Perfect Welcome

My Blog Has Moved. I'm No Longer Found Here.

2010-10-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd clarify that because I got a new follower at Perfect Welcome since I launched my new blog (thank you) and didn't want anyone to miss out on the fact that I was posting elsewhere. I'm now here at A Lady In France. And there is a giveaway of French chocolate involved. Hope to see you there.

The Unveiling

2010-10-15T07:53:00.000-07:00

I've missed all of you, reading your posts, writing ordinary posts of my own - you know, daily life and communication.

The thing is, daily life has gotten in the way. There is the blog launch (which is today, if you haven't guessed and includes a giveaway of a french box of chocolates from La Maison du Chocolat to one winner).

And wouldn't you know, the construction is finished so that means finally moving in and settling in. And then, of course, I started teaching 5 hours a week at my place, which means I actually have to clean three times a week to receive them, in addition to all the preparation for the classes. And there are certain must-do's for the garden in time for the season, etc. So I've been quite busy really.

But the biggest stress has been the blog because there was so much I needed to learn about coding, hosting, social media, photos, etc. It was a steep learning curve (or a lesson in futility - it's still a toss-up).

So with butterflies in my stomach (I hope you like the unveiled me), let me gratefully present to you, thanks to Erin at Nirvana Mamma and Pepper at UniqueHorn Designs, my new blog about life and love in France.

A Lady In France

And in honor of my upcoming ten-year wedding anniversary, the story of us, as told in Ten Years with Mr Perfect-for-Me.

Woah - it's a party!

2010-09-27T12:38:00.000-07:00

And I was just shooting the snail!

Hazards of an organic garden.

My New Blog!

2010-09-23T23:52:00.000-07:00

was completely erased when I attempted to install zenphoto for a picture gallery and it replaced (as in wiped out) my current WordPress theme.

I've missed you all, been popping by your blogs, but not commenting much as I've been working day and night on getting my new blog up and running. When I've gotten it ready, that'll change and I'll be back in your lives.

But oh! They shouldn't let people like me in the css-styled websites when I don't know the first thing about programming. My shoulders and neck have fossilized in a dowager's hump and when Mr. Welcome pries me off the computer to go to bed, he has to carry me down by the waist as my body is frozen in keyboard-ready position. I should give it up.

But the blog makeover! The photos! The stories! All the places I plan to show you in France!

I'm going back in.

Dear John

2010-09-14T03:02:00.000-07:00

Dear John,

We've been together for almost a year now. It's been really great; you were my first, you know, and I learned a lot with you. I've made a lot of really cool friends through you that I hope to keep.

But it's time for me to move on. I feel like I've changed and you haven't. I'm a different person now than when we first met and I have different needs, different wants.

And, ah, I've met someone else.

Actually two people. Remember when I was trying to win that contest? Well, you're not going to believe it, but I won! I know in spite of the pain you must be feeling, that you're happy for me. Erin at Nirvana Mamma has announced that I have won the blog makeover contest and Pepper at Uniquehorn Design, whose blog design I really admire, is going to give me the makeover I need. You have been comfortable, welcoming even, just what I needed when I was at home full time with a baby, living in a hectic construction site.

But now I have a little more freedom. I am ready to see the world, to go on adventures, and to really appreciate this amazing place I live in. I need something a bit more dashing than you. And, I'm afraid Mr. Wordpress has what it takes. So I'll be leaving you, John. I'm going on to something with more focus: a different name, more images, franco-american cuisine (you know how much I love to cook), more adventure, perhaps less neuroses if I can manage it.

I know you want what's best for me. And you'll be just fine without me.

The thing is, my projects are only half-completed and I'm not ready to make the move. Can I squat at your place for awhile? I may be a little less communicative over the next month until I move my stuff completely out, but you understand, don't you John?

John?

Snapshots

2010-09-12T12:58:00.000-07:00

our more modest sunflowers - the last of the season

Young Lady: all I want for Christmas is ...

(yes, I know, it's her first close-up debut)

radiators needed painting -Mr. Welcome made a protective tent near the well

a bit of lavender growing on the side of the road - the blue is gone, it still smells ... mmm ... divine

a playground in La Defense - we used to live here and loved it. but there was no vegetable garden

this unassuming little phone table in the guest room

is a very old sewing table with a place to put candle, needles, etc.

And the best snapshot of the week was seeing a parade of french firetrucks in the town next to us, sirens blaring in memory of 9/11; and in the midst was a large, red (get this) NY fire department truck! The solidarity they showed for my beloved NYC was a bolt out of the blue that left me in tears.

The Sprint

2010-09-07T05:01:00.000-07:00

I ordered some Asics Gel Kayano running shoes from Amazon.com, which will then be shipped to my sister in San Francisco, who will then kindly ship them to me. The money I would save by buying them in the States would be negated by the 99€ international shipping fee, and my sister will certainly find a better shipping deal.

I ordered two pairs. One white pair for the running I'm about to start with a friend (one hour training for an hour of English), and one black pair to wear to pick up the kids at school. It's bad enough that I'm wearing sneakers at all, but a dirty grey pair with my brown or black pants (or even worse, my capri pants) is simply unacceptable.

I just can't seem to wear anything else these days. My podiatrist, who fitted me for insoles, insisted that I wear no shoe without his personalized sole inserted; but it's hard to fit the thing in any shoe that's worth wearing, and on top of that, I find my sneakers to be infinitely more comfortable. They can usually stave off that crippling sciatic nerve that always seems to get pinched whenever I'm in a pinch. So I wear sneakers everywhere.

I have a supinated foot, which is apparently very rare - only 2% of the population. It means that I have a very high arch, and instead of leaning inwards when I walk, like most people, my foot leans outwards and causes sharp pains on the ball of my foot. It's a very agile and flexible foot, but fairly prone to injury. I read up on it quite a bit as I was planning to start exercising, and I discovered that the Asics Gel Kayano was the best brand for this type of foot. I looked down at the shoes I was wearing, and to my surprise, discovered that that's exactly what I had! No wonder they were so comfortable.

I ambitiously bought those sneakers, along with a jogging stroller, right after Young Lady was born six years ago, but was deterred from running when I found I couldn't do it without peeing my pants. Sorry for the TMI overload folks, but that's the fact of the matter. Of course I had Big Boy and Peanut in France where the government pays for ab and, yes, perineum re-education after childbirth, so the problem is supposed to be resolved by now. I'll spare you the details of how the re-education was accomplished and how well it works out. Your welcome.

But it's clearly time for a new pair or two, necessitated by my somewhat exhausting lifestyle. I seem to sprint everywhere I go. From the morning onwards: dragging three kids into clothes and up the stairs to be fed and to the bus on time; bringing Peanut to his nursery adaptation where I have to take him every day for two weeks in increasing increments of time; rushing to be the first in line to get Young Lady signed up for ballet at the conservatory and Big Boy signed up for multi-sports in the school gym; rushing to get to the pharmacy for Peanut's vaccine before it closes and to the post office so that I'll make it in time to pick the kids up from school; carrying a squirming Peanut up the stairs to fetch Big Boy at his second floor classroom, and speeding him outside so that Young Lady won't have to wait too long in front of her school until I can get there; bringing Big Boy to one Wednesday play center (for moms who work) and Young Lady to another because she's in primary school . And I don't drive. It's all on foot - 16 minutes' sprint to the nursery, 12 minutes' sprint to the schools, 14 minutes' sprint to Big Boy's play center and 19 minutes' sprint to Young Lady's.

My mind is buzzing with all the english students I'm getting and how I'm going to organize them all, and when we're going to find time to finish moving in now that the construction is finished (and Mr. Welcome has to go to Duabai again). In the frantic sprint, my mind is a block ahead of my lumbering form, racing along with my butt sticking out in true stroller position (which conveniently serves as a walker whenever the sciatic nerve acts up). With all the racing around I do, I'm surprised that I'm not in better shape.

I used to be in great shape. When I was a lifeguard, I ran 3-4 miles a day and swam 100 laps a day, just for fun. As a single in Manhattan, I would leave my Upper East Side apartment very early when the portable bagel and coffee stands were being set up, to join the other joggers around the reservoir. I would then walk the 50+ blocks to work if it was nice. I liked to move. I danced salsa with my boyfriend (Mr. Welcome-to-be, who is a fab dancer, by the way). I occasionally went to the gym or the pool. What happened?

It's like I put the veil on for my wedding and never took it off. Well, literally six months after our wedding we moved to Somaliland, where I wore the veil out of respect for the culture; and then with those loose Somali dresses that allowed complete liberty to the waistline (and the cockroaches), I just never saw it coming - all the weight gain. It slipped right into three pregnancies and several stressful moves, and I've been veiled ever since in whatever item of clothing I can find in this skinny country to fit my frame (usually at the supermarket right next to the synthetic shoes).

The veil doesn't fool anyone. Young Lady announced that Axel had said "ta mere est enoooooorme!" (You're mother is enormous). Excuse me, I have some weight to lose, but in any other country no one would even give me a second glance. I said nonchalantly, "that's okay, honey," but inside I was blowing my bangs straight up from the side of my mouth, while trying to decide whether to slump my shoulders in resignation or push up my sleeves in determination. Mr. Welcome discreetly came over to whisper sweet nothings like, "out of the mouths of babes" and "perfect to me," darling that he is.

The blow was lessened somewhat by the fact that I had already started Dr. Dukan "Je ne sais pas maigrir" and was in the early blush of assured success. I know, I know, more low-carb hype, but when I saw the graph of when I would be at my perfect weight, I couldn't resist. The diet falls somewhere between Atkins and South Beach, both of which I've tried. Atkins I tried right after coming back from Africa, but I wasn't motivated and I just wanted my cake and to eat it too. Plus, I was sure that the weight would just slip off like it had before. Ten years and twenty pounds later, I fell in, then out of South Beach by trying to be too perfect and follow every single meal plan. That was a lot of cooking, even for someone who likes to cook.

So here I am eating low-carb and still doing okay (4th day so it hasn't gotten hard yet), except that it makes me feel like a lean-mean sprinting machine. I can relate to Ellen Degeneres' observation that models always look so angry because they never eat any bread. There's something about no sugar and no carbs that makes that black coffee or diet coke go straight to the head. My brain works so fast, my husband won't have finished his question before I've answered him, accused him, told him a story and asked him a question in return. But if I can melt away a little extra water weight to prepare my feet for those Asics and the hour long training sessions, I will be in good shape. Eventually.

But look at me. Here I've been chewing the fat when there are still the dishes to clean, the laundry room to organize and the paperwork to be filed before I pick the kids up from school. Aye Aye Aye.

Gotta run.

Lost and

2010-08-31T10:20:00.000-07:00

I found my voice this morning with Peanut. I started singing an aria to him as I was changing him, and he, gazing up at me (in intense admiration) started singing too. It was a duet culminating with a sloppy kiss from him at the end, as all duets should be. The song was from Samson and Delila by Saint-Saens (whose name I tend to mispronounce - "san-son?" "son-san?" - a similar butchering to "en haut," a word which, before one learns to switch positions in the nasal passages like changing train tracks, is reduced to nothing more than a guttural stutter.) Eloquent. But the song burst out of me like the sun and brought back a memory of my mother sitting with Turandot playing loudly on the stereo, the opera score in her lap, and tears in her eyes as she sang along. I was glad to have found my voice, and by association, this memory.

