Beth in France

2012-01-28T19:03:00.002+01:00

My mom's visit here in the lovely Haute Savoie continues well.
As you can see, a good time is being had by all:

(Daisy apparently feels really relaxed in my mom's company.)

On Friday, we picked up Tya from school a bit early and went shopping!

We were in Annemasse, a nearby town that has some good shops. What's a trip to France without a trip to the Monoprix? Amirite?

The town square in Annemasse is quite pretty most of the year.
It's a bit barren in January...

...but it was still fun taking pictures to commemorate our outing!

2012-01-25T22:17:00.004+01:00

On a trip to France, most people might expect to go visit interesting sites- perhaps the great Cathedral of Notre Dame or the Eiffel Tower.

We are not doing any of that sort of thing with my mom. In fact, today she got to help me clean my house.(Thanks, Mom! Love you!!!!)

But we don't only clean house.
Mais non!
We also....go pick up Mallory when she gets out of school early:

(FYI: My car is the one with the blue "Nebraskans for Peace" bumper sticker.)

Here's Mallory getting her papers inspected as she leaves school:

Back home, Finally!

This is Bob. My mom thinks Bob is kind of cute and sweet.

Bob is actually strange and kind of deformed.
She was like this when we found her and even the vet can't explain how a stray cat could be so hugely obese. She's like a watermelon with four toothpicks for legs. But she's so pathetic that you have to love her....

My mom has been enjoying the lovely fruits and vegetables here in France...

(She took this photo at the supermarket. Kind of pretty!)

She has also sat through two of Alexa's dance classes. She went to ballet on Monday and today was modern dance. As she watched, she had to hold the teacher's dog, Coppelia. Coppelia is quite spoiled and barks at you if not petted and endlessly cosseted.

If my dad shows these photos to their dog back home, my mom could be in big trouble. Bridget seems like the jealous type....

2012-01-23T10:13:00.004+01:00

You may notice that the photos below do NOT contain Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the Tower of London or serious guys in tall, black, fuzzy hats.
This is because none of the pictures were taken in London.
Don't worry- there ARE London pics and you will see them.
Eventually.
But right now, I'm in the midst of a visit from my mom, who trekked all the way over here to see us!! She's only here for two weeks, so we're keeping quite busy.
The main activity has been shopping.
Here we are on our way into the Balexert shopping mall, which is just outside of Geneva:

(No, she isn't crouching. My kids are all giants and she is kind of tiny.)

Here's Alexa modelling some adorable leopard ears:

MacDonald's is always popular with the kid. Mom says she agrees that the European versions of their food is MUCH nicer. The salads are quite good, even!

We have also ventured to the Ikea, as mom has never, ever been to one!
The thrills started in the restroom, where they had a Dyson AirBlade to dry our hands.
Very amusing!

Equally thrilling were the tasty Swedish meatballs!!

The fish Alexa ordered was less thrilling, but the desserts were quite excellent.
There were even donuts!

Luckily, we had an actual Swedish person (Valentine's boyfriend) to guide us through the huge labyrinth. He was also very handy for translating mysterious signs and carrying heavy stuff. Nice boy!

Having a bit of a rest is a must. The place is quite huge!

After a few days in a row of shopping, we decided to take Sunday off and have a rest at home.

What's in store this week? Definitely a day in downtown Geneva- other than that, no definite plans have been made...

2011-12-26T07:46:00.003+01:00

This morning, we leave for LONDON!!!

2011-12-12T15:31:00.004+01:00

On Sunday afternoon, the Annemasse music conservatory gave their annual Christmas concert. I participated, just as I did the past two years- but this time it was much more fun because Valentine was there singing with me:

(This isn't a great pic, as it's kind of blurry- but it's the only one where you can get the full effect of our concert garb. I think we looked kind of elegant!)

The church was pretty full, but not as jam-packed as previous years, when it was standing room only.

Vivaldi's "Gloria" (RV 589- the famous one) was on the program.

It went really well and a good time was had by all.

2011-11-01T16:53:00.003+01:00

We had an excellent Halloween!

The kids had the whole house decorated and invited a dozen friends over.

I even got dressed up for the occasion. I was a witch and Severin was supposed to be a vampire.
But I thought he looked more like a male model after a particularly hard night of partying....

Don't the girls all look cute?
Valentine had the Hipster Vampire Girl look going, while the twins were just being gorgeous something -unspecifieds....

2011-10-18T10:31:00.004+02:00

Original Halloween Cuteness (by Mallory)

It's mid-October now.
School has been well underway for a month and a half now and we're heading into the two-week long "Toussaint" holiday.

But my kids aren't thinking "all saint's"- they're all about Halloween.

It's definitely NOT a French thing.
In fact, many people here are actively Halloween-hostile.
Which is weird.
I think it comes from the multiple attempts that French shops have made at promoting the foreign holiday in order to push merchandise. The efforts were such blatant attempts at culturally invasive money-grubbing that it turned many people off.
And, frankly, France doesn't need Halloween.

My kids and I always have a big party for our friends because we're American and like to enjoy this fun holiday that I grew up with.

But I'd really rather not see French people doing Halloween parties. They try to make you eat pumpkin soup and they don't know what candy corn is.
It's just sad, really....

2011-09-01T17:35:00.004+02:00

It's my birthday today.

Yes- I'm now 46 years old. And I don't care who knows it. Coyness does not become me.

No- I don't want any cake today. Thank you.

Yes- I just spend 10 minutes reading my Facebook birthday wishes and counting how many there are so far (25). This is possibly pathetic, but I'm not sure. While I feel that 25 is a perfectly respectable number, I have a suspicion that it's not cool to count- or at least to admit that you did so....

No- I'm not having a party. Back in the day, I used to always have a party with a good friend from jr high/high school. It was always very fun and crazy and no parties since have ever compared.

Yes- I have been invited out to dinner and will be going to a nearby restaurant that I've wanted to check out for ages. It looks so chic and charming- I hope it lives up to its reputation...

and finally:

No- I'm not going to trot out that tired old bit of nonsense "I'm not getting older, only getting better".
In fact, I am getting both older AND better.
So there.

2011-08-28T20:23:00.004+02:00

This has been an odd summer...one that, for a variety of reasons, I haven't been too inclined to blog about.

But here's a nice topic for a post:

Along with three friends from the Music Conservatory, I performed last weekend at a medieval faire in a charming mountain village.

It was a long, hot day, but lots of fun....

2011-07-16T14:33:00.002+02:00

Valentine turned 18 on the 6th of July. Not that it made me feel old, or anything....

OK- maybe a little.
But that's ok. That was more than outweighed by the joy of seeing her becoming an adult- so beautiful, capable, kindhearted, clever, talented and full of happiness....

The party we had for her was great. Tya had about 11 friends over and had a barbecue. Then they played Wii rock Band outside, followed by a "sitting around the campfire late in the evening" kind of thing, which was all really fun...

(And here's Al, looking cute.)

2011-06-20T13:32:00.009+02:00

Grandes Medievales D'Andilly 2011:
Part III, In Which My Girls are So Beautiful

2011-06-16T09:01:00.009+02:00

Grandes Medivales d'Andilly 2011: Part II, In Which Severin Is Totally Awesome

We just spent the last two weekends in the late 15th century, and it was fantastic! Severin was a knight in the daily shows at the fair. He was great and looked pretty impressive.

The photo of him and Valentine appeared in the Geneva newspaper last week, so it's not only me who thinks my kids are gorgeous and amazing!

2011-06-07T12:19:00.017+02:00

Grandes Medievales d'Andilly 2011: Part I, In Which Ae Terribly Geeky and Proud of It!

We spent last weekend in full-on geek mode, enjoying ourselves at the huge Andilly Medieval Fair.

This is the third year we've gone, but the first in which we were actual, official participants!

Since September, Sev has been in a medieval combat group, and when it's time for the fair, they put on quite a show!

As you can see, there's quite a crowd- this is one of the biggest historical fairs in France!

In the photo below, Severin is just behind the flag bearer, carrying the group's blason on his back.

And you can see him in the doorway of the tower, ready to defend it from enemy incursions!

To add to the fun, I managed to convince some of the people that I sing with at the Conservatory to come out to the fair to sing with Tya and me!

Three showed up on Sunday and we had a great time walking around and entertaining the crowds. It reminded me so much of the good old days with the LHS Madrigal Singers!

The fair continues for three more days next weekend and we'll be there for nearly all of it.
And on the 12th, there will be lots more people from the Conservatory to sing - at least 10 besides Tya and myself.

(Also- please note that Sev and Tya's rock band has a concert on the 11th!)

2011-05-30T18:09:00.001+02:00

2011-05-29T19:32:00.001+02:00

2011-05-17T14:06:00.011+02:00

List of Eight Things That Are Making Beth Happy Right Now

8. "Friday" by Rebecca Black.
How on earth could this be making me happy, when it is apparently inducing severe vomitting in everyone else on the face of the planet? It's one of those "so bad that it's good" situations.
Plus, the lyrics are easily changed to suit every day of the week and every possible situation. My kids are particularly good at this and many lulz ensue.
If you want to hear a version of this song that won't make your brain bleed, listen to this.
If you don't value your cerebral integrity, go ahead with the face-palmingly unforgettable original.
But what I really think you should all do is watch this parody (btw- DON'T get in the van with Uncle Dave. I'm just sayin....)

7.Super-short hair
Natalie Portman in "V for Vendetta", Demi Moore in "G I Jane", Persis Khambatta in "Star Trek" , and Beth in "Just Went to the Hair Salon Today and Said What the Heck, Cut it All Off."
Ok- maybe my hair isn't quite a marine-syle buzz-cut, but it's not far off by much.

Yes, I look kind of scary.

And yes, I love it!

6.Chanel Sculpting Eyebrow Pencil ( in brun cendre)
Just because I have no hair doesn't mean I don't want eyebrows, people!
And the best way to make my mangy, sandy-colored eyebrows look all awesome is to use this exactly-right, natural brown pencil that is the Holy Grail of the eyebrow-enhancing world.
And there IS such a world, I swear it upon my Mac Brow Set.

5. No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series by A. Mc Call Smith
If you don't know these books, start reading them NOW. They will not only entertain you, they'll make you wish to be a better person.
What happens after that is up to you, of course....

4. June 2011
Just thinking about next month makes my heart sing a bit, for a variety of reasons. One of these is the medieval faire at Andilly. We attended last year and the year before that. But this will be the first year that my kids and I will be WORKING there! Expect to hear MUCH more about this in a future post....

3. Ray William Johnson - Equals Three
One-stop shopping to meet all of your weekly YouTube viral video needs.
What? You say you HAVE NO weekly YouTube viral video needs?
Well the, you'd better watch this now and get over being so classy and highbrow and stuff....

2. Battlestar Galactica
I'm talking about the awesome 2003 miniseries, which was followed by a pretty darn fine bunch of shows from 2004 to 2009. I'm sort of rediscovering this, as when it first aired, I had no access to US tv shows because I was still living in Ouagadougou. (Just loading a short YouTube video there could take half a day. Seriously.)

What I'm NOT talking about is the original 1970's Battlestar Galactica, which, at the time, I loved with a mad passion. I have to admit that much of this mad passion was directed at actor Dirk Benedict, whom I ( and just about every other 12 year old girl I knew) had a crush on. Starbuck!
*Swoon*
Fond memories of my girlish fantasies (some not precisely G-rated, let's just say) featuring Starbuck tempted me to use the magic of YouTube to have a look at the old show.

And now I have proof that 12 year old girls in Nebraska in the late 1970's did not come with factory-installed Gaydar.

"Non-threatening" is the nicest thing you can say about the guy. The feathered hair, the high-pitched voice, the arch delivery of the oh-so-cheesy dialogue... what was I thinking?
My brother's guinea pig had more sex-appeal.

In the new version, the character of Starbuck is played actress Katee Sackoff, who is hundreds of times sexier and infinitely more masculine than Dirk Benedict. Even a straight woman, forced to choose between the two of them, would opt to date Katee.
I'm just sayin....

1. Bang Girl's Pages of Truth
My daughter Mallory doesn't read books, she inhales them.
So, it's no surprise that her first-ever blog is made up of her reviews of various novels she's reading. If you're interested in seeing it, contact me and I'll send you a link. As she's only 13, we're keeping her blog private for now. ( Creepers gonna creep, and all that)

2011-04-23T15:06:00.004+02:00

It has recently come to my attention that my blogging skillz have seriously taken a downward turn over the last six months or so. Posts have been sporadic and major milestones missed.

This sad state of affairs must not continue! Especially considering the fact that a major area of neglect has been the very excellent rock band that Sev and Tya are part of: The Boxmen!

So, for your viewing and listening pleasure, here's the only existing video of their first-ever concert back in December of 2009! They'd only been playing together a few months, but were already pretty darn good!

Since then , they've only gotten better. Sadly, I don't have any other video footage to share. But I do have a few photos from their concert in December 2010.

Their next concert is in June and I PROMISE to get a decent video of it!

2011-04-11T15:55:00.004+02:00

Friday afternoon, we celebrated JP's 60th birthday with several firemen and a few gendarmes....

Very festive, as you can see...

It turns out that when you set the woods behind your house on fire, the fire department and cops show up.
JP knows that now.
Just to be clear, he didn't start a forest fire on purpose, he was just trying to burn off some dry grass.
Which, it turns out, is illegal and dangerous.
Live and learn, as they say...

After the excitement died down, I took the twins and one of their little friends on a road trip to Lyon to see:

which was SO completely amazing and fun and cool!!

We had great seats and the girls loved the show- especially Alexa.

At the end, we went down in front of the stage to dance and sing along with the encore.
We finally got home at about 2am.
Good times!!

2011-04-03T21:38:00.003+02:00

Generally speaking, France on a Sunday is SO boring!
Few shops or businesses of any kind are authorised to be open and things slow down to a deadly pace. So, I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do with the German exchange student who we are hosting this week.
Valentine had told me that the girl doesn't like history, so that ruled out museum visits. And museums are kind of my go-to solution in times of trouble...

But I wanted to do something nice, as Sunday would be our only full day with Teresia. Afterwards, she'd be at school all day and then leave on Friday night. So, I proposed that we go up to Chamonix/Mont Blanc. I figured we could go up the cute little railway to the glacier and then go back down and visit the village.

My plan work out...for the most part.
I drove us to Chamonix (it took 45 minutes flat- my personal best!) and got us on the train. We were at Montenvers station within 20 minutes.

We got out and looked around.

took a few photos...

I tried to chat with our guest a bit about the Mer de Glace glacier, Mont Blanc, the Montenvers rack railway line, etc.
In fact, what I did was commit the error of forgetting that she doesn't like history.
And she doesn't much like geology either, apparently, because after approximately 8.5 minutes on the mountainside, she said "So, are we leaving now?"
Yes, we're leaving now.
Sigh.

What she likes is...shopping.
Luckily, Chamonix is one of the most touristy spots in all of France. And this means many shops are open on Sunday.
As I predicted, Teresia perked right up the moment we got her into a Benetton shop...
And we fed her pizza.
She mostly just likes pizza.

As for me?
At that point, I could have used a stiff gin and tonic....

2011-03-23T20:50:00.001+01:00

For some reason, I find this absolutely adorable...

2011-03-14T14:23:00.004+01:00

Here's a final post on the twins' room, aimed at those of you who aren't entirely sick of this whole project. I just wanted you to see it all now that the girls are moved in and living in the room. I took a few pics, panning around so that you can get a feel for the whole space.

As you can see, I glued panels of cork above Alexa's bed, so that she could get her posters, pictures and scraps of paper all on display again.

Here's Mallory's bed. Her guinea pig (chilling in the blue cage at right) seems pretty happy with his new, nicely decorated spot.
On the south wall, there's a window, but there was too much sun and the pic didn't turn out. Sry.

So, here we are again at Alexa's bed. You can see the balcony on the left. And also note the fluffy shag carpet on the floor, cleverly camouflaging the problematic cement bar in the floor.
Here's a closeup of Alexa's wall:
And finally, the view off their balcony. It's a bit desolate now, but will be really pretty in the spring.
The balcony is certainly big enough for a small table and a couple of chairs... I think the girls will really enjoy it.

2011-03-11T10:38:00.004+01:00

The only thing I love more than a good list is a good batch of "before and after" photos.
Sadly, I don't have many pics, as I was too busy and disorganised to take as many as I should have...
But here's a couple of good ones for your perusal:
On the left, you can see the door to the balcony that is now part of the twins' New and Improved Bedroom.

And on the right, we can admire the awesome new ceiling that Paul put in for us (the man has mad plastering skillz, srsly!) and the gorgeous apple green paint on the walls around Alexa's bed....

