Pimp My Livingroom

This post is not about television programs, travel or bubonic plague. It is about my all-time favorite topic: renovating our sweet and rather exasperating old house.
Yes- in May, The New and Improved Romanian Handyman showed up. Actually, we don't call him that. That would be silly.   We refer to him as "DJ Pauly G".  Not to his face- even though the girls mean it in the nicest possible way.  It is just their way of expressing the amount of his awesomeness. The truth is, the man works miracles!  Just look!

 This is the "before " shot. This living room is quite small and has one tiny window.  One!  Only a cave-dwelling troll would have thought to "improve" the place with dark varnished wood ceilings. Sadly, the previous owners were cave-dwelling trolls with a decorating budget.....

Not that our own  "improvements" over the years turned out much better.  The textured wall treatment was my bright idea.  I started hating it the minute I finished putting it all over the walls. Definitely time for a change.....

This is where Paul took down the wall between the living room and the entry hall.  The idea was to make that wasted space part of the living room and give it some much-needed volume....

It was so great to get that horrible wood off the ceiling.  But under it was tons of lathe and plaster.....

As you can see to the right in the photo,  there is
the old opening leading to the main staircase of the house  leading up to the bedrooms. This would be blocked up and the space behind transformed into a closet.....



 Dust ruled our lives for many; many days.  Every surface in the house was covered....

One of the worst things about the hated textured wall plaster was that it was so hellish to remove.  We had to use a wallpaper steamer and putty knives to chip it off little by little. It was truly Satan's Wallpaper


The green being uncovered here is the original wall color from back at the turn of the century.... So, that is an historically accurate revolting shade of green.  Call the Smithsonian!

.












As for the clean-up task-  luckily we had help from R2D2's cousin.  (see below right-hand  corner)  He's never, ever been in a movie and his name is Kevin.  Sucks to be him.

 Anyway, the above may look similar to what we started with...but it is actually COMPLETELY different.  The room is now about a meter longer, the ceiling is NOT a disgusting troll-ceiling and the floor is a lovely oak parquet instead of splintery pine....

I won't go into the specific, horrid details, but I have been sick for about the last three weeks and it has really cut into our fun here in the USA. While in Avignon, I came down with some kind of flu and I had thought it was almost gone when I got on the plane in Geneva on the 10th. But I was coughing by the time we got stuck in Denver and I quickly re-infected poor Valentine. Then we got to Lincoln and made my mom sick. And now poor Mallory is sick in bed. Here's a nice picture from two days ago, back when she was one of the few healthy people left in this House of Plague.

(That's my parent's new dog- a rescue Wirehaired Terrier named Tess. She's very calm and sweet.)

Beth in Nebraska

After many, many adventures, we have finally arrive in Lincoln!
We won't be here for long.... we are here for Art's celebration of life ceremony an will just stay two weeks.
We've been able to spend time with family and have some fun...all of which will eventually appear on this blog.
Just not today.
But I just wanted to say that it is great to be back after three years away....

The month of March sort of got out of hand and escaped unblogged. But rest assured, April will not suffer the same treatment. And I will have plenty to write about because I will be in the United States. FTW! But before I get into all that, lets catch up on last month. To make a long story short: There was Easter. We ate nice food, prepared by Mallory and myself. Then we had a nice outing to a nearby castle, because that is how we roll here in France. 

Le Chateau de Ripaille, near Thonon-les-Bain

The kids all seemed to enjoy it

Another highlight since I last blogged was my visit to Avignon with Valentine.  She was busy at the Fine Arts school, so I had lots of time to wander around on my own.  I spent much of my time revisiting the "Palais de Papes".
I have visited it once before, but as it covers about 2.5 acres, there was still stuff to see....

Mostly built between 1334 to  1364, it still  dominates the city.

The only bad thing about the trip was that I came down with a very bad case of the flu.  in fact, I've been sick for about a week now...but seem to finally be recovering.  For a while I had my doubts that I would.  When I spent two days in bed reading Laura Ingalls Wilder, I knew I was possibly in big trouble.  LIW books are my instinctive go-to position in cases of impending death and disaster. 
Fortunately, I pulled back from the brink of mortality and "The Long Winter" has been put back on the shelf, only three-quarters finished.

