Pepper Spray and Kneepads. A Thing of the Past or Making a Comeback?

Hmmm, I sat down at the computer to write a blog post because I was struck to be in a writing mood, but I can’t think of anything to write about at the moment. Of course I could bore you with mundane observations about present weather conditions (it’s cold!) or the week old leftovers taking up space in our refrigerator (they’re starting to mutate…), but your time is much too valuable to be reading about that. Give me a minute.

It seems as though the people next door are cooking up something good for dinner. You see, our apartment is one of two apartments connected by a hallway. One unlocks the first door and finds himself in a hallway with two doors, apartments 5 and 6. Ironically, apartment 6 is the first door and the further one is ours, apartment 5. Almost every time Lori and I leave our apartment we are bombarded with smells that can only come from master chefs. (Of course, it could just be that our own food is so appalling that anything would smell like it came straight from a gourmet restaurant.) It is a quirk of fate however that the vent that connects our apartment with theirs (the people we lovingly refer to as “the Giants” for a reason I will tell you of shortly) brings no smell of their first-rate cooking but only carries the stench of their cigarette smoke. The Giants do not seem to smoke regularly, or at least they do not seem to smoke regularly in the room containing our connecting vents, but as soon as we smell something burning we know they must have had a nicotine craving (unless we are cooking, in which case we disregard it entirely).

The Giants, if standing on each other’s shoulders, would probably reach about 12 and a half feet, and if they put their dog on their shoulders as well, could probably add another 5. I have not seen too many very tall people in Kyiv, the NBA would have a hard time scouting, but I have certainly never seen such a tall couple. Add in their colossal dog and they truly are a rare find.

I’ve taken up a new dislike for dogs. I assume it won’t last, but all the same I want nothing to do with them at present. A few days ago I went jogging and I knew from the start it wasn’t going to be a pleasant experience. (A few of you are nodding and saying, “You’re quite right. Jogging is never a pleasant experience,” and I would agree with you mostly, but it’s the feeling that comes after the jogging that makes it worth it.) Anyhow, being the graceful person I am, I completely missed the tree root that jumped right out in front of me and I tripped over it, landing in the dirt and cutting up both my knees and slicing my hand with something I’m saying was probably just a rock to keep my mother from worrying. (I actually don’t know what it was, I thought it would be best not to look and sleep peacefully knowing I was up to date on my tetanus vaccinations.) Had I been able to foresee the rest of my jog I would have headed straight home but the blood trickling from my hand seemed have slowed and the hardest part for me of jogging is getting myself out the door. That accomplished I thought it would be a waste to go back in now. So I continued, abstaining from the urge to watch passing cars and people to focus my attention on the sidewalk in front of me watching out for more sneaky tree roots.

There are sketchy construction sites all along the sidewalk that leads from our apartment and they usually possess a stern looking guard who looks as though nothing would make him happier than for you to attempt to trespass on his construction area. Some of the shadier construction areas even have one, two, or a pack of large, savage dogs of an unusually large size. This was the case with the construction area I chose to jog past. (As most of you know, luck is not generally found to be in my favor.) Gates are generally kept closed when there are guard dogs. (After all, the aim is to keep people out of the construction area, not to kill them for passing it.) But that day the guard must have forgotten to shut the gate, so when I passed, the wolves saw their chance to swipe some dinner from the slow-moving roast beef who unluckily decided to pass by at that moment. Now, I’m not a person who you would say is scared of death, per se, but I had always seen myself going out doing something very exciting, like skydiving, or passing out Bibles in Tajikistan, or yak hunting or something. Getting torn apart by dogs was not an acceptable way to go. So, I stopped and turned around and started screaming at the snarling dogs. It seems as though they didn’t speak English; they paused for a second with a stupefied look and that gave the guard who had heard me yelling enough time to come and call them off and promptly hit one. (I’m not one for animal cruelty, I’ve spent my fair share of volunteer hours at the animal shelter, but I almost smirked when I saw that. So sue me. I felt bad later, alright.) Anyway, at that point I really did want to go home, but going home would take me right past the construction area again and my nerves couldn’t take that just quite yet. I still had two legs attached, after all, which was more than I could have hoped for 5 minutes earlier, so I continued down the sidewalk and turned around when I got to the bank. It looked as though except for a bloody hand and a couple bruised knees I was going to make it alright, but to put some icing on the cake a random dude jumped out from in front of a van and yelled at me just to scare me. I was already on tenterhooks from my two previous skirmishes, and considered having a heart attack right then and there, but decided against it once a memory of my last visit to a Ukrainian hospital entered my mind. Bursting into tears also came to mind, but that always messes up my contacts.

I finally made it home. I opened the door with a bit more force than normal…I hope that cabinet wasn’t expensive…and Lori had a slightly puzzled look on her face, but I am here and I am alive. However, today instead of reaching for my tennis shoes I opted for grabbing a taebo DVD instead.