Below, we see things are being put back into place. This is Mallory's bed:

The next step will be to glue cork board onto the wall above Alexa's bed and the finish the raw edges at the top of the wallpaper....
There also remains the small problem of the cement bar running through the wood flooring near Alexa's bed.
There was much debate about what to do about the yawning chasm left behind when the original wall came down. Paul said cement would do the trick nicely and I thought it would be fine...and it would have been if it had been well finished....
But the job was rather sloppy. By the time he was doing it, I think Paul was tired out and slowly losing the will to live.
At any rate, it's not beautiful and probably best covered up by an attractive area rug....

2011-03-04T15:47:00.010+01:00

The New and Improved Romanian Handyman aka "Paul" (which is admittedly shorter to say, but way less fun to write!) has been working steadily since Sunday morning, putting in 10 hour days.
I think he's pretty tired out at this point, but at least now we can finally really see some progress!

Here's a preliminary before and after for you:

You can see in the left photo the green wall that separated the bedroom from the hallway. Below, you can see that the wall is gone and now the balcony that was in the hallway is part of the twins' room. And the room is about one meter wider than it was. FTW!

Here's the new wall out in what is no longer really a hallway, but more of a landing...
Paul finished plastering it this morning and is painting it right now.

The disgusting wasp megapolis in the ceiling has been replaced by insulation. (Nice, normal, bought-in-a-store, insect-free insulation.)
Plasterboard has been installed and it's all been nicely finished...

Sev had to help out quite a lot yesterday- which he loved because of the awesome outfit he had to wear. jk lol!!!!

2011-03-03T09:55:00.003+01:00

The kids are on vacation from school right now...but holiday atmosphere is thin on the ground.

We're WORKING over here, people!
Srsly

After talking about it for years, we've finally taken on the project of enlarging the twins' bedroom. Their room is rather small and it always seemed to me that the hallway and balcony right next to their room would be much more useful as part it.
All it would involve would be ripping down a thin brick wall and building a short new wall closer to the door to their room.
(Please note that the word all in the above phrase should have been enclosed in quotation marks or some other ironic device. )
These things always turn out to be more complicated (and time consuming and expensive!) than they first seem, don't they ?

Here is the hallway and the door to the balcony. The door to the girls' room is to the left. The door on the right leads to Sev's room.

The wall came down pretty well...it was messy work, though.
Luckily, we have help- we've a new Romanian friend! As any regular reader of my blog knows, we can't get anything done around here without at least one Romanian in the house.
With a bit of help from Sev, the wall was history with a few hours.....

Then the next step could be taken... the horrible wooden ceiling had to come down.

Go Sev!

The plaster underneath was so damaged that Paul (our New and Improved Romanian Handyman) insisted that it ALL come down, so that he would put in an all-new ceiling.

And when the plaster and lathes came down, we found this:

And so it was that the Mystery of the Extremely Scary Hornet Invasion was finally solved.
They hadn't only been attacking from the kitchen chimney and the garage and the front wall of the house, they'd actually been in a gigantic nest located right over Alexa's bed.

But it's gone now and, with counseling, Alexa should eventually be fine....

So- finally, the demolition-type work was all done...
We are ready to start building something!

2011-02-26T14:49:00.004+01:00

If Nietzsche was right when he wrote "that which does not kill us makes us stronger", then why I am I not positively bulging with lady body-builder bulges?
That's what I'd like to know.

One recent event that I thought might be the death of me (or at least the source of amazing new triceps and quads) was the concert at the music conservatory last night.
Rehearsals have been frequent and crazy...some demanding six hours straight on my feet in VERY high heels.
Ouch!
And my voice teacher changed my solo song just two weeks before the show. I have to agree that the Purcell piece suited me better...but it still gave me very little time to get the bumps smoothed out!

And I was SO stressed at the last dress rehearsal...

But last night's show turned out SO well!!!
The only sad thing is that Tya took tons of pictures and even filmed my solo...but it seems that none of it is on the camera.
A mystery!
But there are a few photos that turned out, so you can at least get an idea of what the show looked like. And you can see my crazy costume! I 'm the one in the red 1950's dress and grey baroque wig!

2011-02-25T15:10:00.004+01:00

I didn't want the month to end without me doing some name-dropping/bragging/gloating. So, this is where I casually mention that I was in PARIS this month.

See?

I was there for reals, taking in the culture and whatnot!

Of course, I wasn't just there on a whim, satisfying my need to feel stylish and cool. I was actually on a mission: the renewal of Sev's USA passport.
This was not a thing lightly undertaken, believe me.

This process used to be a piece of cake back when we lived in Ouagadougou (it sort of helped that the US Ambassador there sang soprano with me in a little choral group....) But, sadly, I do not know the US Ambassador to France. I don't even know if Mr. Charles Rivkin likes to sing. (He kind of looks like a tenor, though. JMHO)

So....we had to play by the rules here- and they are crazy!
First of all, the passport can only be renewed in Paris.
Secondly, as Sev is under age 16, he has to be physically present at the embassy in order to get his new passport.
And thirdly, BOTH parents must be present with the child.

You may think that sounds insane, but the best is yet to come: this passport can only be obtained from Monday through Friday from 10 am until 10:30am.

As Dave Barry would say: I am not making this up.

You carefully make your appointment online weeks ahead of time so that your name goes on the list that will get you inside the front gate. Then you wait outside the door of the security checkpoint. Once inside, they will mercilessly confiscate your cellphone, ipod and your brand new tube of Lancome Color Fever lip gloss.
While I may not personally know Mr. Rivken, I just can't think that Charlie could have any objection to me having lusciously glossy lips.
But just try explaining that to those crabby old guards...

But it all turned out well - Sev got his passport and we had a nice two-day stay in my favorite city!

2011-02-19T09:09:00.003+01:00

Why You Might Enjoy having Dinner at My House....Or Not: Two Scenes from a Dining Room

Alexa looks across the table to the buffet where there's an orange soft-drink bottle sitting out.
The label says "Orangina Geisha Peche". ('Peche' is peach in English for all you non-French speakers out there)

"Actually, what is a geisha, mom?"
"Umm...a Japanese hostess?"
She looks at me quizzically.
I try again. "A fancy Japaneses hostess? That serves tea?"
"Really?" asks young Alexa.
"Yeah...well...kinda...." I falter.

Valentine is about ready to die at this point from choked laughter and snorting. (Aren't teenagers fun?!) She decides this has gone on long enough.

cough*Prostitute!*cough

"That's just embarassing!" Alexa declares. "I can't believe I even asked!"

"But they serve tea!" I repeat. "And play the harp. Or something" I cleverly elaborate.

"Like Inara on 'Firefly'?" chimes in Mallory, my little geek-girl.

I grab onto this idea like it's the last flotation device on the Titanic.
"Yes! Exactly like that! You've seen 'Firefly', Alexa. A geisha is a Japanese Inara. Or Inara is an outer space geisha. Or something."

"Ok." she says. "But why the heck did thay name a drink for kids that?"

I've got this one covered and answer without hesitation: "Because a soft drink called "Orangina Prostitute" would probably be extremely unpopular. What would that even taste like? Gah!"

I then imagined a marketing campaign for "Ho Cola", but wisely kept it to myself, figuring that the general tone of the conversation had degraded far enough for one evening, thank you very much.

------------------------------------------

Severin is happily coving his french fries with ketchup.
As he sets the bottle down, he reads the label out loud: "McCords ketchup- the taste of America!"
"So" asks Valentine "Does it taste like America?"

Sev takes a contemplative bite of ketchup-festooned fry.
He chews it slowly and then announces "Why, yes! It does taste like America! It tastes like capitalism...and guns! Yum!"

"You're not supposed to say that!" advises his older sister. "It's supposed to taste like freedom!! Doesn't it taste like freedom? You better say it tastes like freedom, or you're in big trouble, buster!"

-----------------------------

We generally eat at about 7, if you're interested.....

2011-02-01T17:08:00.006+01:00

January 2011 was not so bad, in retrospect.

There was this:

Nice, huh?
That was during a weekend in the Val d'Illiez, Switzerland.
It was all cute and stuff...

And there was this, too:

I has a fun weekend with a girlfriend who works as a translator each year at the big Solothurn Film Festival in Switzerland. It was fun to watch the movies from the booth and get the insider's view of everything...
And Solothurn turned out to be a very cute Swiss town:

Come to think of it, I spent a lot of time in Switzerland this last month....
I guess there's worse places to be.

At any rate, Valentine had no time for gallivanting pointlessly around foreign countries.
She stayed home, working hard:

What a good girl! And so talented! And lovely!

And finally....our cat, Daisy, who spent the entire month of January working assiduously to become even more gloriously porky.

Well done, kitty!

2011-01-03T13:45:00.006+01:00

I haven't been blogging because I've been too busy celebrating! New Year's Eve was good fun...

We got dressed up....

Please note Mallory's edgy touches to what could have been a dull ensemble. She really rocks the boots, doesn't she?

We went to a party....

And had a good time with our friends.
There was food involved....

Here's Severin as he gets ready to attack the buffet...in an apparently litteral sense of the term.

Along with the food came drinks....though some didn't even need alcohol to get them wound up for a night of crazy dancing:

We stayed out until 4am and then made our way home, well satisfied that we'd properly rang out 2010, may it rest in peace.

Sunday, Mallory and I made our King's Cake for the Epiphany. I inscribed it with a pentagram on the top crust, to make it Wiccan-friendly. Tya appreciated the extra touch...

For those of you who don't know this tradition...the "Galette des Rois" is a post-Xmas cake that is baked with a small ceramic figurine inside it. The person who gets it in her/his piece gets to wear the gold paper crown and be the monarch of the day.
Good fun...and a very tasty cake. We like the kind filled with frangipane, though many other kinds exist...

2010-12-28T08:32:00.006+01:00

My New Espresso Machine That Will Kill You With Its Awesome...

(or maybe it will just make you a nice latte.)

I really cleaned up at Christmas this year!
I got some delicious Dior perfume from the kids.
And the best part is- instead of the giant purple snake, they got me the body lotion and a Dior makeup bag!
Good choice, kids!

My parents got me adorable (and warm!) Ugg boots.
The astounding coffee machine was from JP and the kids....and the husband also got me a spa weekend in Switzerland. So I really did well this year. Seriously.

The boots really came in handy when we went to the Christmas circus in Geneva on the 26th. It was a freezing cold night, but that New Zealand sheepskin kept me plenty warm...

2010-12-25T18:09:00.003+01:00

Merry Christmas....

2010-12-01T10:15:00.004+01:00

Very early on Saturday morning, we drove an hour in the snow to get here:to take these two lazy, yet adorable creatures:

to compete in this cat show held by the Cat Club of Lyon in the city of Aix-les-Bains.

The two green cages belong to our cat breeder pal who took us to our first show last September. The one on the end is ours, lovingly decorated with frilly curtains sewn by yours truly...

It's not well known, but even the fancy cat clubs allow common house cats to compete in a special category... and it's lots of fun.

Our friend, of course, has no common gutter cats. She shows skinny little naked expensive cats... I had to show this one to the judges for her, as she was busy with another cat being judged at a different table...

Here's our Dexter being checked out by the judge. Dex was a good boy and the judge really liked him... "Nice, big, quiet boy" was the final verdict.

Daisy did well, too....sort of.
She was extremely well-groomed, as my girls have been working on her for weeks. And she was nice to the judge....didn't do her strange growling thing that she does when she gets crabby.
The judge's final verdict was "lovely but bizarre".
But he was Polish.
Maybe "bizarre" means "adorable" in Polish?

But despite her bizarreness, our Daisy won, big time!

As did our handsome boy

Here's Mal standing beside our award-bedecked display cage:

Our happiness was only slightly marred by the fact that there were NO other competitors in the class. At all.
This actually kind of ticked Mallory off.
"It would be much better if other people were competing. I'm sure our cats could beat any other ones! I know it!"
She was really ready to bring it, cat-wise.

Her only consolation was that, even in a class with only one entrant, the cat won't be nominated for the prize if it is not up to standard. It needs to be healthy, good-looking, well-groomed and have a good temper. Competing cats have to be handled by judges and their assistants, so difficult, shy or mean cats need not apply.

That made our Mal feel a bit better. ...but she'd still rather see some seriously cut-throat house-cat competition the next time around...

2010-11-18T15:38:00.004+01:00

Just got the news that my grandma died last night.

Lillie Rohnert Kolb.
She was 92.

I love this picture of her- she reminds me so much of my own girls...

This is another favorite...I think she looks like a 1930's movie star.
Here is one I keep in my dining room. You can spot her, right? The glamorous one...
She taught me how to cook, sew, crochet, make quilts and, most importantly, how to get up and do exactly what needs doing, even if you don't really want to....

This is definitely one of those time when it really sucks to live on a continent far from family....

2010-11-18T10:12:00.002+01:00

Yesterday the USA celebrated ( is that really the word I want there?) "National Unfriend Day" for the first time ever, thanks to the efforts of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. Not that is was actually much of an effort. He went on tv and said "Today is National Unfriend Day" and that was it. But it had to be done.

In fact, it's a brilliant idea and should be celebrated more than once a year, IMHO.

In fact, several times every month seems preferable....or is that just me being crabby about all that Mafia Wars crap cluttering up my wall? And no, Farmville Psychos, I don't want to buy you a cow or send you mangelwurzels.

One thing that slightly amelliorates my crabby is this- the semi-official song of the Facebook clean-up movement:

2010-11-02T15:28:00.005+01:00

The kitchen update will have to wait. (I hope nobody was holding his or her breath waiting for that particular bit of news on my blog, btw. If so, sorry for your anoxia and probable brain damage. My bad.)

So, kitchen news has been suspended today in honor of our annual Halloween party here chez nous in the French Alps. It is probably one of the best. (It is also probably just about the only one, so I feel safe making that claim.)

The kids did a bang-up job with the decorating. They did it all themselves and damn they made me proud! I was all "The torch has been passed. My work here is done." and etc...

This was our new cats' first Halloween with us. Dexter found it a bit daunting, but Daisy took it in stride. She even decided to take part and here we see her playing the role of the witch's familiar...

Here Sev sporting his Mafia look..

And Tya's Goth look fits right in at halloween, of course. She didn't even need a costume...

Alexa was the world's most adorable cat. Actually, she reminded me of a recent ad campaign for a perfume that she likes:

Doesn't she look like a grown-up Alexa?Somehow, I didn't manage to get a picture of Mallory. I guess between the treasure hunt and all the other fun, she was running around too much. But she was a super-cute witch....

The party went on until midnight. Pizza was eaten, poker was played and then a bunch of kids slept over. (I had 10 people to feed at breakfast!)
In short, a good time was had by all.

2010-10-18T10:04:00.004+02:00

This is a story - a story about a little kitchen in an old house in the French countryside.

Sometimes it is a little scary, but don't worry- like all good stories (the ones I like, at any rate, everything turns out ok in the end....

Once upon a time, in a little old house, there lived an evil witch. Her house had a little kitchen. It was an ugly kitchen- as ugly as dirt. Really unattractive dirt. Actually, now that I think about it, dirt was probably more lovely than this kitchen.

One day, a king and queen came riding buy and decided to purchase the little house. The witch was selling out, as she was getting on in years in need of cash to buy a small appartment with easy access to shopping and doctors' offices.

The king and queen fixed up the crappy kitchen as best they could. The queen took care of their baby princess, while the king tiled the countertops and tried to cover up the cracked walls.

It was a nice kitchen and they very nearly lived happily ever after....

But time passed and after a few years, the king and queen (and the many tiny princesses and the handsome prince) were sent into exile in a distant land. When they returned, they found that the little house was again....kind of ugly. Fifteen years had gone by and the little kitchen seriously needed an update.

First, everything had to come down.
And I do mean down.

The plaster crumbled, mildew blossomed and new frontiers in incompetant plumbing were revealed.....

It was very scary.
The king asked if maybe he could go fight dragons instead. But he was basically very brave. So, he called up a young knight (that would be our pal Cristian ) to assist him with the huge task that lay ahead.

First of all the walls and ceiling had to be torn down and covered with all new plasterboard. This was kind of difficult, but the king and the knight did a good job. They even got some help from the handsome prince...

To be continued......

2010-10-04T14:57:00.004+02:00

There are two new household members chez moi and it's about time you all met them.

This is Dexter:

(Don't worry, he is not a serial killer. As far as we can tell.)

And this is Daisy:

Shortly after our beautiful Cleo was killed, I drove the girls down to the local animal shelter. We stood in a room among about 20 lovely cats, hard-pressed to choose only one.

So, we did what any decent people would do: we chose two.

Daisy was sort of a wretched specimen, really. She was quite thin and her fur was scruffy and matted. The eye passed right over her...well, mine did, anyway. But she caught Mallory's attention.

"This is a good one, mom!" she insisted.
And she was right.

Dexter also kind of blended in at first, but when Valentine picked him up the first time, he put his paws around her neck and gave her a big hug. And who could resist that?

