An ordinary life

I think by next week this will look very different with the
start of the thaw. The tracks in the middle are a lynx

It's hard to write about ordinary life just after reading of such devastation in Japan, but ordinary life does go on and I am grateful for the ordinariness of life carrying on around me. I am grateful for the smiles and enthusiastic waves from neighbours (not really quite sure why the greetings were so enthusiastic, but still grateful nonetheless), I am also grateful for a warm house and food on the table. All perfectly ordinary, nothing remarkable until you realise how precious they are, how precarious it could be, how in an instant it could all be swept away by some quirk of nature, or by some revolution. In most earthquakes we read about, there is a concentration on the rescue stories, on the triumphs and the tragedies of ordinary people, but no not this time the media appear to have moved on to the threat of the nuclear reactor meltdown, or is that just the BBC? Or they are concentrating on the effects on the economy I to be honest I do not really care what speculators think of the economy of Japan, they should not be distracting the Japanese's Government from the mammoth task of clearing up and putting things to right, I think they have enough on their plate. I want to hear the stories, I want to hear how the Japanese people are? How are they doing, not the flippin' economy.

Ian dug out the drainage ditch for the
barn so the water can flow. He needed
me to give it a little perspective

So what has our ordinary life been like this week? Actually it hasn't felt that ordinary at all, things are changing - the sounds of Spring have rushed in upon us. For the first time in ages we hear the steady drip drip of the snow melting off our roofs,  we find out once again which roads are the dirt roads and which ones are actually tarmac and which ones are in desperate need of repair after the winter, it all seems so long ago since we saw them. We also discover there really is still grass under the snow and it still amazes us that it has managed to survive under its winter blanket and only needs a few rays of light to change from a dark murky green to the vibrant hue of spring. It was so warm the other day ie about 6C that we sat outside our workshop on the land on our patio chairs, Ian had to sink his chair into the snow, up to the seat, as there was not enough room outside our workshop for us both to put our chairs, but it was so good just to be soaking up the rays. I would have taken a photo but it was a long walk to get the camera along a path that was only half solid enough to walk on, part of it was still soft and meant sinking in up to my knees. After two days of warm temperatures there is still a lot of snow to melt and lots of puddles everywhere.

Not quite as deep as by the barn but a
pretty good indication of how deep the
snow has been

Post winter slush and dripping roofs seems a small price to pay for the return of the warmth of Spring. It is the promise of warmer days ahead that means I don't notice the pain of having to walk in the wet slippy slush, or the fact our car is not nice and clean now but the usual two tone colour it normally is. It is part of the process of transition, not entirely pleasant maybe in some ways, but the promise of the future is enough and the rays of sunshine help to make the slush bearable. As I said there is still a lot of snow to go, as there are mountains of it piled up all over the place; the snowploughs this year ran out of room to push the snow and had to have additional vehicles just to scoop up the snow to get it off the road. Of course a lot of buildings suffered damage with the weight of snow, not just our polytunnel and we see many collapsed buildings around. Ironically though buildings are still coming down as the snow melts off them, it is almost as if the only thing left holding them together was the ice and as that melts it all comes crashing down. We were round at our friends farm to see the new baby goats and we had a look at one of their buildings that had slowly been coming down over the winter, and Ian stepped in with our friend to have a look at the bent beams, only to find out that later that afternoon it finally gave up the ghost and fell down. Scary!

Cute heh! One of friends' new baby goat

Talking of our polytunnel we have finally made a decision on what to do. We have pulled the guys off building the barn to build the polytunel instead, as right now that is far more important to us. They can't really get going on the barn yet anyway as there is far more snow down there as you can see from the pictures, than on top of the hill where the polytunnel is. They are going to start off with beams left over from the barn and try to re-use what they can from the polytunnel and then we shall see what is still needed. They said it was going to be far quicker to take down the old framework still standing and start from scratch and so will build it using a different shape. They are also going to use sturdier beams in the corners and in the middle than use the same sized timber, so hopefully it will be far more robust. Well here's hoping anyway.

