Tales from the Towers: Opera, surgery and cleanliness

Last week I wrote that every day in the early morning, trying to enjoy the peace and quiet of the new day on my balcony, Puccini's Tosca resounds from somewhere, I don't know exactly from where. I have nothing against this really enchanting opera, but hearing it again and again every morning at 6 o'clock, is just a little bit too much.

One of my friends was there with his advice:

"You go out", he writes, "and buy them another opera, the Pagliacci maybe, which is my favorite!"

As I said before, I don't know from which apartment the music reaches me, and I can't imagine myself walking around the Towers and knocking on doors and asking the people:

"Excuse me, are you the guys with the Tosca?"

I could put up a sign at the reception desk which says: "May the man or the woman or the couple or the family who listens to Tosca kindly come forward!"

Not worth the trouble.

I had an appointment with a surgeon who was scheduled to remove a small mole from my knee. The idea of a knife on my knee scared me a bit, so I gathered courage by eating a large piece of cake with a lot of whipped cream and regarded it as some kind of a last meal rather than a breach of diet.

The surgeon, a nice young man, was in bad need of a haircut. He wore a light blue surgical cap which sat a bit askew on his head and strings of hair escaped on the right and on the left side of his head. Probably a bachelor, I thought to myself, a wife would have sent him to the barber a long time ago.

"It won't hurt", he assured me, "you'll be okay in 5 minutes, you will even be able to drive your car!"

"You mean", I asked him, "the reason I don't know how to drive a car is this small mole I have on my knee? If it's so, maybe I should go see a car dealer straight from here after you're done!"

"Now stop joking and hold still", he admonished, "you're just like my 8-year old son!"

Aha!, I thought to myself, not a bachelor but probably a house full of kids, a working wife and really no time to go to a barber!

"You're all done!" he said and I studied my mole-less knee which now showed some stitches made by a man who I am sure does not know how to sew on a button. And why did he use black thread on my rather lily-white knee? Is there any reason why he shouldn't use white thread instead of black? The way it looked I did not even think I could show this off to my friends, and if I don't show it, they won't believe the story of my operation! Nearly everybody here tells of an operation they had or are going to have and here I am with an operated knee not being able to show it because it just doesn't look presentable!

Nadya came back from her vacation in the Ukraine. She went through my home like a whirlwind with a deeply disapproving look on her face:

"How did you manage to mess up this house in just a couple of weeks", she asked, "didn't I tell you to put things in their place while I am away?"

How long will it take her to realize that I am not the "putting things in their place type" and that's why I love and fear her at the same time! She does not only clean my house, she completely renews it in such a way that I hardly recognize it and of course I cannot find a thing that I am looking for!

At least I know all about present day Ukraine by now, and if nothing else, it is good to be informed about what's going on in other places of the world. If you want to know about the price of an apartment, or food, or clothes in Ukraine, just ask me.

Do your own cleaning ladies keep you so well informed? Tell me!

Lucca