As you can see, Dex and Daisy really enjoy the new addition to the house. (nice transition there, no?) The little blue sofa is cosy and Mallory loves to curl up there to read. But the cats prefer it when some unlucky soul leaves his jacket on the coffee table, as that provides a perfect bed/cat fur repository.
The left corner of the room is nice and sunny- perfect for the huge ficus plant that used to loom ominously over our dining room table. It was a little....overwhelming for the space it occupied before - but now the giant plant is out of our way, safely tucked into a bright corner.

So, you can see that the room finally has a real floor and actual furniture.

And even better- it now has fancy decorations:

We picked up this old mirror at the thrift shop on Saturday.
So, we've got that whole "shabby chic" thing working for us.

I've got plenty more pictures for you...mostly from our kitchen remodelling project. I hope to get them up soon. I don't seem to be doing very well with my blog lately, though. Lots of stuff going on here, blah, blah, etc. ...
But luckily Tya is taking up the slack. In contrast to me, she's blogging more than ever.
Go check her out!

2010-09-13T11:24:00.006+02:00

"Well, plastic has to come from somewhere", Alexa told me, displaying a philosophical resignation far beyond her years.

I'd been complaining about the location of the cat show we attended this weekend. Instead of a cute town like Annecy or even Lyon, we had to go to Oyonnax- an obscure little town that bears the proud nickname "The Valley of Plastic".

Luckily, we were there for cat action and not charming tourist photos.
And cat action is what we found:

When my pal Nat had initially suggested that the girls and I accompany her to a show, the idea was that we would enter our housecat, Cleo, in a competition. I thought it would be fun for the twins and they would enjoy showing off their sweet little cat.

Sadly, she was hit by a car on Sept 5th and died.
I won't go into details, but it was bad.
Very bad.

We ended up going to the show anyway, but just to help out Nat, who is a big-time breeder of short-haired orientals, siamese and Cornish Rex. They are all sort of strange and thin and don't have much hair...but they have their fans and are very, very valuable.
And they aren't too ugly, once you get used to them.
In fact, over the course of the two-day show, I went from finding them vaguely repellant to actually finding them rather handsome.
They sort of look like bats and I have nothing against bats, really.....

At any rate, those little bat-cats managed to beat out the competion and come home with no less than five trophies.

And it was an interesting opportunity, anthropologically-speaking. The cat show circuit has its own culture and definitely bears exploring. I look forward to finding out more when we go to the next big show at the end of November. ...

2010-08-30T07:24:00.008+02:00

So, what happens when Tya, the Girl Who Imprudently Misplaced Her Ipod Headphones takes a long roadtrip seated beside Sev, Possibly the World's Fussiest Teenaged Boy?

Maybe this:

Tya: Sev. Dude. Lend me Your iPod headphones. I'm desperate here.
Sev: No.
Tya (pleading): Dude! Please! Help me out!
Sev (implacable): No. Way.

This initial exchange is followed by further exchanges along these same lines, involving heavy use of the words, "dude", "please" and "no".
The sanity of Tya is also called into question several times.
Finally, after several minutes of this:

Sev (resigned): Alright.
He sighs heavily and pulls a small bottle of hand sanitizer out of his pocket.

Tya looks at it blankly for a moment, then grabs it and puts a bit on her hands. She is distinctly heard to mutter under her breath the phrase "You are SUCH a freak."

Tya then puts out her hand to take the headphones, which are not forthcoming.

Sev: Your ears.
Tya (disbelieving): What?!
Sev (patiently, as though talking to a particularly stupid dog): Put sanitizer in your ears.
Tya: You are beyond a freak. I don't know what you are.

She squeezes a bit more of the blue gel onto her fingers and rubs some inside of each ear.

Sev inspects to make sure the interior where the headphones will touch her ears is completely covered.
He finds she has missed a spot and makes her apply more.

Tya (through clenched teeth): Are you happy now?

Sev (doubtfully handing over the earphones): I guess. This really isn't hygienic, you know.

Tya (grabbing the earphones): Über. Freak.

The above is something that could have possibly happened while we were driving to my MIL's place in the northeast of France last week, if my eldest daughter was very disorganised and my son a borderline OCD case....

2010-08-16T09:55:00.002+02:00

We're back in France now - 22 hours after our plane took off from Lincoln, Nebraska.

It was a trip full of surprises- including an unscheduled trip to Washington DC- too bad all we got to see there was the airport.
Then we had an extra stop in Frankfort before ending up in Geneva.
So, it was a bit of a trial getting here.

At least we got upgraded a couple of times. Not to First Class or even business class, but believe me, there is a huge difference between just Economy and Economy Plus. It was so great to end a long flight and not feel like I'd been folded up and stuffed into a small cupboard for nine hours...

2010-08-09T16:00:00.002+02:00

We're finally back from our epic camping trip across five states: Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Our farthest point east was camping along the shores of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin.

Mallory's favorite spot of the whole trip was the tiny town of Desmet, South Dakota. In fact, she wants to live there one day...

The thunderstorms didn't sweep us away and the mosquitos didn't devour us, though it was a near thing at times.

Valentine took hundreds of photos.. so expect to see some of those soon!

2010-07-18T22:51:00.002+02:00

One of the reasons I had to come back to Nebraska this summer was a party.
It was actually a pretty big party, but we didn't end up getting a good group shot of everyone.
I just have this:

We needed to celebrate the birthday of my Grandad!

It was a great time and a wonderful opportunity to catch up with family that I haven't seen for ages.
Good times!

2010-07-14T05:03:00.007+02:00

As a picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words, I figure that my only real hope of giving my readers any idea of what we're doing here in the USA lies in posting some photos.

First of all, no visit to the USA is complete without an enormous fiberglass animal statue, such as the World's Largest Holstein Cow up in North Dakota....or the slightly smaller, but no less beloved Giant Chicken of Lincoln, Nebraska.
This big guy roosts in the parking lot of a very popular local restaurant. Lee's has been around forever and some of my earliest memories involve eating there with my whole family. Grandpa Augie would invariably tell me to go over to ask the organist to play 'Love Letters in the Sand' and he'd give me a quarter for her big glass tip jar.
I must have done it dozens of times over the years, but I was always SO embarrassed...

It's not much to look at, but it was fun to take my kids to visit...and eat some of that amazing chicken!
Here's my mom and Tya at the bar:

(If you blow up the photo and look to the right of Tya, you can see that the organ is still there and the tip jar still sitting right on top of it)

But my home state of Nebraska is about so much more than Lee's fried chicken and old Pat Boone songs.
It's also about college football.
And, more specifically, college football merchandise:
Yes, the Huskers reign here and their insignia is to be found everywhere, on everyone, at all times. If you want to blend in here, all you have to do is wear a University of Nebraska t-shirt. It's a kind of uniform. As you can see, though, we haven't quite got that mastered yet and Tya's Goth wear kind of stands out like a sad, dark and mournful sore thumb...

We end up spending a lot of time in stores. When we're not looking at books and clothes, we're mostly to be found shopping for food. And when we do so, usually Tya grabs my camera, recruits her brother and heads off to document the fascinating world of the American supermarket. She seems particularly fascinated by the huge quantities and has quite a number of photos of Sev holding jumbo-sized containers of just about everything a person could want to eat.
For example:
They seem to have a good time, though the other shoppers aren't quite sure of what to make of them...

I have lots more photos and lots more to say about our trip. I just hope I can find the time to post them and do some more writing. I miss my blog!

2010-07-07T15:51:00.004+02:00

America!!
Land of the Brave and Home of the Free.

It also happens to be the home of big cars, big stores, and big people.
That's what has struck me most in the three days since we arrived here. There's so much space and so much stuff!
And that last item on my list was NOT a cheap crack about fat Americans. When I wrote 'big', it wasn't a euphemism for porky or obese. Americans are TALL. Since I've been here, I've seen several men close to seven feet tall.
Srsly.
Of course, this is a college town famous for football players. But still....

What have we been doing since we got here on Sunday night?

Well, when we're not visiting my Grandad Art, we are mainly out shopping.

Yesterday, we hit the jackpot at a local thrift shop and came home with armfuls of amazing, nearly new clothes. Tya did particularly well, finding stuff to work with her Goth look. So, that was a fun 17th birthday activity for her- along with a screening of the latest 'Twilight' opus and a feast at a locally famous restaurant that has a ridiculously yummy buffet.

So, a good time is being had by all.

2010-07-03T21:18:00.002+02:00

The house is tidy, the garden weeded, laundry done, fridge cleaned, and suitcases packed.

In short, we are ready to leave for the U S of A!

We'll go to the Geneva airport early tomorrow morning and catch the 9am flight to Newark...then another to Chicago....then, finally, a plane to my home town of Lincoln, Nebraska.

I just hope the housesitters turn up! They're supposed to be driving in tonight, but it's already 9:30.....

2010-07-01T08:52:00.005+02:00

On Monday, I was driving down the valley to go run some pre-trip errands in the "big city". My three girls were with me, indulging in one of their favorite recent pastimes: discussing all the tasty things they want to eat while they are visiting the USA this summer.

Top on the list is always Taco Bell. It may seem odd, but if you're a kid who only gets this stuff once every three years or so, I suppose you might really get to craving a fast food taco or two.

Then there are the breakfast cereals.
"Lucky Charms " Mallory announced. "Lucky Charms are the MOST delicious!"
"What about Froot Loops? We'll have Froot Loops, right?" Alexa chimed in, concerned that her favorite not be left out.
"That stuff tastes like mutant chemicals. " Tya sniffed from the front passenger seat.
"But it's goooood mutant chemicals!" Alexa insisted.
Mallory ignored the controversy.
"I like popsicles! We'll get popsicles? Right, mom?"
"Mmmmm." I answered, concentrating on the road, but giving it a vaguely positive intonation.
"And root beer?"

The other girls were quiet and let the master work. Mal was on a roll.

"And Cinnabon rolls? And Valentino's buffet? And Mountain Dew?"
"Mmmmmm!" I repeated, taking a particulary tricky curve. (People who have lived here for years have managed to drive off this road, tumble off the edge, down the to the valley floor and die in flames. I SO do not want to do that.)
"And those waffles? With that chocolate stuff?"
"Mmmmmm?" I inquired.
I hadn't heard this one before.
"You know! The frozen ones made by that strange white baking creature."
"Strange white...?" I said, baffled.
But then the light began to dawn.
"Yeah, mom!" Alexa chimed in "The little thing with the creepy staring black eyes!"
That clinched it.

Luckily, the hard part of my drive was over and I was able to safely laugh uproariously for a good long time at this very accurate description of the dreaded Pillsbury Poppin' Fresh Doughboy.

I am SO calling it "that strange white baking creature" from now on.

2010-06-26T08:03:00.005+02:00

My blog seems to have had plenty of rock and roll, lately. But today we just have rock. Lots of rock:When this rock was dumped in front of our house a few weeks ago, I was VERY happy and relieved. Our errant local landscaper (his previous exploits prominently featured here) had left us in somewhat of a lurch.
After industriously removing all cover off the slopes around the edge of our driveway, he made the bare slopes steeper....
.....and then disappeared again.

I was really beginning to worry that he'd taken our advance money and scampered off, never to be seen again in this life..
He'd signed papers when he took the money, of course, but I was beginning to envision a lawsuit. And the idea of initiating a lawsuit in France, against a guy who is the son of our ex-neighbors who live in the village, made me quake in my bottines.

I'd call him and ask when work would start and he'd assure me that the rocks would be delivered on a certain day, say Tuesday. Then I'd call the local rock and gravel place and ask if it was true.
Or if he'd even called them at all.
And it turned out it wasn't and he hadn't.
Then I'd call him and hear the most unlikely fantasies unfold...Well, they were lies, really, but why be mean about it?
He told me, for example, that the reason the office had no trace of a call from him was that he hadn't called the main office at all , but just talked to the owner's son.
Well, I CALLED the boss's son...and he said that he hadn't heard from the guy.

When confronted with this, my creative landscaper told me that the fellow had been DRUNK when they talked and must have forgotten.....

I felt like I was living in an alternate universe - a particularly nasty one inhabited mainly by compulsive liars.

And meanwhile, the dirt kept washing down the driveway.

But finally, this happened:
It was a huge relief to finally have the key element, which we'd already paid for, present.
I was finally able to start sleeping well at night again.
Not that all is a bed or roses, or even rocks, now.
The pile has now been sitting there for over three weeks. When I call the landscaper, I hear more creative fabrications that might even be entertaining ... if it weren't all so frustrating...

My yard is still slowly eroding down my driveway and into the Menoge River at the bottom of the valley, though.

Which kind of sucks.

But I do have rocks AND I'm going to be in the USA in one week! So, I have to say that I'm relatively happy, despite my small miseries....

2010-06-22T07:26:00.004+02:00

My older kids aren't the only ones getting public attention.
The twins are getting lots of press lately, too.

First, there was their fleeting (but impactful!) appearance on the national news here in France.

And now just yesterday, their dance recital Saturday night was covered in "Le Dauphiné Libéré" It's a newspaper filled with tons of regional news- there's plenty of accounts of village jumble sales and church choir concerts......but this was INTERESTING:
Mallory didn't make it into any photos, but Alexa is not hard to spot. She's the gorgeous one right in the center of the trio in the lower right photo. (I know you can't see well, but trust me-she's gorgeous!)

Here's the short article in a rough translation:
There was a crowd at the Chateau Rouge attending a recital of the ballet school association of Annemasse, given by Pirouette Dance School (located in Fillinges). On stage, several scenarios were created by Corinne C. with the theme "Our Hippie Years". It was a return to the 1970's organized around the songs and music of Gainsbourg, Bardot, ...(etc...)... A remarkable and notable evening.

Weird theme for the show, non?

I have to admit that it was pretty funny sometimes. For example, at one point, all the children came on the stage, waved their arms and started singing the old Baez song "Here's to You":

"Here's to you, Nicola and Bart
Rest forever here in our hearts
The last and final moment is yours
That agony is your triumph " they warbled cheerfully.

Why anyone would think it was apt for a bunch of French children to sing a tribute song to two anarchists executed in the USA in 1927 is anybody's guess...

I know it was popular in 1971, but so were many other songs...
How about "Joy to the World"? It's cute and contains no mention of "agony". Just frogs and fish. And kids like animals, right?

Or "Proud Mary"? That's a classic.

Anything would have been better, really...

Just not "Mr. Bojangles".
I HATE that song with a passion most people reserve for Nazi war crimes. It's one of those songs that makes me reach out and switch off the radio so fast that I'm in danger of fracturing my wrist.
Also "I Shot the Sheriff".

2010-06-21T09:27:00.006+02:00

Bad news.
The music festival yesterday was called off on account of the rain. That means no film and no photos.
I feel like a Bad Mom that I didn't do better at their last concert. I can't imagine how I LOST the video off my cell phone.
But I guess that's just how I roll....

Today I've been busy setting up things for our trip to the USA- we leave in 13 short days!! The last time we were there was in 2007, so everybody is pretty excited.
I've managed to get JP's visa sorted out. (He's currently in Ouagadougou, melting in the heat and enjoying only sporadic internet access.)
I've also booked and paid for our campsite in South Dakota.

Now I'm looking at rental cars. I often end up on sites written by French people, advising fellow citizens on their upcoming USA trips.

Here's one that I enjoyed that really gives a feeling for the differences between driving in France and driving in the USA. (I'll translate for you, but you can see the original here, which was written about Arizona):

"Coooool! Firearms may be freely sold here, but it's no problem- Americans are very respectful of the law. It's one of the paradoxes of this great country.
Forget about your latin driving. Here we've never hear a horn honking. And it's not because the light is green that you're not going to let a pedestrian cross.

In the city, you'll have the impression of seeing a film in slow motion. And in front of a school, slow-motion slows down even more.
And everyone respects the speed limits! Forget about passing 'à la Français' and "yes, but the light was orange". Try that on a cop over here and see how far it gets you...
The sign below perfectly summarizes the sense of humor of cops in the USA:

Interesting, huh? From what is said about the USA, you can derive a pretty precise picture of what driving in France is like.

In a word: insane.

People pass on blind curves like they (and everyone else on the road) are protected by magical powers.
And it's open season on pedestrians. Moms pushing strollers containing adorable babies, cute kids walking home from school- everyone is fair game....

And it isn't just me and the internet "authorities" that think so. Every anecdote I've heard from every French person I've ever met that has driven in the USA says the same thing: Americans are polite and sensible drivers and the French are maniacs.

I still drive like an American (safely and kindly) and make the other drivers here a little crazy- especially when I stop to let pedestrians pass, rather than running over their toes as they try to get across an intersection with their lives intact....

