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)

Yesterday afternoon I wallowed a bit in low self-esteem as I hurried along the streets of Annemasse. I'd left the house in a rush, anxious to pick up a prescription from Alexa's cardiologist before the clinic closed. I still had on my house-cleaning clothes: baggy capri-lenth jeans, an old gray t-shirt and comfy sandals...and I felt very profoundly un-chic. Not like Annemasse is a big, sophisticated city...but it's pretty fancy compared to Saint André. My home village has more cows than people and cows seem to appreciate a more laid-back clothing vibe.

I tried to cheer myself up by finding people worse dressed than I was. "Look! Brown calf-length socks and white loafers with geeky shorts!" I told myself. "He looks WAY worse than me."
But the guy was at least 60 years old, balding and sporting an ugly tattoo.
Who was I kidding?
I had to admit that not many 40ish women were wearing anything so un-pulled-together as I was. In fact, it looked as though they'd all signed a contact agreeing to wear pointy-toe, high heel shoes and tight, short skirts, all day, every day, forever and ever.

"But at least your hair looks fabulous", I consoled myself.
And it did - I'd just been to the hairdresser right before and it was all sleek and bouncy and shiny- not at all like my usual fuzzy mess. And that was a good thing. That night I was invited to an art exhibition in Geneva and didn't want to look like a countrified pile of dowdiness.

So, there I was, walking down the street, thinking deep thoughts about my hair, when I heard a child yell "Amandine Bourgeois! Amandine Bourgeois!".

He was about 10 years old, black, cute as a button and walking up to me!
"Amandine Bourgeois! It's you!"

This little boy had mistaken me for the 2008 winner of Nouvelle Star (the French version of American Idol)
TOLD you my hair looked good!


You can easily see why he made this mistake.
She and I are alike in so many ways.

For example, Amandine is 30 years old and at one time in the past, I was 30 years old!

Another amazing coincidence: We weigh exactly the same amount...well, we would if I amputated one of my legs.

Anyway...maybe it's silly, but it did kind of make my day.

When my son was an adorable, chubby-cheeked toddler his hair was thick, straight and blonde. In short, it was just perfect for an English-schoolboy bowl cut. It took him from "cute" to "ridiculously cute".

He is now 13 years old and just a tad short of six feet tall. So, maybe that would be no longer... appropriate, but something had to be done. The older boys here in France tend to wear their hair long, but Severin's was completely out of control. He 'd peer out from under the long fringe, looking like a particularly large, affable sheepdog.

JP and I had tried to convince him to go to the hairdresser, to no avail. Thinking that maybe he was afraid of our local salon making him look like a provincial loser, I even offered to take him to a hairdresser in Paris when we were there.
No deal.

But yesterday, JP came back from his week in Ouaga. At dinner he carefully studied Severin, who was concentrating on his plate of stir-fry. Unfortunately, when he's deep into his food (as teenaged boys often are) he tends to hunch over his plate, as though he's afraid it's going to be snatched away at any second. The curtain of hair hung down, obscuring the vegetables and chicken. From behind the barrier, crunching sounds were audible.
"That hair's pretty long, Severin" JP remarked mildly. "Why don't you let your mom cut it?"
"OK." he mumbled from behind the curtain, and then resumed crunching.
Ok?
OK??!!
We've been trying to take him for a haircut for six months and all of a sudden he says 'OK'?
To a haircut from his MOM?
"Are you sure you don't want me to make an appointment for you up in the village?" I asked, just to make sure I hadn't just had a massive auditory hallucination.
But no. He really trusted me to cut his hair.

After he washed the dinner dishes, he went up, wet his hair and came back to the kitchen, looking completely unconcerned.
Me? I was concerned.

