I wanna… drive the zamboni!

Two Ukie lessons in and I am LOVING it.

I remember more than I thought I did, and making flashcards / using transliteration is totally helping.

I’ll be completely functional by the end of my 30 hours. Maybe not exactly literate, but functional.

I bought two more self-teaching Ukie books, and stickers for my keyboard. Although it might have been easier just to buy a damn Ukie keyboard…

I’m having fun though and despite the fact that I had a lesson on Thursday and a lesson this morning, I retained more than I thought I would given the time I worked on memorisation.

I’ve also decided to try my hand at making a babka or a paska this year for Easter. I don’t remember my baba’s babka looking like that, so I was probably thinking of her paska when I was looking for the recipes… Either way, a trip to the Polish deli in Salem, an attempt at pysanky (again), and some sort of yeasty/bready/cakey thing, and WOO! Ukie Easter less the basket blessing.

Am I the only one who thinks it sort of sad that I wasted so much time trying to learn who I really am? If my mother weren’t dead, I would so kill her for denying me this… (OK. Maybe that’s a wee bit exaggerated, but seriously. Looking back now, I feel so robbed.)

And despite the email I received the other day, this interest in my nationality has been going on for a very long time - pre 2009 - and it’s only now that I’m doing something about it. It bothers me that my timing coincides with the possibility of a civil war / WW3 (depending on who you listen to) in my grandparents’ homeland. It also bothers me (a bit) that the final push I needed to jump into learning all this Ukie culture and language stems from the very fact that my grandfather’s Polish place of birth has wound up in Ukraine* and that I need to be as fluent as possible in order to deal with the Consult in Kyiv to get his birth certificate and then make a play for citizenship.

Not that becoming a Ukrainian citizen will do me much good if they continue to stay out of the EU… but even if that never happens, it might be worth it. 

Speaking of, Ukraine doesn’t allow dual citizenships, so that’s a bit of a problem. They don’t seem to be very strict about it, though.  I did joke at one point that losing my American citizenship would require me to get a spousal visa so I could stay in the States. Leave it to me to do every thing ass backwards, you know?

*Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve always known I’m Ukrainian and not Polish - despite the fact that my baba was quiet fluent in Polish when she was freaking out at the nursing home before she passed. Apparently, I reminded her of someone she didn’t like very much. *sigh* It’s tragic that that and the fact that the hearse had to be pushed through the cemetery (snow + hill = bad) are my last two memories of her.

But I digress - I’m a Ukie even if my grandparents were born in what USED to belong to Poland. (I’ve always wondered how that works… Ukraine didn’t really “exist” as a country for a very long time. So how did Ukrainians even happen? ‘Tribes’ and all that? I have a lot of research to do….)

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SuperWhoPotterLock is ruining my life at the moment… It seems I can only write fanfic on my phone during business hours. Such a fucking pain in the ass… but I guess that’s what happens when your commute is over an hour and you spend most of that sitting still, waiting for the Massholes to realise that you can’t just merge into moving traffic. You have to take your time and wait for an opening.

Or, I guess you could be like the guy we saw on the highway on our way to Wahlburgers last weekend:

Dude was within arm’s reach of a fucking Wal-Mart truck. There was absolutely NO FUCKING WAY he did NOT see the truck. He literally could have reached out and touched it. Instead of doing the smart thing and wait for the truck to pass him, he drives right into the side of it.

I’m serious as a fucking heart attack.

He went to change lanes and bounced off the side of a fucking semi. He did severe damage to the front of his car and he was lucky he didn’t snap his mirror off. Neither one of them stopped to see what happened. I’m assuming Mr. WallyWorld had no idea that a Honda CRV wanted to move over so badly that hitting his truck was an option and part of me thinks that the Honda driver didn’t want to pull over and admit to his stupidity.

Massachusetts drivers are the worst in the world. Their stupidity knows no bounds…

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And with that, I’m off to do homework. I think I’ve done more homework since graduating with the first bachelor’s degree than I did in all of my schooling prior to 1997…

What the fuck is wrong with me?