Regrettable Television

I haven't been writing on my blog because I've been watching too much television: some of it very, very bad and some of it very, very good (which is also bad, in a way- as it sucks up time that could be better spent organising my laundry room or making scones or possibly writing blog posts.)
Let's have a look at some of the culprits.
1. Terra Nova- Reading a description of the basic plot outline, this show sounds like it was created with me in mind. Dystopian future? Time travel? Dinsosaurs? Produced by Steven Spielberg? Sign me up!
Sadly, "signing up" includes exposure to a thin plot propelled forward by painfully cheesy dialogue and the boring antics of surly, extremely well-groomed, attractive and completely predictable teenagers.  
"Disappointed" hardly covers this one.  I wanted to like it, but just couldn't. 
So,  I decided to try for "so bad that it's good"-style viewing. 
But it was a lost cause.
The network cancelled it, but that is too little, too late. Now not only is the Fox Entertainment  Group responsible for the horror that is Fox News,  it is also to blame for making me HATE a dystopian time-travel dinosaur show.
You have truly done an evil, evil thing, Fox.

2. Revolution- This is another show that seemed like it had been imagined as an early birthday gift/late Xmas present created specially for ME- a  dystopian post-apocalyptic future conspiracy extravaganza produced by JJ Abrams.
The basic premise is that quite suddenly,  all electronic devices stopped working (sort of like the EMP that wipes out everything in Dark Angel*).  Also, for some reason, internal combustion engines no longer work (this also happens in the excellent urban fantasy novels "Ariel" and "Elegy Beach"**) This is never explained, but one is left with the hope that it will be, as one man has a jump drive that supposedly holds the secret of why everything shut down and how to get it all back on again.
It all sounds great, but problems are evident 15 minutes into it. The action is set 15 years after the lights go out.  And this low-tech future is mostly inhabited by preternaturally attractive young people between the ages of 16 to 25.  They are all extremely well-groomed and recieve excellent dental care. (Who knew that you could get veneers on your teeth in the low-tech dystopian future?) 
They're so clean, despite the fact they have to wash up with a bucket of water heated up over a fire. 
And the clothes of these young subsistance-level farmers is so  fashionable, perfectly fitted and completely unworn.
And clean. 
Did I mention how damn clean the low-tech dystopian future is?
They are supposed to be running for their lives, but all manage to look as though they've just finished up a yoga class and are heading out for some sushi.
Now, I'm no snob.  Far from it. I love me some post-apocalyptic clichés. Give me a good fascist militia, a drunken  lowlife who is secretly super-awesome,  and a plucky tomboy who is good with a bow and I'm ready to go.
But somehow this show manages to make every  single trope of the genre boring and silly.  And that I cannot forgive.

3. All's Faire in Love- This is a movie, but I watched it on my television. So, it totally gets counted as "Regrettable Television".   Once again, it all looked good on paper. If this movie had an Ok Cupid profile, I totally would have dated the heck out of it.
 Get this: a romantic comedy filmed at the Michigan Renaissance Faire.
It had me at "Michigan Renaissance Faire".
Sigh.
Sadly, this review from Rotten Tomatoes about sums it up :"If you don't like the word 'penis' but crack up at the use of 'wang,' 'ding dong,' 'wenis' and 'wiener,' this is your movie."
Not to say there weren't a few good bits.  But it takes a LOT of good jokes to make up for the over-use of the word "wenis". 

4. Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace. This is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.  The only thing that could possible  make it worse would be the word "wenis".  In fact, if you changed the title to "Star Wars I: The Phantom Wenis"***, it probably would officially become the worst movie, ever.
At this point, you may be asking yourself why the hell I watched this.  As a crazed Star Wars fan since I was a sci-fi freak 12 year old back in 1977, I'd presumably seen this thing when it came out in 1999.
Right?  
Well- it's like this: one evening, Mallory told me that she'd like the watch the Star Wars films. She hadn't seen them for a few years and hardly remembered them at all.  While Sev and I have often revisited IV, V and VI over the years, the twins had not really joined us. So, I thought it would  fun to have a SW marathon, starting with TPM and going on to the end.  But looking at sci-fi section of our dvd collection, I noticed something odd: films II through VI were there, but "Phantom Menace" wasn't.
I couldn't figure it out. 
Maybe I'd lent it to someone and forgot?
I put it out of my mind and ran upstairs to obtain a copy. (I will NOT say that I  downloaded it off the intwebz.  That is illegal and not something I would do. Probably.  Unless I was desperate.)
Then I settled down with Max, Sev and the twins to enjoy a fun movie night.
My happiness lasted... about three seconds.  That's when the scrolling intro text began. Also the questions. SO many questions: 
Trade routes?
Taxation? 
What's next?  The Teapot Dome scandal? The War of 1812?  Is this History Channel? What's WRONG with you people?! You are limited only by your imagination in this outer-space fantasy world and you are giving me trade disputes, taxes and  blocades? I didn't like this in high school history class, so why do you think I would like it now? WHY?!