Sure, I trim the girls' hair all the time. But cutting guy hair? Guy hair is hard!
How was I going to do this?
He sat down in the kitchen chair. I opened a drawer and took out my trusty secret hair-cutting weapon: scotch tape. When I trim the long hair of my daughters, it works a treat: you simply stick it on at the level you want and cut just above it. You get a straight line and all the snipped bits of hair stick to the tape.
Sheer brilliance.
The only problem was his older sister.
"Tape?!" Valentine barked. "You are so NOT using the tape on him!"
Apparently, she was there to protect her brother's interests, even if he himself had nothing to say on the subject.
"But it makes it so much easier." I whined.
"You are NOT cutting his hair straight across!" she informed me
"But..." I protested.
"You are layering and tapering and you'd better get to work," she commanded.
I sighed, put down the tape and picked up the scissors, mentally reviewing everything I knew about haircuts.
Besides "use tape" there wasn't much.
But then , what's the worst that could happen? I mean, if it looked really horrible, he'd HAVE to go get it professionally done, right?
So, I twisted up the top sections with a pink Hello Kitty clip borrowed from the twins and got to work.

I did my best, trying to seem capable and confident, even if I was neither.
And guess what?
It worked!
I actually manged to give him a completely new, shorter, layered haircut. It has shape and style and does not (Valentine assures me) announce to the world : My mom cuts my hair.

As Severin looked in the mirror, seeming pretty pleased, JP passed by and pronounced it "Much better".
"Just don't tell anyone your mom did it" advised Valentine. "They'd make fun of you at school"

"That's right" I agreed. "It's our secret. Only we'll know the truth ...and everyone who reads my blog, of course"

Today I am having a nice day, doing nice things for my (need I say it?)nice, deserving self! I had a long put-off, much-needed visit to the doctor. This was followed by a stop to make an appointment to get my contact lenses replaced and then a quick stop by the estheticienne to make an appointment for eyebrow waxing and other painfully satisfying activities. Then this positive flurry of self-pampering was followed by a stop at the hairdresser. I walked in the door and they said they had a spot open right away and sat me right down. I guess I looked like an emergency case. (Bad hair is considered an emergency in France)
As you can see in the new pic I have up, it's now layered, but with a stylishly sleek fringe at the front. Trés chic? Well, maybe not. But at least now I don't look like I have a dead, elderly badger perched on top of my head. And that's something.

The twins have seen my new hairstyle and seem to both like it. "You're beautiful, Mommy!" Mallory gasped. But then after a good look at it she added doubtfully "But that doesn't look like work hair."
I guess she's gotten too used to me running around the house sporting a bedraggled pony tail..

So far today, I have not unpacked a single box. I am just pottering around, doing whatever takes my fancy. I read a bit earlier on and now I'm planning a bit of emailing and general internet time-wasting. Bliss!!

I haven't had such a nice day in ages. I'm loving life in France and keeping very busy, but I seem to be getting very shabby and neglected as a result.
Enough of that!

Well, it's 8:30 on Sunday morning and here I am already with the report on last night's festivities. It really is amazing, considering that it involved a two-hour long ceremony in an nice warm (ok, stifling hot) church followed by a formal dinner for 60 people. The fact that I did it and lived to blog the tale this morning probably owes a lot to the fact that while I served lots of wine and VERY nice French champagne to other people, I didn't drink any myself.

As for the ceremony- it was pretty much as depicted at left, right down to the angels. OK- there weren't actual angels. But my adorable twin daughters DID look positively ethereal. I hope to have some pictures to post tomorrow and then I'll let you be the judge.

Yesterday began before seven am, as I had to drive Severin to a church youth group event. The kids were going out to a village to distribute the grain purchased with the funds they raised last month. They bought in bulk and had to bag the corn themselves. It was a long, hot morning of work for all the teenagers, but they were really proud to have raised nearly 10,000 US dollars!!! They helped out a lot of needy families with this huge sum!!

