Today Klara and I went to a pro-Ukrainian protest in town. I’d rather not involve her but her dad is out of town and the friends I could have asked to babysit were all going, too. Serves me right for having great friends. Even my friend from Africa showed up with a kid and an infant in tow. The colleague from Venezuela came but that’s obvious. A couple of Republican politicians attended.

The protest was filmed and will be shown on Ukrainian TV. The other Ukrainian and I taught everybody some Ukrainian on the spot to address the cameras. A local art class under the leadership of an immigrant from China made Ukrainian flags for everybody. It was a truly multinational event. My favorite person on campus whom I never met but who helps me with international faculty was there. I now know what she looks like.

The organizer is the only other Ukrainian in town. We embraced and wept for 15 minutes, singing Ukrainian songs. After knowing her for over a decade, I discovered that she has an enormous swear lexicon in Russian. I also realized that even though everybody is wonderful and supportive, nobody really understands like another Ukrainian.

After the event, Klara very formally thanked me for telling her about what’s happening in Ukraine. I managed to wiggle my way out of the question of what country the evildoers who attacked Ukraine came from.

Russians targeted an oil depot near Kiev. It’s on fire.

Kharkiv is under heavy artillery.

P.S. Now Russians have blown up a gas pipeline in Kharkiv.

Nightfall brought a new assault on several major cities in Ukraine. An hour ago, Russian troops shelled a children’s cancer hospital in Kiev, killing one kid and wounding two children and two adults.

American and Canadian Ukrainians don’t go to sleep anymore until the dawn breaks in Ukraine and the worst of the day’s fighting ends. This is a bad night already, and it only just started.

Ukrainians took out Mohammed Tushaev, one of the leaders of the Chechen troops Russia sent to fight in Ukraine. One scary dude he was.

Klara and I are playing her favorite game about a group of evildoers trying to destroy a school full of peaceful animals. Today I’m bringing real fire to the game.

“The evildoers thought that the animals would be happy to join them and become evil! But the animals refused and fought them bravely. So the evildoers dressed up as animals to infiltrate the school and conquer it from the inside. But the animals spoke their secret language that evildoers don’t understand.”

Also, the class clown whom nobody took seriously turned out to be a real hero.

We’ve played this game for two years but today I’m really into it.

Russian troops in Ukraine started wearing Ukrainian uniforms to disorient the population and sneak deep into the territory. In response, the Ukrainian army switched entirely to speaking Ukrainian.

In Ukraine, everybody is bilingual. People who don’t speak fluent Ukrainian understand it completely. But Russians don’t understand Ukrainian at all.

All of the rumors about the supposed persecution of Russian-speakers in Ukraine are pure rubbish. Ukrainian TV, for instance, is completely bilingual. Somebody speaks in Ukrainian, another person responds in Russian, and everybody is happy. In public spaces, the languages are used interchangeably. Official documents are all in Ukrainian but that’s always been the case. Back in 1998, I ran into trouble in Canada when I was applying to college and the Canadian bureaucrats kept demanding that I send them documents in Russian. I obviously didn’t have such documents because Russian wasn’t our official language.

Here’s an explanation for the Russian invasion and why the Russians expected an easy win and no resistance.

The Russians don’t understand that we don’t like them. It’s impossible to explain to them how we feel. They sincerely thought that crowds of happy, liberated Ukrainians would cheer them in the streets. No evidence to the contrary can change their minds. They honestly think that a small gang of anti-Russian “criminals and drug addicts” (I’m quoting Putin) usurped power and is preventing Ukrainians from reuniting with the Russian brothers.

Remember, I have a Russian husband. And he’s one of the best ones. I’ve tried everything. Stories, anecdotes, videos, books, jokes. He doesn’t get it. I told him that I always said I’d consider any guy, of any race, creed and nationality but never a Russian. (Then God decided to be funny and here we are but that’s a different story.) But it’s useless. “We always got along so well,” he says. “I just don’t get it.” Hopefully, now he’ll get it but I’m not too optimistic.

I haven’t always been a fan (once again, putting it mildly) but Ukraine’s president Zelensky is a total badass. With Russian troops moving in on the capital with the express orders to kill Zelensky, he refused to be evacuated and stayed with his people. This is a young guy, with a family. He has every excuse to go. Which US president would have stayed?

But there is more. A group of nuns in Kharkiv, my city, refused to get evacuated and stayed to pray where prayer is most needed.

Let’s hope these incredible people survive the night.

You learn a lot about people in difficult times. Somebody I never suspected of sensitivity and great people skills (and that’s putting it mildly) suddenly came through for me in a really big way and unasked, which is important because I don’t have the mental resources to ask anybody for anything. Somebody I suspected of being an idiot showed she’s an even bigger idiot. A former friend with whom I’d had a falling out and didn’t talk to for several years is now back to being a friend.

I deleted half of my Twitter feed because for some strange reason people can’t sit it out if an issue is of no interest to them. It’s perfectly fine to have nothing to say but if you are driven to comment, it might be a good idea not to be an asshole. And by the way, “there is no war, this is fake news” has absolutely become a thing in the US. Just as I expected.

Also, I really don’t appreciate the endless questions of “but why do you care if you didn’t want to live there in the first place?” I’m not a freak for caring. If you can really imagine the place where you grew up being bombed into rubble and not care, then maybe you are the freak.

Everybody on this blog has been great and very supportive. I appreciate all comments and the discussions because the time I spend on the blog is the time I don’t spend staring at footage of severed body parts online.

This hit me very hard, people. The only way not to let it hit you hard is to disassociate, and I’ve spent too much time learning not to do that to now go back.

God, I’d really like to go back to worrying about the mask mandates right now.

Klara was invited to a friend’s birthday party. I agreed without looking up the address on a map. Turns out it’s a 40-minute drive for a 9 am Saturday party. The roads are icy. And I have a kid who has literally not been in the car for 40 minutes straight for more than a dozen times in her whole life. We aren’t living a driving lifestyle because everything is so close.

There are no lockdowns. All kids’ activities have been completely open for over a year. The hosts and all the guests live in the 2-mile radius from me. Am I right to be upset that people chose this enormous hassle for the guests? I have to get up at 7:30 am on a Saturday and drive a total of 80 minutes there and back for a 2-hour outdoor party.

I feel punished. Yes, I should have checked the address. But how was I supposed to know people would do something like this?