Also- Jar Jar Binks.

It took about 10 minutes of stunned misery before I suddenly remembered why I had no copy of this dvd on hand.  In fact, this was the result of a concious decision I made in  back in Burkina Faso in 2000 after watching the movie for the first time ever (on VHS tape, btw!!So retro!!).  I was SO bitterly disappointed and disgusted by it that I proclaimed that the film was not welcome in my home.  I banished it from my life and seldom thought of it ever again, except to occasionally mutter things like "Jar Jar Binks was created by demonic forces to destroy human souls."
My self-soothing mind-wipe was so effective that I didn't really conciously register the fact that, while I eventually upgraded all our Star Wars films to DVD versions, I never purchased SWI:TPM.
 Good call, in retrospect.
Why anybody thought it was a good plan to re-release it in 3D is anybody's guess****. 

I guess that's mostly it for bad television that I regret. Luckily, there was also some really good stuff.  And I promise you that the giood stuff is just as good as the bad stuff is bad. 
And that's saying something. 
If you follow me. 

So, my next post will be all about the really excellent stuff I've seen over the last two months: less complaining, far more rhapsodising.


* Dark Angel is one of my favorite sci-fi series, ever. And would look like "Citizen Kane" compared to "Revolution", if "Citizen Kane" had featured Jessica Alba as a genetically engineered super-soldier.

**Author Stephen Boyett posits the failure of all advanced technology.  This includes guns and  is caused by magic, which actually works. Fair enough. (Also: if you can, one day you should read "The Architect of Sleep"- his 1986 novel, which is almost impossible to find, but is one of my fave books, ever!)

***Alternate title proposed: "Star Wars I: The Wenis of Jar Jar Binks"

****Here's a great review from Wired

The Mayor's Wishes

Last night I went to our local town hall to attend "Les Voeux du Maire".  The latter is a phrase that's hard to translate easily into English.  The few sources I found styled it as "The traditional New Years ceremony of the the mayor's office", which is accurate, but not very elegant.
 The direct translation is "The mayor's wishes"...and after an hour or so of listening to his wishes, I had a few wishes of my own- the main one being to get the hell out of there (and possibly move to Switzerland).

I don't want to be mean. I KNOW it's a thankless job to be the mayor of a tiny* village in rural France.  The tax base is sadly minuscule and each inhabitant seems to have their own very personal complaints and issues that they want solved hier, bébé**.

That said, being mean and snarky is SO much more entertaining that being nice.  Don't you agree?

So, there I was, sitting on a vaguely beige and definitely grimy plastic chair, in the company of  about 150 other unfortunate souls. The invitation had promised a glass of wine along with the speech, and I think that was a key factor in the turnout.  Without the lure of free booze, that mayor would have been looking out at an audience comprised of only the assistant mayor, a few town council members and the school cafeteria lady (who also serves as the bus driver and janitor).

While the idea of serving wine was good, looking back, I see clearly that a tactical error was made with regards to the timing.  The whole thing would have gone off much better if the alcohol had been served before and during the speech, rather than after it .
And I think the mayor could have benefitted from a few pre-show shots, as well.  As it was, we all had to sit there, stone cold sober in our sticky chairs*** and take in the mayor's one hour long attempt at pubic speaking.

The man has been mayor in St.André forever****.  But apparently,  making a speech every year since forever doesn't make you any better at it.  Funny.  
And even more amazingly, the whole hour-long discourse was contained on a single bright green post-it, which he looked at every 15 seconds.

The contents of this marvel of de-motivational speaking?  I won't bore you with the specific details...they mainly involve central heating, insulation and sewer systems.  The real problem was in his approach to presenting his not-yet-drunk constituents with the various bitter pills needing to be swallowed.

It's hard to explain it in abstract...let me give you some examples.  Below is an exerpt  from his speech*****, translated into English for your reading pleasure. 

"About 750,000 euros will be needed for the renovations.  And that means there won't be any money for other things.  Some people will be happy.  Others won't be happy.  But that's what was decided,. So, we're doing it that way. Maybe it's completely arbitrary.  I don't know...but there you go, then. Whatever."

After one hour of this, your brain begins to melt,  madness descends...and the carafes of wine that get passed around are very welcome indeed.  It didn't hurt that there was also sausage, cheese and little puff-pastries filled with pear compote.

As we munched on the above mentioned snacks, the man himself came by.  JP remarked that the mayor had a small Legion d'honneur****** symbol emboidered on his tie.
 I  replied "Oh. He got it for incompetant pubic speaking?  They give awards for that now?"

