Our Stove

So we've rounded the bend and are in the final stretch! It's JUNE (sung in a high pitched falsetto, if you're wondering) and two weeks to pack our stuff and head back to the states. I just can't stop smiling. No, that's not true, hormones man. Don't mess with the crazy pregnant lady weeping over EVERYTHING, because she's, "just so happy." Seriously, the morning (translate=all day) sickness, swollen large feet, headaches, emotional roller-coaster, and what-have-you were not expected when I first viewed the double lines on my positive pee stick. I panicked, but for completely different reasons.
I didn't start this post to whine. I started to sing a couple of songs of gratitude to the Czech Republic, or well our adventure here. First, the people who garden in their underwear or serve sausages wearing speedos & cowboy hats (seriously, it happened) make me smile. If you had to live through the ridiculous winter here, I bet the first thing you would do would be to shed your crusty wool sweaters and roll in your yard too. There's no average profile of the semi-nude gardener. They come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and thank you to the young black lace bra and white mini skirt we saw gardening while we rode the bus the other day. Way to go with a simple pony-tail and minimal make-up. Way to take a risk, because you really have a great youthful body & women here have a hard time going with the "less is more" look. Semi and full nudity seems to be located in just about any housing location, and that's what strikes me. Nudity is not an issue for me. Dude, whatever, I'm a figure sculptor, but in my life, it has always been accompanied by a sense of family, privacy, and in my adult life, the wafting scent of pachouli. So back to what strikes me, makes me rubber-neck. The display of comfortable nudity in the housing development environment. It just blows my mind to see the brand new row homes one just like the next, with their 4 foot pools, matching trim, 2.5 kids, and competitive lawn mowing, adorned with comfortably nude and semi nude people going about their suburban business.

Next, our nuclear power plant, I mean our old stove and old thin pots make me smile. It's ability to only cook on rip roarin' hot makes great fried potatoes. I now know how to pull off a mean batch of fried potatoes. While I've had more time to cook here as a full-time-stay-at-home Mom, you would think I would have done much more experimentation in the kitchen and added more to my repertoire than a mean batch of potatoes. Chad entered the kitchen a bit during our stay here, so did Thomas (of course he made bubble soup in the sink. The attempts were a family affair. I think it was because Chad was forced to join us at home most nights and take weekends since businesses and his school studio access were not available 24/7. Czech's know how to schedule holidays. There were other reasons (enter crazy morning sick preggo lady a few months back), and the random availability of anything vegetarian, but the stove was a challenge. Most people have this stove here, and I think that's why soup and goulash are so very popular and souffle, not so much. We spent many strange meals together here (remember when Mom tried to feed us soup and toast with mustard for dinner?), and I will always smile while thinking back to our first attempts trying to get the stove to work like we think a stove should together. Chad discovered a rice making method on this stove and I will never forget his plastic bottle strainer. It was the most romantic pot of rice ever.