Liankacreations

  I don’t know what happened to all my free time. A couple of months ago, I thought I was doing just fine. I was managing work, school, house chores, the dog, and even a little bit of knitting. Somehow, I was keeping everything under control. Now it’s August, and I feel like a big mess. I blame the news. Nothing good in the news lately. Smart people say, “Don’t stress about things you cannot control.” But for me, it’s not the lack of control that stresses me. It’s the “worrying” about things that stresses me. And there is plenty to worry about.  Russia is getting ready for the election, if you can call the process of facilitating the election. Putin suddenly started traveling around the country, heading mostly toward the eastern part of the country farther away from Moscow and the danger. Apparently, he is trying to communicate that everything is fine and that he is still the president of this wonderful country. On Tuesday, he visited the “Microfocus” research station. The sta...

  I haven’t written here forever, though I probably should have. From Marina When you live under constant stress, it becomes difficult to write. Sometimes, it feels difficult even to live. I think every single one of us is stressed for one reason or another. Is it a new reality? I don’t like being stressed, although I know stress can sometimes be helpful. In my case,  stress stopped being useful and became overwhelming. I have been deeply worried about my relatives in Russia since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war. I know all their news before them. Today I spoke with my best friend, Olya, my best friend who owns an apartment in Gelendzhik, Russia, on the Black Sea. She told me they don’t have gasoline in Gelendzhik. Well, I already knew that—I watch every possible news source on YouTube. My other friend, Marina, who often sends me photos from Russia, just went on vacation to Khakassia by car. Before their trip I warned Marina about the gasoline shor...

  May 22, and it is snowing in Tomsk. You could say "still" or "again"—both would sound right. And yet, the cool May weather hasn't slowed down the mosquitoes. According to a report by RIA Tomsk, cold weather doesn't kill off the larvae of these blood-sucking insects. The early-spring species have already taken flight "to hunt," and a mass emergence is expected by late May when warmer weather finally arrives. I wish I could say that we don't have mosquito problems here, but we do. I think a lot of it depends on neighbors who keep containers or pools of stagnant water in their backyards, where mosquitoes happily breed and multiply. My husband already got his first bite of the season. Let’s hope for the best this summer. For now, though, Tomichi (Tomsk citizens) aren't too worried about mosquitoes; their real problem, now and always, is ticks. Tomsk had a few warm days earlier this spring, and the ticks became active immediately. Every sprin...

  Sunday proved rich in events: Easter, the flooding of villages, Cosmonautics Day, and the election of a new Hungarian prime minister. The ice breakup on the Tom River reached the Tomsk Region on April 10, and on the 11th, ice movement began within the city of Tomsk itself. However, due to several ice jams, the river eventually “froze up” again, and water levels began to rise. On the night of April 12, the water level near the Kommunalny Bridge—which I wrote about some time ago—exceeded the danger threshold of 890 centimeters, according to official local reports. Water spilled over the roadway beneath the bridge and began flowing into the Sennaya Kurya, a small river in Tomsk. That same night, floodwaters reached several villages in the Tomsk District. Because of ice jams on the Tom River during the spring thaw, water rose quickly, inundating fields and several streets. Approximately 100 people were evacuated. One resident said that before 2010, these villages did not flood. The r...

     Marina's photo of Spring Tomsk Today I showed my husband an Instagram video of a young woman cleaning windows by literally stepping outside… on the fifth floor. Well, it’s actually a well-known tradition to clean your home in Spring. And Easter is almost like a due date. There’s also a specific day - Clean Thursday—the Thursday before Easter. I don’t know the full history behind it, but the idea is simple: you clean and wash as much as you can on that day. For some families, washing windows is an obsession: regularly in spring and autumn; it doesn't  matter on what floor your apartment is. Of course, not every woman does this, but many still do—I was one of them. I lived on the 8th floor, and I used to make sure to lock my apartment door with a key, not just a bolt (in case I wouldn’t be able to open it from the inside). To be honest, I did this for about 5–6 years. Then we installed modern plastic windows that open inward, which made the whole proc...

  “The asphalt washed away again, along with the snow”, “The patches simply "melted away" - Russian jokes about roads in spring. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?   I read online that some of the streets in Tomsk look just like our Hawthorn street, Elm street, you name it. However I have to admit streets in New Bedford are getting patched.  In Tomsk, the post-winter cleaning of sidewalks has begun. Over the cold season, 35,000 tons of sand-and-salt mixture were spread on the city streets. According to the city administration, Mayor Dmitry Makhinya has issued instructions to promptly collect the sand deposited on sidewalks and roads over the winter, before the spring winds begin and the snow melts. It is worth noting that the dust storm season in Tomsk typically begins in late April or early May, when the snow has completely (or nearly) melted and dry weather sets in. Do you remember my photos from a previous blog ? Well, in the outskirts of the city there is a lot of snow alon...