A Pleasant Sunday

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For the first time since we’ve been here, we finally got around to attending our own neighborhood church yesterday. I like it quite well. They do things in good order, no objections. Afterward, we went for our favorite Sunday breakfast, bougatsa. It’s that crème-filled pastry made with fillo. It was fresh and hot out of the oven. They serve it sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar and cinnamon. Yum!

After that I began the first draft of the (I hope) last chapter of my book. It may turn out to be two chapters. Demetrios is also working again on his book about human brain function. He has made some milestones in the development of his theory.

In the evening we, together with Manolis and Vasilea, went to visit Kostas and Mena. Kostas looks much better than before the surgery, better than he has looked in years, as well he should, now that he has a new valve in his heart and it is pumping more blood than before. His color is much improved and he looks a lot younger than he used to. He looked so contented and happy. Mena was radiant.

The swelling in his leg, where he had bled so much, is down. That thigh used to be three times its normal circumference; now it is almost normal.

Demetrios and our two cardiologist friends, Andreas and Tasos, are still marveling that Kostas’ cardiologist never told him anything was wrong. They can find no explanation. To me, with my suspicious nature, it seems obvious. You find no rational or medical reason, you are left with corruption. Wake up, guys! That cardiologist was/is in cahoots with the surgeon who messed up so badly ten years ago! They are either blood relatives or koumbaroi or childhood friends or the cardiologist was being paid off not to recommend another surgery, or something like that. Because of course a second surgery would lay bare, literally, the willful, inexcusable, major malpractice of that surgeon who failed to finish the job. He had shown the extra lousy judgment of doing his malpractice upon, of all people, a lawyer, and it was important for him that Kostas die before it would ever be revealed. (Surprise, surprise! He lived! Alleluia, a thousand alleluias!)

As that surgeon is by now retired, and the need to put him out of practice is moot, I doubt Kostas will sue. The subject hasn’t arisen. But you never know. He once sued the School for the Blind to force them to keep him as their attorney when they tried wrongfully to fire him – and he won! (Maybe by now he wishes he hadn’t, as the School owes him 30,000 Euros and cannot pay it. The entire staff has been unpaid for more than six months now. Although Mena urges him to sue them, he won't, for fear of depriving the blind.)

The whole company all began to share memories of their childhood together. Mena, at my request, brought out some photo albums showing everybody in the high school and university years. Our husbands were all so dorky looking! I wouldn’t have looked twice at any of them, with the possible but unlikely exception of Demetrios or maybe Ioannis the Theologian. They certainly all have improved a lot since then; Kostas is very handsome; Manolis is even dapper and distinguished looking on top of being handsome; George (Pelagia’s husband) has also become dashing in his latter years. Demetrios I cannot tell because his face is my favorite in the world in any case.

Well, okay, Leonidas, an exception, was handsome all along.

With the women the reverse is true. All of us used to look quite a bit better than we do now. How is that – they grow better and better looking while we do the opposite?