Winter’s still here

April, 1^st

 

I look out of window, see all this snow and don’t believe it is going to melt at all… I look at window in a couple of hours and don’t believe what I see- windows are spattered with drops. Now it’s raining…

I wonder who is playing tricks on whom… Spring, Winter, my expectations?

Happy April Fool’s Day!

 

Purple… You always wrote in purple…

My dear friend!

Hey my dear Bill, I so got used to your writing in purple and I cannot recall whether I ever asked you why you liked this colour. Little sister wrote in green, I loved red most of the time. It just occured to me that it might be on purpose. I may be wrong though. I love this colour, for whatever reason you have once chosen to write in it!

Love this, thank you for being to me such a good friend!

—– Original Message —–

From: Annet

To: Bill Crain

Sent: Monday, October 13, 2008 9:35 AM

Subject: hello

 

Hello dear Bill:
How are you?
I have just eaten about half pound of toffee and I can’t say I am feeling well. Sometimes I feel like eating them so much but I can’t stop myself from eating too much.
If I have a connection on my Wednesday I’ll be online, at 10 o’clock. I am sorry I couldn’t be on this Sunday. Bill? Did you chat with little sister? She put an unripe apple on her website,I had a bite, it was sooooo sour!(of course it was sour,it was a Granny Apple)
Bill? Have you ever watched the movie ” A long Engagement”? It’s about a girl who was limping(walked with a limp) and she was trying to find her fiance who might be killed at war for desertion. I watched half of it because then it stopped playing. I thought it was something to do with my computer but my sister said her DVD player didn’t play it either, so she threw it away. Now I wonder whether how that girl found her fiance, I am sure she found there wouldn’t be this movie without it, I believe.
Remember, I told you that I gave my brother-in-law two books with CDs? Oleg liked listen to them and reading at the same time. I will copy those CDs when he has finished them. I’ll go to Moscow on Wednesday after our chat, which I hope will be as usual. I need URGENTLY(URGENTLY need,not need URGENTLY)a new pair of jeans and I am going to buy a book with CDs for myself. I miss reading.
Dear Bill, I am very concerned with this world financial crisis. Are you okay?(I am OK. I didn’t have any money in stocks,though I was planning to. Now seems like a GOOD time to buy stocks,si9nce they are down). I am afraid of it. I think in this troubling time it’s better to have goods rather than money. I need a new refrigerator, lots of stuff for decorating my balcony, a new camera(digital …& if it IS a digital camera,why do you need a new one?), a warm winter jacket, a woolen hat…stop. (I’ll see if we can get you some of those things,instead of books,but you’ll have to tell me your size,though it may be too small by the time it gets to you,because of ALL the toffee that you are eating LOLOL…in American size!!!) 

I need many things to make it short. I don’t know how to manage to buy everything I need and not to miss a chat with you. I am sooooo missing you Bill. I am happy when you talk to me by voice, Bill. It’s sooo lovely to hear your voice though I don’t quite understand your very heavy American accent :-)))(I don’t have & have never HAD an accent,you on the other hand DO !!!)
Dear Bill, send my love to your Mom and little sister. Tell them take care of themselves. You take care too, my dear friend.
Be a good boy.(Me be a good boy…….YEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH RIGHT !!!!)
Your Russian friend,
Annetxxx

I want you back

My day off today. The Iditarod is close to its finish, at least for leading mushers and I am so behind with what I wanted to write about it… A week ago or so I woke up in such condition like my brain was divided in two parts and every one lived its own way in me. One was telling me  it was time to get up and get ready for work. But I didn’t want not even to get up, but to wake up! While in other part of my brain was throbbing thought “I want you back!”  It shouted in my head again and again I WANT YOU BACK! Did I dream about you? I didn’t remember anything. It lives inside of me… I haven’t been crying…probably did my best not to…was busy with reading about Iditarod, worked, hiked with friends, went to the cinema and watched Oz: The Great and Powerful, got congratulated with International Women’s Day, got some presents and gave not a single one… what else? oh, I’ve bought a new bicycle! It’s a gift to myself. And today I’m crying… I want you back, dear Bill… I know that it is impossible, and I am sane, I am sure! And yet it’s all I can think about…

I have two more great friends of mine. It is my friend from Great Britain, now is already a grandfather and my Nebraska friend, last time I heard from him, he was struggling taking care of his elderly parents. Why I don’t miss them? I do like them very much. I do love them actually… They also mean a lot to me… I miss little sister though. I just know if she  hasn’t answered yet, that would probably never ever  happen…Why I can’t find anything to say to support Doug? Why I don’t have a courage to start chatting with Graham? It just occured to me why… They mean a lot to me, but what about me to them?

