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.

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.

When my baby boy was born, he seemed pretty big. His sister had been a dainty 7.5lbs. He weighed over 9.

Now he's nearly six feet tall and, as of tomorrow, 14 years old.

In honor of the event, we are having a party. Right now, there are seven teenaged boys in the living room, eating pizza and playing Star Wars Monopoly. Soon, they will eat this cake:

It's a nearly exact copy of Sev's bass- as near as one can get using cake, fondant frosting and almond paste, anyway. I'm not sure I'll be able to cut it- I think I bonded with it emotionally during the five hours I spent struggling and cursing to create it.

.I'd never before made a large, shaped cake. And I'd never had to color fondant before. It's harder than you'd think, especially in black. I think my hands are permanently stained.

But it looks prettycool, doesn't it?

This month, I’ve got a favorite season, pod cast, food, a website, song, tv show …

November Top 10 List

1. Fall- Nine years in the relatively invariable climate of West Africa gifted me with a mad love for seasons. These days, put me in a temperate zone and whatever season I’m in is my favorite, just because I know it will all change in just the course of a few months.
So, right now it’s autumn in the Haute Savoie and all I can say is: gorgeous.

2. A Way With Words- I want Martha and Grant to come visit me, tell me interesting stuff and be my bestest friends 4ever. Is that creepy? Is it inappropriate to feel so strongly about two public radio hosts that I’ve never met? Probably, but I’m powerless against the charms of their hour-long show that examines all the oddities and foibles of the English language. I laugh and learn something new every week. If you are curious about English slang, grammar, old sayings, word origins, regional dialects, family expressions, and just speaking and writing well, this is the go-to program…

3. Burkina-style Peanut Sauce - This is the national dish of Burkina Faso. Cooking it brings my four kids down to the kitchen saying « Smells like Ouagadougou !». It also has the advantage of impressing guests, as most people have never eaten it before- especially not an authentic version. You need: chicken broth, tomato paste, Maggi seasoning cube (but use it appropriately!!) , peanut oil, chicken (thighs work best), vegetables (for sure cabbage, also sweet potatoes and green beans. Eggplant, potatoes, and carrots are also good) You also need a bunch of peanut butter- preferably one made specifically for African dishes. Skippy or Jiff won’t work. Fresh-ground stuff from a health food store would do nicely.
All of this is assembled into a sauce and then usually served with tô. But rice works, too. If this sounds tasty, leave me a note in the comments section and I’ll give details on the recipe so you can make it at home…a bit of Burkina chez vous.

4. Cake Wrecks: Many thanks are owed to Joy and a few other readers that led me to this endlessly fascinating blog that documents the worst in professional cake decorating. Today, for example, it features a birthday cake that is « ornamented » with a pile of dead leaves on top of the icing. Not marzipan foliage, mind you, but actual dead, rotting leaves. Must be seen to be believed, really… Go check it out and consider it your « Cake Tuesday » offering from me.

5. I Gotta Feeling- I don’t usually get popular songs stuck in my head. My strange brain tends to add only oddities to my inner soundtrack. For example, when a pal burned me a cd with a song in on it about trapped miners committing cannibalism, I was humming it for days. And a more recent brain-worm tune for me has been the old hymn « In the Sweet By and By ». So, I’m not generally a Black Eyed Peas-ish kind of person. But when I took the kids to the cinema a few weeks back, I ended up wearing funny glasses, listening to talking guinea pigs wishing I were in the next room over watching Surrogates . But that was only appropriate for my older kids and, so I was keeping the twins company as they enjoyed G-Force. It turned out to be tolerably cute, as I am rather fond of guinea pigs. So, now the song I Gotta Feeling (prominently featured in the film) makes me think of secret agent rodents speeding down the highway in over-sized hamster balls and I smile… Plus, this is the only song that I know the words to that has the phrase "mazel tov" in it.