Mr. Welcome went with his brothers and father to clean out the family's country home that was recently sold. It's part of a hamlet and is two-thirds of the long farm house, called a longière. His grandfather bought it when his mother was young so that they would have somewhere to go for vacation; he ended up taking residence in his later years.

This home was a treasure trove of memories and would-be antiques (Mr. Welcome's aunt laughs at my notion of antiques, considering the term to apply only to anything dated B.C.) had there not been a fire that destroyed so much of it. Nevertheless, Mr. Welcome came home with an old armoire and other small furniture, and lots of books. There was a Bible that dates to 1772 and I only know that because I looked up the Roman numerals and had them converted to something I could read. I was so excited to have something that was printed only 100 years after the printing press was invented - that is, until I looked that up too and discovered I was off by a couple hundred years, bringing perhaps justified shame on America's World History education - at the very least, on me. But a friend commented that the Bible was four years older than our country, so that's something.

We found some old paintings of his grandfather's, and the plan for a wall he decorated in the Louvre (we have to see if it's still there). And then we found this. Mr. Welcome's great-grandmother's notebook from 1903, detailing what she was learning in high school. Honestly, the book was so perfectly written in calligraphy, it could have been printed (the printing press had been invented by then). There were no errors and no wasted pages.

There was a well on the side of the house that dates to the 14th century, I think. The house was probably newer, but you still had to duck when going from one room to another because the people were that much shorter when it was built. Mr. Welcome is moved to save these precious articles (so many of them were on their way to the bin) in tribute to his family's history, and I am moved to preserve them by the very fact that they're so old, myself hailing from a country that is so new. All in all, there were some great finds.

On Sunday at church, I sat behind three people who looked new. I asked them if they had a song book, and the teenager responded that he didn't speak French. I discovered that they were from NY so I offered to translate for them. When the service was over, I learned that the woman was Columbian, but grew up in America, and she had flown to Paris with her teenage son because she was reuniting with her long-lost brother who lives in France.

They had been separated at birth, and though she had tried for so many years to find him, she didn't have his official birth name. It was when she was going through some medical papers that she found a document with his name. And from there, you'll never guess how she went on to find him. Facebook! As soon as she clicked on his profile, she found herself staring at a younger version of her father and knew right away it was him. So she and her son flew all this way, spent a fortnight in the City of Lights, and communicated in Spanish through many late nights to catch up on everything that had happened to them in their lifetime apart. Their joy and emotion radiated through their entire conversation.

Of all the great finds, some are so treasured they cannot be valued.

* I couldn't post a comment on my own blog to tell you how grateful I was for your encouragement after my last post, so I'm posting it here. Thank you.

Judgement. And Panic.

2010-08-28T01:19:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine remarked on facebook that no sooner had she returned from vacation did she get stuck in the emergency room for three days, whereupon I responded with the appropriate concern for her condition. This is what she replied:

"Panic is not in the context of my work, kisses."

I chuckled with Mr. Welcome over that one because it was he who taught her how to use google translate so she could communicate with a Brazilian guy she met where English was their only common language (except she didn't speak it). Since then we've gotten some funny news from her on facebook. What she was probably trying to say was "don't worry - it's not for me, but for work (she's a nurse's aid), and then bisous," which are the french kisses, one on each cheek. Except that she's a young chick who writes in textspeak, and google translate was probably even more bemused than usual.

I have been feeling myself under the subject of unfair scrutiny lately. Of course it's my own fault for putting it out there on my blog - I mean, you get judged if you walk out of your home into public, but how much more when you call attention to yourself. But even in my own life I've been getting some comments that seem unfair, a summary judgement of who I am and what I'm about based on a few encounters.

I should clarify that I'm not talking about you my friends or bloggy buddies, but rather people I barely know or people who read my blog (or read me on a forum) for the first time. It appears that I am suffering from post-partum depression (Peanut is almost two), care too much what people think about me and suffer from lack of time management. While I can take it with a certain amount of good nature, I think I'm suffering as much from the grains of truth as I am from the summary assessment of my situation and my nature without having walked in my shoes (or read more than one post).

I am certainly open to critique. My sister-in-law's pronouncement that I absolutely should not look for a full-time job without first getting my life in order (seeing a psychologist and getting off the medication I've been on for the 15 years since my car accident, losing weight, getting my driver's license) was taken very seriously, even though I berated her for, what felt like a low blow to pounce on me before I finished my breakfast. She apologized, I decided to take her advice, I love my sister-in-law, and all is well.

It does bug me that my posts have been curtained with grey shadows, and I agree wholeheartedly that I care too much about what people think in terms of weight and my appearance (I'm also a girl), but this is only a moment in the life of. In truth my life is characterized by hardship and growth, but also by serenity; by trying to find myself and by knowing exactly who I am; by a longing for something more to justify my existence and by being satisfied that I bring to the world exactly what it needs in my infinitesimal way.

There is a proverb that says, "The purposes of a man's heart is deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out." There is no understanding in curing the ill before really listening.

Of course I'm afraid that my half-humor and half-chagrin about this will not show through this post and it will seem like another proof of my caring too much what people think. But it's been a tough year living in a construction site with young children and full-time care for a baby, living in a culture that is not my own, holding down the fort while my husband works and travels a lot, and stepping cautiously around the strange men in my home while still trying to keep some order, some healthy food on the table. Even something as simple as driving is a major challenge here, having failed the test twice after over 3000€ and 80 practical hours spent (I even have a NY driving license so it's not for lack of skill). It's a moment in the life of, but it's not all there is to me.

My husband thinks I'm brave for facing the challenges squarely and loves me as much for my foibles as for my strengths. He knew me when I was at my "best" in the face of the world but doesn't necessarily think any less of me now. He is in my moment.

Last night as I was coming down the stairs with him after having successfully arranged my kitchen, I started to list all the other projects I considered urgent that we needed to attend to (panic rising in my voice with the addition of each task). He stopped me, held his hand up and said,

"Panic is not in the context of my work, kisses."

Now there's someone who won't judge.

Springboard (and ... never mind)

2010-08-26T01:18:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone!

I'd like to springboard you to two blogs today (while selfishly keeping you here to read what I wrote as well. I know, wish you never came, huh?) The first blog is Gigi at Kludgy Mom, who is hosting a B2S B2B (see button) starting on Sept 12th and lasting 6 weeks. You can register for the event here. What I find to be useful for this blog education/challenge (if you, like me, are in need of one), is that there is only one task per week. woo hoo! It's totally doable for the busy blogger. So pop on over, as you clearly have nothing to lose.

The second blog is Mr. London Street (my favorite) who wrote a beautiful post here about "Firsts." If it's your first time reading him, you won't be disappointed.

Last night I had a lovely time just sitting and talking to Mr. Welcome - the sweetest part about marriage, I'd say. I had fallen into one of my depressive slumps that seemed impossible to rouse from, and which we had figured out in a conversation earlier that morning, had to do with not spending enough quality time as a family.

The house seems to consume every spare moment. Never mind that we are (a year after buying the house) still doing major work on it. And it involves strangers constantly in the house, and us shoving important stacks of paper and other articles in plastic bags to prepare the room to be plastered or painted (which I can never find later on when I need them). Never mind that once the living room, guest room and stairwell are painted, we are DONE for the time being. Never mind all that, because there is still the curtains to purchase, the rugs to clean, the kitchen island to purchase as a temporary measure since we can't get our horribly incommode kitchen redone for several years due to a severe shortage of money. Never mind that the falling bramble hedges need to be replaced with lavender ones, the raised garden beds need to be started so that they're ready for Spring, the trees and laurel hedges all need to be trimmed, the Spring bulbs need to be ordered so that they're ready for planting. Never mind that I need to iron all the name labels on to the children's clothes before school and start preparing my advertisements to teach English in the area. Never mind all that because we have no money or time, only an overwhelming sense of failure.

I correct myself. I have an overwhelming sense of failure. My husband is too busy with work at work and work at home to consider the matter. As for me, I judge myself on how I look, how attentive a mother I am, how organized my house is and how much I accomplish. Never mind that my strength is completely relational: to love people, to include them, to joke with them, to lighten them - I don't judge myself on that, only on what my strengths are not.

I judge myself on always feeling a step behind others - that I'm not as toned or energetic or fashionable as when I was single living in Manhattan, that my house is not as sparkling as Bree from Desperate Housewives (or even Susan - you have to shove all the drawings and markers to one side of the table in order to eat), that I'm not constantly engaging with my children and taking the opportunities provided to teach them how to garden and cook and clean up after themselves, that I spin my wheels and seem to accomplish nothing. That is what I judge myself on.

Mr. Welcome and I decided that we would start having Saturday projects. Our goal would be 3 Saturdays out of 4 to go out with no other goal than to build relationships and memories as a family. We would go up the Eiffel Tower, we'd go to the Loire Valley, we'd go to the Louvre, we'd visit the Notre Dame etc. And we'd do it every Saturday, with us taking turns coming up with the idea and planning it. Let the work get done when it may.

Already, the sun had returned to my smile from having made this decision together, but at the end of the day as he was herding the kids downstairs to the shower, Mr. Welcome turned to look at me and came over to give me a big hug, "I looooooove this woman," he said. "I looooooove her." Suuuuuuun.

Prior to us sitting down together for the evening, he had tried to put a shelf up in the kitchen but used the wrong screws, which bore huge holes in the wall, rendering his project unfeasible. He had already successfully built a kitchen unit for our microwave, but he regretfully decided that the shelf idea was going to have to fall to the wayside.

So as we were sitting, I asked him (usual girl question) what he was thinking about. He responded that he was trying to figure out how to the build shelves in the living room as he had planned. I joked that, given his history, he shouldn't attempt it. (Ignoring me) he said that he always spent his time thinking about algorithms or problems that needed to be solved - his brain was always working that way, which was probably why he was a computer programmer. (Hmm, what do I spend my time thinking about? "People,"I volunteered, " and how to weave them into a tapestry of peace, love and human kindness." He laughed at me).

We moved on to other topics, like how I showed my whole hand when we were selling our apartment by telling a prospective buyer how much we were offered and if he couldn't beat it, we were going to go with the other guy (instead of letting him just make an offer, which could have been considerably higher). I listened with chagrin to what I had done and announced that I probably wouldn't make a very good poker player. He said that was right but that I was perfect for a relationship since you always knew what I was thinking.

This led to him telling me a joke. Never mind how we arrived there; as in the nature of all conversations, it's impossible to say.

A husband came home and told his wife that he had invited his boss to dinner that night, where she responded that she had planned on making peas since that was all they had and the stores were already closed. He said not to worry that he'd explain to his boss when he came that it was a simple meal of steak and peas. She would go into the kitchen, make a loud clatter and announce that she had dropped the steaks so that there was only peas left, at which time the boss would understand the reason for such a simple meal. All goes according to plan, and when the clatter comes from the kitchen, he calls out "Is everything okay, chérie? Was it the steak?"

