Yaramaz Went Away

I spent the morning drinking strong tea and discussing the pagan origins of Halloween (and Easter and Christmas, etc) with my lawyer out at Vodafone. In theory we are working from the Legal-Biz Writing ESP syllabus but have yet to touch on it because everything else we bring up is more interesting. Wasted over 3 hours in traffic going to and coming from kitelli this morning, a five hour expedition for a two hour lesson. Sigh. Stupid. And this thrice a week. At least she gives me hugs and good tea and does her homework and we get to do our lessons in the fancy schmancy oaky pannelled law meeting room with lots of windows overlooking the slums and wastelands and dark satanic mills of Outer Istanbul. 

Tonight is Halloween and there are 40 million parties that in theory I ought to attend. I’ve been up and running since 6am, non stop, and just feel like a balcony, a beer, a cat-on-lap, and a book. And later pizza with a very ill D. Maybe more under-duvet Facebook scrabble (I play on Firefox, he plays on Safari, and we pass my MacBook back and forth beneath the covers until we fall asleep. I won the last game). Not feeling up for a mad party.  Sigh. Am I old or just overworked?

Yesterday was very strange. There were drums and shouting and fireworks that sounded like bombs and two unrelated accordion players playing two different eerily Tom Waitsean tunes from somewhere on opposite sides of the building all morning.  By nightfall, more shouting, more fireworks/artillery. D. was certain that a giant flag the size of the city would soon be draped over us and we’d wake today bathed in a red nylon glow, with rippled light effects dashing across our faces and the rumbling of explosions muffled in the folds of fabric.
Awoke today not to a red nylon glow but to more rain, pissing buckets. Which is ironic really, since the water was turned off again yesterday, unexpectedly.  It’s a regular thing now. So I had to leave a sink full of pots and bowls and ladles mucky with lovely korma and penang curry and rice and other goodies. We ate very well yesterday, and watched about 40 000 movies in bed, under the duvets. This house has no heating system and I have yet to buy a space heater. 

I am really tired. Must go to vodafone before 8am tomorrow from Taksim, meaning i leave here at 7:30.  Ugh.

In a land full of enormous flags flying and draped and waved.  In a land of marches in the marathon-cleared streets, children waving said flags, shouting in call and response soldier marches,  and half the ad-space in the metro being taken up by flag posters and slogans about how happy one is to be a Turk (am not Turk; ergo miserable by default).  Admin staff at work clad in black (but very cute, sexy, tight black) in honour of the fallen soldiers in the East, fighting the Terrorists (if you are American, we are not talking about your particular terrorists- everyone needs their own unique terrorists).  All the windows in the Osmanbey branch of the school (the gorgeous old high-ceiling’d one with balcony doors that can be melodramatically and aesthetically flung open above the street) are obscured by a flag three offices wide and four offices long. We had our dos meeting there friday, with the light effects from the rippling and blowing redness shifting and darting across the room.

Today is the Cumhurriyet bayrami- Republic Day.  Taksim Square is a million tiny flags strung up from statues and lamp posts and power poles.  The police buses and barricades have been up all weekend.  We saw them Saturday night when we came in for beer and backgammon (unplayed) with penny in the Benneton street.  We saw the huge ones on the hotels when we went in to Tunel last night for tom ka gai and penang curry at Lokal (the best bathroom ever).  I’m going to try to stay at home today and avoid the hordes. Nationalism just scares me. We went to Besiktas yesterday afternoon, to the bootleg dvd bazaar, and bought 8 movies. I think today will be a movie day. Pizza, beer, and cheap dvds.

A grey and heavy day, with my nose usure as to whether it wants to be snuffly or stuffy or normal. It alternates between the three with unpredictable regularity. Better than the weekend with my skull-ache and dizzyness and complete inability to breathe through my still sniffly nose or my inability to breathe through my mouth without bursting into a paroxysm of coughing. This whole two-months-of-cold scheme is wearing mighty thin.  Low-level illness is stupidly boring and I can’t even call in sick. 

I think D. is making chili today, which is very exciting.  I hope I have enough chili powder left over to make it taste sufficiently real and not just like spaghetti bolgnaise with beans. Last week actually was spaghetti bolognaise, the D. cooking foundation course, and the recipes- aside from the cumin and coriander and chili spice mix- isn’t particularly different. Next week, duck a l’orange bolognaise? 