2010-06-20T11:06:00.011+02:00

You know how when you were about 10 years old and your grandma bought you a groovy pink and purple flower-covered diary with an adorable itty-bitty padlock and matching tiny key? And how at first you swore to yourself you'd write in it every single day? And how you did, at first?
But then how you slowly slacked off until you realized that eight months had passed and you hadn't written a word? And how it seemed hopeless to start up again because you'd missed so many vital events and catching the diary up would have been too gargantuan a task to contemplate?
Remember that?
No?
OK.
Never mind.

But I have to say that I find myself in a similar situation here. My beloved (by me, anyway!) blog has sat here unattended as I hosted hoardes (nice hoardes!!) of houseguests, played tour guide, and did some fairly blog-worthy stuff.
And now I have to get it up to date.
Where to begin?

On Friday (June 11th!), as the Auxillary Twins neared the end of their stay with us, three fabulous new guests had to be picked up at the train station. MLW was arriving from NYC, via Paris, with her 18 year old niece and two year old daughter in tow.

(I haven't asked if they want to be pictured on my blog. So all you get today is a back view of Possibly The World's Cutest Toddler.)

Then on Saturday, the parents of the Auxillary Twins arrived. They'd pushed up their trip by one day so as not to miss the concert that Valentine and Sev's band were to play in that night. I thought it was so lovely that they were interested and made the effort! And SO encouraging for Tya, who was quite, quite nervous by then.

Just as these new guest pulled up, JP was off to pick up Tya's godmother and her husband in Geneva. (They are real city-folk and neither one drives) So, the support crowd of fans for The Boxmen was growing by the minute.

I whipped up a little dinner for 15 people (ha!) and then we headed off to the concert, packed into two cars. We would have made the Shriner Clowns proud- we had seats for 12, but 13 people needed to go, so we just piled in and made the 10km drive up the valley, hoping not to see the police along the way.

The concert was primarily for the younger students of the "School of Rock" of our little mountain valley and was held in a small community hall. When we walked into the crowded, tiny building , we easily found the 13 seats at the front that the band had reserved for us at the very front.
As I sat down, Sev came over to me and informed me that he would be SINGING with another band that night.
"Just one song" he said with a feigned casual air. "They asked if anybody knew "Smells Like Teen Spirit", so I tried it with them and it worked. Gotta go now." And he stuck his iPod earphones back in and wandered off.

Talk about surprises!

First the younger groups played (5th and -6th graders). There were a few of my English students from last year. SO cute!
Then the older groups went on. Most of them were pretty decent, music-wise. The only problem was the singing.
Not good. At all.
One young woman's version of "Knocking on Heaven's Door" sounded more like what they must play just outside the gates of Hell.

A certain amount of smirking and groaning went on in the crowd, which I thought was dreadful. Yes, much of the singing was American Idol crazy reject bad, but these were just nervous kids. I smiled from my front-row seat and tried to send mental waves of encouragement and kindness.

And I hoped someone would do the same if my kids or their friends messed up...

The next band consisted of three adults. They played a couple of songs and then Sev came on stage with them, looking hugely tall and gawky in that way only 14 year old boys growing too fast can manage.
But as for stage presence? Chatting with the crowd? Getting a laugh? Sev was all over that. Then he launched into a parody of the famous Nirvana song!
It was so funny- it's really a shame that most of the people there didn't speak English!
"Now I'm mumbling, and I'm screaming and I don't know what I'm singing!"
I'm not saying that he sang it completely in tune. But then, does melody really count in a Kurt Cobain song?
I was just amazed that he was so at ease. And the crowd seemed to love it, despite the language thing. (Most of the groups were singing in English anyway, so everyone was pretty used to not getting the lyrics....)

After a couple more decent groups, The Boxmen came on. And that's when my normally somewhat shy Valentine showed us all that she was born to front a rock band.
I was completely astounded!They sounded GOOD! Really good! Like about 1000 times better than anyone else there. Their music was great, Tya's singing was impressive and they seemed to have FUN! You could really tell that they all like each other and enjoy being together.

"The crowd went wild", as they say. Everyone really seemed to appreciate them and the compliments afterwards were...vastly gratifying!

The best compliments came from their teacher... he was, obviously, SO, pleased with them. He pointed out to me that The Boxmen members are not the youngest kids in the association and are by far the least experienced. Max and Sev (guitar and bass) had never touched an instrument before September! And the drummer only had one year of experience.

On top of that, all of the other groups had been playing together for at least a year or more. But somehow The Boxmen blew them all out of the water. Their teacher is expecting great things next year!

Yes, I did film it.
No, I cannot show it to you.
The recording seems to be lost.
Can't find it on my camera!!!!!

But here's the thing- their great performance earned them a spot at the village music festival! And that's today! And for the event, I've borrowed a decent camera from a friend. So, maybe I'll be able to show you something soon...

It's lucky they're able to go perform today...On Tuesday, their drummer made a wild leap off a picnic table at school, trying to grab cherries off a tree (a common pastime for bored high school students at their lycée (high school), or so Valentine has informed me). He hit the ground, dislocating and breaking his right shoulder.
Ouch.
He's ok now- has to have his arm in a sling for a month and a half...and may need surgery. But at least he didn't break his neck....Could have been worse, as we like to say back in Nebraska.

The Boxmen have recruited their teacher to play the drums, just for this last gig.
And hopefully their drummer will be fully recovered by September...

2010-06-10T14:49:00.004+02:00

The Guest Twins (featured in previous posts) have adapted well to life in a French/American household.

Maybe too well.

We seem to have gotten them hooked on "Nouvelle Star" (The French 'American Idol' spin-off)
They've been watching it with us for the last two weeks and are now plotting a way to get their parents to let them watch the final show next week. They are pretty optimistic, as they'll be staying in a hotel and presumably have access to a TV....

(Here I'll just insert a hearty "sorry" to the parents of the Guest Twins, who probably would rather their children do something else during their dream vacation in France than watch TV)

But I have to admit that I love this show.
Yes- a year ago, I hated it, but now I adore it.
I guess I'm becoming more French? I even think it's better than American Idol, which has been getting saddder and more disappointing with every season. Somebody needs to stick a wooden stake, Buffy-like, in that thing and mercifully let it crumble into dust.
And then gather up all the dust and launch every molecule of it into outer space.
Srsly.

But NS is still fresh and interesting and manages to get some really unique talent. And this season, the show has boasted my favorite candidate, ever! She's a quirky, incredibly talented and lovely 20 year old from Montpellier.

And last night, she sang one of my favorite songs, ever.
You've got to hear this!

2010-06-08T14:16:00.006+02:00

A few posts back, I mentioned that my twins (along with their whole class, of course) were going to be on French television.
Well, the show was finally aired today on the national one o'clock news on TF1 (the most popular channel, if you recall)

JP and I were at home and saw it on our big screen TV. When it finally got to the classroom scene, it was all I could do not to get all Mrs. Bennet and shriek "I was sure she could not be so beautiful for nothing!".
I only just restrained myself, but when you watch the video for yourself, you will notice that the camera person seemed to like Alexa's looks, as did the editor of the piece. She gets a close-up early on in the school scene and then again at the very end of the program.

Besides seeing both of my adorable younger daughters, you'll also get a look at the region where I live. It's even prettier than it looks in the show.

The segment (which you can see here. After the advertisement is over , click the "chapitres" button if you don't want to watch the whole 30 minute program. Go to chapters 11-19. Then click on the third picture from the end. it's a little photo of the girls' class. Can't miss it. ) is part of a series that TF1 is doing this week about the 150th anniversary of the annexation of the Savoy into France.

Today's installment was about the regional dialect of the area. And as my girls are in a Savoyard class in school, they got to be on the news.

2010-06-05T16:34:00.003+02:00

Yesterdays's shopping spree was great fun, but today hasn't been so shabby, either. We spent the day in Geneva.
Our Guest Twins were particularly keen to go, as they'd never been to Switzerland before.
All the girls had a great time shopping and doing all the usual tourist stuff:

From the photos, you'd guess it was a perfect day.

And it was, mostly.
(Except for the part where Mallory vomitted in the back of the car and got it all over her pants, obliging me to immediately buy her a new pair at the H&M. And then when the parking ticket machine short-changed me 30 Swiss Francs and the attendent said I'd get paid back "eventually, probably".)

2010-06-04T17:04:00.002+02:00

Today I have something for you all that is much better than dirt and rocks.
I bring you this:

The short version is: Mallory won a 200 euro shopping spree at the shopping mall!

Here's the longer version: Our pals from Portland came early this week and left us their twin daughters (who have already featured heavily in my blog, back in our Ouagadougou days).
So, for the next two weeks, I have four 12 year old twins ..which is kind of fun and certainly unusual.
Today, they got out of school early. I'd pre-arranged it so that the guests could attend school with my girls. Mallory was begging to go swimming, but the local pool isn't open yet. So, I proposed to take them to a nearby shopping mall.
We jumped into the car and made the 15 minute drive to the rather small facility. In the 16 years since it was built, it's lost a lot of it's luster. And, as a general rule, France cannot compete with the USA in terms of shopping malls.
I'm not saying that's good or bad.
I'm just sayin'....

The main attractions the place holds for Mal and Al are the H &M and Claire's. After these two sites were thoroughly examined by the four twins, we decided to do a circuit of the mall (which would take about three minutes, tops) and then stop for a snack.
Alexa and I lagged behind the other three. She was showing me choice stuff in a jewlery store window. (That girl does have taste. Her budget runs more towards Claire's, but she likes the expensive stuff.)
When we caught up with the others, they were in line at a stand that had been set up. People were being given little cards. When the nice hostess inserted said cards into a big machine, annoying music ensued. Then the machine printed out the "prizes", which mostly seemed to consist of coupons for 10 percent off at various shops in the mall. Which was ok, but not exciting.

What was exciting was when Mallory's card provoked a printout that was worth 200 euros! I couldn't quite believe it, but when the bald guy with the microphone and crazy pink tie came up to interview us, I began to believe!

Mallory had one hour to spend 200 euros in any one (or two, max) of the shops in the mall. She ended up getting a portable dvd player, a digital camera (which has been her dream for the last year!) and some goodies from Claire's for herself, her twin and her two friends from the USA.

I feel guilty saying this, but the shopping spree was fun...a lot more fun than getting the cash and dutifully putting it in the bank. Mallory and the other girls had a blast!

What a great way to end the week!

2010-06-03T09:07:00.005+02:00

The title of today's post is: More Than You Could Possibly Ever Wish to Know About My Front Yard. (Catchy, no?)

So, below is a shot of the major problem we are dealing with. As you can see, there is a newly-poured staircase squatting right in the middle of a dirt-covered slope. The dirt in question constantly crumbles off the slope (as dirt tends to do) and ends up on our nice, newly-paved driveway.
Now, the whole point of paving the driveway was....wait for it.....NOT to have a driveway full of dirt.
So, we've got a problem.

Our answer to this problem was to hire a local landscaper to fix up the situation. I will not, because of my love and affection for my readers, go into the gruesome details of this. All I will say is, that if you knew what I've been through with this guy over the last month and a half, your brains would explode.
I know mine have.
Suffice it to say, we paid an advance in mid-April and he just finally showed up YESTERDAY to start working.
The idea is that he's going to dig back into the slope and then put boulders along it. Then he'll fill in with dirt and plants to make it look spiffy.
Here he is (finally!) industriously digging away:

It just so happened that I was out taking a few pictures for my blog (and for JP, who is in Bamako right now and is missing all the fun), when there was almost a Tragic Yet Hilarious Incident.

There he was:

When suddenly:

The backhoe took a nosedive off the top edge and down towards the pavement. It looked like it was going to tip right over. I don't have a close-up of this moment, as I was more concerned about having to call emergency services (What's the number for the paramedics again? 18? Or is that the fire department? Or poison control? 17? 15? Oh merde! )

but the guy's face had a look of deep concern that one might venture to have called "pure panic".

Somehow, though, he managed to get the bucket into place in time and push himself back up.
If I would have had a video camera with me and the thing had gone over, I SO would have sent it to "France's Funniest Home Videos".

Or at least YouTube.

Despite his entertaining and clown-like antics, he did manage to make some progress:

And he's back again this morning, attacking a few other problems we have in our yard (which you'll soon be well-acquainted with, don't worry). The backhoe is rented for just a couple of days, so he'll get all the digging done today and then start in on the other work by Monday.

So, expect more thrilling photos of dirt very soon...and maybe there will even be some big rocks to go with it!

2010-05-30T18:41:00.006+02:00

We just spent the last two weekends at the Andilly Grandes Medievales, with the Full Package Family Four-Day Deluxe Pass of Awesomeness.
Because that's how we roll.

(Please be sure to take note the sewing that has been keeping me busy: a new green skirt for Valentine, a complete red, black and white costume for Alexa and flower crowns for the twins.

Also, on two days, I dressed up a bit myself! )

One merchant that I talked to at this huge French ren faire asked me if I found things at this faire that I'd never seen in other places. I had to admit that I hadn't been to a faire in the USA since about 1990 and had no clue what's on offer these days. But I hastened to assure him that this one was really lovely and well-done and all the things on offer very charming. The diplomatic answer and, fortunately, also true.

Besides the usual jousting and falconry and the rest, we also lucked onto something extra-great: a fencing club from a town near where we live had a camp there! Sev was able to talk to the arms master and see about taking medieval sword-fighting. Sev did "normal"(Olympic-style) fencing back in Ouaga, but we hadn't found anything here in France nearby.

The guy was really nice and said Sev could start in September and see if it suited him.

So, that was a lucky circumstance!

We all had a great time and I especially enjoyed hearing the compliments roll in over my "magnifique" children.

Now i have to get back to work. the kids and I have been cleaning and re-arranging all day.

Our good pals from Portland (and Ouaga) are arriving tomorrow night!

Fun shall ensue....

2010-05-25T14:16:00.005+02:00

I spent a busy three-day weekend (Pentecost Monday, anyone?) that drove all thoughts and possibilities of blogging out of my mind.
More on the weekend later. Before I go on to new and exciting activities, I have to finish telling you about Italy...not that there's lots to tell.
But I do have pictures!

No festival would be complete without a dorky mascot and this thing was nothing if not complete. So, the minute we got off the bus, we were all herded along to join the giant fuzzy...whatever it was and get a group photo taken. I cleverly avoided this by whipping out my own camera and playing Ofiicial Group Photographer and Archivist.

If you look, you can see Mal in a bright blue sweater and Alex nearby with a long pink scarf.

We spent most of the morning tramping around the village, going from workshop to workshop. I was a tad grumpy, as I'd gotten assigned a group of 6th graders from another school, rather than the group my twins and their pals were in. And this group of 17 kids already had two adults with them and didn't even need me..grumble, bitch, complain, etc... So, I couldn't take any pictures of my girls.

Instead, I took a few of the landscape, which was a nice one. In this region of Italy, the roofs are all covered in slate. Very pretty!

The little metal hooks on the roof are to keep the snow from falling off in big chunks and crushing people....

As I said in my previous post, there were about a thousand kids there. And all of us ate together in an enormous tent. The din was deafening, but the food was quite nice. Only the italians would serve 1000 kids a starter of al dente pasta with fresh tomato sauce, followed by a veal stew (sort of like the French blanquette de veau). The dessert was an ice cream bar -a "gelato della panna" that was SO good!
And drinks? There was local apple juice for the kids and bottles of wine for the adults. So civilized these Europeans.
Now that I think about it, I suppose I AM a bit European...but I'm not European enough to be comfortable even drinking a smidge of alcohol at mid-day on a school trip. I stuck to water. Guess my Nebraska roots were showing. ... which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Here's a picture that Mallory took. She used her DSi camera mode and took about 300 pictures, many of them blurry, bless her heart. But the ones that were in focus were quite good!

After our idyll in the Heidi-esque mountain village, we piled back into the bus and descended into the valley to go explore the ancient town of Aoste.
Well, "explore" is a big word...we only had one hour of free time!

It's a pretty interesting place- the area has been settled since pre-historic times, of course, but it really got on the map when a Roman colony was established. It was called Augusta Praetoria Salassorum. T
This (pic below) was the eastern gate to the colony at the time. It's called the Porta Praetoria and was built in the 1st century BC. It used to be faced in marble, but that's long since gone and carried off for other projects...

Very cool!
Seeing all the Roman ruins (the town has tons. lol) almost made up for the suffering I endured. No, my iPod never did come unblocked during the trip. I had to endure the whole trip with no decent music or podcasts. Mallory lent me hers for a bit, sweet child. However, , while I don't mind Fall Out Boy and Green Day, it's not the stuff that's going to get me through six hours on a bus...

So, that's it for Italy. Tomorrow you get to hear about yet another Ren Faire.

I'll just add that progress is being made on our new room! As I write, JP and a pal are installing the radiator. The floor will go in after that's done.

Also- Alexa just phoned and asked to stay an hour later at school. It seems that a tv crew has come to do a story about Savoyard being taught in French schools and her class is being featured. It's supposed to air on TF1 in a week or so. (TF1 is a big deal! From Wikipedia : "TF1's average market share of 25-35% makes it the most popular domestic network. TF1 is the largest European television channel by its audience.")

