Hear Me, O Muse

Gabriel update: his day still consists entirely of sleeping, then crying, then eating, then sleeping again. Each day he'll sleep for 3-5 hours at least once, but you never know when that's going to be. Is this sleep the long one? Or is he going to wake up in ten minutes? So whenever we go to sleep, you feel like you're sleeping with a time bomb. But one where you can't see the clock.

My parenting skills have expanded into lullabye territory, but I've realized that I only remember like the first couple lines of most lullabyes. I remember the music, but not the words. But then I figured, Hell, Gabe only speaks Romanian anyway, so I've started just making stuff up.

So now Gabe's developing brain is daily subjected to stuff like:

Hush little baby, don't say a word.

Daddy's gonna buy you a mockingbird.

And if that mockingbird don't sing,

daddy's gonna buy you a Burger King.

And if that Burger King don't fry,

daddy's gonna buy you a box of lye.

And if that box of lye don't clean,

daddy's gonna buy you an extra spleen.

I don't see how he can help but grow up to be awesome.

Gabriel does not agree.

This week marked another step forward in introducing American cuisine to Romania. One morning I was sitting with Io and was like, "I would kill several people if I could have Du-Par's pancakes right now." For those who haven't been to Romania, you can't get Du-Par's pancakes here, because there are no Du-Par's restaurants. In fact, Romanians don't eat breakfast at all. They are so anti-breakfast that Romanian literally does not have a word for "breakfast." With increasing numbers of breakfast-eating non-Romanians here, they've begrudgingly added "mic dejun" ("little lunch") to their language to refer to breakfast.

For those who don't know what Du-Par's is, well -- jeez, I don't know what to tell you. Go out and have some right now. If there isn't a Du-Par's in your area, you should probably just kill yourself.*

Anyway, just like the metric chip cookies, if I wanted pancakes the only way to get them was to make them from scratch. My pancakes certainly didn't hold a candle to Du-Par's, but they were pretty good and a little taste of home. Tania even had a jug of pure maple syrup from New York in the house, for whatever reason. Woohoo!

Gagi, Io and I made our third attempt to get Gabriel a birth certificate today. We were unsuccessful yet again, but we are making progress. Our attempts took us out to the office of a notary public. Like many businesses in Bucharest, it's operated out of a converted condo unit. I think the deal is that during communist times, the government put up lots of housing but not a lot of office space, probably because there was nothing for people to do other than stand in line for bread. After the revolution and the dawn of capitalism, lots of people started businesses, but there's little commercial space to house them. So lots of people bought condos and converted them to offices. Io's family doctor's office is in a condo unit (with regular residences on either side), as is her nail salon. There are mini-marts, lawyers, dentists, anything you can think of, all being run out of converted residences.

When we got to the bloc with the notary in it, I was immediately struck. All the blocs in Bucharest look the same, because that's communist efficiency. But this bloc looked different. Io explained that this was one of the luxury blocs built to house higher-ranking party members, because, you know, some animals are more equal than others.

The condo we saw inside was pretty big, and the building had wider hallways and higher ceilings than the other blocs I've seen. The elevator even had automatic doors rather than the kind you have to open and close by hand.

Io tells me that this area used to be a regular neighborhood with little streets and free-standing homes before Ceausescu had the whole place bulldozed flat to put up these fancy blocs for the party faithful. The road he laid through it is called "Socialist Victory Boulevard." A year later, the proletariat carefully weighed the pros and cons of socialist victory, and then shot Ceausescu and his wife in the face. Turns out everyone had a little more to lose than their chains. For example, ammunition.

Next week, I'm off to Bulgaria for a little vacation that by total happenstance coincides with the expiration of my visa. What are the odds?

Go Cubs!

* This would involve everyone who isn't in southern California committing suicide. I am okay with that.