Here is the other baby, obviously otherwise engaged. Mum
is not much older as she is the one that escaped to go to the
boy goat when she wasn't supposed to.

It seems like its been a week of preparation for the coming year, from finally making a decision on the polytunnel to planting seeds. It seems the promise of Spring is all that is needed to spur us into action. One of the things that crossed my mind is that if we are going to have alpacas then I really need to get up to speed on the knitting as the hope is to have some gorgeous alpaca wool from them. I have never really been a great knitter, as Ian's mother was a prolific knitter, but I do have a go from time to time and made a couple of jumpers (sweaters) for Ian and myself and knitted a few baby clothes. I decided that since I have wool stored I would start off with knitting baby clothes (no pressure kids!) and so I pulled out a pattern I have kept from years ago and got started. Well I thought I understood the pattern but as I knitted I realised I had forgotten a few techniques like how to increase stitches in a pattern, I had also never come across the instructions K1B before, I have come across KB1 and thought it was the same. KB1 means knit into the back of the stitch but it didn't give me the nice chunky fisherman's rib as the picture showed me in the pattern. I pulled that piece out four times, checked on the internet three times before I got the hang of what I am supposed to be doing ie knitting into the row below but the good news is that it is flowing nicely now.

Trying it out for size! Ian decided to move the tractor to
higher ground and it is a good job he did as this will be
very muddy by now. When it has its roof on and a concrete
floor it obviously won't be so bad.

Ian also has done a few finishing off jobs on our other apartment, like put up a coat rack. We are quite pleased with it as we used a piece of wood which was heading for firewood but we liked the design of it so put it to one side, added some hooks, and voila! Easy and very cheap. A lot cheaper than the nice coat racks in the DIY shop. He also used panelling from the apartment we live in for a bath panel. We ripped it off the walls  because someone in their infinite wisdom had cut into them to put a radiator in and there was no chance of matching it up again. The bath looks pretty smart now and so we decided to christen it. Well actually we thought we had best test it out, to make sure it didn't leak, as it hasn't been tested since it was put in and we may have a visitor sometime in the next week. So we had our first bath in ages! Bliss! A bath that is long enough to lie down in and one which is deep enough to be submerged in - our American baths were so shallow they were almost pointless.

Makes our ponds look like they have sunk but we think
that it is the sides that are so deep with snow. Not sure
if they have reappeared from under their blankets yet.

It hasn't all been sweetness and light this week for me as this last week I was quite poorly for about 24 hours. I started to feel a bit achy one afternoon but by the evening I was really bad, so bad I went to bed before Ian which is errrrr very bad! I was so cold and I just couldn't get warm, so I was tucked up with the old hot water bottle trying to get some heat into myself.  I was very achy the next morning too and felt really unwell when I woke about 7am, so one cup of tea and a couple of paracetamols and I went back to sleep. I slept till 12pm and that is not like me either. I don't do sleeping in! I think I could count on my hand how many times I have slept in past 9am and that is even as a teenager. Just can't do it. No idea what it was but after my sleep I felt much better and apart from the odd bout of tiredness I am fine now.

Lynx tracks. Two large paws at the front and two smaller
paws at the back. Lack of claws means it is not a dog or fox

I posted a picture of a possible lynx track the other week but we weren't sure if it really was a lynx or not. Now we are pretty certain it is a lynx and it is a regular visitor to our land. Its also probably male as our polytunnel ruins has a slight whiff of "Essence de Tomcat!". Down by our lowest pond are lots of very characteristic cat tracks and, as someone commented, the only other cat besides lynx with a similar gait and foot pattern is a leopard, and there are not many of those in Latvia, so we go with lynx. Funnily enough since the lynx tracks appeared we don't seem to have as many deer tracks, can't think why. Some of the tracks are quite incredible as there is a huge distance between each set of tracks. The lynx must have been on the run but what a colossal stride it has, certainly would not like to meet one on the run.

