This and That

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We spent yesterday and the day before mostly at home. Demetrios is finishing up one last discharge summary. He also had to take the telephone back to the store, as we couldn’t get a dial tone. The store plugged it in and it worked fine. Demetrios brought it home and it worked fine. For a while. Then, again, no dial tone. We unplugged it, waited a few seconds, plugged it back in, and it works. More or less. A friend called me from the U.S. today and we got cut off three times. It’s a bit exasperating.

I have spent a lot of time reading and doing housework. Somehow, such a small house as this, a little dollhouse, is a joy to take care of! And I’ve finally figured out why I so love hanging out the laundry. It’s because when you go to visit a Mediterranean country and you see laundry hanging out over the balconies, that’s part of the local color. It’s considered quaint, romantic. Well, instead of just gawking at all quaintness, I get to participate in it! Yes, hanging the laundry out over the balcony to me seems romantic! (I must be sick!)

Put another way, it’s probably the most Greek-like thing I do in a day.

I also figured out, finally, how to get the menu options on my blog to show up in English instead of Greek. I had been continually asking Demetrios what things meant. “What’s AKYRO?”

“Not valid.” Invalid. Invalidate? OH, that must be “Cancel”. That’s the sort of thing I was going through when it was all Greek to me.

Today is the feast of St. Dionysios, the Areopagite. The Areopagiti was the main court in Athens, so the title means St. Dionysios (Dennis) was a lawyer or other legal official. Today there is a special liturgy for all the lawyers in town, and they mostly all go to it, too. Demetrios went with Costas, who is a lawyer, and Ioannis and Manolis, two other lawyer friends.

Afterward they all went to the funeral of another friend who had also been Manolis’ sympatheros. Your sympatheros is your child’s father-in-law. (Your child’s mother-in-law is your sympathera.) You are to understand that these people are not only very close to Demetrios, but also to each other.

The deceased was a professor of theology who had spent most of his time on Mt. Sinai, researching and publishing the sayings of the saints and fathers there. He was well respected and apparently he was considered very holy, too, because three bishops officiated at the funeral. Several monks came from the Holy Mountain. A priest himself renowned for his saintliness had spent the whole night in the chapel praying before the body. Hundreds of people attended.

Had I known any of this, I might have attended myself! As it was, however, Mena and I had arranged to go shopping for wedding gifts. Manolis’ son is getting married Sunday.

Mena took me to a store that sells beautiful, elegant, well-designed gift items. I bought a crystal vase with an unusual, swirly, modern design. She bought a lovely ceramic piece.

On our way home we stopped first at her bank, and then at the “bazaar,” as she called it.

Her bank works the same way our DMV offices do (Department of Motor Vehicles). You don’t stand in line. You take a number (punch the button and a computerized machine spits out the slip of paper with the number on it) and you sit down and wait until a buzzer sounds and your number appears in lights above the appropriate teller’s window. I like that. With my heavy package (the vase being large), it was good to wait in a chair!

It’s market day, so we wandered through the outdoor stands, admiring the fruits and vegetables, the handbags and lovely embroidered or crocheted tablecloths and runners. Anything else you want may be there, too, from blouses to pajamas to socks to pots and pans. There are shoes and hats and clocks and all sorts of things. We only bought vegetables and grapes, but had a lot of fun looking at the rest.

HINT FROM HELEN: Although the grapes are irresistibly sweet this time of year, you must watch your intake! Eat only the same amount, by weight, as you would prunes, and delete the prunes from your diet if you eat grapes.

We met various of Mena’s friends at the market. One of them, Alika, came back with us to Mena’s house. She sat down right beside me, rummaged around in her shopping bags, and finding her cigarettes, lit up. I just found an excuse, before long, to get up, and when I returned, I took another chair.

Alika was distressed because her granddaughter, Thalia, has just been diagnosed with a sarcoma in her leg. Please pray for Thalia. She is only 14 years old. Mena says she is a wonderful girl, and very pretty as well. We told Alika about my sister Barbara, who has fought cancer so long, but today is tumor-free. So Alika left, I think, with some hope.

Making the intended use of our new cell phone, we called Demetrios on it to find out his plans. He was still at the cemetery and would not be joining us for the mid-day meal. As it was by then 2:00, we went ahead and ate. We didn’t know where Costas was.

And then I went back to our own flat on the bus, all by myself, same as I had come! I was so pleased. Mena was all solicitude: Did I have a bus ticket? Did I know the stop? I didn’t, but by some miracle, I got off at the right stop anyway, just because the area suddenly looked familiar. I decided if it wasn’t exactly the right stop it was close enough. Turns out to have been exactly correct. Ha! Now I have the freedom to go see Mena on my own, whenever.

When I got home, Demetrios had just arrived and Mena was on the phone to tell him to keep a watch for me.

At the moment, Demetrios has gone to the Court as the guest of his lawyer friends, where, still in honor of St. Dionysios, there is a reception for all new lawyers.

No Oedipus (“Eddy Puss”) yet. A waiter at the taverna (cafe) across the street where Oedipus made his living by begging says he hasn’t seen the cat in about a year. I haven’t seen ANY of the cats I knew before; there seems to be a whole passel of new ones.

No doves have appeared, either. Yesterday a pigeon appeared on my open window sill. I set out some soaked bread crumbs, on the inside of the sill, and the bird came right in and gobbled them up, then politely flew away, leaving only a feather for a souvenir. Today I set out some soaked cat kibble (on the outside, because I was to be gone) but it is still there tonight. Stay tuned.

HINT FROM HELEN: Do not feed birds anything you haven’t first soaked. If they fill their stomachs with it and then take a drink, the food in them will expand, and the bird will be in trouble.

I deduced what Christos has been using our house for, in our absence, when he asked permission to do it yesterday. He wanted to meet with some clients in our living room. I said certainly; Demetrios said the same at first, but then, having eaten too many grapes, he didn’t feel very well and wanted to lie down. So Christos met his clients at a kafenion, coffee shop.

So, our house has served as his Thessaloniki office, now that he lives in Katerini! Now that’s worth my putting up with finding things not as I had left them and having to do some cleaning, and finding things like my brand of dish detergent replaced by something cheaper and watery! Yes, it’s worth bearing with all that and more, because money in Christos’ pocket is money in our pocket, quite literally. Demetrios points out that is should have been worth it to me all along, anyway, as Christos is his brother! True. Lord, have mercy.

I did, by the way, get the black, crusty crud out of the toilet. Christos said he thinks that’s just what happens to a toilet when it sits there unused for a year. NOT! I could tell it had been used. Never mind, several stiff brushings with chlor got it out. Chlor, I discovered, does all sorts of things, like whiten grout and clear up cloudy glass. One day I finally became curious as to the nature of this mysterious, wondrous, dangerous substance that Christos taught me always to handle with rubber gloves on. I read the label and was able to translate it – hydrochloric acid!