So- the bad news is that our septic system problems are all our own and no help from the mayors office is going to be had for any of the dozens of households involved. 

The good news is that if you, dear reader,  have a secret desire to become mayor of a small village in the French Alps, I could probably persuade most of the population to vote for you....


*587 people, at last count. Now that's tiny!
**French for "yesterday, baby"
*** It's actually completely unfair of me to harp on the less-than-pristine state of the  chairs, as that was at least partially my fault. For New Years Eve, I rented the town's party hall with a few friends and had a bit of a soirée.  There were sixty of us and I suspect that a bit of wine/champagne/disgusting tequila-flavored beer might have ended on to a few of the chairs. Maybe.
****Since 1993, anyway.
*****OK- I made it up based on my rather inaccurate memory of what was actually said.  But the spirit is there.  This was really what the guy sounded like. For reals!
******Some kind of  award invented by Napoleon in 1802.  They have big medals and fancy sashes, FTW!

So...I woke up to a flooded cellar this morning.

 It looked like this:

Right now I've got a couple of guys pumping it out and we're hoping that the heat pump, washer and dryer and all the rest have survived their night with their little feet in the water.

It's all kind of depressing.  

Why don't we instead look at this:

This is me and two of my lovely daughters last night at the church of Saint Joseph in Annemasse.  We were just getting ready to perform at a big Christmas concert there.  Since September, the girls and I have been rehearsing for it with the Ensemble Vocale of the conservatory there. 
This year's piece was Mendelssohn's Psalm 115.
The Ensemble usually sticks to Baroque music, so it was fun to try Romantic for a change...

So, it's December and we have a bit of snow up here in the French Alps. 

Here- I'll prove it:

That's our backyard.

 Sadly, the snow didn't confine itself to that area and had to be cleared so that we could leave the house to get food and not die....

I consoled myself with the fact that shovelling is a good form of aeorbic exercise.

Luckily, I didn't have to do it all myself!

I'd been thinking of putting the Christmas lights up...but then it started dumping snow on us.
 As the weather calmed down today, I finally got it done.  There are no pictures of me doing it...but I'm sure they would have been pretty funny.... Maybe tonight I'll take a picture of the final result.

Halloween 2012 
Our annual party was lots of fun and very successful, as always.  Half the joy is the lead-up preparations....and I can say with no false modesty that we kind of outdid ourselves this year.  Mallory cooked some AMAZING food and the other kids did a great job decorating the house. 

That's Sev in the Darth Vader costume...

Valentine was SO cute as WWII icon Rosie the Riveter

Cats, chickens and Germans....but mostly cats

September mainly involved cats and Germans. But no German cats.

 Mid-month, the twins and I took our two most presentable felines to a big show in Bourg-en-Bresse.
 The inhabitants of that town are referred to as "Burgiens", even though "Bourg-en Bressiens" would be way more fun to say. Burgiens are inordinately proud of their chickens, which are very tasty and expensive and famous throughout France. In 1814, the city was entirely ransacked by Austrian troops.
 IMHO, the incident was probably poultry-related. I'm just sayin....

So anyway, once again we entered our cats in the "chat de maison" category and took home all the prizes. This time, though, there was COMPETITION! However, Dexter was much admired by the judges and mercilessly ground the competion into the dirt.
The fact that said competion was a teeny tiny little black kitten was quite beside the point.
We didn't feel bad.
 At all.
Mostly.

Above you can see the twins posing in front of our cats' cage displaying their many fabulous trophies and ribbons, some of which were wrested from the tiny paws of a pathetically weeping baby kitty  - but I digress.....

Below we have a picture of Bill.  In the catshow world, Bill is called an "Exotic", which is much nicer than calling him a "Big Fat Bastard".
 Actually Bill is a real sweetie.  And his name is really "Neo".  But we all thought he looked more like a "Bill"
Neo Bill won second place in the overall category "Best in Show"  and is no doubt destined for a life of fame and glory. 

Below you will find a helpful guide to some of  the many cat breeds.

(You're welcome).

Germans showed up at the end of the month in the form of two 14 year old exchange students from the Lake Constance  region.    Apparently people in that lovely area of Germany have lots of spare time to fuss over their food requirements.  Or maybe they just eat fish out of the damn lake three times a day.  At any rate, I had quite a time feeding these two, as they were both not only vegetarian, but one wouldn't eat eggs, either!  The other liked eggs ok, but wouldn't eat any cheese.  We had veggie burgers twice and I counted the days until they left....
Next week, Alexa heads to Germany to make a visit in return.  I'm tempted to send her with instructions to pose as a macrobiotic vegan or possibly a fruitarian.....

