in the yard. I retired to our one-but-spacious-room flat to lick the wounds in my male pride pricked by the excessiveness of her instructions. At times, her aspirations to have her finger in every pie on earth do exasperate me. I closely control myself but she is too shrewd not to smell a rat.
Actually, I am vexed not so much by my mother-in-law as by this here situation. So my gravest objective is not to let her feel nor even suspect herself an outlet for my irritation which would mean the direst collapse of my self-esteem.
After a missile attack, I helped Sahtik to take the kids over to the Underground. She also transferred the oil lamp there. Half an hour later the electricity appeared! All of them came back together. A very pleasant family evening evolved.
It's ten-to-ten in the evening. Ahshaut is sleeping in his cot. The mother-in-law and Roozahna are in the Underground. Sahtik stayed home knitting.
I am freshly washed in the tub and utterly hurt by the fact that watching TV (the popular quiz 'The Field of Miracles') was preferred to my most natural suggestion.
December 28
From 6.30 till 8.30 am, massive missile attacks and artillery shelling raged all over the town. I was ordered to take Ahshaut to the Underground. So as to keep me down there, they found some pressing maintenance work.
While going to and fro (ferrying tools, hot water, clothes etc.), I saw a missile blast some 100-meters away – like a jet of pale brown smoke leaped from a building's wall. Did not look like Alazan explosions. Till now thick black smoke hovers over the houses on fire in Krkjan.
Missile salvos kept hitting the town all day long. In a bubble of calm around the noon, Sahtik and I went out to the Theater to vote in the local parliamentary elections. Normally, I keep away from politics, but after such a massive pressure to bulldoze me out of participation, I could do nothing else but go out and vote.
The weather was mild and warm. However, its meekness could not bribe me into assuming a less rigorous attitude and I crossed out all the candidates in my vote slip because I didn't know a single one of them.
Roozahna's aunt took the girl but very soon had to bring her back—Roozahna got too hysterical after one more missile attack.
Most reluctantly, Sahtik conceded to my plea for Ahshaut to have his day nap at home while she, Roozahna and my mother-in-law kept to the Underground. At something past 4 pm, another missile attack made me take even him over there – by the compromise agreement between Sahtik and me he might stay home only as long as it's calm and the very first explosion be the signal for taking him over to the Underground.