Next, I got the girls and we headed off to the beauty salon. I had made appointments for the four of us two weeks ago. But somehow they managed to overschedule their morning at Ananda Beauty and I felt more frazzled than beautiful as the minusule salon filled up with NINE other clients, most of them looking rather of annoyed as service was so slow and spoadic, with only two stylists on duty.
But the Jacobs had precedence and Alexa had her heart set on a head full of curls. Mallory went for curls as well, but it was no use. We tried lots of hairspray, but what we needed was an Act of God. The second we got home, those corkscrew curls went as flat as....well, something that is REALLY flat. Whatever else Mallory may have gotten from me (stubborness? Warped sense of humour?) she did NOT get my hair. Of course, no one would actually want my hair, but it does hold a curl and mostly does what it is told, if told authoritatively enough.
So, it was with a sliver of actual hope in my heart that I gave the hairstylist a small picture of Marilyn Monroe. (Once, years ago in Chicago, a modeling agent told me I had the look of "a young Marilyn Monroe". I think it was a polite way of telling me to brush my hair and get my eyebrows professionally waxed )
Anyway, I thought the older, polished Marilyn look could work-big, loose curls up off the forehead. It was an idea, anyway. Gael (my hair guy) peered at the little picture and got to work.

He pulled on my hair and brushed on it and my three girls (who were all done and looking gorgeous) stood there looking at me with very concerned, frowny expressions.
"Maybe you're flattening out the top too much" I ventured.
"No! Trust me! It's going to be great!"
More brushing.
More frowning on the part of the Jacob Style Patrol. Slight head shake from Valentine- the JSP commander.
"Maybe you're flattening out the sides too much?" I said, vainly trying to push it all back up into a semblance of Marilyn-ishness.
"No! It's looking great!" he insisted.
I tried squinting. Nope. Still didn't look great. In fact, although I would swear that I'd shown him a picture of Marilyn Monroe, he'd apparently modelled my hairstyle on that of Bozo the Clown instead. Now, he is a style icon in his own way, but not one that I, personally, wanted to ressemble.

Instead of saucy, smooth, face-framing curls, my hair was flattened down over the top and down the sides. Then at ear-level it exploded into a bunch of fuzz.
It was the Anti-Marilyn of all hairdos and it was all mine.


'Yikes!' didn't quite cover it. And the more Gael touched it, the worse it got.
I finally just told him to Leave It Alone.
I considered using the blue plastic cape across my shoulders as a makeshift hood so I could get out to the car without anyone seeing me. In fact, maybe I'd wear it for the actual event that evening. It figured it would be easier to explain why I had a beauty-salon cape on my head than it would be to explain why I had Circus Hair.

Once I was safely at home, I pushed, prodded and pinned my hair until it looked like something that a female human might possibly want on top of her head. In fact, it looked kind of nice. It didn't have anything even vaguely Marilyn-ish about it, but at that point I was just glad not to be a hideous freak.

Mallory decided to quit fighting a hopeless battle and opt for a straight-haired look. Pulled back with a blingy tiara, it looked really sweet.

But we didn't have much time to fuss over hair. It was soon time to head over to the restaurant to assemble the cake, set up the tables, arrange the flowers, etc. Valentine and Mallory were a huge help. It would have taken me all afternoon without them and instead it was done in less than one hour!

More tomorrow!

The air is Ouaga was exceptionally humid yesterday and I had the hair to prove it, which was particularly sad because it was the day that I HAD to get my pictures taken for my French passport.

Getting this passport was a big deal. Mine was stolen about five years ago and I have been trying to get it replaced ever since. But this situation that should have been easily remedied quickly turned into the stuff of nightmares. The people renting our home in France “misplaced” a box containing all our important documents-including the ones pertaining to my naturalisation years ago. And requests to the French Administration at Nantes yielded the news that they had never heard of me – all my records there were lost, as well!

Every attempt to fix this situation failed for four years, but about a year ago, JP found someone here at the Embassy in Ouaga willing to help me. After many letters and much to-ing and fro-ing, yesterday I got the news that they had all the papers they needed and I could get my passport replaced.