I don't like August much.  

To be specific: I hate it more than couscous, but somewhat less than clowns and lighthouses, 

But September is a month that I can really get on board with. 

 It kicks off with my birthday, which is nice and festive.  

And then the weather really starts to cool off and segue into Autumn, which is my favorite season.

Not that birthdays are SO great, what with getting older and all that...but I usually manage to have a pretty good time- generally thanks to my four wonderful children.

This year, Mallory made me a stunning Fall-themed birthday card that I LOVE.

She also made angel-food birthday cupcakes (only 85 calories each!)

Valentine organised the funding with her siblings and bought me a cute lavender candle, gorgeous flowers and a bottle of my new favorite perfume: Dahlia Noir by Givenchy, which supposedly "embodies the mysterious, singular radiance of a woman’s graceful power."

 This seems pretty unlikely, but I'll try wearing it for a few days and tell you what I think. If my graceful woman power starts giving off  any mysterious and singular radiences, you, my faithful blog readers,  will be the first to know 

Then I might phone my doctor....

Click the Links!

July is about over, but  it has been reasonably fun for me. And now you can have fun, too- just by clicking all of the assorted links that appear in this post!
Not that they're really all  actually fun...but some are quite entertaining.
I promise.
So...
We've  had some visitors from Australia. It had been ages since we'd seen Stephen and Adrienne, so it was great to get together again.
They looked just the same- but their two daughters had certainly changed over the last 14 years or so... So grown-up and lovely!

Mallory and I made some pasta together a couple of times.... It was tasty and was the latest episode in the long and glorious pasta-oriented history of my paternal ancestors (I used to make noodles with my Grandma Lillie when I was a little girl)

 Our cats laid around a lot (Which is what they do when it is NOT July, as well.  So, not much of a surpise there)




Severin and Max made a video parody for Valentine's 19th birthday.  The original is to be found here and their rather funny masterpiece is to be seen here.

Valentine had a lovely party with her friends. Karaoke and Jungle Speed were featured activities and a good time was had by all.

In a late-breaking birthday event, Valentine got a shout-out from one of her favorite YouTube personalities. (Can one really call a naked plastic baby doll a "personality"?  Let's just say, "yes", shall we?)

As for the rest...Our old neighbors from Ouaga (Tony and Kirsten, for fans of the African chapters of my saga) stopped by for a day as they drove up to Germany.  Hopefully they'll stay a bit longer on the way back down next month.

Robert and Aminata have been here this week...


And tomorrow we're leaving for the north to go visit my MIL for one week.  We'll be staying here.

That's it!

Taylor Swift vs Avril Lavigne Death Match

To mark the end (FINALLY!!) of the school year here in France, a friend of the twins held a party last night. The theme was the eternally (and apparently internationally)  popular "Dress as your favorite celebrity" concept.  This allows teenage girls to dress up,  wear lots of makeup and look all awesome without seeming to be trying too hard.
 I know this is a true thing, as I did it myself back in the day.  In one particularly memorable incident in 1978, I think I was supposed to be Olivia Newton John .   Don't mock me.  She was quite the style icon back in the day.

On second thought...go ahead and mock away.

Luckily, my daughters have much better taste than I ever had.  They decided to go as country star Taylor Swift and pop rock girl Avril Lavigne.

As I quickly rummaged through teh interwebz looking  for a couple of pics to accompany this blog post, I immediately was made to understand that there is much online bickering about which of these two young ladies is "more awesomer".

The facts?  Well, let's see...Avril Lavigne's name means "April vineyard" in French. 
So, she's got that going for her.
Also, she looks a lot like my daughter Alexa!
I guess that makes her awfully awesome....

But then we have Taylor Swift, who grew up on a Christmas tree farm - and  that gives you special powers beyond that of other humans. Christmas trees provide a lot of happiness, so I'm pretty sure that being associated with them earns one mucho good karma.  

On the other hand, she once dated one of the Jonas Brothers and wrote a song about him. Sadly, that may cancel out all xmas tree-related cred accrued.

Then again, Taylor is about 6ft tall and could crush Avril like a bug.

So there's that.....

I don't know...it's all mildly confusing, which is no doubt why thousands of teen girls are ready to spill blood over this question.

Luckily, my own little Taylor and Avril get along quite well..

This morning's verdict on the party? 
"Meh" pretty much sums it up what the girls had to say about it.

But at least they had a fun time getting dressed.  Me trying to glue false eyelashes onto Mallory was priceless, I assure you.