6. Glee- I’d seen it mentioned a few times on the web by bloggers I like, so I downloaded the first episode of the series. Then, I settled down with my three daughters to watch it. It’s kind of like High School Musical, right?
Wrong.
It’s clever, scorchingly mean, amazingly funny and SO not for 11 year olds. So, the twins don’t get to watch, but Tya and I are enjoying it. As someone who was in the school music scene back in high school, I find it particularly enjoyable. I think Tya likes it because the world of a US high school looks so exotic to her…there’s no cheerleaders or swing choirs in French lycées- not ever. Quelle idée!

7. Asphalt- Maybe it smells a bit dreadful, but it is still my favorite paving material for the month of November. As I write this, a team of eight men is outside my house, putting the finishing touches on our newly-paved driveway and parking area! It’s actually fascinating to watch (to me, anyway…but then, I don’t get out much) and I just spent an hour leaning out of Tya’s bedroom window, watching them work. JP was teasing me, saying that only old men like to stand around and watch construction projects. I begged to differ. Small boys like to, as well.
By Friday, it will all be cooled, hardened, and ready to drive on. Yippee!

8. The Nation- a brilliant magazine that keeps me in touch with US politics and helps me not be (too much of) an idiot.

9. The Annemasse Conservatory of Music- It’s a small school run by the city of Annemasse, just about a 20 minute drive from my house. In September, I joined the choral group there and am really enjoying it. It’s not just the singing itself and the nice new friends I‘ve made- it’s the whole ambiance of the place. It’s heavenly to be in a building full of nothing but musicians who are busy learning and improving. Very inspiring.

10. Top 10 Lists- They are so very appealing. Make one and you automatically feel organized and authoritative. The only problem is that, while 10 is a nice, round number, it can be hard to come up with that many good items….

I am happy to report that my optimism was not unfounded and all your good wishes for progress on the house have done some good. The people that are supposed to pave the driveway called today and promised to come next week and finish the job! Theoretically, on Tuesday the asphalt will be laid down...which means we will finally be able to call in the next group of people- the ones who are supposed to build the carport.

This is all very exciting, from my point of view, but let's move on. It is Tuesday, after all, and that means...

CAKES!

This one was NOT made by me. It was made by four adorable little girls. I had the twins and two of their pals bake a cake one day recently and then let them loose with my decorating equipment. I gave them a few helpful hints when asked, but mostly just sat back and let them go at it. It's a bit odd, but awfully cute...and certainly eye-catching. it is, in fact, just exactly the kind of cake a bunch of 10 and 11 year old girls would like, don't you think?

Below is the cake I ended up making for my friend last weekend. It may seem like a strange design choice, but allow me to explain: Monica just got a degree in geology and her thesis won a prize. I wanted to make her a congratulatory cake, but not a boring one. No flower sprays or fondant "diploma", please.

As her research involved measuring thousands of cave bear teeth, I made her a silly "cave bear" cake. She loved it and had a good laugh.

I can't post anymore cakes today, as I misplaced my cake album.
Hope i find it before next Tuesday...

I haven't posted for a few days and that's because I'm so optimistic. (See how I did that? How I turned a fault (laziness) into a virtue (a sunny outlook on life) Pretty slick, eh?)

Here's the deal: On Tuesday morning, a rep from the company we hired (last spring) to pave our driveway suddenly called and said the crew was ready to get started right away. In fact, if we were amenable, the guys would get going on it that very morning.

Were we ever amenable.
We were amenable with bells on, baby!

We'd pretty well resigned ourselves to a second winter of parking the car down by the road. Which is really no fun. Not only is it a long slog up to the house with groceries and such in hand, but the passing snowplows always manage to create a "Find the buried car" treasure hunt for us. So we were very excited that the job was finally going to get done.

When the crew arrived, I asked one of them how long it would take.
"All day today and maybe a bit tomorrow morning", I was told.
"Amazing!" I thought. And here's where we get to the crazy optimism part: I quickly took several "before" photos and planned to take "after" photos on Wednesday afternoon. Then I'd write a blogpost about the progress on our home renovation project and post the photos as well.

This was my plan-maybe not an exciting one to you, but it was mine.