"No," she calls out disconsolately, "... the peas."

A Few of My Favorite Things - The Song of the Shirt

2010-08-24T09:49:00.000-07:00

I thought I would start sharing with you random things I love in a very random way (ie not any particular day of any particular week, but when the mood strikes me - my first post of this nature was here without me realizing I was going to start making a "thing" of it). I discovered the following poem about 15 years ago and have loved it ever since. I've included a Wikipedia introduction to give some background.

The Song of the Shirt is a poem written by Thomas Hood in 1843.

It was written in honour of a Mrs. Biddell, a Lambeth widow and seamstress living in wretched conditions. In what was, at that time, common practice, Mrs. Biddell sewed trousers and shirts in her home using materials given to her by her employer for which she was forced to give a £2 deposit. In a desperate attempt to feed her starving infants, Mrs. Biddell pawned the clothing she had made, thus accruing a debt she could not pay. Mrs. Biddell, whose first name has not been recorded, was sent to a workhouse, and her ultimate fate is unknown; however, her story became a catalyst for those who actively opposed the wretched conditions of England’s working poor, who often spent seven days a week labouring under inhuman conditions, barely managing to survive and with no prospect for relief.
The poem was published anonymously in the Christmas edition of Punch in 1843 and quickly became a phenomenon, centering people’s attention not only on Mrs. Biddell's case, but on the conditions of workers in general. Though Hood was not politically radical, his work, like that of Charles Dickens, contributed to the general awareness of the condition of the working class which fed the popularity of trade unionism and the push for stricter labour laws.
And without further ado ...

The Song of the Shirt

by Thomas Hood

WITH fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread--
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch
She sang the "Song of the Shirt."

"Work! work! work!
While the cock is crowing aloof!
And work--work--work,
Till the stars shine through the roof!
It's Oh! to be a slave
Along with the barbarous Turk,
Where woman has never a soul to save,
If this is Christian work!

"Work--work--work
Till the brain begins to swim;
Work--work--work
Till the eyes are heavy and dim!
Seam, and gusset, and band,
Band, and gusset, and seam,
Till over the buttons I fall asleep,
And sew them on in a dream!

"Oh, Men, with Sisters dear!
Oh, men, with Mothers and Wives!
It is not linen you're wearing out,
But human creatures' lives!
Stitch--stitch--stitch,
In poverty, hunger and dirt,
Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A Shroud as well as a Shirt.

"But why do I talk of Death?
That Phantom of grisly bone,
I hardly fear its terrible shape,
It seems so like my own--
It seems so like my own,
Because of the fasts I keep;
Oh, God! that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap!

"Work--work--work!
My labour never flags;
And what are its wages? A bed of straw,
A crust of bread--and rags.
That shatter'd roof--and this naked floor--
A table--a broken chair--
And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank
For sometimes falling there!

"Work--work--work!
From weary chime to chime,
Work--work--work--
As prisoners work for crime!
Band, and gusset, and seam,
Seam, and gusset, and band,
Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumb'd.
As well as the weary hand.

"Work--work--work,
In the dull December light,
And work--work--work,
When the weather is warm and bright--
While underneath the eaves
The brooding swallows cling
As if to show me their sunny backs
And twit me with the spring.

"Oh! but to breathe the breath
Of the cowslip and primrose sweet--
With the sky above my head,
And the grass beneath my feet,
For only one short hour
To feel as I used to feel,
Before I knew the woes of want
And the walk that costs a meal!

"Oh! but for one short hour!
A respite however brief!
No blessed leisure for Love or Hope,
But only time for Grief!
A little weeping would ease my heart,
But in their briny bed
My tears must stop, for every drop
Hinders needle and thread!"

With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread--

Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,--
Would that its tone could reach the Rich!--
She sang this "Song of the Shirt!"

(I've been feeling the need for a vacation).

Generic Impossibilities

2010-08-23T03:29:00.000-07:00

I grew up in a family where we needed to count our pennies. Four kids on a symphony musician's salary (in a smaller city) is something that needs to be worked in order to draw out the best value. My very hard-working parents managed to save enough to buy a large fixer-upper in a nice part of town (where boys didn't try to set my hair on fire while following me to school), and they put us all through college.

However, I remember the stacking and carrying of all the firewood in order to heat our large house, and coming downstairs in the morning to stand on the iron grate over the heating duct with my flannel nightgown billowing and my icy feet burning from the tepid air flow. I remember the 45 minute drive to "the farm" each week to sow, weed and harvest our vegetables, which were then frozen for the winter (and our apple, strawberry and blueberry picking, much of which got frozen as well). I remember the knocking down of plaster, the sanding, painting, the re-wiring as we fixed-er-uppered the house ourselves. And I remember the generic food.

The food was not simply from a cost-cutting or a buy-bulk supermarket, it was white packaging with black letters, and I think it was called "no-name," or something like that. I remember having shampoo that was green and sort of glopped out with zero lather, with a special shampoo for my mother so her beautiful hair wouldn't fall out (although I later found "Prell" to be every bit as harsh for the hair). I actually remember when we started to buy things like yoghurt and when we started to get shampoo and toothpaste with names. Things were looking up.

All in all, there was still a great deal of coupon-cutting and careful decision-making all throughout my growing-up. I remember getting made fun of for what I wore, which now looking back, although not brand-name, was otherwise perfectly fine. But because I was incredibly insecure, I decided that all my problems would be solved if I had some brand-name clothes, and I presented my mother with a list of must-haves that included a modest amount of Izod tee shirts and Levis jeans for what I figured to be a mere $500. (I was astonished when she laughed at me).

When I was set free to make my own way, I spent money quite liberally, although I was careful not to make the mistake of credit card debt. I was certainly not interested in coupon-cutting or saving money, although I wisely put money into my retirement as soon as the opportunity was afforded (then cashed out early to buy our house - oh well). I always had this idea that money would fall from the sky at the right time, probably due to my parents' never letting us feel the worry of not having enough. Indeed, when my husband was out of work for a year, we lived in the nicest part of NYC and somehow (legally) had the most money in our bank account ever (?); and just at the moment when we were selling all our things on e-bay just to keep up with the bills, the opportunity was given us to buy this amazing house in a really nice neighborhood with great schools; and only two days ago, the 2000€ debt that I had been pondering how to solve (in spite of our careful planning) resolved itself by the Caisse Allocation Familialle deciding it owed us money and depositing 1,978€ in our bank account. It does seem to fall from the sky!

But even with money falling like rain, we find the need to be wiser with what we have. So we shop at Leader Price (Leed-air Pry-ce). Or we head down the discount section of Auchan, where they have bulk cereal and jam for 85 centimes and everything packaged in white with "discount" written on it. Or we sift through the various sections at Carrefour, looking for those marked with "discount" just to get things for at least half-price. And I find that a lot of it is absolutely as good as the higher-priced, prettier-packaged counterpart.

For one thing, milk is milk in France - it comes from a cow and does not include hormones. Creamy desserts are creamy desserts. Rolled dough is rolled dough. You're going to find the quality and the discount all made with real ingredients, like eggs, cream and flour. You're going to recognize the words (if you read French) when you look at the ingredients, and you're probably going to like the taste. In many instances, there's no reason to pay for the package. But we've discovered in the quest for penny-pinching, that everyone has their limits. In the episode of Ugly Betty we watched last night on DVD, it was Beluga and blinis with champagne for Wilhelmina Slater; for us it's catsup, camembert, coffee, and tinned sardines.

My husband absolutely insists on Heinz ketchup (okay, I'll give in to the new spelling). I don't mind the Amora brand and find it tastes just as good, but I buy what he likes considering that I, personally, insist that the coffee has to be brand-name. Carte Noire to be exact, although instant Nescafé is good in France. (I once fooled a coffee connaisseur with instant espresso powder that he was sure had just been freshly brewed.) Camembert is also a staple in our house, and we did not come all the way to France to buy firm young camembert with perfect, furry white skin, so it's generally Le Rustique for us, as aged as we can find it without that hint of ammonia. Now the tinned sardines was just a fluke, as it's a rather rare purchase in and of itself. My reckoning that generic would be just as good was quelled as soon as I rolled back the lid and discovered that there were still scales on the little guys. I mean, fish is generally sold with scales in France, but sardines are so small that once you try and remove the scales, there's nothing left!

So we buy cheap where we can, and try to reduce a reasonably sized cart for one-to-two weeks worth of groceries from a whopping 375€ to something around half-that. Money may fall from the sky here in France, but it sure blows out the door just as quickly.

So what about you? What can you absolutely not compromise on?

Oh Goody!

2010-08-19T01:58:00.000-07:00

The Peanut is still giving long discourses where there are only three recognizable words, one of which is "goody," a pronunciation I think lost somewhere between 'thank you' and 'merci.' He says it like "goo-deeeeeee," which is actually not that far off the mark when you think about it. Someone gives you what you want and you say, "oh goody."

Yesterday I went into the centre of a nearby town with quite a spring in my step. It was probably because it was the first day that wasn't actually raining, and also perhaps due to the fact that I had been fasting on liquids for three days and it was the last day. I can't really explain the fast - it was just something I felt like I needed to do, and since it was three days worth of liquids, I was having fun juicing the tiny beets, pulled out of the ground for that purpose way too soon. I had been planning to fast the week prior, but my friend who does Ramadan convinced me to wait so we could be tired and dull at the same time.

Anyway, all went well at La Poste where I happened to arrive right before a huge crowd, and so got seen right away. My good mood was then threatened as I forgot to be coldly polite at the national insurance center while asking for a form, and subsequently got put quite in my place by a dying bureaucrat where I had to salvage my self respect by matching her politesse with some iciness of my own (darn friendly American personality that gets me every time).

But I shook it off when I saw that Le Marché was going on all down the street. I had been planning to go to the grocery store, but when I saw that, I leapt at the chance (I was full of fresh juice) to support the local commerçants. I supported them to the tune of 40€ in a mere hour, and all for just lunch and dinner.

This is a half-crown (which I can't eat since it has gluten), but I was thinking of dear Mr. Welcome, who was working from home. I strolled among all the cheese stands, the vegetable stands, the fish stands ... actually I was looking for some halal meat since I was keeping the daughter of the friend who was doing Ramadan that night and all the next day.

I ended up in the charcuterie & traiterie and thought how nice it would be to have a ready-made lunch for Mr. Welcome. I ordered enough sausage stuffing for two tomatoes from our garden and a slice of terrine de foie de lapin avec poireaux. If you don't know and love french food, I won't translate that for you as it might possibly gross you out. It made my french man salivate, however, and I love him, so ... Can I tell you how he was beaming to have this meal put before him?

I was already salivating thinking about breaking my fast that evening and what I was going to prepare. I never found the halal meat, so I ended up buying a kilo of jouets de poisson, which means "fish toys." They're lovely large chunks of salmon and white fish that would probably make a shark very happy. In any case, they looked so fresh sitting on the ice that I just had to get them.