Stayed up til 2am almost watching the above video. It’s long but worth it. Watch it. Really. Seriously. Watch it.

wearing:  sunflower dress, big pashmina shawl from Cappadocia, lime-green with pink-n-blue flower elf-shoe shaped slippers

hair: down, unbrushed, with about 2 inches of normal brown grown out from the red

makeup:  none that I am aware of

ate today:  nothing yet

thing last said:  “I’m going to go sit on the balcony. You just go back to sleep.”

last phone call:  Last night, at work, either for that horrible level testing for faraway students that comes at random times when I’m never prepared or for Banu to ask about something to do with timetabling or for Zeynep about drivers- but it’s all such a blur

in your bag:  I think there’s my frog beaded purse, my Akbil keychain, next week’s timetable, some random boiled sweets foisted upon me in restaurants but never eaten, my mp3 player, spare batteries, random business cards,  a pen.

last watched on tv: I haven’t watched tv in a very long time.

last website visited:  Cuteoverload.com  Like crack on a bad day.

plans for today:  dunno yet. I still desperately need a washing machine. Maybe I’ll go to KocTas and actually get one. And go to Kahve Dunyasi for fabulous lattes and gorgeous carrot cake. Or stay in bed, order pizza, and refuse to leave the house til Monday.

last thing bought: a huge bottle of water the size of a large baby, last night, because the water was off again.

listening to:  The hurdaci’s call for scrap metal, rags and bones (as it were), seagulls, truck, neighbour lady beating a small carpet over her balcony

last showered: yesterday morning before work

looking forward to:  retirement. Going home at Christmas. Having a toilet that isn’t stopped up.

worst part of the day: It’s not even 10am yet. I’d say it was when I discovered the toiled was stopped up. That was around 8am. I don’t own a plunger. I must buy one. Ugh.

best part of the day:  My tea is quite nice.

favorite person of the day:  Haven’t had any human interaction to speak of really. Except with a half asleep D.

thinking about:  fucking off to Bali and renting a house and eating nasi goreng and papaya for a year and saying screw it to work, teaching, managing.

current annoyance:  my nose. Whiny teachers. Turkish last minute huge plans that must be implemented NOW with no warning but then never followed up on after you did everything as asked.

current obsession:  LOL Cats; Stephen colbert’s presidency

feeling:  ugh

hearing: a lot of random city noises

Sometime after noon yesterday, the sunshine and lollipops cleared off and left chaos, whining teachers, four thousand critical missed and mixed messages, no water in flat again for no reason, a scarily clogged toilet, a asphyxiatingly clogged nose and a thoroughly shattered me in their wake. Am feeling better now that it’s morning. Except the nose part. It’s still not allowing air through and I’m all sneezy and snuffly. Yesterday sucked ass big time.  I don’t even want to  think about it.

On the plus side, confirmed Non-Cook, D., made me spaghetti bolognaise for dinner last night. From scratch. His first real venture into the kitchen. He even roasted the garlic and used fresh tomatoes. It was just about ready when I finally stumbled through the front door around 7:30 after 4 failed attempts at leaving work.  It was very good.  And we had bulgarian Cabernet Sauvignon, which was lovely. And I was cranky to him because of my day, because I’d had it up to here (*hand at eye level*) with the universe and its contents and everything made me want to cry. I wish I wasn’t such a raw nerve sometimes. It makes it so hard to be a decent person.

A few things to note:

Sunshine and lollipops are bursting from the sky seams and I didn’t have to wear a coat today and I lounged out on my balcony this morning in only my sunflower dress and slippers and no shawl or blanket or sweater or cat..  Birds flew in Hitchcockian swarms overhead, last night and today,  squawking and nattering and arguing amongst each other, uncertain whether to head south for warmer climes or to just chill out in Istanbul over rak and meze in Nevizade. 

Still haven’t replaced my lost nosering and feel quite lost and naked without it.

Seem to be getting at least a bit better after my month of prolonged malaise. I’ve been freebasing effervescent vitamin Cs for two days now, and pounding back 30oz’ers of TylolHot (souk algnl ve gripal enfeksiyonlarn semptomatil tedavisinde).  Shivered all night last night with inexplicable illogical chills under forty pounds of duvet, barked like a dog til my throat was raw, woke up completely unable to breathe through my nose, drank tea, showered, hauled ass to work after being hounded by mysterious phone calls and doorbell rings whilst trying to get dressed (I hate my naggy neighbours and anonymous phonecallers from somewhere on the asian side early in the morning),  dealt with 30 more crises at work, make a FakeCafé with radioactive milk and bleached sugar and a side bottle of water infused with a hint of effervescent vitamin C and now, at 12:00, feel…ok. Yes, ok. No barking coughs, slightly open nasal passages, no chills or fever or death pallor or wooze. Not perfect yet but certainly better than before.

It’s friday. Dang.