The crew brought in a backhoe and steamroller and fussed around all day Tuesday, scraping gravel here, adding more there, then smooshing it all down with the steamroller. The house shook from cellar to attic all day long.

On Wednesday morning, I had my camera ready, waiting to see a truck full of asphalt pull up. Instead, at about 11am, the guys gave the house a final shake with the steamroller, packed up their stuff and came to say "au revoir".

That means "goodbye"", as in "we're leaving right now and you will never see us again, ever".


It turns out that these guys were just the preparation crew. They were merely the scrapers and smooshers of driveway gravel. The actual paving team is a whole different group of guys...a bunch of people too busy, I guessed, to come to my house anytime soon.

I sighed and asked when I could hope to hear from the second team.
"Soon," said the crew chief as he started to climb into his Peugot truck.

Maybe he saw the glitter of tears in my eyes or maybe his heart had been softened by the nice cup of coffee JP had brought out to him the day before, but he stepped back down to reassure me:
"Really soon. They don't like to leave too much of a lag time between the preparation and the actual paving."
"But how soon exactly?" I couldn't help but ask.

"Like this" he said, holding out his right thumb and index to indicate a space about two inches long.

Hmm.... I know France uses the metric system, but centimeters don't measure time, do they? Or did I miss something? I wondered as he climbed into the white truck and drove off.

So, here I am, my driveway blocked off by a rope so nobody tries to drive up it and spoil all the hard work of the prep crew. I have no idea when this will be finished. And there's still the carport and a whole freaking room to build...


In all the "excitement" of Tuesday, I forgot to post my usual cake pics. I was reminded of this today as I searched the internet for cake ideas for tomorrow. I want to make a cake for a friend and, though I usually use my own designs, I felt the need of a bit of inspiration this time.

In my search, I came across a site that promises to show "cakes you can bake" and features pictures submitted by proud bakers.
I'd venture to say that just about anybody could make this cake:

I just don't know if you'd want to.

Another proud amateur cake decorator has a whole site of her own where she is showing off her efforts, including this "joke" cake for her boss. :

Is making people vomit considered a joke, really?

The baker even shares this helpful hint: if you slightly warm the Tootsie Roll candies, you can more easily stretch them into more realistic, poo-like forms.

Needless to say, I've given up my internet search for cake ideas today(too scary!) and will just go ahead like usual and design my own...

We just had our best Halloween celebration ever. However, as is so often the case, "best ever" involved very little sleep and I'm pretty wrecked today. A few of the guests went home after the party, but most stayed over night.
So, I had 10 pretty wound up children and teens on my hands. I finally got everyone to settle down by 2am and then went to bed myself. But I was rudely awoken at 4:30.

You know how the laughter of children is supposed to be musical and enchanting? Well, at 4:30 am, after only two and a half hours of sleep, it is so NOT.

So, I'm kind of low-energy today. But I feel motivated to share a few fun photos of the great party we had.

At the head of this post is the rather cute jack-o-lantern cake I made. I used a hexagon cake tin and then trimmed it to shape. I'm sort of proud of the stem.
For the interior, I used a boxed mix from the USA: Red Velvet. It created quite a sensation when we cut the cake, as French people aren't used to seeing dark red cakes.

Below we have a creation of Mallory's- the ever-popular candy spider-web, complete with giant spider:

The kids and I made all the food and then Valentine had fun making funny labels for all the dishes. The tiny, croissant-wrapped hotdogs were labeled: Steamed Baby Mummies. tIf you look closely, you can see their tiny, mustard-dot eyes:

( As you can see on the sign, she wrote in French. I'm giving translations.) We also ate: Mashed Grasshoppers, Bat Paté Sandwiches, Baboon Brains, Roasted Witch Fingers, Griffin's Eyeballs, and Mini-kebabs of African Tiger Meat.
(That last one was a reference to the number of times people have said to Tya "OOH! You lived in Africa! Did you see many tigers?")
Tya even took the labels off all the drinks bottles and gave them names like "Human Blood: type AB" and " Artificially Flavored Toxic Snake Venom" . Nom!