So, that's all kind of exciting!

2010-05-21T13:37:00.007+02:00

Italy: sunny, sophisticated, stylish.

While France may have a rep for being sophisticated and seductive, our neighbor to the south takes the cake (or rather 'torta'). Though I often see dowdy French folks sporting faded jogging pants in our local supermarket on the weekend , I think it might be forbidden by law for Italian people to go out the door looking less than impeccable.

At least, that's how it looked to me- based on a one-day whirlwind trip to the north of Italy on Tuesday.

You may be wondering how I ended up cruising around the Val d'Aoste in a giant doubledecker bus bursting at the seams with 76 junior high kids?

Well, I'll tell you, I wondered about that myself as I struggled to open the window and get some relief from the hormonal whiffiness of a herd of 12 and 13 year olds mostly unacquainted with deodorant.

I also wondered that as I turned on my iPod about half an hour into the three hour trip to get there and the screen promptly froze. I had nothing with me to read. And I had nothing to listen to but the chattering and the squealing.....

(Mallory does love her candid shots. I was giving some rowdy kids my "Look of Doom". Don't I look like a crabby old thing? )

Not that they weren't nice kids. And not that I wasn't happy to be asked to accompany the twins' sixth grade class (and a few other classes!) on their trip to a Franco-Provençal festival being held in the tiny alpine village of La Thuile.

Hey! I figured. A free trip to Italy! What's not to like?

Well, it turns out there were a few things not to like, like the fact that it took so long to get there. We left at 7am and drove for three hours. Then we had to be back on the road by six . So we had had only eight hours of visiting for over six hours of travel..

But mostly it was fine and a good time was had by all.

The majority of the day was taken up by the festival. My twins (and all the other kids on the bus) study Savoyard a few hours each week as one of their language options. So, after they've been to French class, English class and German class, they head to the classroom of Monsieur B. He's the math teacher, but has a not-so-secret identity as an accordeon-playing Savoyard activist.

Savoyard is a local dialect that is slowly dying out and not getting any support from the French state, in contrast to the more prestigious dialects of Brittany and Alsace. The Franco-Provençal family of languages (to which Savoyard belongs) is found in a pretty small area and the speakers tend to stick together. So, our school was of many in the region invited to this big three-day festival.

-I'm going to stop here for now. Blogger is bugging out and refusing to let me post any more photos. I'll try again later tonight and tell you the rest of the story....

2010-05-16T18:39:00.005+02:00

Thanks to everyone for all the kind comments and sympathy.

Your support really does make me feel a bit better!

As you may imagine, we're not too cheerful around here, but we are getting on with things.
JP got the sign hung over the door of the new addition to the house. It's a piece of wood that an elderly neighbor carved for us when we first moved here. He's a lovely old fellow and has fashioned signs for many local people and businesses.
Ours says "Welcome to La Corbiere" :

The rhubarb is coming up nicely and JP even repainted the rabbit that stands guard over it.

Now that I read back over what I've written, it makes it look like only JP has been keeping busy.
Au contraire!
Severin and I were out in the garden today, putting in the potatoes and a few more plants.

There's only a bit of space in the middle now for the green beans.

It's been so cold lately, we were waiting for warmer weather. But as it's the middle of May already, we decided that we'd best get cracking...

Not far from the garden, just to the north, is the spot where we buried our Mr. Darcy:

2010-05-14T17:01:00.001+02:00

Mr Gaspar Darcy died today at 3pm. He was a Good Cat and will be greatly missed by those who loved him.

2010-05-12T15:43:00.003+02:00

It's been raining for the last few days and I haven't been able to resist torturing my kids with a very bad joke that I first heard back in the halls of Lakeview Elementary School.
Why don't I inflict it on you, too?
Q:If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?
A:Pilgrims.
OK, possibly the worst joke ever- but I figure that kids need to be exposed to this kind of stuff in the home so they have a good resistance to it later in life...

The kids all have a day off school tomorrow. The older ones are even getting Friday off. I just hope the weather improves so that we can get some gardening done. We have to get our potatoes in soon or suffer the shame of having to buy all of our potatos in the fall.

And now the bad news. It's the bad news that is probably going to turn into very bad news in the near future: Mr. Darcy had been looking much improved, but is now getting worse again. I'll take him to the vet again on Friday, but I'm afraid that they've really done all they can for him. Cats are supposed to live a long time, right?
Ours is only eight years old.
I am SO not ready for Mr. D to go.

2010-05-09T19:26:00.004+02:00

This morning we packed up a picnic and headed for the village of Cluses, where they were having a medieval festival to celebrate their 700th anniversary of the town charter.

All I can say is, if that's how they celebrate 700 years, I'd hate to see them when they weren't making an effort, because it was sad.
Srsly.
My kids offered some of the best entertainment that was to be had and will be appearing the the photo albums of many French families. Not that the kids did much- they just walked around looking good...but that was enough for the crowd of people who came out on a rainy day for a family outing and were disappointed not to find much entertainment.
Severin showed his Tuareg sword to impresse small kids.
The little girls all loved the three "princesses", of course.

(Sorry that Sev made a funny face here, but the girls look cute and the photo turned out mostly pretty well)

Here's the new cape I sewed up for Mallory this week:

Valentine got an elaborate hairstyle and a new cape, too:

Alexa wore some amazing celtic-looking earrings we found at the thrift shop for 2 euros. Win!

After we got back home, we quickly changed and went to a flea market being held in a village near our home. I found EXACTLY what I needed: A toddler car seat for only 3 euros (for some vistors we'll be having next month!) and some boots and shoes that fit Tya for only 1 euro per pair. I even got a good deal on plants for the garden- six cabbages and six lettuces for only three euros! That far outdoes the price at the garden centers around here!
Today was a good Mother's day for me!
Hope all you other moms out there had a good one, too!

2010-05-08T21:27:00.003+02:00

The first bit of news I have is that our Mr. Darcy is looking a lot better. The meds have eased his breathing and he seems to enjoy life again. It's a pretty calm life, as he spends most of the day in a chair by the fireplace. He gets up for the litter box and food and that's it.
So, he's not the cat he was. but we're glad to have him around for as long as he can stay with us...
I was very relieved to see Mr. D feeling better, as I had a busy weekend planned.
Today was the day I'd promised to help a friend (single mom) clean the junk out of her yard and garage. My two eldest elected to help out, too. And the twins came along to play with the cats there. As the friend is a cat breeder, there are plenty of them.
We ended up filling a huge bin:

This was only about a quarter of what needed to be thrown away (And no, I'm not including Tya, Sev and their pal in that statement!) but we only had the one bin.

It only took us about an hour to do it, which was good, as I still had sewing to do back at home.
Yes, we're going to yet another Faire and I needed to get a cloak sewn for Tya. This Faire is tomorrow in the village of Cluse, which is celebrating the 700th anniversary of the town charter. Should be great fun!
I might even dress up myself!

2010-05-05T13:21:00.003+02:00

I have blogged quite a few times about our two cats. We have our Number One Principal Main Cat (AKA Mr. Gaspar Darcy) and our Number Two Adorable Back-up Cat (aka Cleo/ Meeper/ Girl Kitty)

This is Mr. D in happier days.

The days are less happy now because he's very, very ill.

He'd been under the weather for about a week when I took him to see the vet last Thursday. The vet thought it was pneumonia, but the antibiotics didn't help. By Sunday, things seemed dire and on Monday, I was pretty sure he was going to die.

The vet that saw him on Monday quickly determined that our Gaspar had no infection of the lungs... In fact, his lungs were full of water because his heart is diseased and has congestive heart failure.

And that is just as bad as it sounds.

He's on medications now and is at home with us, but the prognosis is bad. Most cats with his condition and symptoms only live an average of 92 days after diagnosis.

It's crazy how bad it feels even just to write that....

2010-05-01T18:11:00.003+02:00

The weather forecast yesterday evening announced that the next day would be rainy. And that's why I was sewing cloaks until late at night. If the twins didn't have cloaks, you see, they'd get too cold and wet at the Medieval Faire!

Yes, we just attended our first Faire of 2010. It was a small one, but good and also FREE, which is always a plus.

All four of the kids came, as well as Tya's good pal Valentin.

There was plenty to see and do.

Despite the gray skies, it wasn't all that cold. We even managed to have a nice picnic.
The lady at the stand below had some interesting old plants: rue, angelica, borage, hyssop, burdock...lots of stuff I'd herd of, but never seen before.

The Faire was held in the village of Arthaz-Pont-de-Notre-Dame, just a 15 minute drive from our house!

BTW:
Happy International Workers' Day!

2010-04-29T13:14:00.003+02:00

Mallory is our Nature Girl. Plants and animals are her thing - which is good, otherwise we wouldn't have this:

It's a little flower patch near our brand new back door.

Mal's also been out in the vegetable garden, putting in the first lettuce plants. (And no, you can't have her or even just "borrow her. I need her here.)
Below we see Mallory and a dog- a nice, elderly, blind in one eye and mostly deaf sheepdog.

Ciboulette ('Chives' in English) is a good old dog and has worked hard all her life herding sheep and is now enjoying a well-deserved retirement. She belongs to our friends who were visiting during the last holiday. Her time chez nous was much appreciated by Mallory, who (of course) adores all dogs. Mal even completely forgave Ciboulette for laying several times in the brand new flower bed and crushing the baby flowers.

Here you can see a bit more of what we've been up to, house-wise:

The four layers of varnish are on the addition!

Yay!

What wasn't so great was the fact that we got varnish all over the borrowed ladder we used. It took the kids hours to scrub it clean again. (Have I mentioned recently how sweet my kids are? They are sweet...and hardworking, too!)

Here's a shot of everyone hard at work varnishing the carport. It's hard to tell, but there are six people under there working, plus baby Yasmine clinging to her mom and getting varnish on her clothes.

I promise to post more pics soon- we're going to have some landscaping (fancy!) done, so I'll definitely want to show our status as everything progresses!

2010-04-28T15:05:00.007+02:00

Reader’s Meme

(Courtesty of Oreneta )

The rules: Bold the ones you've read completely and italicize the ones you've read part of. Watching the movie or the cartoon doesn't count. Abridged versions don't count either. According to the BBC, if you've read 7 of these, you are above the average.* My comments are in parenthesis.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (good book, but I like ‘Persuasion’ better)
2. The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (I spent my teen years reading moody gothic novels. Good fun!)
4. Harry Potter Series - J.K. Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (for school. didn't think it was all THAT)
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell (made me cry!)
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott (many, many times)
12. Tess of the D'Ubervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk (Never heard of it or him. Is that bad?)
18. Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger (annoying)
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell (one of my favorite books.)
22. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (I never understood why kids were supposed to like this book. I found it SO annoying. Hated it!)
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (A fun book to read outloud for your kids!)
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (TBR)
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (TBR)
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Why is this crummy book on this nice list?)
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (« The Moonstone » is a better book, IMHO)
46. Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery(The whole series!!!!)
47. Far from the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (I love this book, but it's too sad to read it very often)
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding (ever read 'John Dollar'? Even creepier!)
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons (I love this book!! You should read it too!!) #
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
60. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (Read it for a class and managed to completely erase nearly every detail of it from my mind afterwards. Good for me!)
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (What is this doing here?!)
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden -Frances Hodgson Burnett(Big FHB fan!!)
74. Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce (No! Never! Gah!)
76. The Inferno-Dante
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola (My daughter is reading this for school right now-says it is very depressing and very long)
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - A.S. Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (I’ve only read « Never Let me Go »)
85. Madam Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ( sooo good!!)
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (so annoying!)
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down -Richard Adams (One of my favorite books of all time. One of my « comfort reads »)
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (I never like Roald Dahl as a kid, but I started to enjoy his stuff as I read it to my own kids. 'The BFG' is the best!)
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

My additions:

101. The Lamplighter- Maria Cummins

102. Endurance- Alfred Lansing

103. The Jungle- Upton Sinclair

104. Precious Bane- Mary Webb

105.Black Beauty- Anna Sewel

*Is this TRUE? It seems like a very low number to me....

# I've added my own twists to the meme:

a. red bold for all the books you really love and would recommend that other people read.

b. list five books that you think should have been on the list.

Also- isn't this list kind of strange? Why would crap like 'The DaVinci Code' and 'Bridget Jones' be on it? And why the obscure modern stuff? I'd never even heard of, say, "The Cloud Atlas" (though I looked it up and it seems to be pretty interesting). Still. Odd.

2010-04-26T14:49:00.004+02:00

Part III of « How to Buy a Huge, Old, Expensive Chandelier Without Even Trying »

So, there I was blithely walking around the hotel, unaware that dramatic lighting was in my future. JP told me he was going to write in a bid for the next day’s auction , I merely gave a vague « Mmmm.. that’s nice » and went back to inspecting the gruesome brown tile in the 1970’s bathroom with horrified fascination.

« Somebody chose this tile. On purpose !» I marvelled to myself.

I saw JP wander off and get into line to place his bid, but I just smiled indulgently. Kind of like when your 12 year old announces he’s going to be 'Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter' when he grows up. There’s a slight chance that you’ve got something to worry about. But it’s much more likely that it’s not going to happen.
That was my policy on the chandelier.
I found out that I was wrong a few days later when JP came down the stairs and said « Guess what? ».
I’d heard the phone ring a moment before and had figured that he’d picked it up…but I had no good guesses in mind.

Not a one.
Then he said « We got it » and I somehow knew immediately what he was talking about wasn’t something as bad as, say, head lice, but was definitely not something I would unconditionally like, such as winning a million Euros in the lottery.

Call it wifely intuition.
« We got the chandelier and we need to pick it up by tomorrow night. »
Surprise!
At least, it was a complete surprise to me.
Now, at this point, I actually could still have stopped this. We still had the right to refuse to buy the thing. But JP really wanted it and I was beginning to think that it would look kind of funky and unconventional hanging in our new room.

There’s also this: when I was a kid, a local restaurant in my hometown shut down. « Diamond Jim’s » was supposed to be pretty fancy, I guess. ( I am very hazy on the details and have GOT to ask my mom for details the whole thing) The simple version of the story is that the place sold off the furnishing and my parents ended up with two things:
a. the top part of a wooden partition set with panels of red plexi-glass.

(Yes, it was just as awful as it sounds. But hey- it was the 70’s. I don’t have to defend anything.)

and
b. a crystal chandelier
Strange coincidence, or what?
We were not, in the general way of things, crystal chandelier kind of people. In the early years, the family living room featured a gun cabinet as the major piece of furniture. (Yes, it was full of guns. Thank you for asking) But then suddenly we had a chandelier and the guns got moved to the basement and we were looking pretty fancy.

Today (40 years later!) that chandelier hangs in the foyer of my parents' very lovely home and looks pretty gorgeous.
So, I hardly had the heart to quash JP’s chandelier project. It’s possible that in 40 years I still may be looking at, enjoying the darn thing and all the funny memories behind it, right?
So, I got busy helping find someone to retrieve it. Luckily, Monica's husband didn’t have to work the next afternoon, so he and his son went to go get it for us.

From what he told me later, getting it was just awful. They showed up and were told to get the thing down and carted off, pronto. That’s right- they were expected to take it off the ceiling alone! They borrowed a ladder and a few tools and just barely managed to get the thing down. D said it was just sheer luck that he’d brought his 14 year old along for company and he didn’t know how he would have managed if he hadn’t. I felt pretty bad putting them to so much trouble…
They loaded it in the back of their station wagon drove off to meet up with JP. They had to pass the Swiss border and hope they didn’t get stopped. JP was waiting at the drop-off point in the parking lot of a cinema multiplex. He got the chandelier wrestled into our car, paid back D the money for the thing and then gave his son some cash for helping out. The whole transaction seemed vaguely like a particularly incompetent drug deal …
For a few days, the thing sat on the floor in the new room. But then JP wanted to varnish in there, so then it sat right in the middle of the kitchen for a few days.
So, I was vastly relieved to come back from an outing to Evian one day and fine the chandelier hanging in its rightful place! The electrician had come to finish wiring the room and had (with the help of two assistants and JP) gotten it up and running.

(I had taken some pics of it laying on the floor around the house, but I can't find them. If I do, I'll edit and post them)

It lights up the room quite well and certainly gets remarks from all the visitors...

