onto her arm and pull her in. The lion and tiger turn as if they are about to leave so I quit pulling on her arm to let her walk in all by herself. Then, the lion and tiger quick turn around and grab her. I fling the door open and am playing tug of war with the lion and tiger over this woman when I decide that it's hopeless. So, I tell her sorry and shut the door. WHAT IN THE CRAP!!! And that's when I forced myself to wake up from that one. Like, oh, that's too bad you're going to get eaten. Sorry. Good grief! I certainly hope that would not be my reaction in real life! 'Sorry.' Seriously?!

Third night. I don't even want to go to bed this night. I know these dreams are ridiculous, but they are unnerving while I am trying to sleep AND I'm not exactly feeling rested when I wake up. Finally, I fall asleep. And this is my favorite dream so far. I am laughing just remembering it. I laughed the whole way to the track this morning. It was so dumb. The dream, that is. Our entire family was in Ukraine to adopt BoyOne and BoyTwo. We were in the ten day wait and the boys were staying with us. We were staying at Disneyland. Except it was how Disneyland would look if it were here. And the 'hotel' we were staying in was actually a church. We had two rooms sort of next to each other. One was for the kids. It had one giant bed in it. (K, this comes from the apartment I am in now. The bedroom just has the bed and a dresser in it and the bed takes up nearly the entire room. Not because it's a huge bed, but because the room is small) All the kids fit on the bed and they are watching a movie. BoyOne starts to complain. Shocking, I know. He wants to know why this is taking so long. I proceed to remind him that we are in the ten day wait and (surprise surprise) we found 3 sisters that we would also like to adopt. That's right. In my dream we are adopting FIVE kids. Send me to the funny farm now. And BoyOne asks who else we are adopting. I tell him who the sisters are, they are girls from his orphanage, and he starts saying that he doesn't want to adopt them. They aren't cool, it'll take too long, why weren't we adopting 3 brothers, etc, etc. I roll my eyes and step back into my room and there is some lady standing there. I stop and look at her, trying to figure out who she is. She walks up to me holding an envelope with some cash in it and starts talking to me about how Huz thinks we need to spend less money and maybe we won't have dinner tonight and that's when I realize/decide that she is the other wife. In my dream I start to get really ticked that Huz suddenly has two wives when I stop myself and think, 'this could really work to my advantage.' I tell her that Huz always thinks we are spending too much money but that we have six kids and are about to have nine and that we have to feed them. Three meals a day and snacks and to get over it and just buy the food, that we have enough money for all of us to have dinner but that maybe she won't be able to buy herself a Dr. Pepper (who do you think I am subconsciously talking to????). Then I tell her that BoyOne is acting up and she has to deal with it. I shut my door and climb on my bed and start reading. This second wife thing is totally going to work out! And then I realized that this was not a normal thought and I woke myself up.

The End.