As the evening drew closer Amina arrived with her daughter (she admitted that she had thought about making me a nice traditional Moroccan soup to break my fast but was too lazy, and I admitted that I had almost called her to ask her for it, so that she promised to bring one when she came to get her daughter, along with some flaked pastry with chèvre). I was already thinking about how to prepare the fish, and decided on butter with the fresh dill, lemons and shallots I had bought at the market that day.

In the course of my fast, I had also made vegetable soup and drained the broth, then mixed the strained vegetables with mashed potatoes. To my surprise, I discovered that the kids love it! So I decided to take the leek I bought at the market, the zucchini I picked from the garden, some organic carrots (as ours were still too small), and mix those vegetables with the new potatoes from the market that I cooked and mashed.

The kids ate late, around 8pm (which is not at all late in France). I was feeling pretty great as the really hard day had been day #2 where I almost broke down and gobbled up the frozen fish sticks I was preparing for my kids upon learning the news that Mr. Welcome would be home late from work. I stood firm and the anticipation was really worth it.

I set out the meal for two while the freshly-scrubbed kids played downstairs in their pj's. There were beet leaves fried in canola oil and sprinkled with salt (the beets were pathetically small, but their leaves did them justice). There was the mashed vegetable and potato mix, and then the broiled fish plate sizzling before us. I also had had the foresight to chill some white wine (with no alcohol - sorry to offend the connaisseurs among you but I just can't handle alcohol). It was a meal to delight in.

I was giddy in anticipation (can you blame me for writing an entire post about food?), said a little prayer (there are times where you just have to thank God for the bounty) and dug in, savoring every bite.

Goo-deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

SOS! UTI & OCD -

2010-08-15T10:12:00.000-07:00

Our mac charger is on order qnd in the interim I'm using my husbqnd's computer, zhich hqs q qwerty keyboqrd thqt is driving me qbsolutely nuts!

I realize now as an adult that I had quite a bit of OCD patterns as a kid. The first one that I remember started innocently enough. I was about 10 or 11 and asked my mom if I could go to the bathroom in the middle of a church service. She said "no,"and given that I didn't have to go that badly, that should have been the end of that. However, I started panicking thinking, "but I have to go! What if I'm in a place where I have to go the bathroom but I can't?" So to try and control the situation I started to go the bathroom as often as possible (sometimes every 5 minutes) if I was outside of my home or about to go somewhere.

This behavior lasted about two years, and cropped up again later on when I started having stomach troubles at the age of 15. I went through a battery of tests but missed the only one that revealed an intolerance to gluten, which was not diagnosed until I was 36. Suffice it to say that there were many many years of bathroom paranoia, which were not eased by all my travel, and I have had many an occasion to build character - like when I was stuck in traffic in a taxi in New Delhi with beggars surrounding the car, banging on the windows, on my way to a business meeting with a stomach that was urging me elsewhere. I finally had the driver turn around and take me back to the hotel and just got a later start to my meetings that day.

There were other phobias and other OCD patterns that lasted for years (checking the smoke detector every single night without fail to see that it was working, or stepping on a crack in a certain part of one foot that burned with awareness, because I had stepped on a crack in the same part with the other foot - honestly, if I had been on the world of Path, I would have been a godspoken), but fear of needing an unattainable toilet remained my greatest phobic OCD trait.

Friday night, Young Lady was being capricious. It was time to go to bed and she didn't want to, so when I offered for us all to pray together she said "no"and I ended up praying with Big Boy (in front of her and also for her - that she wouldn't have bad dreams and all that). Off to bed.

Except that she kept coming up in tears to say she wanted to pray with me and I would tell her again no and to get back into bed. I kind of felt like a schmuck for sending my kid away in tears because I wouldn't pray with her (I mean, what kind of mother am I?) but at the same time I didn't want her to be capricious. When she came up again trying to negotiate a prayer, or at least for me to sing her a song, I could hear in her voice that it went beyond caprice and had headed its way into full-blown worry. I could tell that for her if I didn't pray with her in her bed and tuck her in, that the sky would literally cave in. I could hear her heart burning the same way my foot did that just needed to step on that crack. So I gave her the emotionally appropriate response - the one that would keep her out of therapy later on.

I laughed.

I couldn't help it! There was just something so helpless about seeing all my neuroses come to life in the little girl standing before me - ones I was so sure she'd escape if I just gave her a secure and emotionally healthy upbringing. I'd seen her need to control in other situations, but never before had I heard that worry in her voice that I recognize so well. Okay, we are a long way from a diagnosis (or even thinking we need one if Mr. Welcome is right), but in that moment I wanted to call and set up an emergency psych evaluation for her - for us - right then and there.

The next day that niggling feeling I'd been having of "oh I think I have a Urinary Tract Infection!"was confirmed as I struggled to contain the familiar feelings of panic. UTI's are not my friend as they touch on that raw nerve of phobic panic like nothing else (except stomach upset). I remember one while trying to get home from India, surrounded by a mob of people trying to get on an overbooked flight, and then a particularly horrible one where I was all alone in Paris, up all night in an empty room getting ready to leave for NY the next day. There was bleeding, and I was awash with panic, wondering how I would make it to the airport the next day, much less through a 7 hour plane ride.

So even here in the safety of my own home, just the very illness can send me into a tailspin of panic, thinking that it's Saturday, and no doctors are open, and I'm going to have to go to the emergency room with the entire family and wait for hours, and how are we going to get all the grocery shopping done, and ...

And you know what? Now that I'm in France, properly established, I know my way around a little bit better than before so I called SOS Medecins. Yup you got it - it's a hotline for doctors that visit you at home and it's fully covered. She took my details, warned me of a delay that was all of two hours, and sent someone over who gave me a prescription for antibiotics and voila! Problem solved and panic calmed.

I think dealing with phobias has a lot to do with finding solutions and having them at the ready in your aresnal.

I wonder if SOS Medecins has psychologists who make housecalls too.

What We're Doing. What I've Done.

2010-08-12T07:06:00.000-07:00

What we're doing these days ...

we had some corn for dinner last night (along with tomato and chèvre salad).

The bounty is just raining down on us (literally - you shake the plum tree and you're sure to get hit in the head). After fresh plums and plum tartes and plum cobblers wore out, I made plum ~~apple~~sauce. However, I tried to de-pit and de-skin the cooked plums in a juicer with no lid. It's lucky the painters haven't started on the walls (and ceiling) yet.

We've been welcoming people a lot lately, but not perfectly at all. Tiredly. On Sunday, I left the guests at the barbecue and went to take a nap. Peanut too.

Every year I swear I'm not going to be caught unprepared again and be the only Parisian (or Paris suburbian) not on vacation. And every year, here I find myself.

When I graduated from college, I taught English in Taiwan for a year. Our visas were not correct so we were forced to leave the country every two months to get the proper stamp. For my first visit, I went to Seoul where I was too afraid to venture out by myself since I had barely gotten accustomed to living in Taiwan. Asia was still so foreign to me, and now I can visualize almost every airport.

Two months later I went to Tokyo and stayed with my brother's college friend. After that I went to Singapore and had a great time enjoying the cleanliness of it all after living in the quite dirty city of Taichung (which is even cleaner than Taipei). I remember going to Sentosa island before it was built up into a resort. I lay on the pristine beach with my friend, and sat in the gentle waves staring up at the sky with not another soul in sight. They were already beginning the construction of the hotels far off. For my last visa trip of the year, I went to Hong Kong and shopped myself lonely on GAP castoffs, staying in the since-condemned Chung-King Mansions in a room so small you had to take a shower over the toilet, and you could touch one wall with your feet while sitting on the bed against the opposing wall.

Then I went to New York. I wasted my time there for a year, before deciding to go back to Taiwan. With a proper resident visa, I only traveled once while there, again to Hong Kong, again alone.

After Taiwan came Paris, where I decided to au pair for 5 children, thinking it would be easier than if there was only one child, because they would entertain each other. It was easier. I studied, I dated (but not Mr. Perfect-For-Me), I broke up, I moved back to NY.

This time I decided I wasn't going to waste it so I got a proper job with insurance. After only one year as an assistant, I convinced them to let me be the Regional Director for Asia so I could travel around selling ad space for the financial newspaper - that after having yawned my way to a "C" average in "Intro to Business" in college. I traveled again, almost always alone, unless we were going to the Bank Meetings as a team. I doodled my way through sales pitches, listening to the Central Bank Governor of Indonesia talk about his country's economy and waiting for the pause so I could ask him how many pages. When we went to shake hands, he had six fingers on one hand.

There was no travel vacation in these years, only one or two week trips every few weeks to Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Manila, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, New Delhi, Mumbai (Bombay), Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore. There were late night phone calls from the office or from home. There were World Bank and Asian Development Bank Meeting trips to Fukuoka, Washington D.C., Geneva, Hong Kong and ... I don't remember where else. It all blurs together. I remember being so blasé about traveling that I was only packing for a two-week trip an hour before the car was supposed to arrive, only to realize I had better stop chatting on the phone and start seriously looking for my passport. I never found it in time (it was in the pocket of the company laptop) and I ended up having to reschedule my two-week trip to four countries at the last minute.

I remember arriving in Islamabad and being stunned to see a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman who seemed somehow faded to me ... she didn't seem to have the same vibrant complexion a Westerner has. She was wearing a Muslim veil and I learned afterwards that the nearby Afghanistan was the origin of the Caucus race. I remember catching my breath as I drove in the long taxi ride from the Lahore airport to the city center, marveling at the lush beauty everywhere I looked. I still think this is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. And I would never want to live there.

Then calm. Dating Mr. Perfect-For-Me. Working 9 to 5. Getting married, six months of bliss.

And the whirlwind started again with a year in Africa - off to Hargeisa, then Djibouti, then Nairobi, then back to Somaliland again with little stay-overs in Ethiopia when the two neighboring countries (with the same clan and religion, that is Djibouti and Somaliland) weren't getting along. At those times, instead of a 50 minute flight from one city to the other, we had to go way out of our way and cross Ethiopia or Berbera to access the other country. I remember all the Russian pilots because the aircrafts were old Russian models and no local could read the controls.

I remember the time we stopped the plane in Berbera in the middle of the desert (but next to the sea), and watching everyone start ducking under the wings of the plane as soon as we heard automatic rifle fire - I wondered if I should duck too. I remember the bomb shaking our house - the one that went off next door - and I had slept through it. I remember the ghosts that woke two of my teammates up at night in our compound, and the skulls the hospital construction team dug up from the 1989 civil war. I remember the little 8-seater plane ride from Nairobi to Hargeisa that took two days to get there as there were two emergency landings. And I remember the soft feet of the camels and the aloe vera plants that were bigger than me, and ...

I remember, I remember ...

So often all I wanted was someplace to call home, and a family of my own. And here I have all that - a different me, a same me.

But I'm stuck home for the summer and I wish I could learn how to have adventures as a mom too.

Ne Me Quitte Pas (Don't Leave Me)

2010-08-10T03:32:00.000-07:00

I

I have counted quite a few of my posts that were rather depressing and dull this month of August (not on vacation and alone with my kids). But don't leave me y'all!