My question is this: why do they still have to use photos on passports? This is 2008. I’m all for finger prints and retina scans. My fingers are quite slim and I feel that my retinas are probably super photogenic. But no - I had to make a trip to a local photo shop and have the dreaded ID pictures taken.

Resigned, I went to a place that the French Embassy recommended. It was near the municipal stadium and located in a nice new building. It even had a waiting area with seats! It boasted digital cameras and a viewing screen for approving the pictures before printing them! Very posh.

I paid 3000cfa and went into the studio area. The photographer sat me down on a small, unsteady stool made of very shiny, very slippery red vinyl. I am thinking that the seating must at least somewhat explain the odd expression I had on my face in the first picture he took.

Another problem was that my hairstyle (such as it is) does not, apparently meet with French Embassy standards. The pictures have to show both of your ears. So, I had to gather up my frizzy hair and shove it behind my ears, which are not small and dainty. They don’t stick out, but I don’t consider them to be two of my finer features.

I fussed with my hair a bit, then he took the first picture.

Looking at the television screen nearby, I saw a particularly careworn 89 year old woman with tiny pig eyes, Albert Einstein hair and an expression of extreme dismay on her blotchy face. Judging from the ears, she also apparently had some elephant blood in her ancestry.

Oh wait. That was me.

We tried it again.

And again.

I made the photographer keep taking pictures until the receptionist from out in the waiting room started poking her head in the door, wondering if we had ducked out for a romantic lunch together.

“That one is good. I like that one. It’s really nice. Perfect!” the photographer said after the 20^th attempt. The words were flattering, but said in a tone of voice that held desperation and potential violence.

I told him to print it.

Maybe it isn’t that bad, I told myself. Maybe it just looks scary because it’s blown up on the screen. In a smaller format, it might look completely normal!

He printed the pictures, trimmed them and handed them over to me.

Well, I thought to myself optimistically, These could be useful eventually! If I have him take me in profile now, I can use them as my mug shots if I’m arrested for shoplifting Metamucil when I’m 90.

Ever practical, I stuck them in my purse. Then I headed over to Photo Luxe. It’s where we usually get our ID pictures done. I didn’t care what the Embassy “recommended”, I was going to have to keep this passport for years and I didn’t want to look like a depressed, elderly elephant pig on it.

At Photo Luxe, Moussa took my picture. One picture. Click. No fancy TV screen.

Out in the crowed, dirty, no seating whatsoever waiting area, we waited a few minutes and then Moussa ripped off the plastic covering so he could place the sheet of pictures in front of a fan to dry.

I had a look. It was not bad. I looked very serious, rather smart and quite “severe teacher about to ask you to recite all the countries of South America, including all major cities and principal exports”. I can live with that. Shooting for “completely hot sex-goddess supermodel” would only lead to bitter disappointment and tears.

As for the humidity in the air? Well, we waited all day for the Mango Rain, but all we got was the Mango Spit. Mango Spit contains little actual water and much dirt. It does not give you any desire to go out and frolic in it, even if you haven’t seen precipitation since October. So, the day was a bit of a disappointment, weather wise.

It was midnight when the real Mango Rain came. It poured down for about an hour and cleaned things up nicely. When I woke up this morning, everything was cool and freshly rinsed.

So, that’s done. The dry season will really set in now. Things will heat up dramatically and there won’t be another drop of rain until June. I miss weather. All we have here is climate.

BTW- As soon as I got home, I ripped up the first set of pictures and threw them in the bin!