I meant to you as much as you meant to me… I miss you, I miss your LOVE YOU ALWAYS, I miss everything that refers to you… I cannot resign to the thought I’ll never be able to hug you… You are in my heart, dear Bill, but I wish this bright day was filled with your live voice, with sounds of coming in and out instant messages… not only with memories of you.

I wish you were here!!!

These salty spots on my keyboard and the desk are tears of mine… May I feel your presence, please? May I have a sign that your spirit is around me? Can you be with me and with everyone else who is missing you? Help me understand you are here… I may be strong girl and at the same time I need to be wrapped in loving care, lifted up if I stumble, tears wiped… Please make me always feel you are around… It’s just sometimes I feel like you are beside  and sometimes I feel nothing and this nothing scares me…

To make myself feel better

It’s so good I kept a diary, one more place shared with you. I found an entry about our voice chat. Even now I cannot say better than then… And…How good I had no time to correct my entries. Dear Bill, my entries kept you busy correcting them and now they will keep ME busy writing your corrections down and rewriting my stories again. It feels good. I am not a writer but I love what I wrote you once…

I always loved your voice, when I could understand what you were saying to me and when I just begged you to slow down. You used to say it was side effect of all those pills you had been taking, making your speech err… ok, it’s all the same I don’t remember that word and I will always insist on that those were my bad ears and not something wrong with your speech. I loved not only your voice, I loved you cough, whistle, clear your throat, drop of something from your table, your stool’s creak… any sound from your room and you… it was so real…I mean it was like you were in my apartment but just behind the wall…I felt no distance, dear Bill, it felt like I can come near to you and hug you, and what was felt just like this it can be counted as almost done, can’t it?

What was your voice like?  I try to hear your voice in my head but alas, when I almost imagine it right, it suddenly vanishes away like a ghost. The only word I think I still hold in my memory as it is said by you is Domodedovo. It is so long that you had to say it by syllables   Do mo de do va  And it always was an a in the end, if you did  your best to keep it “o” in the beginning of the word, but in the end you had always failed  🙂  I so loved you to repeat some russian words after me. I had always had fun, especially when I came up with making you say “I  love” in russian and well, just my stupid gigling gave me away with my trick, but anyway I was not going to make you say “you” … Your voice was velvet, dear Bill, it was rich…

What fun we had all together! Little sister used to steal all things from you, I used to steal too, but why do I remember more that I had to bite you or bang you with something? It’s just that you often answered- bites Annet even harder :)))  OUCH! Is’t it just why I learnt this word so well?  Was I so bad? Can it possibly be so?

Probably most of our chats were about nothing, childish, but my, how they were sweet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Today when I was chatting to my friend I took away his keyboard. He had nothing else but to start a voice chat with me. No wonder I was smiling all day long then. If you have a dear friend who you can talk to by voice, who teaches you to pronounce some MEAN words in English, who is patient enough to understand your thick Russian accent, who cares about you- then you are happy. Then you wear a smile on your face all day,and you don’t care if everyone thinks that you are smiling for no reason & thinks that you are just being goofy.  hahaha But as I said,you don’t care. Then you are happiest person of the world, you have been singing all day just because of the way you feel. Why else would I love a voice chat ? Because in spite of the distance between my friend and I,  I can hear his caugh or laugh or whistle so like he’s just behind the wall in my flat. This is a wonderful sensation…for me…
LOL You, lol, who is the hero in  today’s entry, I sooo like to hear your “Yeaa” in a reply of my “Biiiiiiill?”
-Biiiiiill?
-Yeaaaa
hahaha
I soo like it, Bill…

I put corrections, Bill.