No just kidding. Last night as Mr. Welcome was checking the radio to make sure the alarm was set, I yelled "stop!" because I heard this song (video above, words below - make sure you read the words first before you listen). I think this was the song that made me really fall in love with the poetry of the French language. And since this blog is sometimes about all things french (although Jacques Brel was Belgian), I thought I'd share it for all of you who don't yet know Mr. Brel. My rough translation of the song is below.

Oh, and while we're talking about French, some of you have asked why we don't just go out and buy a new charger, and the answer is that we are radin (rad-dan (don't pronounce the "n"). It means cheap. Chargers cost about twice as much here as in the States! Not that we can do anything about that as it's a different current as well.

Actually, truth be told we are more fauchés (foe-shay, which means "broke") than radin. With the construction, the tickets to the States, a huge tax bill .... yikes! We're eating plain rice these days. So we managed to get a weak charge after Mr. Welcome banged the head of the cord and got the prongs out, and we have propped it up with a carton of soy milk. Voila!

But one can (almost) live on love alone, right? So without further ado, here's my favorite french song:

Ne Me Quitte Pas (updated by my husband 6 hours after my first post)

Hi Honey,

Here's an updated translation.

Sorry I couldn't resist, hope it's ok.

Ne me quitte pas – Don't leave me

Il faut oublier – We have to forget

Tout peut s'oublier – Everything can be forgotten

Qui s'enfuit deja -(the memories) that have already fled

Oublier le temps – Forget the time

Des malentendus – of misunderstandings

Et le temps perdu – And the wasted time

A savoir comment – Spent trying to know why

Oublier ces heures – to forget these hours

Qui tuaient parfois – that sometimes killed

A coups de pourquoi – with strokes of 'why'

Le coeur du bonheur – the heart of joy

Ne me quitte pas (4 fois) – Don't leave me.

Moi je t'offrirai – As for me, I'll give you

Des perles de pluie – pearls of rain

Venues de pays – coming from countries

Où il ne pleut pas – where it doesn't rain.

Je creuserai la terre – I'll dig into the earth

Jusqu'apres ma mort – until after I'm dead

Pour couvrir ton corps – to cover your body

D'or et de lumière – with gold and light.

Je ferai un domaine – I'll create a land

Où l'amour sera roi – where love will be king

Où l'amour sera loi – where love will be law

Où tu seras reine – where you will be queen

Ne me quitte pas (4 fois) – Don't leave me

Ne me quitte pas – Don't leave me

Je t'inventerai – I'll invent for you

Des mots insensés – words with no meaning

Que tu comprendras – that you'll understand.

Je te parlerai – I'll tell you about

De ces amants là - These two lovers

Qui ont vu deux fois – Who saw twice

Leurs coeurs s'embraser – Their hearts aflame

Je te racont'rai – I'll tell you

L'histoire de ce roi – The story of this king

Mort de n'avoir pas – who died

Pu te rencontrer – because he couldn't meet you.

Ne me quitte pas (4 fois) – Don't leave me.

On a vu souvent – We have often seen

Rejaillir le feu – the rekindling of the fire

De l'ancien volcan – from an ancient volcano

Qu'on croyait trop vieux – we thought was too old.

Il est paraît-il – There apparently are

Des terres brûlées – burnt lands

Donnant plus de blé - that give out more wheat

Qu'un meilleur avril – than the best April

Et quand vient le soir – And when the evening comes

Pour qu'un ciel flamboie – and the sky is in flames

Le rouge et le noir – the red and the black,

Ne s'épousent-ils pas – don't they marry well together?

Ne me quitte pas (4 fois) – Don't leave me.

Ne me quitte pas – Don't leave me.

Je ne vais plus pleurer – I'm not going to cry anymore

Je ne vais plus parler – I'm not going to speak anymore

Je me cacherai là - I'll stay here hidden

à te regarder – to look at you

Danser et sourire – dancing and smiling

Et à t'écouter – To listen to you

Chanter et puis rire – Singing and laughing

Laisse-moi devenir – Let me become

L'ombre de ton ombre – the shadow of your shadow

L'ombre de ta main – the shadow of your hand

L'ombre de ton chien – the shadow of your dog

Ne me quitte pas (4 fois) - Don't leave me.

Technical Difficulties, and Kludgy Mom

2010-08-08T09:04:00.000-07:00

You haven't heard from me in awhile, either by post or by comment (you miss me, I know you do), but it's not because I'm lying on a beach in Bali with no internet connection. It's because I can't charge my mac.

The charger has four little prongies, and two of them have gone into hibernation, causing the contact to be too weak to charge by computer. Mr. Welcome and I have tried everything, starting with tweezers (which don't fit) to banging the head of the charger on the table to force the prongs out, to swinging the charger like a lasso hoping centrifugal force will do its work (it doesn't). So I am at 48% and rapidly descending. At times we are able to get it to charge a bit before the contact is lost again and I find myself darting in to check out how to get to Casino or how to make zucchini bread before darting back out again so I won't use up too much batteries. Let's just say that my blogging world is Paradise Lost at the moment, and until we go to the mac store and pull out our wallets, well ...

There is one blogger, however, who has no such problem. I want to introduce you to Kludgy Mom, if you don't know her already, who is one tech-savvy gal! She made my button! Move your eyes over to the right and you'll see the button with the little code there for those who have virtual jean jackets and like to collect blog buttons. I tried to put it in the post itself, but in spite of her excellent instructions, was unable to do so and wasted 10% of my battery trying. That's why I needed someone to make my button.

Before you start lining up with your button requests, she took some time out of her already packed schedule to do mine because I have friends in high places. But besides being a worthy read for the excellent recipes, Friday Flip-offs (speaks for itself, no?), and Surprise Stalker editions where you might even get stalked one day, she is going to be imparting her techie wisdom to help you improve your blog in September (don't worry, I'll remind you). But go have a look and familiarize yourself with her a bit now - courtship, and all that.

You will have wondered as I did, so let me enlighten you directly from her "About":

What is a kludgy mom?

A kludgy mom (clue-gee mom) is a mom who uses clumsy or inelegant, yet effective, solutions to household problems, typically using parts, behavioral tools, people, food and other sundry items that are cobbled together.

A kludgy mom practices the art of embracing a life lived haphazardly. I’m a kludgy mom. Maybe you are too.

You can read all about the origins of kludge. It’s a real word, for all you non-techies out there.

So until I am at 100% capacity, let me say au revoir and sending you bisous.

Blogging Frenzy, or Blogging Bliss?

2010-08-03T04:59:00.000-07:00

I started following Nirvana Mamma a short while ago because I found she had some great ideas about building a better blog. And when I read yesterday that she was teaming up with Uniquehorn Designs to offer a free blog makeover with buttons and everything, I was definitely going in! All of you who are still using the standard templates proposed by google (like me) will know what I'm talking about.

If you've been reading for awhile, you'll know that I was insecure about my blog and asking for some tips to make it better. And if you read my most recent post, you might think that I'm really on the brink of a meltdown - that either blogging or life are somewhat off-kilter for me. Or perhaps both. (I'm doing just fine). Well I learned from all your comments that the main thing I need to do to spruce up my blog is to bribe people to come visit me. I'm currently working on some giveaway ideas, and at the moment am hung up with Customs about getting non-pasteurized cheese shipped by post. I'll let you know how that works out.

The other advice that came through loud and clear is to have a smashing blog with all the latest ways to accost the world and inform them of your existence so they can't help but worship and adore you (and follow you) - twitter, facebook, "subscribe to" buttons, blogging forums, etc. So this is why I literally leapt at the chance to win that blog design giveaway.

I started following all the requirements. Now here you're supposed to comment each time after you do something. First, subscribe to Unicorn Beauty in my google reader. Okay, done. It just meant I had to click on that button thingie you get when you follow the link. But once it's in google reader, I'm not sure I'll ever see it again. I just get updates on posts of people I follow in my dashboard. I don't even know how to find the reader. Okay do the same thing for Nirvana Mama. Done.

And then I'm supposed to like them on facebook. But the problem is, I only have a personal page, which needs to stay personal as Mr. Welcome is rigid about privacy. So I thought - perfect time to create a facebook page for my blog! Okay, they don't accept Miss Welcome as a name, which means .... oh I get it, I need to create a community page. Okay, no problem ... now how do I like somebody on that page? I can't unless I use my personal page. Can't I do it with my blog page since I'm the owner? You know, one blog to another?

I'm starting to feel really stressed out. Okay, follow both blogs on Twitter. Need to blow the dust off that account. I request password (and username) and realize I have a really pathetic ... tweet ... saying I don't know what to do with the darn account. But I still follow them on Twitter - that was pretty easy. But then I'm supposed to tweet about the giveaway. I don't know why I froze on that one. Everyone else has such complicated abbreviated updates going on from their iphone. I still text in complete sentences. Alright, let's put that aside for now.

Back to facebook. Let me at least put a facebook fan page link on my blog. There. Copy the code, and ..... it looks like I have .... thousands of followers? Because somehow that code linked the box, not to my page, but to those who like low-fat milk? What?

By now my eyes are darting as frantically as my fingers are typing. And I have to leave a comment after each one on Nirvana Mama's website! When the attempt to join the BlogFrog community page through facebook crashed and burned, my comment went something like this: MAYDAY! MAYDAY! ABORT! ABORT! And I am only now getting around to writing a blog post promoting both Nirvana Mama and Uniquehorn Designs, telling them why I desperately need to win. Don't take this as a jab at them or the difficulty of their contest. It's a breeze for all of the tech-saavy. (But shouldn't it be the non-tech saavy one that needs to win?)

In any case, do click on their link and tell them how wonderful they are and how much Miss Welcome needs help on her design. Just kidding. I'll be glad if you one of you gets to win who was referred by me, and I encourage you to try your best to win. At the very least it will get you to create twitter and facebook pages. (Or have you reaching for your blood pressure medication).

But it brought me to what my only problem is with blogging. You can always do more. You can always comment on everyone who comments on you, follow everyone who follows you, comment on every post of your blog friends, join communities like Blogher or Lady's Blogger Society and feel that as a responsible citizen you need to read other people's blogs on those sites and comment on them too. And send e-mails and check out all the blogs on someone's sidebar, all the blogs that win something .... it becomes a bit of a blog frenzy for me that is not entirely pleasant.

Last night as I was trying to recover from stretching myself into techie positions I wasn't used to, I commented to Mr. Welcome (I always comment on his) that in the olden days there were small fulfilling projects to tackle. You weren't worried about trying to do more than was right in front of you. After lunch, a lady might take out her needlework and if a friend came over with hers to have a little chat, all the better! You'd stop for tea and exclaim over the finished project your friend had been working on for some weeks. You had just started yours and looked forward to the day it would be completed. It surely would be - you had the time. When your friend left, you'd get started on dinner. No distractions of commenting on five blog posts while the meat is cooking. You just did something constructive, like polishing the silver. Life was simpler.

Instead, it's more like a sinkhole ... no - a black hole where you can always take it one step further! Mr. Welcome calls out to some pale creature just coming out of the hole, "hey have you seen my wife down there?" He thinks for a minute, "yeah. I think I saw her with some of the bottom feeders - she's reading some blog about the habits of amphibians in Papua New Guinea." Nirvana Mama managed to follow her bliss. What about me?