The kids all thought the labels were brilliant.

Everyone was disguised, of course. Sev was a Goth Boy:

Mallory was supposed to be the Corpse Bridesmaid and Alexa was the Corpse Bride. The latter didn't let me get very spooky with her makeup, though. So she ended up not looking very "corpse":

Here's a bit of the general decor:
That's it for today. I have to go make dinner.

Then I might just go directly to bed...

I hope you all had a great Halloween (where applicable, of course).

Some people claim that Marie Antoinette once said " Let them eat cake".
In fact, what she said was "Let them see cake" The doomed queen hoped that viewing attractively decorated confectionary treats would soothe the violently rebellious spirits of the thousands of unhappy peasants milling around the palace.
It didn't work.
But I'll show you my cakes anyway.

Throughout my stay in Ouagadougou, I honed my cake-making skills. It was often quite challenging, as few good materials were available locally. The powdered sugar, for example, was dry, lumpy stuff from Lebanon that had to be pounded through a sieve before I could use it. Butter was available only sporadically, so I had to stock up, despite limited fridge space and power outages that could spoil everything.

But I persevered.

This next cake is one of the first character cakes I attempted. I probably should have made Pikachu larger, but I was just grateful that he turned out recognisable. Nothing's worse than making a character cake and having it misidentified by your eating public.

A remark like "So... that's...Big Bird?" would have killed me. (Yes, I do invest emotionally in my cakes. Thank you for asking.)

(The colors on the above cake were actually ok, btw. It's just a bad photo.)

Now, here's Santa. He's a bit square, but cute enough...

Here's another character cake from a cartoon. The film "Spirit" was a favorite of Valentine's at the time, so I made this:
This next one is also my own design. By the time I made it, I'd already done quite a few horse cakes. So, when one of the twins asked for a horse, I talked her into a seahorse- which she loved.
(I I love the expression on his little face.)

This is probably the most difficult character cake that I ever made. SpongeBob may be a big yellow rectangle, but he's a complicated big yellow rectangle. I'm pretty proud of him, as these cakes can go very, very wrong.

That's it for today. The kids are on school holiday now and I'm very busy keeping them busy. we're planning a big Hallowen party, so there's plenty to do. I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow so that you can see what we've been up to...

Big news! Taciturn Tuesday is going all cake, all the time!

Ok...maybe not all the time- but at least for the next three Tuesdays, I'll be sharing my past Adventures in Cake Decorating with you.

One day in Burkina Faso, I was seized by a sudden urge to make fancy cakes. My first effort was a 3-D train for Severin's third birthday. Mercifully, there is no surviving picture of it.
With that failure under my belt, I was ready to move on (and up, so I hoped). I borrowed a cake pan from a crafty US expat neighbor and managed to make this for Alexa's birthday:

(I made Mallory a Teletubby cake that year. No good pic, sorry.)

Tya's best friend needed a cake soon after. I felt brave and drew this pony for her- no fancy pan or any instructions. Just me and the icing.
This next one is one from 2001. The kids at the party thought it was a bit alarming. It's definitely one of the scarier cakes ever made in Burkina, I'm thinking. It's not an original design, though- I got the idea out of a cake decorating magazine. It was baked in a teddy-bear cake pan. Looking back, I maybe just should have made a teddy bear...

When Valentine was deep into her Harry Potter phase, I made her this Hedwig cake. It's my own design and I think it turned out pretty spiffy.

After a while, I had enough experience that I felt ready to venture into more complicated projects. I made a character cake, without using a custom pan or accessories. I grabbed the video box, took a long look at Buzz Lightyear and started drawing in icing.

Next Tuesday, stop by to see SpongeBob, Pikachu and many more cartoon characters, entirely made out of sugar. Maybe that doesn't sound too exciting, but it's better than the alternative.

Remember, you can only choose one.

"Cake or death?"

I'm still feeling under the weather and not like writing much.
Luckily, I have plenty of pictures to share.

