Czy chcesz pizze?

Tonight’s dinner was pizza. With all the trepidations surrounding the painting job (see post below), I didn’t have the mind nor the muscle to think about food preparation. So I went to a local pizza place to pick up my order (I am the only one in town, in the country probably, who has never in her entire American life (they don’t do pizza delivery in Poland) ordered a pizza delivery; one quick drive will get me a pie fresh from the oven, so why would I opt for a delivery?).

I wore my “Prawa kobiet prawami czlowieka” t-shirt tonight. Most people pick the next clean t-shirt in the stack to throw on. I choose mine deliberately. I wear the Polish one whenever I miss my connections to that country. [the translation of the words is “women’s rights are people’s rights.” The shirt comes from a friend who works at the Center for Women’s Rights in Warsaw and if you knew how incongruous it is to talk of women’s rights in the Polish context, you’d appreciate how much this t-shirt means to me. It is fading considerably from overuse.]

As I claimed my pizza, the young man said to me “ty rozmawiasz po Polsku?” He had a slight American accent, but he was otherwise quite fluent (translation: you speak Polish, don’t you?).

It turns out that he is a Wisconsin guy who had decided, while in college at UW-Stevens Point, to learn Polish. Eventually, he spent his junior year in Poland. Okay, so he is now dishing out pizza – not a great ad for choosing Polish as you major. But I’m sure he’ll move on to bigger and better things any day now.

I have, until this day, in my many years in this country, met only two people who had had no connection to Poland but had decided to learn the language nonetheless. Both were sociologists who chose to do research in Poland. This young man today will make it a pack of three who will have deliberately studied Polish.

I asked how it could be that he spoke Polish so well. The language is exceedingly hard for Americans, in part because of the conjugation principles (you conjugate nouns as well as verbs, so that if you say “I sit on top of the table” or “I sit under the table,” the word “table” will take on a different form; this additional grammatical idiosyncrasy drives English speaking people completely nuts). He answered simply “jestem bardzo inteligentny” (=I am very intelligent). Indeed!

This was supposed to be quick and easy

I have been repainting some of the rooms in the house this year. My study got the greenish-yellow treatment this winter and today I attacked a room that is mostly used as a bedroom for visitors (one such person is coming later this week). It hadn’t been painted for more than 15 years and there is an entire area where it looks like someone was systematically checking to see how many footprints could fit in a small space underneath the window.

First step: get a nice creamy-toned paint. I did that back in March (it was to be a Spring Break project).


paint's ready 

Second step: tape the window frames, doors and baseboards. Done yesterday.

Third step: patch holes in drywall. Yep.

Fourth step: move furniture around. Here I encountered a major snag:


wait a minute, it's not supposed to look like this 

As you can see, the bed completely fell apart (actually in several places). True, it was one of those Danish teak things that isn’t terrifically sturdy and it had some years on it, but it had seemed perfectly content sitting in its spot for years and years. No one knew it had a problem until it came time to move it. Then it just sort of collapsed.

Of course, this, in the end, is a good thing. It would have been a source of great embarrassment and consternation if it had decided to fall apart while visitors were, er, sleeping on it.

Still, the painting project got interrupted by the need to purchase a new bed. All Rubin’s stores were visited, a bed was finally found. (Sixth step will have to be bed assembly; it comes in many smallish boxes; I am dubious that a full-size bed fit into these, but I am told that indeed, once the pieces are slapped, glued and nailed together, a bed will emerge.)

Fifth step: Pick up the pace with the rollers and the brushes! I am rushing to finish before the day runs out on me. I am speckled with creamy dots and dribbles (how do professional painters stay so clean when they paint?) and I anticipate at least two more disasters. Just a few minutes ago I stepped on a carelessly placed painting utensil. It took a half an hour to clean that little problem up.

Is dad listening?

George W. Bush came to Cheney’s defense today. Amidst speculations that, but for the threat of the lost conservative vote, GWB would be better off dropping Cheney from the ticket, George W. responded: “Dick Cheney is the best vice president this country has ever had.” Are we witnessing a family rift in the making? Is there a lapse in memory, or a punch at dad, or what?