have patience

Tolga headed back to Ankara tonight. He'll probably come back in a few days because the job he's going to quit fired 42 people on Friday. A typical development in a company that has become more and more unstable with its decisions. The advantage of being fired is that by Turkish law, the company will have to pay Tolga a severance . . . the disadvantage is the company hasn't been very timely in its payments, including his salary. So we will wait and see what happens. In the meantime Tolga has two opportunities to choose from, one that he's informally accepted and will start in two weeks time.

I will wait for him here in Kusdasi. I'm working hard on a tan and that's about it. Tonight, before Tolga left we watched the US women's soccer match. In the middle of the match, we had guests. It was Tolga's brother and his brother's family. Today is their one-year anniversary and they brought over dessert. We had just finished eating dinner and dessert was borek (a cheese pastry), simit, and tiramisu. Dinner, tea, dessert with family is nice. With guests its boring. During a close quarter-final match, it's torturous. It's a lot of work to follow the conversations, and I have little to add with my limited Turkish. So I just sit and eat. And when we finished dessert, Anne brought out watermelon, peaches, and cherries. Baba ate everything, in spite of his diabetes.

At the end of the night, Anne was complaining about her leg hurting. Again. I had been warning Tolga about this all week. She was limping around the house. It would come and go, but she wasn't exercising at all - just toddling from the kitchen to the balcony to the living room. That's what worried me. Under no strain, she was moving like a cripple. However, when Tolga was there she made no complaints, only in passing to Yenge. Tonight she complained some more to our guests, limping dramatically to serve them food. As they finally left near midnight, she mused, "I don't know why my leg is hurting."

I think it has something to do with Tolga gone and me there.

So, like a good daughter-in-law, I made my Anne sit (with only the slightest amount of resentment) while a cleaned up for the night.