A couple of weeks ago, I walked home in the rain. It wasn't miserable at all. in fact, I thought it was rather nice and was inspired to take a few photos. Here's a shot that highlights some local characteristics. For example, there's a couple of billboards on the side of the barn -a common way to pick up a few euros. And under the billboards, you can see the wood stacked up for the winter. People are serious about their wood around here.

This is why our little corner of France is called "The Green Valley":

When I pass by this house, I always peek in and say "bonjour" to their "goat". It's really well-done, isn't it? I just might get inspired to make my own trompe l'oeil one of these days...

When I get to this curve in the road, I know I'm almost home. (The front edge of our house is just visible at the center of the photo)
So, as you can see, we really are out in the country. We have a few neighbors, but they're pretty scattered. But despite the sometimes sparse socialization, we keep busy.

I particularly enjoy cooking and am constantly experimenting with new recipes. Here's a raspberry chocolate tiramisu that I recently concocted with some berries from our garden.
Our garden is almost all over and done now. There are about seven cabbages left, a few beets and a single pumpkin that I'm fattening up for Halloween.

Our sole apple tree is also ready to harvest. They're just plain old red apples, but they taste amazing when you get them right off the tree. We're eating the prettiest ones out of hand and making applesauce out of all the rest

Finally- today I woke up and got to work on a special project- a birthday cake for my eldest daughter's best friend. As he's also the drummer in their rock band, I decided that he should have a drum kit cake. I'm pretty sure it's the only drum-themed cake in the Haute Savoie -possibly in all of France...

The Fourth of July/US Independance Day holiday was always kind of a big deal in Ouaga. We were always invited to the US Ambassador's house for a pot-luck picnic.


It doesn't seem to be the same here in France. The US Ambassador in Paris didn't invite me to his party, for some reason.

Despite being left out by the big-shots, we managed to make our own fun.

Severin, being the Man of Da House these days, was in charge of the grill:

A bit later, a few of Valentine's friends arrived for a slightly early birthday celebration. The big day is really on Monday, but Saturday seemed like a better day for a party.

I made her a cake, of course:

The guests are still here, playing a board game...It's 10pm and I'm not exactly sure how long this is going to last...

If this keeps up, I might have to change the name of my blog to "Cake of the Day".

Yes, it was a two-cake weekend for me. On Saturday, I did a white tiger cake for the twins and then on Sunday morning I whipped up a basketball cake for the birthday party of a family friend in Geneva.

I have to say that I'm SO grateful that Livia is a basketball player. Basketballs are so EASY to draw. Just imagine if she were an opera singer or a cockatiel enthusiast. I was a bit tired from yesterday's big party and really wasn't up to doing a very fancy cake so soon after the white tiger challenge. But a basketball was just fine.

Now I'm on cake hiatus until JP's birthday in April...

Eleven years and six months ago, almost to the day, I nearly passed out in the office of the local ob/gyn. It wasn't just expectant mother lightheadedness- I'd just found out that I was going to have twins.
The girls were born nearly six month later on February 28, 1998.

In honor of this big event, we are having a party. Nothing like the huge bashes we used to have back in Ouagadougou, but their friend from school will come and we'll have cake and pizza


The girls and I made the candy tree on the left. It turned out very cute.
The cake, of course, is my own handiwork.
I kind of amazed myself by freehand drawing the tiger with black icing.

The guest arrive in just half an hour. I'd better get out of my frosting-covered clothes!

So, we're in this borrowed house, sharing space with a hoard of giant mutant cockroaches and several crazed kamikaze gekkos. Each morning before the kids get up, I patrol for buggy bodies- some dead and some still wriggling. This AM brought only two - one in the kitchen sink and a pony-sized brute in the bathroom off the room here the kids are sleeping.
In view of all the roaches-whom I loath- I take a pretty friendly attitude towards the gekkos. But try explaining that to them. I ran into a little one in the bathroom at about 6am today and despite my reassurances of good intentions towards him/her and all his/her kind it completely panicked and ran straight up the wall. Sadly, he had apparently not been informed by older and wiser lizards that his super -sticky feet would NOT be enough to hold him to the ceiling.
Luckily I saw what was happening and dodged out of the way as gravity had its way with him.
It's a happy ending: gekkos are amazingly bouncy. He scrambled off with no apparent harm done.
And I hold no grudges, despite the fact that he nearly landed on my head.
May he live long and munch many more roaches!