Tragedy and joys

A stunning sunset

This week there was an immense tragedy at our house, Macbook Pro number 2 died. We bought Macbook Pro's just before we left America because Ian's old work one went on and on and on and still works even now, if a little cranky and needs to be constantly plugged in but it is 8 years old. We expected new ones to do the same, but oh no! The extra expense of buying what we thought would be a robust and reliable computer turned out to be a bad move. We don't know for sure if Macbook Pro number 2 died of the same disease as Macbook Pro number 1or not, aka a logic board, as we have to go all the way into Riga to take it to an apple repairer to find out, but we do know if it is then it is mega expensive to replace. So two computers bought a month apart both die within three months of each other, somehow don't feel like such an ardent Mac fan anymore.

A creative project this week. One of our neighbours isn't
sleeping well and is pregnant and a pillow like this helped
me all those years ago (over 21 now, help!) and so I had a
go at making one from fabric and pillows that weren't being
used for her. Kept me out of mischief for an afternoon anyway

Last week I mentioned that the majority of Latvians use a third of the electric we do which I found quite shocking, as I thought we don't use that much electric, but this week I am not so sure. A survey of households by a social and research agency found that only 4% of economically active Latvians use less than 100 KW/hrs per month, as unemployment stands at around 20% and if all of the unemployed used less than 100 KW/hrs then that is a quarter of Latvians in total not nearly half as Latvernergo stated. It does get complicated trying to compare the figures though as they are not comparing like with like and maybe the other proportion of folks are pensioners and possibly those out in rural areas do not use much electricity either as the study was done in Riga. What is for sure is that the rates are going up even though Latvernergo are not in any danger of making a loss, because by August of last year they were well in profit, but the bigger the profit the more tax so I guess the government or the IMF are happy. Just a shame those profits are not being invested in a better network, particularly in rural areas so that when the neighbours starts milking the cows the lights don't dim for everyone else on the line. The survey does call into question where Latvenergo gets their figures from though.

You have to trust me on this, I took this picture of the
sparkly diamond rain and would it show up on the camera?
No of course it didn't. Still you can see we have a lot of
snow still

We have still been having lots of glorious sunny weather and hardly a cloud in the sky for most of it too. The temperatures though have still been low, around -20s at night and -15-ish during the day but the last couple of days it has been gradually warming up and may have even briefly got to close to 0C today. Had to take a layer off just to shift some wood as I was getting too hot. There was one day this week it was so pretty as it looked like it was raining diamonds, just imagine a very slight drizzle but with the sun shining and instead of wet drops of fine rain, they are shiny, sparkly dancing, dazzling, lights shimmering their way down to the ground. It felt like another gift from heaven to remind me of the richness of God, a message to me to not worry about tomorrow because God has my tomorrows in his hands. At least the continued cold weather meant I finally got out skiing this week, I couldn't put it off any longer. I didn't do badly at all, I made my own little track around our orchard while Ian was busy digging in the snow with his tractor to clear a path down to our unfinished barn and I only fell down five times, twice in the first five minutes. One thing I did find was that getting up from a groomed track (ie one made by a skidoo and so compacted) was easier than trying to get up from the fresh snow of my home made track, every time I put my hand down it sank in the snow up to my elbow, and digging in my sticks didn't help either. In the end I found out that laying the sticks across the snow and leaning on them that way helped me to get up, difficult to explain and probably hilarious to watch, so glad none of you were there to see me.

Not sure what this is a footprint of but have wondered if
it was a lynx. One of the ladies I teach English too, saw one
while out skiing this last week.