Today is a nice day. The kids are sweet, the sun is warm but not too hot. We ate tomatoes from our garden for lunch. The leaves create a pretty pattern in the sun on our wood floors. I have nothing important to do, and when I'm done with this blog post, I'll try to close the computer for awhile and play with my kids. Yesterday's stress reminded me of the proverb, "Like a city with no walls, so is the man who lacks self control." I think I'm going to build some walls around myself today to keep me from getting sucked into the blog abyss, never to return.

Maybe Uniquehorn Designs and Nirvana Mama will decorate those walls for me.

Motherhood. In France

2010-08-01T12:39:00.000-07:00

The alarm goes off early at 7:20. It's on purpose because I need those extra 10 minutes to snooze. I can usually swing it, even getting up as late as 7:40, then pushing everyone to be ready on time to make it down to the corner bus stop by 8:10. But I usually need at least one extra snooze.

I wake the unwilling kids up and shove them into their clothes, then up the stairs to have breakfast. The biggest part of the battle is done because they don't have to finish breakfast, but they obviously can't go to school half-naked. They eat toast with jam and butter and hot chocolate.

Once the bus picks them up, I toy with the idea of going with Peanut into Paris - I mean I do live here after all! - to go to a museum or visit some trendy shops, but the idea of having to change trains on the metro is too much of a deterrent for me. I can't handle the winding corridors and the up-and-down-the-stairs it will entail just to get from one train to another, not even to mention the stairs exiting the metro. Plus, a lot of the entrances aren't equipped with handicap exits, which is really hard to manage with the stroller. (Heck, even the social security in my last town didn't have a handicap entrance, so why should anyone else care?)

For my guilty pleasure, I go to my old comfortable stomping ground - the mall at La Defense. There are always elevators and escalators there, and everything is accessible and easy. I stop at Starbucks - they greet me as an old friend and I explain that we moved away. The sweet caffeine jolt puts me in a pleasantly tolerable mood, which lasts almost an hour. I peruse the shops, but a lot of the nice stores don't have clothes in my size. (Without admitting my actual size, I'll say that I would be able to find it in a normal store in the States).

I've gained a lot of weight in the recent years from post-pregnancy, sleep-deprived snacking. Going to a gym would really help as I love exercise, but most people do sports through the town hall, which requires committing once a year for the whole year; it's expensive .... and it's just not the treadmill which is sometimes all you want that day. I know the real answer is to eat like a french woman, but this post is not about that right now.

So I head into the kids' shops. That's a real pleasure for me as clothes will always look great on my babes. I try not to spend too much (although that's hard because unless you buy everything in the supermarket you can't, for instance, get shoes for less than 40 euros = $52 when the dollar is strong). I run into an old acquaintance who still lives in the area. We chitchat a bit and I realize that I miss how friendly everyone is in this little corner where almost no one is French.

I head back in time to feed Peanut and put him down for a nap. I pass by all the bakeries, whose offerings I cannot enjoy due to an intolerance to gluten. I head into the cheese shop, but the hundred varieties have lost some of their interest for me, especially without the baguette. I get the usual camembert, Mr. Welcome's preference for daily meals.

With Peanut down for his nap, I listlessly consider all the things I could do for a span of two hours. Today is not a day for ambitious projects, like scrapbooking, organizing the furniture in one of the rooms, weeding the garden ... cleaning the toilet. I throw in a load of laundry because I love hanging it to dry in the garden, and then I sit down to blog a bit. I almost don't even answer my e-mails anymore or post on Facebook - just blog. Fortunately, I no longer need to take naps every day, now that I've been diagnosed with sleep apnea and wear a mask at night. That's helped my morale a lot to not be so exhausted and waste so much time sleeping.

Peanut wakes up and it's just time to head out to pick the kids up from school.

There's a lot to be grateful for - the 287€ I get each month from the government for having three children, which helps allow me to stay at home; the large family card that allows us half off transportation and loads of other discounts, like the entrance fee to the swimming pool; the fact that children start school at age three, and even babies and toddlers can often get part-time nursery spots to give mom a break; there is an activity center for Wednesdays and vacations if you are at a loss for what to do with the kids.

But today as I'm standing in the crowd waiting for the school gates to open, surrounded by all the other mothers, I'm not feeling grateful. I'm feeling lonely. I've given up making all but the most basic efforts at communication, knowing that "let's get together" will be met with a false assurance. Some days I handle it more optimistically than others, but not today. I've prepared a snack for the kids that is not the most healthy - store-bought cookies and a fruit juice. But I look with satisfaction at the school lunch menu, noting that today was up to the usual standards for a french public school. Appetizer: cucumber and beet slices with vinaigrette, Entrée: salmon with baked potato and green beans, Dessert: cheese selection and a piece of fruit. I know all this will be served with water in glasses (made of glass), real plates and silverware and even cloth napkins in our old school, although here they use paper I think. There will be a baguette too. Of course.

When we get home, I put the kids in front of the tv while I continue to blog and drink another coffee (and yes, eat something sweet usually). I finally rouse myself to think about dinner and decide on soft-boiled eggs with toast since lunch was so complete. Other mothers often give me grief when they hear I serve meat for dinner so I usually try to have something vegetarian.

I'm not motivated, but I need to go back to the school at 8pm to attend a parents' meeting about Young Lady's moving on to (the equivalent of) first grade. It lasts a really long time and is interminably hot, although I'm impressed with what I hear and am glad we live in such a good public school system.

I run into a mother that I know - it's the sister-in-law of a close friend who invited me over once when we first arrived, but who pretty much ignored me at school after that. It's been a really long time since I've felt insecure about myself or my worth as a friend. Living in a lot of different countries and big cities pretty much takes care of that. Drats - I'm sweating and feeling so uncomfortable in my cover-the-pudge outfit and she looks fresh and breezy in dressy black shorts and a top that, together are probably nice enough to wear to the office. I have trouble being myself and don't keep up the conversation as we start the tour guide.

When I get home I collapse on the couch and gratefully listen to Mr. Welcome's chitchat about putting the kids to bed and all the comfort that's found in what is my family and my life. He encourages me as I grumble about my day. We decide to watch a dvd of Ugly Betty, Season 3 that my sister sent me. I follow many of the American series on DVD because I want to see them in English, even if that means being a season behind. Then we look at some American Idol clips on his iphone. Even my frenchman got hooked on that in the States.

We climb into bed and I feel relieved. Relieved that there's the haven of our bedroom, the soft lighting, the peaceful relationship that we share, another day ended. I don't know why I want the days to pass so quickly, what I'm looking forward to ... I do love being a mom. Perhaps it's the desire for something more that gets to me and leaves me dissatisfied. I wish it were enough for me to keep a perfect house. But it's not enough for me just to live in France. I hardly even realize that I do, except for feeling so lonely.

I'm just living the dream.

I suppose this would be a typical day if I took all my negative moments and shoved them into one 24 hour time span. But there are rarely 24 hour days that contain all the negative moments are there? However I wonder if my life as a SAH-mom in France is not that much different than yours wherever you are.

Following the Sun

2010-07-29T12:24:00.000-07:00

Okay, I am clearly enamored by my sunflowers (this is currently the only one fully open but other buds started to open today). I even went out last night to take pictures of it, but I won't bore you with the results, as I've long forgotten how to do correct manual settings for night lighting.

They are so majestic. So grand. The stalks are big (the tallest is 10 feet!) and the bloom is bigger than my face. There are constantly all sorts of huge insects hovering over it, and it even has a good night-life. Last night I saw a praying mantis on one of the leaves.

My sunflowers don't turn towards the sun like they're supposed to. They just hang down like a shower head. Mr. Welcome speculated that perhaps they need to be pollinated first before they start following the sun like all good sunflowers are supposed to do. I just think they're too heavy and can't be bothered. We'll see what happens with the other blooms.

I've been feeling insecure about my blog lately. I hope someone out there can relate to me. I don't know if it's summertime and everyone is away (and not sitting home like me reading blogs), but I don't often get comments these days.

I have some blog friends who really just write for their own sake (or children's sake) and if someone out there also happens to enjoy what they wrote, well ... tant mieux (all the better). If not, they have still pleased themselves. Earlier on, I said that I had my sights set on fame and fortune for my blog and had no interest in reading anything that wasn't meant to entertain. Humor aside, even the gist of it wasn't entirely true. Now that I've sort of figured out the spectrum of possible blogs, I find I do like to read the daily lives of people - friends or strangers I've come to know, because it's their lives.

Mr. Welcome said right from the beginning to simply write consistently, and consistently well and that the rest would follow. It's true that I do love writing just for its own sake. Being the domestic natural disaster that I am, I do not get the same satisfaction in having maintained a well-ordered kitchen as I do in having written a well-ordered post. There's something about that post that's just so perfect, each little string tied up into a big bow at the end, that gives me a thrill like nothing else. And if someone lets me know they appreciate it, well tant mieux! So I suppose my blog is principally for my own satisfaction as a writer, a depicter of life as I see it.

But I do wonder (sorry, shaking my head here at my own ego - bear with me please) when I'm not on someone's sidebar or when someone doesn't follow me whose posts I comment on religiously, why that is. And I start to think, perhaps I turn people away by my humor hidden in my ego (or my ego disguised in my humor). Perhaps I don't follow people quickly enough myself. Perhaps I don't invite guests or give anything away, invite comments or have anything that makes me interesting to turn back to. Living in France, it's not easy to get to all these english-speaking blog conferences, but perhaps I should be less of a SAHB (stay-at-home blogger) and more of a networked-blogger.

I wonder if I'm the sunflower that follows the sun or the one that just stares down at herself.

In any case, I think it would be difficult for me to follow too many people and leave too many comments or guest-post too much, even if it gets me a lot of exposure. I guess I'd rather follow a few and make it count. So I may be more of a fly-under-the-radar blogger than I thought when I set out. However, that said and done ... I would be grateful if you had suggestions for me - you don't need to feed my already deplorable ego (grin), but if you had an idea of something that might make my blog more perfectly welcoming, do let me know.

And thanks so much for reading me.

The Good Earth

2010-07-25T12:11:00.000-07:00

Mr. Welcome and I are broke. So we decided to live off the fat of the land. I just found out you could eat zucchini flowers!

First you have to take off those little leaves there (called "teeth" in French), but you can leave the stem. You trim the very top off and you wash.

This is what a plate of prepared flowers look like:

There are male flowers and female flowers. The female ones are tailed by a zucchini and the male ones stand there and do nothing.

No actually, they just hang out on the end of a stalk and look nice. Those are the ones you eat.

Once you trim them, you can make a batter with egg, flour and milk. I used chick pea flour since I'm intolerant to gluten. Dip them in the batter and fry (almost deep fry) them.

I used olive oil to fry them and the first batch was too hot and it got burnt quickly. The second batch was not hot enough and it absorbed too much oil. The third batch was just right. Here they are! Oh, and I sprinkled a bit of sea salt over the top. yum yum!