Yesterday was Tya's 15th birthday. But Severin remarked that it must have been her 5th, as the cake looked like it was made by Dr. Seuss. In my defense, it's VERY hard working in an unfamiliar kitchen. So, if her cake was somewhat lopsided and sported a pretty alarming shade of pink, it was not entirely my fault.
Plus, didn't mom always say that it's the thought that counts?

One part of leaving Ouaga is finding homes for many of our pets. That's why Dawn the Goat HAD to get married.
We managed to find a place for her with some lovely friends that already have a goat at home. But theirs is a BOY goat and as one thing would certainly lead to another, Mallory decided that a wedding would have to take place before any change in living arrangements could take place. Who is more of a stickler for the rules of civilised life than a 10 year old Nice Catholic Girl?

So, last Saturday Yann and Dawn got married.
When a Canadian friend of mine came by that morning, I was sewing the dress. And yes, I should have been packing boxes, working on the house inventory or even blogging. But I was sewing up a white lace-trimmed goat dress. Custom designed by me. Goat-couture, if you will.
The wedding cake was sitting on the table. It was pretty obvious what it was. It was a two-tiered white cake topped with white flowers and a pair of small plastic animals: the goat bride and groom.
Sandy laughed at me a while and then pulled out her camera to take some pictures.
"There's always something crazy going on at your house, Beth" she said, shaking her head, which I took to be a high form of compliment.
But you see how I may have gotten a rep around here for being a bit of an odd bird.


The guests arrived soon after and the ceremony began. As Mallory was needed to wrestle to bride down the aisle, Alexa had to be the officiating priestess. She got right into the rôle , digging up a white vestements and various trappings.


In the end, JP had to intervene, as Yann got a bit over-wrought with the emotions of the moment. As you can see, it was clearly a love-match. At the end, when Alexa said "You may now lick the bride", they sort of nuzzled each other, making us all optimistic about their possibilities for a very happy future life together.

Aslan and Midnight (who got married last year) will, of course, stay together. They'll be going to live at a sort of urban farm owned by some friends of ours. There are no other goats there, but plenty of horses and monkeys for company.

"Let them eat cake" - that Austrian-born bubblehead Marie Antoinette said this when told that the French peasants were starving and had no bread. Right?
Well, it's a funny story, but it turns out that historians all agree that she never said it. She may have been the Paris Hilton of the 18th century, but she's officially off the hook on this one.

I'm definitely not tempted to say that the average Burkinabé just needs to eat cake. But the fact remains that I have discovered neeré powder can be made into a really tasty pound cake!
Yesterday, I followed a normal recipe that included butter, eggs, sugar,vanilla and cinnamon) and then substituted neere powder for a quarter of the wheat flour. It took a bit longer to cook than usual, but turned out very moist and rich. It was eaten up within the day and everyone wants me to make another.
This time I'll get brave and replace half the flour with neeré powder.

Still no internet at home or access to my email Curses!

Today the saga of The Jacob Twins’ First Holy Communion continues for yet another installment.


But in case you've wondered- no, my life hasn’t stopped just because I write slowly. New stuff has been happening, keeping me busier than a person really needs to be.
Yesterday, besides editing the film, I had to make this big baby shower cake for a party that was held this morning. It was for two little Burkinabé girls that have been adopted by US families. Yes, one of them IS the little toddler from the orphanage that I wrote about here! Her adoption came through (finally!) and now she has two parents, plus a big brother and sister, as well! I’m SO happy for all of them!