2010-04-25T11:08:00.005+02:00

A few weeks ago, I left my blog-readers with a nail-biter of a cliff-hanger: What unlikely and inappropriate object would JP end up dragging home from the hotel auction in Switzerland? A solid silver spittoon? An elephant -foot umbrella holder? A case of slightly-used pillow mints?
The truth , my friends, is somewhat stranger, and probably somewhat more expensive…

When we walked in the door of the huge old hotel, it didn’t occur to me that we would be buying anything. I was there strictly to gawk, and believe me, there was plenty to gawk at. As I mentioned in my previous post about the Royal Savoy, the place underwent a series of « unfortunate events » in the form of redecoration frenzies. One of the latest and most disastrous of these resulted in the place having a large stock of macramé wall hangings and wall-clocks made of olive-green pottery.
Yes, the 1970’s had struck hard and lethally at the old hotel.
Fortunately, they hadn’t gone completely mad and gotten rid of all the fine old antiques, but it made for some pretty odd juxtapositions- fine old 19th century landscapes hung beside terrible abstract paintings from the early 70’s, brown vinyl « leather » chairs beside a beautiful 17th century marqueterie bed.

There was plenty to gawk and the place was packed with people poking into every corner of the place, hunting for goodies. Some of them seemed obviously professional- restaurant and hotel owners hoping to snap up some useful equipment and furnishings. Some were obviously wealthy people looking for marqueterie beds and the like. Some of the latter group had me thinking: after you have been pumped full of huge amounts Botox and the Clostridium bacilum DNA in you starts to outnumber the human DNA, are you still, technically, a Homo sapien? Just asking…

Also, apparently a lot of people didn’t get the memo that excessive tanning is, like, really bad for you.

Anyway, we wandered around the first floor, admiring the fine silver and china, recoiling from the wads of knotted rope and finally went into the main dining room. This was the room that held the worst of the macramé, pottery and scribbly, depressing paintings. But looking up at the ceiling, things got rather better. There were nine large, rather beautiful crystal chandeliers.

JP liked them.
He liked them a lot.
He wrote down the lot number for one of them. (It’s the one at the front in the photo.)
He asked me what I thought.
I said:
a. It’s pretty,
b. It would look strange in a wooden chalet-style room
and
c. You wouldn’t get it anyway. There will be tons of bidders and the price will go too high..

After this, I didn’t really give it another thought.
My lovely pal Monica (who is also much smarter than me) spoke to me about it as we went upstairs and went through the rooms.
« You know Jean-Pierre really wants to bid on that chandelier, right? »
« He can write in a bid if he likes. I’m sure he’ll never get it. There’s too many people here- people with way more money than we have. »
« Are you sure? » She didn’t look convinced.
« Yes, I’m sure! » I said confidently « Otherwise I’d have to stop him from bidding, because we really don’t need a huge, expensive chandelier. »
The starting price on the thing was 600 Swiss Francs.
My plan for lighting our new room involved going to a hardware store and paying less than 100 euros for something. My idea was not to be elegant. What I had in mind was this: to not be sitting around in the dark and to not have an empty bank account.
That’s it.
But, of course, my simple, cheap plan was not to be.

To be continued....

2010-04-20T20:12:00.002+02:00

Here is just one of the many places I've been in the past few days.
Nice, huh?
And get this: as we wandered around inside, we ran into the owner of the place and that kindly old gentleman gave us an insiders look at some of the rooms not open to the public!
very cool!

I hope to get a chance to write more, when our guests have gone home and the school holiday is over... This "vacation" has got me worn OUT!

2010-04-14T07:03:00.004+02:00

My poor, neglected computer. The best it’s gotten from me the last two weeks has been an absentminded pat on the monitor as I race by it on my way downstairs at six am every morning.
It’s been getting far more attention from the twins and Severin, who like to stand around and bicker viciously over it like three starving badgers fighting over the last bite of road kill squirrel. My answer to this was (as it is to so many of life’s questions) to make a schedule. So, the twins each get one hour on alternate days and Sev gets and hour per day…which leaves lots of time for other stuff, considering the fact that the kids are on a two week holiday right now.
Sev, resourceful kid that he is, REALLY found something else to do besides stare at a computer screen. He managed to get invited along on a trip to Paris to attend a videogame/manga/anime con (a 'convention' to all you n00bs). Lucky boy! He’ll leave this afternoon and be back on Tuesday.
The twins are also too busy right now to worry much about screen time.
They are:
1. Helping to varnish the wood on the addition to the house and the carport. (Three coats on over 80 square meters. Do the math.) This is mainly what Alexa likes doing. She's quite handy...but, oddly, doesn't like getting her hands dirty.
2. Planting flowers. This is Mallory’s thing, not Al's (see above info re:hands). If it were up to me, our yard would be a barren wasteland, but Mal has got dahlias, anemones, sedum and all sorts of stuff scattered about the place. Very cute.
3. Babysitting what is possibly the world’s cutest two year old. She’s the daughter of some friends who are staying with us right now. Along with their sweet, deaf and half-blind sheepdog, they have come up from the south of France for a working vacation. The emphasis is on the « working » part of that last phrase. Last night I came home from picking up JP in Geneva and Amina and Robert were still varnishing the carport (along with Tya). It was nearly 8pm!

Anyway, the twins adore having Yasmine around and find endless things to do with her. And when she gets tired, she loves it when Mallory gets a pagne and ties her on her back just like her mom does. You should have seen Yasmine’s eyes light up the first time she did it. She hadn’t realized that under all that blonde hair and pale skin, Mallory is secretly Burkinabé.

So, we’re all very, very busy. And it’s sure a good thing I finally broke down and bought an oven, as I’m cooking meals for a crowd lately. It’s SO great to be able to bake again!! It makes life so much easier!! In fact, when I think no one is looking, I like to hunch over it protectively and caress its brushed metal finish while whispering « My preciousssssss ». Unfortunately, Tya caught me at it yesterday and gave me a chastising « Don’t make me throw that oven into the fires of Mount Doom, young lady! » look.

It’s past 7am now and I need to get down the stairs and into the kitchen!! I’ve got to to prepare breakfast and then lunch for 10 today. Last night was couscous with merguez and alloco (fried plantains).

Today I’m thinking chicken and veg curry with rice.
And I’d better make pie. Maybe lemon meringue?

Goodbye for now computer, blog and interwebz pals. Hope to see you all again soon!

2010-03-30T10:14:00.003+02:00

The Royal Savoy Hotel of Lausanne, Switzerland.
Gosh, that sounds classy!
And I guess it was, for many, many years.
It’s a huge old dinosaur of a thing, dating back to the days when upper class young people from England and the USA would still swan around Europe to be «finished ».
The Americans wanted to acquire that sheen of genteel Old World culture. According to my deep analysis of this phenomena ( which mainly involved reading the book ‘Little Women‘ several times), this sheen could only be had by sitting by a lake ( preferably a Swiss lake, but a French one might do) and painting watercolors of it.

The English, on the other hand, seemed to seek ‘continental sophistication’. This is possibly involved the ability to eat roasted horse without freaking. I’m not sure.

And this was the kind of hotel where people would do this stuff. It was very fancy and very, very expensive.
And it wasn’t just the foreigners that flocked there. It was a favorite with European aristocrats, as well. In fact, the Spanish royal family lived in the hotel throughout the entire Second World War.

It was furnished with antiques from all over Europe from the 19th, 18th and even 17th century. Very chic.

But then something happened. Two very bad somethings, actually. Major remodels and refurbishings were done in the 1960’s and again in the early 1980’s.
And this was bad. Very, very bad.

The antique wallpapers and carpets all went and all kinds of newer stuff was installed. Some antiques were kept, but many disappeared and were replaced by modern 60s and 80s stuff. Bleh.
Worst of all, 19th century landscapes were pushed out of the way in favor of 1960’s art. God help them. The stuff was darn ugly and didn’t fit at all with the spirit of the building (or the spirit of good taste).

After this frenzy….nothing. Absolutely nothing for a long, long time.
And the hotel began a decline.
It began to disappoint

The internet arrived and word began to get around even faster…the Royal Savoy was musty, sad, shabby and far too expensive for what it offered. A client review from 2009 on one travel site called it a « smelly, dusty, run down big hotel ». Another person remarked « We were expecting a nice hotel but in fact it is an old, smelly and antiquated hotel ».
Ouch.

The « Grand Old Dame » had become a « crazy old homeless woman with ragged clothes and distinctly bad body odor ».

I guess it’s a good thing, then, that the place was sold recently.
And the new owners, Barwa Real Estate of the tiny (but rich!) nation of Qatar, had big plans.
Their first plan was to clear the whole place out. Everything would have to go: furnishings, bathroom fixtures, dishes, paintings, ashtrays, etc.
How would it all be gotten rid of?
It would be auctioned off.
And just who would buy this stuff?

Well….my husband would.

2010-03-29T09:35:00.004+02:00

The first order of the day is to wish a very

to my faithful friend and constant blog reader, Babzee.

The next is to show you all what has been keeping me away from my computer lately.

No, I haven't been out enjoying the good weather. There's been none of that to be had around here. There's been nothing but cold rain- perfect weather to be sitting in front of a sewing machine and making tons of stuff!
My first project was to sew two sets of curtains for the living room. JP had picked up some fabric last time he was in Burkina and it had been laying around for the last two months, constantly whimpering " Sew me!" at me every time I passed by the crumpled plastic sack in which it was forced to live out its sad days. Maybe this was all just in my head, but that didn't make it any less disturbing.

As my old machine isn't fixed yet, I've borrowed one from a friend. It's white, plastic and very modern, but it works pretty darn well. I'm enjoying the heck out of the fancy zigzag stitch it has.

(Why no, I don't get out much. Why do you ask?)

When my kitty and I were done with the orange, African-ish curtains, we got right onto another project: an adorable pioneer outfit for Mallory!

The fabric is...old sheets that I got from my MIL! So, price-wise, this was a complete win.
I didn't even pay for a pattern- not that I'd easily find one in France. I would have had to special-order it at the fabric store.
So, I designed the dress and bonnet myself!

When it was done, we decided that it was still a little plain. So, I added a matching pocket on the apron and sewed up a cute pair of bloomers to go under the dress.

Mallory has been learning to embroider and she wanted to decorate a handkerchief to go with her outfit. So, I sewed one up for her and she put her initials and a flower on it. You can click on the pic of the skirt detail to see it a bit better. She's actually quite good and is working on a cute cross-stitch bib right now.

I would have KILLED to own this outfit when I was a young Laura Ingalls Wilder fan. I loved the books and read them many, many times. I watched the tv show, but with less enthusiasm. The only thing it seemed to have in common with the books was the setting and the names of the characters. SO annoying and disappointing!

The impetus for making this? Well, this summer, we'll be camping up near DSmet, South Dakota! We'll get to see the real Little Town on the Prairie and go the the annual pageant up there. This is something I've wanted to do for years. luckily, my three girls are all fans and are completely up for it. the men of the family are going along with it and won't protest too much ...unless I try to dress them up in old sheets, too!

My next project? Making a pioneer outfit for Alexa, of course! And i'm alos in the middle of making her a new Renaissance faire outfit.

Plus, there's tons of repair work to do. Now that the machine is out and running, it seems that everyone has ripped pants and torn shirts for me to fix... And no, you can't mail me yours to fix. I adore you guys, but I have to draw the line somewhere!

2010-03-26T09:04:00.003+01:00

Back when we lived in Ouagadougou, we had a television, but never bothered to hook up the antenna. And there was no question of paying good money (or even bad money) for a satellite dish.
The tv was never turned on during the week.
At all.
On the weekends, our kids were allowed to watch just one video cassette per day (with the exception of special permission from their soft-hearted father).
One of the most often viewed and most treasured of these cassettes was « My Little Pony ». It was a French tape, so it was actually « Mon Petit Poney ». In this cartoon, small, chubby, pastel-colored talking horses went about their daily activities. And their daily activities included: being adorable, going on scavenger hunts, being even more cloyingly adorable, babysitting naughty (yet adorable!) toddler ponies, being adorable some more and rescuing a rock-star pony from the clutches of an evil manager. (Note: Rock Star Pony looked and sounded very much like The Artist Formerly Known as Prince and that particular episode was, as you may imagine, peculiarly fascinating)

One thing the ponies were never, ever obliged to do in an episode of the show was flee from people intent on killing them, butchering them and serving them up as Sunday lunch. This might well have been the plot of an installment if the show had been made in France, or Switzerland.

Most of you probably already knew that the French eat horse meat. What you may not have known is that the Swiss do it too.
They’re sneaky that way.
The Swiss may seem charming but you have to watch them closely. Otherwise, the minute you sit down to the table for a nice lunch, they are plonking down a huge roasting pan right in front of you and it’s chock-full of Mr. Ed basted in an herbed wine sauce.

And I know this is absolutely true because that’s exactly what happened to me last Sunday.

We’d gone to the Swiss city of Lausanne to visit some good friends there. We’ve known M and D for many years and were looking forward to a nice meal with them and then a group visit to an old hotel that was auctioning off all it’s furnishings (note: this hotel will figure very prominently in my next post for reasons which will surprise you. )

Anyway, there we were, all sitting around the table. There was JP, the twins, Sev, and our friends’ two lovely teen-aged sons. M was in the kitchen finishing up , while D approached the table with a big cast-iron dutch oven.
He put it down right in front of me and lifted off the lid with a decided flourish.
The large chunk of meat inside had a definite gray tinge to it. I figured that it was the sauce that had given it a funny color.
D want back to the kitchen to get a better knife and those of us left at the table speculated as to what it was.
Beef was the general consensus.
By this time, D was back at the table, hacking away at it with a large knife.
I asked him what the meat was.
« C’est un rôti de petit poulain. » he happily informed me.
« Poulain » is « foal » in English.
We were being served « roast of small foal ».
« You’re kidding, right? » I asked him.
D just looked at me quizzically and went back to putting slices on Sev’s plate.
I turned to JP. « He’s kidding, right? »
JP peered down at the lumps of gray on his own plate.
« No. I don’t think he’s kidding »
« Seriously . What is it? » I insisted, a vaguely worried feeling creeping into my mind.
« Poulain. » he said again, quite surprised I’d asked twice.
« Really? What? Really?........As in « My Little Pony ?» I asked, a bit desperately.
During all this, M had been coming down the long hallway to the dining room. She could see me clearly the whole time and she swears that throughout this exchange my face went from draining paper white to flushing bright red. (Note to self: Don’t plan to earn millions as a professional poker player)

D didn’t quite get what my problem was. In fact, he’d gone specially to the horse-butcher’s shop to buy us this nice treat.
I said that it was just like serving a roasted kitten.
In other words, not so good.

The twins, of course, refused to touch it.
The men of our family, on the other hand, chowed down. Sev even had seconds and thirds. With sauce. Horse blood sauce.
Gah!!

I’m not even that keen on eating cows. I serve beef to our family maybe once a week, max. It’s always organic, relatively happy beef and usually small quantities- little chunks in a sauce over pasta or rice, rather than steaks.

The foal roast was so very, very creepy.

Luckily, M and D are good pals and we all managed to have a good laugh about it in the end
Everyone but the foal, anyway…

2010-03-19T09:43:00.003+01:00

I've been working on some posts-mostly about French culture and such- but can't manage finish anything. Spring has sprung in the French Alps and I can't seem to keep still in front of a screeen. I'd much rather be outside admiring my bright yellow crocus patch...

The addition to the house ? Well, the builders have got all the doors and windows on and put the interior wood panelling in. Their work is done.

Lucky dogs.

Now there's lots for us to do. JP will do as much as he can by himself, with a bit of help from a neighbor and maybe our kids.

What's left?

Flooring (insulation and then stratified floorboards)

Heat (drill hole through kitchen wall and add on a radiator out in the new room)

Paint (one ugly cement wall which used to be the exterior of the west side of the house)

Light (Agree on, purchase and put up some light fixtures!)

Varnish (interior walls and ceiling with transparent UV protection)

More varnish (exterior+shutters+the carport)

So, plenty to do there.

The REALLY big news is that Tya is leaving for Germany.... at 2am this Saturday morning. That's only about 16 hours from now! She's leaving on a bus with a bunch of classmates and some teachers. They'll all be lodged with various host families in a small town not far from Berlin. Tya's very excited. She'll only be gone a week, so expect a full report on her blog very soon.

2010-03-16T17:19:00.004+01:00

I was in Thonon today, dropping off my sewing machine to be repaired. It's an old Kohler that belonged to JP's maternal grandmother who was a seamstress. Widowed when her only daughter was just a year old, she earned her living making hats and dresses for the good folks of Luneville. And she had to work hard, as there wasn't a penny of insurance money.

She's planned to pay the premium on Saturday, but the baby (my MIL) was crying and fussing in her stroller. She decided to go right on home and get to the insurance office on Monday.

The next day, her husband died in a motorcycle crash...

So, that's my sewing machine.

The repair guy thought it was great. A real classic.

"An old metal machine from the early 1960's? These things are indestructable." he said.

If nuclear bombs go off, it seems, the only things left standing will be the cockroaches and my sewing machine...

I had it with me in Burkina, but it didn't do well on the trip back to France. The six months in transit were hard on it and it hasn't worked quite right since. I need it working again because I need to be making curtains, cushion covers and cloaks for the girls (renaissance faire stuff).