You can't really see the flowers here (as they're green) and there are only the female ones visible, but we have 4 plants total and it produced an entire plate of edible flowers.

I topped off our meal with homemade gluten-free bread with ground flax seed and sesame seed, plus a salad with corn, beets, cucumber (from our garden), cheese and a vinaigrette.

The kids ate everything. (And I felt so virtuous).

Otherwise, here is our garden. Can you believe these pictures were taken at nearly 10 pm? It stays light out in France for so long in the summer.

It's starting to rain, but you can see our corn in the background.

Our sunflowers by night

And by day

Sharing our raspberries with the insects

Waiting for the tomatoes

Mmm sweet plums fresh off the tree

And to think all these fruits came from a tiny seed. There's lots to marvel at in life.

And While I Was Blogging About It ....

2010-07-23T09:09:00.001-07:00

Peanut came out munching on 6 slices of bread at once.

It was whole grain.

When will summer end?

I Am a Bad Mother

2010-07-23T08:55:00.000-07:00

Having banned the Peanut from the kitchen after he dumped a bulk container of honey upside down on the floor, I come out to find him repeatedly dipping a cup into the toilet and drinking the water.

What were the other kids doing meanwhile? Staring at the dvd (on repeat-play) with their mouths hanging open.

The Peanut

2010-07-22T09:53:00.000-07:00

Oh Peanut, how fully I appreciate you.

I was not in a hurry for you to be weaned, to get your first tooth, to start walking, to say "Maman."

But you - you didn't want to be left behind.

You fully expect to sit at the table and learn to read English when your brother and sister do. But you can't even talk yet.

I am not in a hurry for you to start speaking with real words, leaving behind the colorful discourse with musical inflections that make sense only to you.

But you've started already - later than Big Boy and Young Lady did, and that's okay by me. You say thinks like, "et voilaaaaa" with great satisfaction as you finish your plate or share your toy.

You say things resembling "water" and "au revoir" and "tétine."

You complete all the words in your daddy's tongue twister that sound like "foi" (Il était une fois dans la ville de Foix une marchand de foie qui vendait du foie a dit 'ma foi - ce n'est pas la première fois ni la dérnière fois que je vends du foie dans la ville de Foix'), except that much to our delight, you pronounce it like 'qua' croaking the word out like a frog.

And you express your discontent with a wail that sounds just like your older brother and sister. You've learned from the masters.

You are fierce.

Your pediatrician looked at you with surprise when you glowered at her as she gave you a shot. She said that you had "mean eyes" but she said it while laughing and I was bursting with pride.

You are affectionate. How I love to put my nose into the crook of your neck and breathe deeply. I love when you are not too busy doing something else.

You just learned how to kiss. You've certainly gotten enough of an example from us! You touch your lips to our faces, pull away and make a smacking noise as you look at us. Sometimes you try to kiss us on the mouth.

Sometimes your kiss is wet.

At times you have your sight fixed on your objective, and nothing will get in your way - not even the cuddles you love so much. I love that about you and would never want to stand in your way.

You ride down the little hill in our backyard full force with your legs hiked up on the sides of your little car, your head back as far as your little arms can hang on. You roar with delight as you turn the corner at the last moment. Your brother and sister participate in your delight, waiting for you at the top of the hill on their bikes so you can go down right behind them. They accord you special honor.

You were so fixated on surfing like your bigger cousins. We were cruel to let you walk the entire 50 metres to the water's edge thinking all the while that we would allow you to go in.

But we couldn't resist admiring your fierce spirit for the 50 metres as you dragged that heavy board in the sand, as you headed straight for your goal.

To say that you were mad is an understatement.

But we will never engulf you - never protect you above what is needed to keep you safe. You can go right ahead and fix your eyes on your objective and we'll be right behind you to steer you on the right path.

Always behind you.

A-HEMeme! Your Attention Please.

2010-07-19T12:16:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, Gather 'round, Gather 'round. I am about to share with you such moving stories as to make you weep, such profound advice as to leave you insensible, such diverting episodes as to .... no really, you can skip this post if you want to. Politics? Favorite drink? Crushes? I fear I will be revealed as the dullest creature around and you'll want to pack up your follow button and move on. (I'm really not fishing for compliments)

I thought that for my very first meme I might get to talk about something like what character trait most inspires me. That would be mercy, by the way. Think Schindler's List (even though I cheated and only saw the movie) when he risked everything - his money and his life to save as many as possible from the concentration camps. Or a more current story where the parents of a Palestinian boy (shot by Israeli soldiers) donated his organs to Israelis to promote peace yes, but also simply because there were human beings who needed the organs. Mercy trumps all and leaves me weeping with the beauty of it.

H'ever this is a specifically themed meme, so politics, drinks and crushes here I come, emulating the Mrs. Trefusis who produced a meme that was interesting and fun to read.

What experience has most shaped you, and why?

This is very hard to say, as there have been so very very many of them. Back to the pottery wheel (sigh) again (sigh).

My car accident when I was 23 did some of its work, landing me head first on the pavement with some memory loss and chronic depression. Smack! New shape.
Losing my younger brother to a brutal suicide when he was only 19 hollowed me out into a new receptacle. Pound! New shape.
Working with orphans in Africa and watching them die from malnutrition, one of the babies while in my arms, flattened me into something new. Bang. New shape.
However, it's not just the pounding that happens at the wheel, it's the molding. Traveling all over and living in Europe, Asia, Africa, (as well as my North American home) forming lifelong friendships with people whose race and religion should make them a mystery to me but who are kindred spirits - this molded me into something fine.
Having babies. Throwing up for nine months and not connecting to anything except feeling rotten, until one day this dependent marvelous creature comes into being just for you to delight in. This molded me, painted me with an elaborate story in brushstrokes of blue and white and gold.

Life shapes me, and if I don't break on the way, I hope to end up as fine china.

If you had a whole day with no commitments, what would you do?

I'm a stay-at-home mom. I have no friends. I have no life .... No wait, that's not what I meant to write.

The truth is, I have forgotten how to have fun. I've forgotten how to have a small adventure (harder to go into Paris and visit a museum than it is to move to another country for a year with kids in tow). So perhaps I might try and have a small adventure. Go see a movie. And shop. And read a mindless book after a dinner of sushi before falling asleep early.

What food or drink could you never give up?

Due to excessive enthusiasm in any and every party I could possibly attend in my youth I no longer drink alcohol, not even any of the fabulous french wines we have here (dull), so I can't claim any form of party drink to be my signature drink. By way of explanation, I didn't want to keep being two people - "me" and "me while high." Most of all, I wanted to be a staid and trustworthy example to my children who never witnessed me any other way (not so dull).

So I would say coffee. Yet I keep thinking I'm going to give up coffee. Stick to tea. Or better yet - green tea. Or perhaps if I didn't have any caffeine, it would be better still - so tisane. But it's very hard for me to think about making this sacrifice because I love coffee. I love the lift, the bitter taste and the emotional association stimulated by well-funded Nescafé commercials.

So coffee. But just in case I'm ever able to wean myself from the steaming mug, I would definitely have to say water is what I can't live without. Water becomes a precious commodity having lived in Kenya where we only had running water 3 days out of 7, and Somaliland where there was the risk of drought, or Djibouti where the tap water was so salty you had to use bottled water to make tea. Aaah. Nice fresh cool water - nothing like it.

If you could travel anywhere, where would that be and why?

It would be anywhere where there was a nice beach so I could lie on it.

Who do you have a crush on?

Like Mrs. T, I am much too devoted to my own husband to have a crush. Aside from the real life ones I had before I got married (that I won't list here in case they read my blog), I think my last one was in my early teens - Ralph Macchio from the Karate Kid. I'm pretty sure I sent him a letter saying something like, " I never write letters like this ..." cause, you know, that would surely peak his interest that I was not just "another fan."

If you were leader of your country, what would you do?

Ah - dull! I have no answer. I'm not politically astute enough. I asked my french in-laws what I should reply and they said, "I'd pack up anyone who looks different than me and send 'em out of the country." Knowing that they almost had a coronary when Le Pen made it to the first presidential round, riding on a Socialist protest vote, you can be rest assured that they were kidding.

What would I do ... what would I do ... I think I would ask Barack Obama for some advice.

Give me one easy savoury recipe that doesn't include cheese.

Come on!! I'm in France!!

Okay, think. Think. Ah! Here's one.

Take one of the three 6lb zucchinis that grew in our jungle of a garden while we were away for two weeks, cut it in half and gut it of all it's stringy flesh and quarter-sized seeds. Cut each half in half again because it doesn't fit into the biggest pan you have. Take out all the meat that you were forced to use because the freezer door was left open the night before. Put the turkey on the hollowed out zucchini, along with the thawed cut onions, the thawed chopped garlic, the thawed basil, some salt and olive oil. Bake it and near the end, add the remaining grated swiss cheese that survived the 5 hour trip home in a cooler.

Oops! No cheese! Scrape off the melted swiss and shove it into your mouth before bringing out the platter.

While you're at it, dump the package of thawed mixed berries into a pan and turn it into a cobbler, following the simplest biscuit recipe you can find online that uses the rest of the butter and milk that are in your empty refrigerator (because the day before when you were supposed to go grocery shopping, you were entertaining your high school friend who was in town, wading into the vegetable jungle, pulling out all the ruined books that were flooded in the garage, unpacking directly into the washing machine, and stopping every now and again to throw up from the stomach flu that finally made it's way around to you). Bake and voila!

Serve to your last minute lunch guests. Hope they don't catch your flu.

What did you think you were going to be when you grew up?

I really hoped to be someone famous or talented, never considering the two are often related.

If you could spend just one day in someone else's body, who would it be?

Anybody who can wear anything they want, eat anything they want and run around and play with the kids without getting winded. Just want to see what that's like for once.

Which woman writer - living or dead - do you most admire and why?

Since I have Elizabeth Bennet on my sidebar (I fudged the answers on the quiz so I'd get her) and quoted Dickens in my last post, you may guess that I'm a lover of all things classic. So it should come as no surprise that my favorite female author is Jane Austen. I know - how passé, right? But she's so original and entertaining and quotable!!

And here are some I can almost quote by heart:

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.

It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are they the result of previous study?

Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.

And one other that I've never heard before but describes so perfectly why I'm a devoted reader of hers and why we would be BFF were she still alive:

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.

Jane Austen

For this meme, I have to add a question of my own, and tag three other bloggers.

My question is:

What character trait inspires you the most?

And my three tags are:

Earth Mother Just Means I'm Dusty cuz she's my real life friend and she's as funny in real life.

Alex at Late Enough cuz I think she would like to answer the questions (esp the one about a recipe).

Mrs. Mayhem cuz she was one of my first blog friends and she's tried and true.

Tis Love That Makes the World Go Round, My Baby

2010-07-16T14:35:00.000-07:00

We're back! I'm so filled with news and pictures, that I fear this post will be somewhat Dickensian, so first a delicious order of business: I have been tagged for a meme by Mrs. Trefusis who is so utterly fabulous, I can't believe she even reads my blog, much less thought to tag me. For the uninitiated, the full title is-was "Mrs. Trefusis Takes a Taxi ... (because she eschews sensible shoes). And if that doesn't make you instantly adore her, click on the link to read her humorous admission that sets her back into the realm of the mere mortal memes. Her humor and warmth comes through in every one of her posts, even while eschewing the sensible.