To add to the fun this morning, not only was there the double baby shower event, there was also the "fun" fair at the twins' school. The word fun earned the Quotation Marks of Irony by being agonizingly boring, loud and hot. Very, very hot. And they ran out of water. I am not kidding. Even the drinking fountain ran dry. So, heat exhaustion was setting in as the girls and I walked over to the Hotel Independance from the school. Why would we be walking the streets at 11 am in 110°F weather? Because my car refused to start this morning, of course. (The battery had to be replaced - 200 dollars US. The cost of living has indeed gone way, way up lately) Anyway, we staggered over to the hotel, hoping to find a taxi. We did, but it was a sad old Nissan with no air-con.
It was quite a morning, is all I can say.

But back to the twin-centric plot. (BTW- if you don't know what's going on, because you just tuned in, go back here for the start of the story.)

Next came the obligatory family photo session out in the garden. Well, the session was obligatory for all family members who were NOT dressed in ancient, ratty, school-bus yellow shorts. This meant that, yet again, JP missed out on an opportunity to take a Family Portrait- an object greatly desired by my mother-in-law. She’s a pretty undemanding person, really. All she wants in life is a reasonably recent photo of her only son, his wife and her four grandchildren, all dressed up for some big event. And though JP and I have had four children for over 10 years now, the Family Portraits are very scarce. There’s always someone missing and the MIL always complains. And I don’t blame her. It seems like a simple request and it wouldn’t be hard to comply with, if certain people would cooperate. Not that I’m going to be petty and start naming names…but it seems like I get a lot of heat from the MIL when she should really be lighting a fire under somebody else’s behind (possibly setting fire to a really ugly pair of shorts).

The garden photo session ended and I got the twins in the car and over to the church. Soon, everything was in place and all 24 children were lined up by height and ready for the procession. Pierre the Photographer was there, busily snapping away. The photos ended up looking a little odd, though. The children all look positively angelic, but it appears that they are having their sacrament in some bombed-out ruins in Kosovo, with big piles of broken cement, brick, metal and tile scattered everywhere.

The old wall surrounding the church ground had been completely torn down, but the rubble hadn’t been hauled away yet. And it looked like there were no immediate plans to do so.

We’d all better start praying nobody trips in the dark and impales themselves on some rusty rebar- was my first thought. Life-threatening injuries put such a damper on festive events.

The church slowly filled up as people carefully picked their way past the debris. I found a seat near the middle and held a few places for JP, the other kids and our many friends who would be attending the event.

Soon, everyone arrived and the mass began. It lasted about two hours and was not too boring, considering.

Was this nun being mean to me? I would swear she was being mean.

“It is not possible. We serve lunch until 3:30. Then we rest. Then we clean up and set up the tables at 6pm.” That was her story and she was sticking to it, but it meant bad news for me.

“But Mass starts at six, Sister R. That means I won’t be able to see the ceremony. I’ll have to be here arranging things”. This was the third time I’d said it - don’t know why I bothered.

It was Thursday night and we were ironing out the final details of the post-communion dinner to be held at the locally famous Eau Vive restaurant. It’s run by a small group of nuns and is famous for its good food and the “Ave Maria” sung at 9pm every night in the dining room. It’s the prime venue for a nice party after a Catholic event and through clever planning ( being organized months ahead of time, anyway-which is pretty clever, IMHO) I managed to reserve the main dining room for our big event.

It was going to be a big, formal dinner for about 60 people and there would be a lot to organize. I had been hoping to be able to come help set up the tables at 3pm on Saturday, but Sister R, the woman in charge, was having none of it. If I missed my twin daughters’ First Communion ceremony, it was strictly NOT her problem.

A mean nun. Who knew? I’m not Catholic and only started hanging around nuns since I moved to Africa. Most of them have fulfilled every stereotype I had in my head concerning them. (Hey-I’ve seen The Sound of Music approximately one billion times. I know from nuns). Invariably, the nuns I’ve met and worked with here are so darn kind, nice and spiritual that it doesn’t seem possible. But Sister R was a different matter.

