All downhill after this

Even more than Christmas, this is the day I dream about: once we’re past it, there’s promise of longer days. It was like this in North Dakota, and I’m not sure if it was better or worse there, but it’s just super bleak when you can get up, hit the treadmill for a solid hour, shower, eat breakfast and check email – and it’s still not even close to sunrise.

Today, the sun rose at 9:26 and will set at 4:49. I can’t confirm that because it’s also 30 and cloudy all day, but that’s a step up from the last day I checked, when it was 28 and cloudy all day.  And what’s really sad to a native Floridian is that at this point, 30 – or even 28 – as downright balmy, at least if it’s not humid and snowing.

At the chocolate factory store

 So, like when I lived in Minot, I view it as once I make it through the winter solstice, I can make it through winter. Yeah, it only gets more and more cold after this, but at least the days get longer. Right now, I commute to work in the dark both ways. It’s just bleak.

 I’m intent on getting my steps in and an easy, but sometimes bitterly cold, way to do this is by walking home by the river, which I love. I normally take a one-hour walk home if it’s not too bad, but one day recently I took the really long way, which is an hour and a half. That was a mistake because not only was it extremely dark and cold but also because the stretch after Gorky park had a layer of ice on the walkway. This is not a detriment to Belarusians; they hustle right by me. But I am terrified of slipping and falling, and both my lack of balance and the residual knot on my head from last year’s fall and subsequent concussion remind me I am not as sure-footed as everyone else.

October Square near my house.
This was at 7:45 a.m. on my way to work.

This December 21 feels like more of a milestone than the last one because it’ll be my last one in Minsk. I love Minsk but man, it’s dark in the fall. I cannot understand how people in Scandinavia, Alaska and Siberia must feel. So far this year, I haven’t had to drag out my happy lamp – starting the day with 2 miles on the treadmill gets the endorphins going – but as lovely as sundown at 10 p.m. is in June, it is not worth the tradeoff. I wake up in the middle of the night and have absolutely no feel as to what time it is. Could be 1 a.m.; could be 5 a.m. This morning, I managed to sleep late and woke up at 7:50 a.m. but I seriously thought it was the middle of the night. Nope. By that time in summer, I would have 7k steps and would still be walking.

But I’m doing the best I can still. Last week, even after doing four miles on the treadmill, I walked down to the chocolate factory to buy my Secret Santa gift. There’s a store essentially right across the street from my apartment, but I like the factory store better because I can just reach in and get how much I want instead of trying to explain to someone what I need – my Russian is terrible. Plus, I don’t want half a kilo of any given candy; I want two pieces of this, two pieces of that, etc. And man, it was the place to be, which make me want to speed through there. I’d been there a couple times before but there were quite a few people in there. Everyone was wearing masks – they’re finally enforcing that here – but basically it was just people on top of people and I hate that. Plus, I bought these awesome overpants that I wear outside – gamechanger! – and although they make walking even an hour and a half by the river totally bearable, they turn into thigh saunas when I am inside. I went to the big market a few weekends ago and couldn’t have been inside 10 minutes but I felt sweat running down my legs as I crammed my cartons of eggs into my bag. Great for the outdoors, but miserable indoors.

I'm a cliché

After spending my R&R in America, I came back to COVID raging and a required-for-work two-week self-quarantine. I wasn’t forbidden to go to the store or anything but couldn’t go into the office. For me, this may have well of meant no human contact because I can’t communicate with anyone else. 

To counter it and to do something productive, I signed up for an online class, and in participating in it, became a cliché. Yes, I gave a presentation while wearing a bathrobe.

The first week of working from home was brutal due to the class, which was 5 p.m. to midnight my time, which fell, theoretically, 7.5 hours into my normal workday. This was especially nightmarish on Tuesday when, due to local time zones elsewhere, I also had a 4:30 a.m. webinar.

These are the times when I am really glad I don’t use the camera on my laptop, because no one needs to see me straight out of bed (or even in bed) while wearing a “Peace Corps – We Run the World” jogging tank top.

Since the class was a solid eight hours, I didn’t mind if I took it easy during the day’s work, so suffering from both jet lag and something I’m fairly confident was(/is) a cold, I alternated checking emails with crashing on the sofa and watching “Schitt’s Creek.”

This, as many now know, is an awesome show that ran on the CBC in Canada, home of Hockey Night in Canada. (It never occurred to me they did other programming.) The episodes during its six-season run were under 25 minutes each, so it was fairly easy to crash and watch one and somehow, a mere two hours later, have completed half a season’s worth.

“Schitt’s Creek,” for those who don’t know, is the story of a family that loses its money and relocates into a small town the patriarch bought as a gag gift for his adult son. The actors who portray the father and son are real-life father and son and the mom is the Beetlejuice/Home Alone mom. There’s also a daughter and several other main characters. It’s all Canada nice; I was struck that the socialite daughter, who’s probably in her 20s, said please and thank you – something that would not ordinarily be written into most shows. Mostly I liked the fact that it went somewhere – there was a definite progression and growth of the characters. You don’t see that much in TV, and that made it a reason show. (Looking at you, Conners.) The son, who was pretty flamboyant, reminded me very much of a roommate I had in Detroit, who was one of the best roommates I’ve ever had.

Even including work and the class, completing that show was probably the most productive part of that first week back. I was just exhausted, even though I still walked every day. I just couldn’t get out of bed.

We’re in the crappy part of the year where the sun doesn’t show itself much. If it comes out at all, it’s not until after 9 a.m. and then it is gone by 5 p.m. It’s just bleak, but at least as of today I tell myself the days will start getting longer soon. (Countdown: 20 days!)

By the weekend of week 1, I decided that I could leave the house and took a long walk on Saturday, I think it was. Even hit a grocery store, but I had previously decided to do most shopping on Thanksgiving, after my massage. (Remember: it was self-quarantine, and I wore a mask the whole time.)

Shopping on Thanksgiving was fine here; obviously it’s not a holiday. But I was struck by two things: there appears to be no spinach in Minsk right now and, for some reason, there were Black Friday sales. Really? Black Friday is an American thing. How have we infected other countries with our commercialism?

Thanksgiving itself, the food part, as a sad little affair. I had decided to splurge and go to TGI Friday’s to get American food, but when I looked online at the menu, I saw that Tuesday is 2-for-1 burger day, so it seemed like if I got a burger it should be that day, and I saw the chicken – the closest I can get to turkey right now – came with sides of mashed potatoes and broccoli. Well, I make good mashed potatoes and have broccoli (but no spinach), so I just couldn’t justify an overpriced meal, especially at a dine-in restaurant during COVID. And why would I take chicken, broccoli and mashed potatoes home when I had chicken, mashed potatoes and broccoli at home?

In the end, it was tasty but still quite sad. I miss people. I can’t say I miss wearing a bra, but I miss people.