Cranky Day

So Momma Bakken’s day began splendidly. The skies were blue. It was 80 degrees outside. We had our much-needed and beloved babysitter, Andreea, here to watch both Bakken bambini as it is the custom, in Romania, to give kids 2 weeks off from school for Orthodox Easter. Christopher, alas, headed to the National Library to grade a sackful of papers written mostly by students who are wonderful and appear frequently in his class, but also by students who almost never appear, yet are registered and wind up getting grades—he is encouraged to pass such students even though, say, they are studying abroad in Sweden for the semester.

So. Momma can’t complain. I head out, stopping off at a new pastry window I’ve been eyeing the past few weeks. Pastries I’ve never seen nor tried before. Breakfast? A Strudel cu Cascaval. Strudel with the Sour-ish cheese. I thought it would be spectacular. But then I felt like Jig in Hemingway’s short story, “Hills Like White Elephants”—it tasted just plain ordinary and not worth my wait. What does Jig say? “Everything tastes like licorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for. Like absinthe.” Or something along those lines. Or there’s the other line: “”That’s all we do, isn’t it? Look at things and try new drinks?” That’s what I felt like post-Strudel cu Cascaval. Blah. Tired of pastries. Nothing sublime there—just toasted dough folded around mealy cheese. (Granted this is on the heels of yet another pastry disappointment yesterday—mass-produced Strudel cu Spinaci). Alas. Maybe I’ll just go back to my morning dose of Muesli—or what we fondly refer to as Horsefeed cu Raisins.

Despite the downturn in my-life-as-pastry-taster, I continued on my walk up to Herastrau Park. My goal? To walk to around lake. I set off, removed my Ipod and listened to the birds and the weed whackers and the tennis ball thwackers. And walked. What looked like an easy 30 minute circumnavigation quickly became an hour and a half as the lake kept pocketing out. And I kept walking (at one point, over a train trestle). How many kilometers? All I knew was that I had to get back home as Christopher and Andreea had an “appointment” with our Landlady T. (some fence-mending with Andreea’s interpretive help)—so I needed to remove Bakken Bambini from the apartment towards donuts or sundaes.

The result: things were smoothed out with Lady T. (though she is still irked by our shower curtain removal), and we hiked over with her to the Internet Billing office (to make sure we will cancel our contract and she won’t be billed), then had some mediocre pizza at an outdoor ristorante. How did this day end? Ah. We have felt surely we might, at the end of our Bucharest stay, receive some small portion of our apartment deposit back from Lady T.--minus the ancient toilet repairs, the shower curtain, and Alexander’s washable (but not entirely washable, apparently) magic-markering of his bedroom wall. A few of our hundred Euros might be ours again?

As Christopher blew off some steam drinking an ouzo and playing some much-need online poker (though not for real money), and Momma pre-cleaned the kids’ room in anticipation of our batty cleaning lady’s arrival tomorrow, we heard: CRASH! Alexander knocked the TV over. Cracked, dented, but miraculously it still works. Honestly. Christopher is, as we speak, watching Liverpool vs. Chelsea Champions League Soccer. Clear picture. I knew there was a reason I was going to Medjugorje in October. To thank the Blessed Lady who will perhaps intervene with our more cantankerous Lady T.

Krrrrry