Amazing... Here I am, sitting in our huge-windowed room, -18°C (0°F) outside, around +19°C inside (thanks to the heater), and I'm feeding Marta, and suddenly the lights go off, shortly after 8 pm - but my computer screen doesn't blink, so I go online (dial-up isn't affected by electricity shut-offs), and I'm typing this with my right hand, because the left one is holding Marta, and I know that if they don't fix whatever's broken in the next hour and a half, the computer's battery will die and I'll either get a few more hours of sleep (if Marta behaves) or I'll have a hell of an evening (if she's sleepless) - in a very cold room.

I was sort of prepared for this, though: first, there was some blinking a couple hours ago, and later mama came back home and reported that the elevator didn't work and the staircase wasn't lit; then I remembered I had to give Marta a bath (with this weather, I sort of kept forgetting for the past two days), and I made some chamomile tea to pour into water for Marta's skin, and I went to the bathroom to prepare everything, and turned what had to be hot water on, but it was icy and it stayed icy for the next 20 minutes, which wasn't all that strange, though normally the water does get hot after 15 minutes or less (it takes a bathful of water to wash a cup, as someone from our building described this recurring problem to mama), and it got me slightly mad, but I quickly recovered, changed Marta's diaper and sat down to feed her.

And here we are, an hour later: our fancy-schmancy phone doesn't work without electricity; we can't call the maintenance people from a cell phone because we can't locate the piece of paper with their phone number on it; Khreshchatik is well-lit and so are the buildings across the street from us; my feet are really cold now and I'm using Nur, one of the cats, to warm them; we're down to +18°C already; Marta's not asleep yet, but she's yawning, which is a good sign; mama has lit up a candle and is cooking dinner in the kitchen.

***

The last story that I read on Gazeta.ru before the lights went off was about Gazprom: they were saying their European clients weren't getting all their gas because of Ukraine (yes, again).