“Well, could I at least drop a few things off in the afternoon?” I ventured, trying for a compromise position.

Well- ok. As long as I didn’t disturb the other clients.
????
Well, normally I go around with a tame ocelot on a leash, singing songs from Okalahoma! at the top of my lungs. But I'd make and effort and leave my pet at home on Saturday. Also, I would try only humming the showtunes under my breath.

See? I can do non-disturbing.

In the end , I got her to agree that I could not only come at 3:30 and drop things off (in a non-disturbing way), but I could ALSO have a small table so that I could set up the cake! This would be quite a process, as the cake would be transported unassembled and then the four layers would have to be put back up with their pillars and the decorations re-attached. Maybe this is no big deal for a caterer, but I’m strictly amateur and this was my biggest cake ever. Over five pounds of frosting and five boxes of cake mix.

I would still have to leave the ceremony to set up place cards, flowers, etc, but it wouldn’t take more than an hour at most. At least I’d be able to see the beginning and end of the big event at the church.

So, at 3pm on Saturday afternoon, Mallory and Valentine helped me load up the car and just before 3:30 we arrived at the restaurant. I carried the bottom two tiers of the cake like they were highly explosive, sure that I was going to drop the whole thing. I had vivid visions of the dramatic fall, the shattered cake and fondant roses rolling around in the dirt like tiny albino severed heads.

And I almost did drop the thing out of sheer shock as I entered the dining room. There was no sign of Sister R. Instead, there was a very energetic Vietnamese sister bustling about the deserted room, removing plates and linens from the tables - tables that were ALREADY set in position for our party! She told me that Sister R was off-duty until 6 and that she herself was in charge of the afternoon shift. And she preferred to Get Things Done, rather than wait around. I imagine she had a lot of other stuff she could have been doing, like resting or praying, for example, but she chose to start getting our party venue organised! This woman was my new best friend! And it turned out to be fun working with her. Valentuine, Mallory and I helped put away clean dishes and cutlery, take dirty linens to the laundry and put away clean ones. We got to see the inside of their kitchen, which is one of the largest, best-equipped and certainly cleanest in the whole country. My girls and I marvelled at the big walk-in refrigerator rooms- one for meat, one for drinks, one for fruit and veg! It was fun getting an insiders view of the place.

Soon, another sister came to help and the five of us quickly had everything done. White linens on the tables, place settings for 60, place cards arranged, flowers in place, cake set up and positioned near and air-conditioner and everything was finished. I wouldn’t need to come back during the ceremony! Everything was ready for the guests to arrive and all I had to do was get home and get the girls dressed. They needed to be at the church by 5pm and it was already past 4:00!

More tomorrow, if the internet isn't down again. It's off and on, depending on the day, as is the electricity. I am SO ready to live in France again!

I'm back online! The pain-in-the-neck server problem over at Liptinfor is fixed, so I once again have internet and email, effectively rejoining the 21st century.

Not like I have lots of time to blog- For example, I spent the morning making this cake for tomorrow's big party. In case you were wondering: yes, it does take huge amounts of time and patience to make 50 roses out of icing.

Now I'm dealing with other tasks- placecards, seating chart, etc.

I probably won't post again here until the big event is over.
Wish us luck!

Instead of blogging yesterday, I made the colourful, possibly blinding, cake at left. Why is it that many things intended for young children are very, very bright? They are not all sight-impaired, just small and incontinent.
Anyway, the confection features “Dora the Explorer”. For those of you that aren’t in touch with the trends in little kid entertainment over the last decade, Dora is a cartoon child that wanders around a cartoon forest promoting bilingual education. Her parents, if they exist, are extremely neglectful. She is alone all day long in the woods, with only a perverted money for company. Boots (the monkey in question) hangs around wearing ONLY a pair of boots. That’s it. Kind of creepy. They need to decide: either he’s a normal money and has no need of any clothes or he’s a completely anthropomorphic primate and should be given a pair of pants. Just boots is kind of kinky, IMHO.

Well, it’s not my call. I just make the cakes.