I am not going to give up English.

I am not…

I can write to your spirit, it makes me feel better really.

I have been crying today. It was silly of me to cry, like a child from whom was taken away a favourite toy. It’s  kind of what happened  to me today..

Dear Bill

I have no more anyone to chat or e-mail in English. Here we only speak Russian. My friends in my town do not know your language. Now I only have you over this space. I have no heart to sign in MSN where I can open the chat widow  to see your lovely dog as your avatar but never be able to get any messages from you. Our favourite smileys are wasted now. Even if I had someone to chat with I wouldn’t want to send a running deer or sobbing bear to anyone except you. These smileys are like sweet words we only say to who we love.

Yesterday I went to the cinema. I watched the movie ” Les Miserables”, a musical drama film of Victor Hugo’s novel. It was in English. It was great, it brought tears running my cheeks several times, although I would prefer hide my emotions in public places…Songs, actors play touched every cell of my body. Sometimes I had to peep at Russian subtitles of course. But how magical it felt to understand most of what was sang! And what else is important- this movie is not that much about French revolution, but a lot of what the Bible teaches us to… Who am I more grateful to for being able to enjoy watching and listening to origin masterpieces and understanding what the Bible means to us? I am grateful to you, my dear Bill. I am sorry I might let you down not reading your Bible daily. I enjoy reading it now. Thank you dear Bill! I am blessed having you as a friend.

I thank you, the Lord, for giving me such friend as Bill and his mom also.

To my dear friend Bill

Dear Bill… can you hear me from Heaven?

It’s just unbearable to know I won’t hear your voice, get a sweet Good night or Good morning e-mail from you. My heart is broken but not because God has taken you too soon, somehow he takes the best first. It is because I realized I had left you much earlier, it was me who had abandoned my dear online friends -you, your mom and little sister. I stopped chatting with you and little sister and then I stopped emailing you&The Boss. Dear Bill I have never stopped thinking of you. Never. I had been praying to God to keep my relatives and my dear online friends safe. Every time I had to speak English, read books in English I thanked you, my dear friend. I ask myself now how come I have stopped writing to you and I have no answer. I have no answer… It feels like hell and I understand I deserve it.

Please forgive me. I hope it didn’t feel just like this to you when I stopped chatting.

I am guilty. I’ve been crying, hardly eaten. I can’t change things. I know you would not have wanted me to suffer soo much. My dear friend, forgive me and be my angel, please

Your brother shared your picture with me and other your friends. You are so lovely, both inside and outside. I so thanktful to your brother to let me know how you looked like…

I’d like to know how you lived before leaving us and I don’t know how to ask your brother and sisters about it, without bringing more pain in their hearts… They miss you and your mom

I miss you so much!

hear me, please… help me to become a person you always wanted me to be

your Russian friend Annet

 

Going home after it got dark.

It gets dark really early now! It was light enough at 16:30 when I left for home from the forest. But in forty minutes it got dark and although I was in seeing distance of my home building I got myself into trouble. Slipped on the wet path… You must hear the thump! I got myself straight in a minute but felt my ribs hurt.  My coat, jeans, backpack and camera bag had the obvious evidence of my falling… 😦  The evening was all right, unless I didn’t lean forth and didn’t try to take a deep breath. But the night turned out to be a real nightmare. Any movement in bed caused some pain, so I don’t remember how I  fell asleep. But that happened only by morning. Needless to say I went to see a doctor. No wonder, X-ray showed fractured rib. Hence this post- it’s much better for me to sit than to lie. Three weeks from now on I am bound to read or watch TV…

Excursion to the Moscow State University Museum of Earth Science.