We have had a fun time reconnecting with folks this week, about time too really as we have been back over a month already. Some friends were having a short break at the disney like castle quite close by and so we joined them at the end of their skiing day for a meal. Two days later and we joined some more friends for another meal round at their house - I could get quite use to this, saves me cooking anyway. On our way back, however, from the second meal we were stopped by the police, who for some reason were parked smack bang in the middle of the road outside our apartment, only we didn't realise they were police because it was dark, until we saw the reflective police stick that is, being waved by one guy indicating for us to pull over, although the road is that narrow that wasn't an option so we just stopped. It is quite normal to be stopped by the police here and it is nothing to worry about, we have been stopped numerous times, usually on the way to the airport but a lack of language here is a big help and all they want to see is driver's licence, technical documents and insurance documents - which should be in the car anyway. Often we get stopped during holiday times ie round about Christmas and Jani, the mid-summer festival time as they are checking for drunk drivers but they stop just about everyone then, so not a problem. What they were doing outside our apartment is beyond me though, as it is hardly a hive of activity. There is our apartment block of 18 apartments and a few houses on our street and hardly else anyone uses it, especially at that time of night and not all of them have cars either.

The view from the front door of our
other apartment

The update on our heating is that this week we have had good heat in our radiators despite the fact it has been so cold, so I am expecting a lower bill than the month before paradoxically. We shall see if our theory is correct that the lower the heat in the radiators the higher the bill because it is not high enough to switch on the recirculation pump, since we are charged for the amount of water pumping around the radiators and not necessarily the heat they contain.  The good news is that our house is sending off a letter of complaint this week as enough people have signed the letter and the heating company will now have 28 days to reply, should be interesting to know what they have to say. We shall not be paying for last months bill until it has been rectified that is for sure.

We feel like we have really made progress this week as we have finally just about finished off our other apartment and cleaned up the layers of dust from all the work. so if you were following last week I did get my sums right this time and we had more than enough flooring to finish the job off (Phew!). We are really pleased with it, as it looks very smart in a shabby chic sort of way. We have tried to use the original fittings where possible, which in reality means the doors and door frames and that is about it and we have taken the walls back to the rough plastered finish which is actually quite rustic in a way and I love the texture. It still looks a bit spartan and I have to sort out some pictures to hang up and we still have a few finishing off jobs such as beading around the laminate flooring as we didn't find any at the big diy stores (so it is not just our small local stores that don't have it in). I think we will try and make our own later on with our own wood and a router or maybe it will just not get done like the apartment we live in as we still waiting for skirting boards or beading to finish off the floors here too after nearly three years. So who is up for a visit now it is looking smart? One thing that is nice is that I now have somewhere that I can work which is not our bedroom and I can walk up to the apartment for a bit of exercise too. Unfortunately there is no internet there so I have to download all my work at home first to my computer so that I can read it when I get there, but perhaps it is a good idea there is no internet to distract me while I am there, probably get much more done.

This now has my desk and books in

We have had a few visitors to the apartment already, one day we left the door open as we were taking things up and down to the basement and an open door is an open invitation here, so one of our neighbours wandered in to have a look, she was impressed with the changes and my Latvian certainly stretched to "skaista" - beautiful, and the international "super" which was rather sweet. We also had young visitors today as unfortunately the lady we visited the other day for one of our meals out wasn't feeling very well over the weekend and is in hospital for a short stay and her son needed taking to basketball practice and then stay at our apartment for a short while to wait for his dad. I suddenly realised how out of practice I am with having kids around in my own place, there isn't much to do and not much in the way of things to drink but we coped and set them to work helping Ian take a load of wood down into the basement - as you do, nothing like a bit of child labour to keep the place warm. Actually they were very good and very helpful.

Looking back towards the front door
we have left these door frames unpainted
to match in with the doors. It means
the toilet door does not look so glaringly
modern compared to the others now

I love this mulberry colour in the living room. And do you
like the two little African guys in the corner, a present from
our son from his African trip

This is the bedroom and you can
see the door which had the paint
stripped off, sanded down and linseed
oil added