Perspective for today

It is good I washed clothes and took a shower yesterday because today, for the moment/hours, there is no gas. That may sounds simple enough to accomplish those two tasks, however it is a bit of an ordeal to do either since it takes many hours to heat our hamam (Az word), klonka (Russian word) or water heater (English word) and washing clothes out of a bucket is a back-breaking job and who wouldn't delay that as long as possible?! In the photo you'll see two blue buckets for washing clothes, green for flushing. You can also see the big fire heating up in the corner. We do also have a shower head, but didn't make the photo.

For example, yesterday was a beautiful day, actually acting like Spring. Choices needed to be made, maximize the gas on such a day or do half of the laundry and go to the bazar for the week. Two loads in and nearing 2:00 the clouds began to roll in and the temperature dropped. Good choice to finish out the laundry and postpone the bazar.

As you can see, drying clothes might take a long time (ie: still soaking wet this morning) so while drying my now clean towel by the pech (our central stove), we multi-tasked by making tea, drying the towel and making pizza dough rise! Our lives are simple but A-OK.

By the way, our landlord just knocked and told me I could turn the gas back on since he was working on something 1) I understood him! 2) I can't see my breath yet so we're in better shape than last week when this happened!