Bandit Monkeys breaking into homes, kangaroos ditching their caretakers while on a walk and going on a walkabout in Ireland what a Wild World we live in, as I slacked early this morning and ditched work for 3 hours and watered my garden then reported in my mind was spinning with thoughts of where I was 10 years ago today...... In the heartland of an old foe, yep right in the heart of Red Territory, aka the former Soviet Union to be more precise Russia, the small village of Cnopot near the Ukrainian/Russian Border, it is hard to believe that it has been 10 years, it seems like yesterday, except everything I receive a letter or email for a young woman I met when she was just a girl 9 years old who walked up to me on my last day in the village and began speaking English, she invited me to her grandmothers house for dinner but I told her we had to leave that day for Moscow, she had a sad look and about to cry, but settled for milk and cookies, she showed me her dolls and clothes she and her mother sewed for them, actually quite fashionable, and since they didn't have any walmarts or targest to buy doll clothes they made due with what they had, over the years we have exchanged letters and photos and kept up on happenings in Bryansk and Cnopot, her brother growing up and most recently her boyfriend and my marriage coming to an end, I feel the longing to return to Cnopot, the village that Moscow and God forgot as the locals call it, I sometimes wonder if would still would receive a welcome and generosity as I received when I was there 10 years ago, after all being the first Westerner er former enemy in that part of the country was a Big Deal, but with Iraq, WTO/G-8 and all, I wonder if the villagers would still be so eager to marry me off to a daughter,granddaughter,niece, or younger sister and build me a house as offered before? I wonder if Vladimir is still the most respected man even over the mayor/commissioner, the position he turned down several times. Or if anyone is living in Elizabeth run down log house. The 83 year old woman I stayed with during my stay who would haul and chop her own firewood, weed her garden which would tide her over till the next year herself, walk her pigs every day and rise at 5 in the morning to cook them a hot meal, and make me drink 3-6 shots of homemade vodka every night with her for our meal, and with all the work needed to be done this woman was the religious /spiritual leader of the village, I envy this woman who had energy of a 35 year old woman, I think of elderly in our country and most of them at that age are laid up in a nursing home, but not Elizabeth, those were good times sun setting at 1:30 in the morning and taking motorcycle rides with the country Mafia shooting AK-47's the real thing folks not AKS while downing shots and listening to music and talking politics and life. The last I heard was Elizabeth passed on and I wonder where she was buried in the cemetery and who picked up her chores, is her house still standing? Or vacant? And what of my Mafia compadres? Are they alive? In jail? Or millionaires now? And what if I took them up on their business offer? ah tomorrow is another day and more plants to water perhaps I shall return to Cnopot and see Marina, and meet her boyfriend and have a picnic at Elizabeth's grave, and leave some shot for her, I know she would be smiling down ont this sought...............