I also want to give Valentine a few more sewing lessons, as she's been asking me...

2010-03-11T09:20:00.004+01:00

The Book: The Ice Master: The Doomed 1913 Voyage of the Karluk- I’m not generally a big fan of non-fiction, but I make an exception for books about early polar exploration. I don’t know why , exactly. When my interest began, back in Burkina, I thought maybe it was because reading about people freezing to death made me feel less miserably hot. But that theory doesn’t seem to hold any (ice) water because I now live somewhere with very long, cold winters and I still love me some polar adventure. And this is a good one. Based on a mountain of diaries, newspaper accounts and some interviews, this account of a Canadian scientific voyage gone very, very wrong could have been very, very dry. But Jennifer Niven keeps the story engaging. It’s an amazing book!

The TV series: Dollhouse.
Joss Whedon-how do I love thee?
Let me count the ways…
( Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Serenity, Dr. Horrible and now, Dollhouse)
OK. Six.
I love thee six ways, baby.
(Apologies to E. Barrett Browning- but I figure she can take the damage)
Like everything Whedon has done, it's thought-provoking, creative, touching and funny. And, like the amazing and beloved Firefly, was cancelled by the networks after only a short run.

The Music Video: TikTok is THE song of the moment, I'm sorry to say. But, much as I'm not a fan, I’ve listened to it several times lately. I wanted to watch the cute video my cousin’s daughter made with a friend.
OK.
I’m not sure how appropriate it is. The cans of Mountain Dew labeled as Jack Daniels were kind of disturbing.
And the lyrics "Boys trying to touch my junk"? Well, maybe it refers to people rummaging through her box of old Barbies at a garage sale...
But it’s all in good fun. And she wants lots of people to watch it. And her mom is very sick right now with cancer.
So, cheer up Mikayla and watch her video. 'Favorite' it and star it up, even. She's a sweetie.

The Podcast: AV Talk - This is my go-to movie review place

The Home Improvement Project: That would be the new room being added to our house. And right now, as I write this, there are workers in it nailing on the interior wood paneling! Progress is being made!!

2010-03-09T14:24:00.008+01:00

Bad news: France is again an occupied country.

This time, though, the invasion force is made up of annoying imported cartoon characters. They are everywhere and imprinted on everything: Dora the Explorer, Thomas the Tank Engine, Spiderman (which the French pronounce "Speeder-mahn" which makes me ROTFL) and everything Disney.

This foreign invasion has long been a concern/peeve of mine. As a young mom in France with a passel of tots, I often found it frustrating that most of the kids' clothes looked just like what you'd buy back in the USA, only way more expensive. On top of that, they'd often feature text in nonsensical English. And I didn't WANT my son to wear sleepers imprinted with Batman's face and ungrammatical phrases. I just didn't.

I started thinking about this issue again when a friend (non French, but living in France) recently complained that she couldn't find much "real" French stuff for her kids. Where are the real French kids' books (as opposed to something originally published in English, but then translated) , the cartoons, the nursery rhymes and songs? And this is just the kind of "insider" information that is difficult to prise out of the natives. (see this post for more info on why the French won't tell you jack)

Luckily, when I got my French passport back in 1996, they neglected to make me sign any papers promising to keep my mouth shut. So, I'm free to give you the low-down on Real French Stuff.

There's a lot of ground to cover. So, today I'm just going to go over a few comic book characters you need to know about:

1. Asterix- This little guy is at the core of French culture. If you want to be an insider, a nodding aquaintance with this small Gaulish warrior is a must. He, along with his big pal Obelix and their many friends, fight the good fight as the last holdouts against the Roman invasion of Gaul (France in about 50BC). The books are very funny and there are 34 of them, so get cracking!

2. Tintin- He's cute! I love the intrepid boy reporter. I really do. But he's Belgian. So, never mind.

3. Marsupialami- This cute fella is...well...I don't know really WHAT he is. I guess he's a kind of monkey/leopard (?) thingy. Anyway, he spends his days bouncing around the Palombian jungle, outwitting the hunters and saying "houba houba!" in an adorable manner. He's been around since 1952, so apparently the formula works. At any rate, he may have a Palombian passport, but he's also trés, trés français.

4. Titeuf- His pedigree isn't as long as that of Asterix or the bouncy yellow guy above, but since the early 1990's, he's definitely been a force in the French culture of childhood. I didn't "get" this one at first. I guess maybe because I found the artwork kind of ugly... but both the comic book albums and the animated cartoon are actually very good. French kids certainly adore them. In fact "Titeuf" is the most popular comic in France right now...and has been for some years. Don't miss it.

5. Becassine-I was always delighted when I could find baby gear festooned with the figure of this lady:
She's very vintage (1913!), very cool and still a force to be reckoned with. Who would have imagined making a housemaid from Bretagne into a comic strip heroine?

6. Lucky Luke- I'm adding this one a bit grudgingly. I don't like him, but he's a definite presence in French culture. I probably feel about this dopey, fake euro-cowboy the way actual French people might feel about Pepe Le Pew. But a true knowledge of French popular culture definitely requires at least knowing what the song "Les Daltons" is about and who sang it back in 1967.

2010-03-08T10:04:00.008+01:00

Just so you know...
If someone offers you a choice between the two following options:
1. See the new Scorsese film "Shutter Island"
or
2. Get your eye poked by a sharp stick,
my recommendation is that you take a good, long look at the stick in question. If it seems to be relatively clean and free of any obvious splinters, you should go with the stick. Chances are, you'll be fine, with some good medical care.

Maybe your eye won't thank me for this bit of wisdom, but your brain will. Your brain does NOT want to deal with "Shutter Island".
Trust me.

What's not to like? (spoiler alert: if you're determined to see this film despite my good advice, you'd best get off the bus here)

Well, most obviously, there's Leo DiCaprio's squinting and brow-furrowing ("acting").

There's the distracting accents. Somewhere between the dialect coaching sessions and the eventual performances, something went horribly, terribly wrong. I know people from Boston and they really don't sound like that. At all.
There's the overwrought "scary" score that I would have expected from a brand new, not too smart filmaker. Some subtletly, please? If something is frightening, I don't need jangy, staccato piano notes and/or screechy strings to tell me so.
There's the threadbare "suspense" plot that gives away the ending with ten minutes of the opening shot.
There's a horrific, drawn-out-beyond-the-realms-of-good-taste scene near the end which is completely gratuitous (because the audience already knows the details of the traumatic event) and seems to be there just for the shock value of seeing small dead children and giving DiCaprio another chance to over-act.
And don't even get me started on the Dachau scenes. Just don't.

About 30 minutes into the film, I leaned over to JP and whispered "Scorsese has lost his freaking mind."

Not that I've ever been a big Scorsese fan. Lots of his films are about the mafia (Casino, The Departed, Goodfellas) and one (considered by many to be his best) is about boxing (Raging Bull). These are two subjects that are completely uninteresting to me (as are race car driving, football and watching paint dry) and I go out of my way to avoid movies about these things, even if they are supposed to be "good" ones.
Another problem is that Scorsese made many of his films in the 1970's . This was an era in film-making when it was fashionable to make everything look like crap. Really ugly crap. On the big screen, even the most glamorous movie stars looked like homeless heroin addicts. (In fact, even the "adorable" orphan in Disney's 'Pete's Dragon' (1977) looked like a homeless heroin addict!) I was only a kid, but I couldn't help but notice that things in movieland had suddenly gotten ugly, dirty and sexual (in a cheap, scary kind of way).
We're just lucky Scorsese and his ilk never got a hold of "The Sound of Music".

The only Scorsese film that I admire is "The Gangs of New York". The whole "gritty realism" thing worked to bring to life a very realistic mid-19th century city in a way that I don't think had been seen before and hasn't since. But maybe I'm biased because I'm an archaeologist and have spent a lot of time trying to imagine the past and he did a great job with the historical aspects.

The above is just to flash my credentials as a non-Scorsese-worshipping filmgoer. I won't, as so many seem to be doing, cut him any slack on this one. It's NOT a good film and you shouldn't waste your time.

My only two consolations are that
a. we went to a cheap show and only paid 4 euros each to get in
and
b. I still have both of my eyes intact.

(Many thanks to blogger/artist Sean McGlinchey for the use of his crazy sketch. Check out more of his stuff here)

2010-03-07T18:31:00.004+01:00

I didn't post yesterday because I had to shop for party supplies, teach a couple of English courses, clean house and then make this:

It's a kind of psychedelic fairy cat. You can see that, right?

At any rate, it's what the twins wanted and they were thrilled. Plus, their pals were gratifyingly impressed.

I had to bake it at a friend's house (Thanks, Esther!) yesterday, as my oven is still broken. (As it would cost about 150 euros to fix it, I know we had better just go buy a new one. But I can't seem to make myself spend the money...)

Anyway, the kids were busy this morning getting everything ready. Even Severin lent a hand, but quickly fled the scene when the nine 11 and 12 year old girls showed up and started with the squealing and chattering.

A good time, as they say, was had by all.

2010-03-05T17:06:00.004+01:00

Birthday Girls!

Last Sunday, the twins turned 12 years old. As a friend recently pointed out, this is probably the last "kid" birthday for them. At 12, they still ask for Barbies and Playmobil as gifts.

At 13? Not so much.

Actually, Mallory asked for books. As is often the case, Alexa didn't have any idea of what to ask for. It's funny that Mal has such definite ideas about...everything, while Alexa is much more laid back and vague about things.

And it's been that way since they were born. When she was small, Mallory would grumble and howl to get things just how she liked them- while Alexa laid ( and then sat) around looking serene and generally ok with the world as it was.

So, the zen girl got a video game involving music (she likes music) and a tiny digital photo frame

Then we had our outing. The buffet at the Chinese restaurant was a big success. The food was good and the decor was satisyingly oriental, in that crazy-tacky Chinese restaurant way that is so entertaining.

Afterwards, we went to Geneva:
The Museum of Art and History is rather small, but has some great pieces. Severin enjoyed the swords and armour, while the girls preferred the paintings.

Here's Alexa in front of some gorgeous peonies by Renoir.

And here's Mallory's favorite- a painting depicting a happy family of farmers apparently enjoying a picnic with all of their livestock. That's what I call cruelty-free farming!

That evening, for about 20 minutes, Mallory was 12 years old and Alexa was still only 11. Mal enjoyed it while it lasted, but Al was very happy when the clock finally hit 8:50pm. She could finally say she was really a whole year older!

2010-03-04T18:03:00.005+01:00

The high-tech voodoo practitioner came today, waved some chicken feathers over my computer and now I can once again post photos! Yippee!

OK- I'll admit it.
He didn't really do a rite involving poultry.
But he DID do something deeply mysterious that made my computer behave better....

Anyway, to celebrate, here a a few pics taken TODAY to show you the progress that's been made on the house.
As you can see, we have a proper roof, windows, cute shutters and a gorgeous copper gutter:

We can finally start imagining how it will look when it's all done. I am loving the super-high ceiling and big wooden beams:

Also, we finally have the insulation all in. (No door yet, though):

And now that it's insulated, that means the electrician can come and start the wiring!

We accepted an estimate yesterday and the guy promised to come tomorrow morning! And I'm pretty confident he will- he's someone we've had work for us before and he's exceptionally dependable, for a local artisan.

We had to modify his estimate a bit, though. The electrician had included a lighting system for the room...a very nice one. A bit like this:

The thing is, a set-up similar to the above would us cost over 1000 US dollars.
So, that's not happening.
I'm sure we'll be just as happy (and way less broke) with normal lights costing ten times less.

2010-03-03T11:02:00.003+01:00

I haven't been posting often, as most of the subjects I've wanted to write about seem to demand at least one small photo to illustrate them...and I seem to have picked up a computer virus (?!) that prevents me from using any photos or attachments. At all.
And it's not just with Blogspot- also Gmail and any other site where I try to load my own photos. Very odd.
I've got a computer specialist coming on Thursday night to help me out. I sure hope he can figure out what's wrong and fix it, asap!

As soon as my computer is working right, expect pics and posts about:
The twins' birthday outing in Geneva
The progress on the addition to the house
French comic book characters
Tya's artwork
plus
The twins' 12th birthday party (coming up this Sunday) which will feature a fairy cat cake designed by yours truly. i'm already working on the sketches for it. Could end up being cute. Odd, but cute.

2010-02-26T21:50:00.003+01:00

You all HAVE to go have a look at Valentine's latest art project for school.

The assignment was to use photography or video in conjunction with one other art technique (painting, sculpture, whatever) to make a piece portraying a daily activity in a humorous way.

She ended up using a picture of an old Flemish domestic painting and having some fun with it. She changed it up and incorporated pics of our whole family.

I think she did an amazing job, but you should go see for yourselves.

BTW: It would be nice of you to leave her an encouraging comment, too. She likes that.

2010-02-25T10:41:00.003+01:00

A list of stuff ( just because I like lists)

1. Project Runway- I adore Tim Gunn. (Not that I'd ever want to meet him, mind you. I dress so badly that it would probably give him physical pain to look at me.) In case you are some unfortunate creature living under a rock and don't know of him, he's the co-host of a fabulous and "fierce" reality show that pits young clothing designers against each other in various challenging situations, ex: must make an evening gown in just 8 hours, using only materials purchased at a corner grocery store.
Let me add that I usually HATE reality TV. The kind of thing where a bunch of people live in a camera-filled house together and gossip about each other is just...so tacky and dull. But shows where people show a real talent, such as singing or sewing? They're a win, IMHO.

2. The Birthday of the Twins- The Dynamic Duo turn 12 this Sunday, which is kind of scary for their mom. My babies are nearly teenagers? Gah!
But it's all good, right?
The girls have opted to celebrate with lunch at a chinese restaurant and a vist to the Museum of Art and History in Geneva. (I'm so lucky to have such cool kids!)
Then, when the school holiday is over, they'll hand out invitations and we'll have a little party with their friends here at home.

3. Pumpkin Soup with Cumin and Coriander: This is a family favorite that is appearing on the table fairly often these days:
Sauté one chopped onion and 2tsp of cumin in two tablespoons of olive oil. Steam or boil about four cups of chopped pumpkin until soft. (If you boil it, drain it well afterwards). Purée the cooked onion and pumpkin til smooth, slowly adding three to four cups of chicken or vegetable bouillion. Wash and chop up a small bunch of coriander leaves? garnish each bowl with coriander, a tsp of creme fraiche (or sour cream)and homemade croutons.
Easy, yet kind of fancy, and very tasty...

4. Skeptic's Guide to the Universe: This podcast is my new "escape to reality" these days. It's about an hour and a half of discussion and debunking : urban myths, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience and paranormal crud get taken on. I especially enjoy it when they go after anti-vaccine whackos and homeopathy.

5. Dingue, Dingue, Dingue- Here's some French pop for you. It's the song stuck in my head this week. Sadly, the only lyrics I know are three words to the chorus...and they're all the same word. The kids are possibly a bit tired of me singing the word "dingue" (crazy) over and over and over again...but it's a cute song! (Here's the lyrics in French and in English, if you're interested)

2010-02-23T10:29:00.004+01:00

The news:
No progress on the house.
JP is back and keeping very, very busy.
The kids are in the middle of a two week school holiday.

The anecdote:
A few weeks before school got out, Mallory's book bag gave up the ghost. It was in such tatters that we just threw it out and she started carrying an old one that had belonged to her big sister. but after a few days, that one broke, too.
I took it to the local shoe repair guy and he said he could have it fixed up in a couple of days.

In the meantime, Mal needed a way to carry her books. And not just any daypack would do. The kids have loads of books each day that are easily 30 lbs or more. The only pack I could find that was big enough was crushed up at the back of the attic crawl space. It was nothing fancy- just the most basic model and the blue nylon was dusty and stained.

In fact, it looked like it hadn't been washed since my last fieldwork back in 1991. I hadn't ever gotten rid of it for sentimental reasons- it was the backpack I'd bought for my first real work as an archaeologist. I carried it in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks as a young government archaeologist. I took it down to southern Peru as a graduate student . Then it kept me company as I did boring, run-of-the-mill survey work for a private archaeological firm in Illinois.
It even came with me to Europe when I started to work on my (never finished) doctorate.
It's a sad-looking item with a proud history.

I wasn't sure what Mallory would make of it. In fact I fully expected her to turn up her nose.

I explained that it was my old archaeology kit, assured her that she'd only have to carry it for a few days and then told her I'd wash it up good as new.
She grabbed the bag with what looked distinctly like a sparkle of interest in her eyes. She didn't even want it washed. (I guess the stains lent it authenticity?) Her books went in with room to spare and she happily went off to school.

Three days later, I proudly held out the clean, repaired back pack that had belonged to Tya. It's rather pretty- a sort of beige with red scrolls and flowers on it- and I was sure that Mal would be so pleased to get it back and get rid of the ancient, ratty blue pack.