Bad start :(

Got ready for skiing hoping to enjoy still snowy forest and nice touching of spring air on my cheeks. I didn’t even get to the field across which the forest is… My right foot got under the snow that seemed to be solid and scooped water. GEEEEEZE While trying to get my right foot out my left foot pressing snow got in the same trap as well. So both my feet got wet and trousers as well. There went my skiing…

Now I think what to put on for the next hike… It’s going to be quite a headache…

Nudity exhibition :)))

Last Saturday my friend and I went to an exhibition, after we failed skiing. It was cold enough and all ski tracks were trampled and slippery. Of course we could try skiing and then  end in Intensive Care, I believe :))) the theme of the exhibition was “Nudity”. My friend thought it was photo exhibition, but it was an art exhibition and almost all pantings were made in 1900 and till time of American Great Depression. Who doesn’t know when it had time, it’s not my fault. To go to such an exhibition with a male friend, was err kind of  thrill, maybe. You think there are will only be naked women for sure and, what, are you going to be blashing all the way, Annet, I asked myself. But wanting to know how a man can react took over.

Well, my first thought was ” What, do men so hate us,  to paint woman’s body in such ways?” Some of the paintings frankly speaking were ugly! Why, I would say, a woman will be sit naked on the stool if it is obviously seen she’s a dog tired??? Why wouldn’t she just fall in bed and sleep?  Then a painting is not a photography, the painter possibly could be a little of plastic surgeon in his soul…LOL

Ok, so far I liked  the painting of two girls lying, maybe just because I myself like to lie in such position, on the belly. Note, I am not saying I like to lie naked 🙂 even if I do I won’t admit  here :)))

So, first three halls hardly attracted me. Naked women on sofas, on stools, or in Russian baths… Like we don’t have rivers here in Russia. Why no one made a painting of a beautiful woman entering the river up to her buttocks, and half turned to the painter, not showing much of herself letting just guess about the rest. I just don’t know why painters of that time had so little of imagination. Or those painters who were displayed here.. Ok, maybe I am wrong, but that’s my opinion.

Just as we were going to come down to the basement part of the exhibition, there was a small room with a painting of a young girl, now I at last was satisfied with the shape of girl’s breast and she wore red shawl on her waist. It was called ” the girl with a red shawl”. There was at least one painter with the same way of thinking about nudity, like me. :))) Coming downstairs I was surprised to see a poster of A MAN at last. Gorgeous! It was something! He stood with his back to us, his head leant to his left shoulder. I just couldn’t get my eyes off his relief buttocks. His body, lean and relief, wide shoulders and small buttocks, ok, it’s something every woman would like, I think, not only me lol 

In the basement nothing much attracted me, except maybe a toilet I had to use. It had everything black, the walls, the floor, such a Gothic style, and….. a weak lock lol As we Russian say keeping on only an honest word. I had to ask my friend to stay beside and prevent anyone from pulling a handle. And I forgot to teach my friend how to say in Russian that the room is being used. Somehow he managed not let someone in.

I was really surprised to see how many people are INTERESTED in such kind of art! I think we saw less people in the Pushkin museum. So many old ladies and gentlemen, along with young people! Well, people know what to do with their time. That’s just me silly living beside Moscow for years and not seeing much…

On our way back we had a look at paintings again. For some of them I learned to see beauty, one painting was great looking from distance you could feel sun breaking through leaves and making nice shodow on naked shoulders… Really, paintings should be watched close for detailes and then on some distance to make them feel real…

There was one huge painting on the whole wall. There were showed 5 naked men ( absolutely naked, you will understand why I  underline it ) and five horses. Some men were on horses some were leading them. They were going to wash their horses. Well, it was called ” Red Army soldiers washing their horses” . I was surprised very much reading about the painting. It was painted in 1928 year to mark 10 years of Red Army. This painting was not displayed for the reason that  Red Army soldiers must not be naked . What, are they not the same people as we all are? That was my thought. Again my thought: and what shows namely that they are Red Army soldiers? Maybe they wore hats on their heads with the red star? Maybe they had high black boots , at that time were worn by soldiers? I wonder, what would compromise them except a name of a painting. lol  Anyway this painting was KEPT FOR  80  YERS in the store room of Soviet military museum. You are glad to see it even just for a reason that for someone’s wrong ideology something was hidden for years and now you are, Annet, and the rest people have chance to see it….

 

When we came out of exhibition we saw a child losing grasp of his ballons, they were floating higher and higher and I had not have enough time to take a picture… SO MANY coloured ballons!!! a poor child  🙂 A rule- keep your camera always ready!