m0ntana

... it isn’t. I’ve lived in this condo for nine years now and I have yet to vacuum. Clutter accumulates against all the walls and in all the corners, my kitchen floor has spots that are older than my cat. I can make fun of it, but the fact is that I am ashamed to invite anyone to visit me.

My routine at the moment is this: work full-time, then come home and relax as if I had a wife to do all the domestic chores. This feels OK to me. But within a year, I will retire. My hope is that I will then take responsibility for the place where I live, pick up, vacuum, dust, and scrub the bathroom and kitchen. Probably not before I go to Russia, though it would be nice to come home to a clean place. I can’t contract the task out, either, since most of the problem is the clutter, and I’m not willing to let anyone else decide what goes and what stays. If I get that sorted out, then I could maybe have someone else come in and do the actual cleanup. (On my by-then-limited income. Right.)

Well, at least it’s a goal.

There are variously published dual-language versions of Russian literature. I’ve ordered a Yevgeny Onyegin from a pleasant man in England who’s docking the price because he says there are a lot of misprints in the Russian (oh, good, just what I need!). And there’s the beginning of Crime and Punishment posted on the web in dual-language form. I wonder if I will ever be fluent enough to read it in the original with no more help than a handy Russian-English dictionary?

... I’m going on an Elderhostel trip from Vladivostok to Moscow via Ulan Bator on the Trans-Siberian Railroad! I wrote at length about the trip over under “Learn To Speak Russian”, which was my introduction to 43 Things via a Google for “learn Russian Portland OR”. Wow! What a great thing 43 Things is, particularly as I look forward to my retirement in a year.

I’ve already reserved my place on an Elderhostel trip in August, 2007. I’ll be sharing a compartment with someone, which will be an adventure in itself, since I’ve lived by myself and cherished my solitude for—jiminy, can it be that long?—over 15 years since my youngest child finished college and moved out. (And the quotation to the right from Rilke is “For one human being to love another—that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.” I stand reproved.

But the Trans-Siberian Railroad! It feels like “ride an ATV around on Mars”. The last time I was anywhere outside the US and Canada was in 1962 when I spent a summer in a German-language program in Salzburg, Austria. So, to mark my retirement, I’m going around the world with a stop in Ulan Bator and another on the shores of Lake Baikal! Wow!

One of my daughters has given me a Freitag & Berndt road map of Russia. I spend happy hours tracing the route. To quote the President (such as he is), “Russia is a big country, isn’t it?”

I see that the custom here is brief entries. Well, I’m verbose and, living alone, don’t get the chance to beeble like this very often, and you’re stuck, I’m going to beeble.