"I like the blue one," she said
"It' so old and stained..." I began doubtfully.
"But it makes my books lighter on my back....and lighter in my head, too. It always makes me think of you!"

So, she's kept the old field pack and the fancy flowered bag is at the back of the closet.
That's my girl!

2010-02-19T12:41:00.003+01:00

Idiot Box à la Française: Part 2

So, ready to settle down and watch more French TV with me?
Great.
By the way, you have paid your television tax, right?
You know - the 115 euro tax automatically added onto your property tax bill? And it’s no use saying that you only use your tv to watch dvds…if you have a tv in the house, you have to pay the tax. (I know this because when we first moved to France, we didn’t even hook up our tv to the ancient antenna on the roof. For about four years, we only used it to watch tapes. But we still had to pay the stupid tax and pay for tv shows we never watched.)

Even you folks that don’t even own a tv had better be ready for a struggle with the French tax authorities. They will definitely send people to poke around your house and verify.
Srsly.
Ok. Now that we’re all legal, let’s continue my list and get you a dose of France via television:

4. Un Diner Presque Parfait: This show is relatively recent (just started in 2008) but it’s excellent for people wanting a glimpse into the « real » France. It’s a game show that each weeks pits five people against each other in a brutal competition to….. have the nicest dinner party. I kid you not. Each night, the contestants gather at the house of one of them and the host gives them a (hopefully) tasty and entertaining dinner. You get to see the host’s home, go along to do a bit of the shopping and then hang out in the kitchen while he/she cooks. As all kinds of people participate in this show, you get to see all kinds of French homes. How people arrange and use their living spaces is so culturally dependant that there is no way this can be boring to someone really interested in learning about the French!
As is typical of many French game shows, there is a large effort involved (making a fancy dinner for five one night and then dining out on four consecutive nights) with very little reward. The contestants all score each other and, on Friday night, the highest total wins the victor a grand total of….1000 euros.
Yawn.
But it’s not about cash, it’s all about the pride French people take in preparing and serving really nice food…

5. 100% Mag-: After UDPP (see above) is over, leave it on the same channel and watch this fast-paced collection of short, easy to understand reports on lightweight topics of the moment. I really recommend this if you are just learning French and/or need topics of conversation when standing around with the other parents waiting to pick up the kids at school, or whatever.
The subjects are varied, ex:
Should you let your teen wear goth clothing?
What’s worse for you? Frozen food or canned?
How about we meet this nice lady who repairs garden gnomes in her spare time?
and
Should I let my dog date?

Ok. It’s often a bit silly, but lots of people watch it and the French is easy to understand.

Plus, there’s this: I was watching the show a couple of months ago and they did a segment on redecorating your home on a budget. They went into the Paris home of a couple in the middle of just such a process…and I recognized the woman! It was someone I knew back in Ouaga. Her son was one of Mallory’s best friends- in fact, Mal and little V. informed us they were going to get married one day. Granted, they were four years old at the time…
At any rate, it was so funny to see her on tv. I hadn’t heard from her since she left her husband for another guy, moved to France and had twin daughters….the girls are cute, btw.

6. Les Guignols de L’info- This is a good one for people that don’t like to watch TV. It lasts about 10 minutes and does a quick roundup of the news of the day (mostly political, but it depends). The thing is, it’s all left-leaning satire done by huge latex puppets….it’s kind of hard to explain. Guess you have to be there.
The writers are definitely fans of President Obama, and President Sarkozy definitely comes off the worst in all interactions. This is a great clip from the show, if you'd like to have a look.

There’s other stuff on, of course, but a lot of it is very French in a way that does not interest me at all. I’m talking about all the weird « talk shows » they have- the ones where mostly D-list celebrities sit around and chat with each other and seem to find themselves (and to a far lesser extent, their fellow obscure guests) endlessly charming and amusing.
Like this.
Me, I'd whitewash my lawn to watch the grass grow as the paint dries, rather than watch one of these shows.
Some people love the stuff, though, and they certainly always manage to fill up the studio audience for these things. But I really don’t get the attraction. It’s very dull and old-fashioned-like something they would have had on tv in the US in the 1950’s.

Anyway, I hope this has been helpful.
Comments are, as usual, welcome!

2010-02-16T18:27:00.002+01:00

Does French culture even exist anymore?

While living here, I’ve managed to get US pop songs stuck in my head, watched the latest über-popular US films, and even bought Dr. Pepper in a local supermarket..
I sometimes fear that my blog might give my readers the impression that France is just like the USA, only smaller and populated by people that talk funny.

But this is very wrong.
Consider just this small fact: On last Thursday, the cafeteria at the junior high (collége) my twins attend served frog legs for lunch.

The above is a true fact that has not been fabricated to impress you with scary French-ness.

The above is also a definite sign that we aren’t in Kansas (or even Nebraska) any more…

What really got me thinking about this was two things: 1. The frog legs and 2. A recent post on a blog that I keep up with. It’s written by a Canadian woman who plotted and planned for years to get her family of five to France for a sabbatical. In this particular post, she remarked the fact that Dora, Spiderman, and that gang of pastel-shaded toughs referred to as the "Disney Princesses » are hard to avoid, even in the heart of the EU. It seems like every book, dvd and tv show is just a US product translated into French. As the whole point of the sabbatical is that the whole family get a taste of another culture, this stuff is just not up to the task. So, she put out a call for ideas for « real » French stuff for kids.

I quickly wrote back with a few suggestions, and it gave me the idea to write a post of my own:
What TV programs are uniquely French?

Here in France, when you turn on the TV you can watch a group of madcap, wacky NYC pals having humorous adventures in French (So I’m told. I hate « Friends » and have never watched it) . Homer Simpson insults everyone in French. Heck, there’s even ‘Extreme Home Makeover’ and ‘Wife Swap‘ in French. There is, in short, no end of US shows imported to France and dubbed into the local lingo.

But if you want to get to know French culture, it’s sure not what you should watch while you’re here.

What you should watch is the stuff below. I’m not saying it’s all great, but it’s all very French and you’ll learn lots. Trust me.

1. Fort Boyard: this is the ultimate French game show. It’s now in its 21st season and has imitations in many different countries, but don’t be fooled - the French version is the original. It takes place in a real 19th century fort sitting out in the middle of the ocean. It features tigers, dwarves, gold coins and, that favorite element of any French entertainment, D-list celebrities.
The concept is this: little-known « celebrities » form a team and pass through a series of trials to earn keys that will eventually unlock a « treasure room » . These trials may involve physical prowess (having to cross a room in the fort without touching the ground, for example), mental toughness (crawling into a room full of tarantulas) or intellectual skills.
The latter type of trial is typified by a visit up to the tower of Pére Fouras. This character asks the contestants riddles. His makeup is not exactly state of the art and makes him look like he’s approximately 180 years old. On the other hand, his riddles are pretty good. (And I LOVE it when I get one right! It may be silly, but it makes me feel like I am really fitting in)
The « gold » coins won in the end are weighed and « turned into » real money, which is donated to a charity chosen by the winners. So that’s nice.
At any rate, the whole spectacle is rather entertaining and very French, in a strange way.

2. Intervilles- This one dates back to 1962. During each weekly episode, teams from two different French towns are pitted against each other in a series of completely ridiculous games. The teams may, for example, have to dress up in giant otter costumes and slide down into pool to gather huge foam anchovies. At least one of the games invariably involves « Les Vachettes ». These are irritable , sharp horned cows from the Landes region of France. Competitors are usually sent into the ring to fetch objects (ex: giant plastic turnips) and get chased around (and not infrequently trampled) by the animals.
It’s all really weird and you must see it if you want to understand France. EVERYBODY knows about this show. Last summer in Montpellier, Mallory was talking to a little three year old boy that could barely speak. He managed to convey to her his love for Intervilles, though. « I like Rosa! » he announced, and promptly tried to gore her with pretend horns. (Rosa is one of the « star » cows of the program.)

3. La Carte au Tresor- Here’s another fairly old one. It started back in the 1980’s and was significantly modernized in 1996 to its current form. But the idea remained the same. Two teams compete to follow a series of clues and compete to find the treasure box full of cash. The special thing about this show is that each episode focuses on a specific region of France. And solving the clues involves going from place to place, learning about the local landmarks, historic sites and activities. The teams get to use a helicopter for some of the game, but they are mostly on foot and have to resort to asking strangers for rides. This can result in some pretty funny scenes, as the French are not, in general, « hey! Hop into my car! » kind of people.

Another very French thing about this show is that the people go to a huge amount of effort and they actually win very little money. The "treasure" is 3000 euros.
I always loved this show, though. You get to see so much of the country and learn interesting stuff .
Sadly, it was just cancelled last September. This was mainly due to a lack of interest by young people, who mostly prefer reality shows like « Koh-Lanta » (A French « Survivor » imitation.) You know- a show where you don’t have to see boring old stuff and learn about history. Sigh. But if they start re-runs, give it a try. And it may come out on DVD, as old episodes of « Fort Boyard » already have…

This is getting a bit long, so I’ll stop here. Be sure and click the links and have a look at a YouTube vido of the opening sequence of each show.
I’ll be back tomorrow with a few more.

BTW: The builder and his crew showed up again today! It was right after lunch, so it was only a half day. But that’s better than nothing. They installed the big Velux window in the roof and put on the gorgeous copper gutters!

2010-02-15T17:05:00.005+01:00

Blogspot still seems to be having problems. I can't get even a single picture to load on my blog, which is rather a shame as things are finally progressing again on our room!

Anyway, as I blogged in a previous entry, the builder showed up on Feb. 4, got the walls up and most of the roof on, then wrapped it all in plastic and ran off.
Finally, today (12 days later!) his team showed upagain. They weren't exactly bright and early, either. It was 3pm-ish already, so they got quite a late start.

But they're out there right now putting the roof tiles on, which is nice. It will be even nicer when we have windows, a door and insulation...

If you want an idea of what it's all looking like, go here. It's a Photobucket album of the room going up. It will be of interest to you home renovation fans out there. For the rest of you, not so much.

Sorry this post is so lackluster. I am miserable with a particularly rotten cold. It's giving me a bad cough, making me sneeze and slowly sucking away my will to live...

2010-02-12T11:35:00.006+01:00

Today I just spent ages getting together a bunch of photos of the progress on our house, but Blogger isn't letting me post any pics today. This is not the first time this has happened...Any other bloggers out there finding Blogger a bit buggy lately?

Well, it's not like there's nothing to write about. Mallory is feeling very perky again, so that's great. JP is finally coming back from Ouaga on Sunday.

And also: Martha Barnette wrote an email to ME!!!

SRSLY! And no, it wasn't a form letter for a funding drive or something lame like that. It was a very friendly answer to an email I'd sent in...
Wait a minute...
You DO remember who Martha is, right? She, her co-host Grant, and their amazing radio show have made it onto two of my "Top Ten" lists over the last few months(here and here). I'm sure you rushed right to the show website and downloaded many episodes, right?
No?
Go do it now. I'll wait here.
You're back?
Good. Listen to an episode after you get done reading this post. You'll thank me.

Back to the business at hand: Yesterday afternoon I had to go pick up my older kids and a few of their friends at school. As is my custom, I listened to my ipod over the radio (Thank you, Technology Gods!). I was really looking forward to the 20 minute trip because I had a new episode of "A Way With Words" waiting for me. I was not disappointed (never am, actually). Like usual, there were many listener questions called in. One that caught my attention was about the term "swan song". The caller had heard and even used the term many times, but had no idea where it originated. I actually didn't find the answer all that interesting, because I already knew it; (+in case you don't know and have decided not to take my advice to listen to the show: The ancient greeks believed there was a variety of swan that stayed silent its entire life until the very end. Then it would sing a beautiful song and immediately die.
The story was already discredited by Roman times, but the idea stuck around. Shakespeare even used the concept a few times.)
The discussion made me think of a wonderful song that I've performed. In fact, I sang it as part of a quartet in Ouagadougou at the US Embassy. (I'm the one in pink) The Ambassador herself sang the alto part. (She was an excellent singer, too. Multitalented!)
The memory prompted me to jot off this qucik email to the program:
Dear Grant and Martha,

Besides being a fan of your entertaining and educational show, I'm also a fan of renaissance music. When on your most recent program, you discussed the term "swan song", I immediately thought of this beautiful madrigal composed by the great Orlando Gibbons in 1612.

The Silver Swan, who living, had no note
When death approached unlocked her silent throat.
Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,
Thus sang her first and last, and sang no more.
Farewell all joys,
Oh, death, come close mine eyes.
More geese than swans now live
More fools than wise.

Just thought I'd share.

I am a US citizen (born in Nebraska) and currently living in the French Alps with my French husband and four bilingual children. We learn something from every podcast and usually have a good laugh, as well.
Thanks for putting together a great show week after week.
Sincerely,
Beth Jacob

Within about an hour, I got this in my inbox:

Wow, that is really cool. Thanks, Beth! Maybe I’ll share that on a later podcast. And how cool — living in the Alps with bilingual kids sounds fantastic.

Thanks again!

Best,

Martha Barnette
Cohost, "A Way with Words"

I'd been expecting, at best, a canned response "Thanks for your interest" kind of thing and I thought it was VERY amazing that she took the time to write back.

My first reponse was to yell "Hey everybody! Martha emailed me!!!"
This brought all four of my kids stampeding up to my attic office to behold the wonder of it. They were all very happy for me and rather pleased that she thinks that living with them "sounds fantastic" (which it is, mostly).

But Tya was very careful to inform me "Martha is still NOT your friend. You know that right? She is a radio host that you have never met. Don't make her think you are a creepy stalker."

Ah, teenagers. They always know what to say...

2010-02-11T22:43:00.003+01:00

Which American accent do you have?

Neutral

You're not Northern, Southern, or Western, you`re just plain -American-. Your national identity is more important than your local identity, because you don`t really have a local identity. You might be from the region in that map, which is defined by this kind of accent, but you could easily not be. Or maybe you just moved around a lot growing up.

Click Here to Take This Quiz
Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Or maybe you lived in Switzerland, then France, and then Burkina Faso and then France again.

I left my home state of Nebraska right after university. Then when I was in my mid-twenties, I left the US altogether. I apparently also left behind my Nebraska accent.

Not that I ever sounded like Larry the Cable Guy. But it's been years since I called a soft drink a pop ...

2010-02-10T13:42:00.002+01:00

First of all, thanks SO much for all the supportive comments. It's so good to know there are people out there on my side!!

Secondly: I am SO on top of this Bad Bus situation! Monday afternoon, as soon as Mallory was feeling ok and resting a bit, I contacted the SIVOM. That's the parents' organisation that actually negotiates and signs the contract with the private transportation company. The office was closed, but I got an appointment right away for the next morning when it opened at nine am.

I told the representative the whole story and stated my main concerns:
A. The bus driver should not start the bus until everyone is sitting. That is a basic safety rule (and we all see why now, right?). Thanks to efforts by parents in the past, the bus driver has plenty of power to enforce this. If a child doesn't obey him, he can even take his/her bus pass away and leave mom or dad to drive the miscreant to school. It should NOT be left up to the younger kids (age 11) to try to make the older kids ( up to age 15!) act like decent people and move their bags off the seats.
B. There is apparently no SOP for medical emergencies. As Mallory sat clutching a wad of bloody kleenex to the back of her head, the bus driver drove into town (4km away) and hoped for the best. He had no clue what to do with her. He stopped the bus on the main road at the entrance to town and made all the kids get out, including Mallory. He walked with her to a seamstress' shop and peered through the window. He had a vague idea there was a nurses office somewhere nearby. There wasn't and I don't know what he would have done if she passed out. As it was, after much discussion (Alexa said it took AGES), one of the older kids said that there was a small medical clinic on the north edge of town. He then sent the other kids walking off to the junior high (even Alexa) and told Mallory to get back on the bus alone. She was weepy, starting to feel woozy, and beginning to feel like help might be long in coming- not a good feeling when you are 11 years old, bleeding from the head and alone with some strange guy who seems completely clueless.
He drove her to the clinic, walked her in, told the doctor to take her and left.
And get this: When the SIVOM representative phoned the transport company on Tuesday morning, she was told that the guy hadn't even mentioned the incident to anyone. What a responsible individual, eh? A real prince.

All of the above made me very worried about how such a person would handle a more serious emergency. The mind reels.
Luckily, the SIVOM representative agees and is talking to the SAT (the transport company) about outlining some emergency procedures for the drivers on school runs.

I'm also deep in the insurance stuff. I spent yesterday alternating calls between the SAT and my insurance company. I finally got sick of it and forced them to speak to each other. That seemed to do the trick. I found out this morning from the SAT that our own insurance will pay for Mallory's medical bills, but then will be reimbursed by the insurance of the SAT. The woman there also told me that the driver had just submitted a report of the incident.
I'd love to hear his version of the whole thing...