I'm doing a little better now than I was 45 minutes ago and the hour before that. I've had almost a glass of wine and had a chance to check my e-mail. I just wanted to be alone - to not have to attend to anyone's needs or answer anyone's questions. But, despite my requests for such, my kids hung on me as I checked my e-mail, until I was eventually able to make my point.
It feels so hard here sometimes. Part of it is always having people in tow who have needs that I have to worry about. Part of it is how many steps it takes to do anything here. It takes at least an hour to leave my mother-in-law's house once I've decided I'm ready to go. An hour & a half or two hours is standard. When it takes so many steps, many of which are dependent on other people, slow people, I start to feel trapped.
So, yes. I ended my day feeling trapped again.
It makes me not want to have anyone near me, yet being alone is not really an option. I could just leave, I suppose. Go on a super-long walk & abandon my responsibilities. But I'm also very tired and just want to be alone with my computer and a glass of wine. By the way, I achieved both of those goals as I started this blog entry. I wish it didn't require getting grumpy to achieve it. If I did it the nice way, I could have achieved it, but slower. After the kids were ready for bed & in bed. Right now, Genci is taking care of the teeth routine.
How things are harder here:
-To wash dishes, you need to do a complicated series of steps. It's less complicated than it used to be, since I've decided not to worry much about getting sick from the water used to wash dishes. But there are 2 different faucets, and the one with the better (more sanitary) doesn't always have water. So sometimes I wish the dishes, but they're really only half washed, and set aside to be washed with the better water later. There's only enough room to dry about 5 plates & 2 glasses, so when I have more, I start stashing them in lots of little places around the tiny little kitchenette that I often share with Genci's mother.
I'm sounding petty. I should stop writing.
OK. I'm still writing.
The bathroom.
To flush, you poor water from a bucket into the toilet - a lot, all at once. If you do it too slowly, it doesn't act like a flush. Today, in the downstairs (outdoors) bathroom, the buckets were empty, so after Nathan went to the bathroom, I had to go upstairs & bring a full bucket of water downstairs & pour it into the toilet. Twice.
If you use the bathroom upstairs, you have to remove your shoes to go upstairs, then put on bathroom slippers so your feet don't get wet. Then you unlatch this make-shift thing that holds the door shut. You pee. You do the bucket thing. You find the little plastic bag to put the toilet paper in. If you forget & accidentally drop it in the toilet, you rescue it (not fun), find the bag, wash your hands. Bucket flush. Out of bathroom, slippers off. Relatch door. Oh yes, if it's night, you're now in total darkness, because the room you go through (the bedroom) to get to the bathroom has a complicated system of plugging in a lightbulb directly into the socket. Hard to figure out. Darkness is easier. Back downstairs. Shoes back on. Not a big deal. But what could have been 30 seconds was 5 minutes.
None of this is a big deal.
But sometimes it wears on you, how time consuming simple tasks can be.
Shopping. There isn't a big store that has everything in organized departments. Instead, there are tons of little tiny shops (holes in the wall almost) that sell different things. Some sell just one thing, some a variety of random things. After walking around the marketplace tons of times a day for 10 days, I kind of know where to find most things. But in the beginning, finding something like fingernail clippers, or a pair of scissors, or a few unrelated items, can be kind of time-consuming, especially if you get distracted by all the people and things you see and forget what mission you were on when you started.
A friend of mine (hi Diane!) wrote me an e-mail today that mentioned how funny it is how some days I'm having such a tough time & other days we all sound happy & great. Well, that's kind of how it is. I think the days that we actually DO SOMETHING other than just hanging out at Genci's mother's house, running errands, trying to shop & playing soccer in the street/park - those days I tend to be happiest. I saw something new. I had an adventure.
But I do have good days where we do nothing special. Perhaps it has to do with how quickly we were able to leave when it came time (in my mind) to leave. Or how few arguements went on - whether it be between my kids or between Genci & his mother. Perhaps it is how much/little sleep I had the night before. I don't know. But there is a definite up & down aspect to our trips here.
I predict that tomorrow and the next day will be good days. We are going on a trip tomorrow, to Lake Ohrid, which is east of here. I think we will spend the night in Macedonia, and return the next day. I'm too tired to pack up all of our stuff (to store while we are gone) tonight. Hopefully I will be decisive and quick in the morning & hopefully we will have a good trip. I think we will. We have errands to do here on Thursday, then I want to take a trip to the North for a few days.
We'll see.
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