Valentine just updated her blog yesterday. Check it out if you want her take on the Christmas show last week. She also mentions Friday's party at the US Ambassador's home.
The party was indeed very pleasant. Carols were sung and cookies consumed. I was looking fairly nice, as I had just been to the hair salon that afternoon, erradicating the grey streaks that, while perhaps earned as maternal badges of honor, don't exactly thrill me on the aethetic level. I even had Gaël "style" it, which involves flattening it mercilessly with a spiky brush and hot blowdryer. It is an effect I don't have the patience to get at home, but this guy does a nice job. It turns out all smooth and shiny and stays that way until the next wash, so it was still looking good when I went to church the next day. Now, when I say "it was looking good", you do understand, I am speaking the in relative, rather than the absolute sense. I mean : 'it looked good, compared to how it usually looks'. Imagine my surprise when two of my French friends that were there came up to me and started effusing over my exceptionally non-curly hair. It culminated in Christine saying "You look wonderful! You look like........oh! What's her name?...." I waited for what she would say. I guess I have a blank-slate kind of face, because over the years many various people have claimed that I looked just like a hoard of completely different people: Kim Wilde, Laura on General Hospital, Sharon Stone (got that a lot) and Cher (???), just to name a few.
She continued "You look like.... Paris Hilton!"
'Maybe I look like I ate Paris Hilton' was my immediate thought, which I found hilarious.
But my friends are nice people, unlike me, and would have felt compelled to give me further unreasonable compliments if I had said that out loud, but I thought it was pretty darn funny

Umm... I just made an appointment to get my hair straightened again on Friday. Not that I in any way buy into the idea that it makes me look like I am incredibly wealthy, famous for no good reason and weigh 118 pounds. But still...

As soon as the SIAO finished, I embarked on a program of household improvement, to make up for the month or so of neglect. First of all, I had the house fumigated. (Fewer bugs is definitely an improvement, don't you agree?). The problem was ants. Previously, they hung out in the kitchen. I was ok with that. But recently, they started venturing out into the livingroom. Onto the sofa, even. I think they were just hoping to have good seats if the kids put on that Bug's Life video again, but that's no excuse. Anyway, filling the house with poison meant we had to go live in the house of our kind neighbors for three days. They are in Germany right now and said their casa was our casa. Not to say that it was stress free - I spent the whole time lunging at the kids shrieking "DON'T play with/touch/use/look at/breathe on that! This is not our house!". Few things kill a friendship faster than having your home destroyed. (Don't worry, Tony and Kirsten. Your house is still standing) We ended up staying about a week, as I had our place repainted immediately after. Then a mason joined in the fun, as there was a hole in the wall to repair and new tile to install. Then the water heater had to be replaced...It often seemed overpopuated around here, what with my three household help women, six painters, a mason , two air-con installers, the carpenter, the plumber, the gardener, the security guard and the driver...not to mention the four kids, their pals and a partridge in a pear tree.
No wait- that's next month.
The house is taking forever to finish. My car has been breaking down every two days. Alexa has a cold. Mallory has headice. Again. And gave them to ME, which I figured out at about two in the morning, which caused me to LEAP out of bed as though I'd received a severe electric shock via a cattle prod to my pancreas. I spent the next four hours shampooing my hair with lethal poison and combing it with a tiny, sadistic comb. Yeah, lice. I am about ready to set off a thermonuclear device on top of my head. I figure the residual radiation would kill off any lice left on the kids. Damn I hate these things. It's roaches for hair! How messed up is THAT? A good (?) pal of mine just wrote: "I guess that the shortcut of locking Mallory in the house whilst it was being fumigated didn't occur to you, did it? You should consult with me on these things." Always one step ahead of me, that Barb!

Anyway, what with all the running (and riding) around for Papiers, organizing the house and keeping up with life in general, I have been getting a tad exhausted. My solution? Take eight children camping in the African wilderness! Of course! The kids rode bikes, rode horses, played baseball and re-enacted all six StarWars films. I got no sleep. The four younger girls, who I had thought would chatter all night, promptly fell asleep, while the three boys howled like maniacs until about 3am, at which point I unleashed my flying monkeys.
I am still not feeling very perky, but life goes on. The car is still not fit to drive, so I am home today, blogging, answering emails for Papiers and making a giant cake shaped like a turkey. Don't ask.