Oh and yes, I didn't know either so had to dig a bit "Meme, (rhymes with "cream" and comes from Greek root with the meaning of memory and its derivative "mimeme"), is the term given to a unit of information, blah blah blah coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins in his controversial bestselling book, The Selfish Gene blah, blah blah In casual use, the term meme is sometimes used to mean any piece of information that is passed from one mind to another." Read here to get the full story. Now that that's clear, stay tuned for me meme.

The Family:

So on to Bretagne. My french in-laws were as lovely as always (even while looking constantly perfect). I hope my daughter gets the french genes, I hope my daughter gets the french genes .... And they are so filled with a sense of fun! We spent the good part of an evening planning the kidnapping of all the doudous (stuffed animals) of the nieces and nephews with a ransom note that would lead them to a series of clues. Of course each of the aunts and uncles had to dress up too ... I was a fairy (a fée), but lacking a wand, I used the toilet brush and became a "fée du logis" (the fairy that magically cleans your house when you're not looking). One brother was a terrifying merman-sea creature in the bathtub, covered with seaweed. Another was the hermit in the garage, with a big hump back made possible by life jackets. Even Mr. Welcome Senior participated as the "sage barbu" (the bearded wise man), although there was some debate as to whether it should be the "singe barbu" (bearded monkey), Mr. Senior opting for the former and his impertinent sons the latter.

On Bastille Day we had a "boum" - a party - with rock music and appropriate lighting. All the under-ten set participated, including my 7-year old nephew who is an amazing break-dancer and one little Peanut who never left the floor. This was followed by fireworks on the beach. It is going to be hard to convince Peanut that normal sleeping hours are not midnight to ten.

The Beaches:

My sister-in-law is a Bretonne and knows the area very well. It's a given that with her we're going to beach-hop and have loads of adventures. Except that this trip she wasn't able to come until half-way through our stay, so for the first week we walked to the same beach every day and sat there looking at each other sheepishly. On Bastille Day, the tide was at its lowest and highest mark of the ... month? I'm not exactly sure how tides work - just that they go up and down twice a day, about 11 hours apart. At least they do in Bretagne. Anyway, what that news meant was that there was a crashing surf. It was too cold to swim on the 14th itself, but yesterday I was determined come hell or .... well, come high water, that I was going in!

It is hard to tell from this picture just how high those waves are. But it was glorious in spite of the biting wind and the freezing water. I felt so alive (and I don't care how trite that sounds). Maybe I should have been an aquarius instead of a scorpio. Anyway, I got a couple of mouthfuls of salt water before I remembered to dive under the crashing wave instead of getting tangled in it.

It brought me back to my vacation in the Bahamas over a decade ago. Oh gawd I'm speaking in decades now. I am a good swimmer - used to swim competitively, was a lifeguard and all, but nothing prepared me for what must have been a high tide on the beach that day. After several attempts to extricate myself from the crashing surf in one piece, I realized I had to make a decision between my bikini and my life (to the very great amusement of my "friends"* who were clutching their sides helplessly. I finally got out in one piece. (The bottom).

*Actually the quotes are a farce for comic effect - these "friends" came wedding dress shopping with me and when it came time to pay, they scooted me over and paid for the dress themselves - I'll never forget you Sue, Neyra and Lisa!

Yesterday afternoon we went for a walk on the cliffs, which are just so typically Breton. Wild, breathtaking views. Gales of salty cold air.

This (below) is a german blockhouse from World War II - the cliffs in Bretagne are filled with them.

And here is yet another beach, although much less wild. The Breton version of "Cannes" I'd venture.

I've chosen my beach house - the white one up there on the cliff (to be purchased from my blog-to-book proceeds) ...

The Children:

I am running out of steam here. Could it be that my internet connection is so slow it's taken three hours to download a the pictures for a post I'm now too tired to narrate? Dare I say a picture is worth a thousand words? Oh, Dickens would never approve!

So here are my darlings ....

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

Charles Dickens

A boy's story is the best that is ever told.

Charles Dickens

'Tis love that makes the world go round, my baby.

Charles Dickens

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.

Charles Dickens

I'm sorry I didn't have time to catch up on your blogs. Will definitely be popping by this weekend.

Postcards from Bretagne

2010-07-08T01:59:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone - We're having a fabulous time here! A little light reading in the garden ...

sunning on one of the gorgeous beaches ...

a night on the town in St Malo

yup - that says what you think it does!

a café for everyone

sunset

woohoooooooo!!

Miss you! Got you a tee-shirt!

xo xo xo xo

Enough About Me. What Do YOU Think About Me?

2010-06-30T00:31:00.000-07:00

I just want to express how sincerely grateful I am to The Bloggers Concierge for featuring me as the first A-list blogger. I am still glowing and rubbing my eyes as people leave sweet comments and puff me up by joining my blog. I'm going to become insufferable. (This is me laughing - you can laugh with me).

I do want to visit everyone's blog who has joined or left a comment, but I may not get to it right away. We are leaving tomorrow for 2 1/2 weeks in Bretagne (Brittany) with the entire Welcome family. If there is ever a time when I feel the disparity of treating non-existent cellulite, eating thin slices of cheese or wearing sexy jeans, it's spending 2 1/2 weeks with my mother and sisters in law at the beach. Fortunately they love me and I love them, even though they tell me that I should eat less so I can lose some weight. But I decided to tell them to stop smoking. ah HA!

Anyway, for those who don't know about The Bloggers Concierge, please do click on the link above, especially since they're going to be featuring my friend The Empress today. She's always worth reading and you will never be disappointed. Do submit your own blog for the next A-list competition they have. In their own words, it is really not as exclusive as all that, but just a chance to get your blog out there. However it is pretty exclusive at the moment since there is only one A-lister. Me! (I'm joking, I'm joking). Actually as I read the other blogs on the list, the honor hits home even more as there are some pretty fabulous blogs submitted! So again, thank you TBC and everyone else. (And Gigi, I know you're going to have a tip for me how to make the code disappear on your button since you're brilliant like that).

Otherwise what news? Well family updates. Young Lady has decided that Ilan is no longer her amoureux. (Apparently his name was Ilan, but I heard Ewan.) First of all, he chased her on the playground and scared her, so that's a deal-breaker right there. Second of all, he's only in Moyenne Section and she's in Grande Section, and one's amoureux should always be bigger than you, according to her female wisdom.

We have also discovered Big Boy's future career. When he was two, he played a lot with the ball so I thought soccer, of course. But he also likes to hug, so then I thought rugby. But then they put up a bunch of larger-than-life photos of rugby players in the mall during the last Cup and they all looked so mangled I decided my sweet boy was too beautiful for that. So are you ready for his profession? Drum roll please ...... A Lawyer! You know why? He's so sneaky! We ask him to go to the bathroom (as in, urinate) so he goes into the bathroom and stands there. "Did you go to the bathroom?" "Yes." We ask him if he brushed his teeth and he flashes us a brilliant smile. All the less brilliant because he hasn't, in fact, brushed his teeth, but no one can accuse him of lying. grr.

I'm going to do an entire post on The Peanut soon so I'll give you the updates then.

On to our garden. Well, the sunflowers are bigger than me, but no yellow has appeared yet. We have a Mexican family staying in our house while we are away (the family of a friend) and I don't know why I thought just because someone was from Mexico, they would know how to weed a garden .... But they don't, so in fact they are not going to do the work we have been too lazy to do. It's up to us to do it along with the packing, which we started on last night. And which is why there will be no pictures for this post. It's 9:30 am and I'm still in my pajamas with a whole day of packing and cleaning ahead of me. Isn't SAHM life great?

Finally an update on Mr. Welcome. Last night he saw me sitting comatose on the couch (drooling and rocking) with a huge pile of dirty dishes still to be done amongst many other tasks, and he sat down next to me and said, "Do you want to clean?" (no response) "Do you want to pray?"

I retorted, "No. I just want to sit here and escape and watch television. I want to eat ice cream and have all the pleasure without any of the consequences." To his credit, he just laughed. "At least you're honest. You're so truthful. It's like a fresh shower on the soul. Now I know what the word 'joy' means. Joy is being married to you."

I thought that was soooo sweet and touching. Although I suppose that's not really about Mr. Welcome - it's about me. But enough about me. * **

See ya' in a couple of weeks.

* Please take all this puffing myself up as lightly as I mean it. I truly am honored.

** End of day update. Mr. Welcome chided me about being so publicly and precipitously conceited because you cannot know that I joke almost non-stop and that the butt of my jokes is first and foremost, myself. So I stand sit admonished, face downcast .... thorry for being over the top.

A French Woman

2010-06-28T01:52:00.000-07:00

A french woman owns 100€ jeans that make her butt look fabulous, but she has only one pair (which is the pair she wears should she decide to wear jeans).

A french woman knows her pharmacist well, who can advise her about birch tree juice and tisanes for drainage, as well as the most effective cellulite cream (all of which she will use to completion to rid herself of the non-existent, unwanted cellulite).

A french woman indelicately shoves large forkfuls of salad into her mouth because it's impolite to cut lettuce leaves.

A french woman wolfs down her entire plate of food in five minutes, tearing off tiny pieces of bread and throwing the rest down on the table, but she then spends an hour over her espresso and cigarette.

A french woman takes a yoga class or jogs once a week and stays in shape.

A french woman wears minimal makeup, but has eyebrows that are perfectly shaped.

A french woman works, goes away for the weekend on her own, goes out to dinner with friends - because what is good for her is good for her kids.

A french woman has cheese after every meal, but only a tiny slice just to taste.

A french woman wears gucci belts and heels to the grocery store or to pick up her kids from school, but has no shame in having dirty hair pulled back because it's healthy to wash your hair just once a week.

A french woman will iron all her family's clothes, including the underwear, because her mother told her it would help prevent stains and it's important that everyone look their best.

A french woman will not eat in between meals and will not allow her children to eat in between meals. It is written in the constitution.

A french woman will do without insecurity, make her man feel like a man, (understand if he "trompe's" her), wear sexy lingerie and shrug at you until you call her bluff.

Had he not married me, Mr. Welcome would have married a french woman, having no particular fascination for America. Happily there is no condemnation for all that I am not,

only appreciation for all that I am.

A-List Here I Come, Baby!

2010-06-24T08:22:00.000-07:00

The Blogger's Concierge is compiling a few A-lister blogs and wants to see if you can make the grade. I'm all for giving it a whirl as it's been a long while since I've done some self-promotion outside of my long-suffering immediate entourage.

Oh, except for the time I commented on this famous blogger, asking her to join my blog, or the time I commented on this famous blogger saying I wish he would recognize me by passing along the meme. I know, cheeky, right? I am clearly suffering from excessive humility.

But I'll try my very best to put myself out there and tell the lovely ladies at the Concierge Desk why I think my blog is all that and more. The following are excerpts of some of my posts over the past eight months. I hope you find something that appeals to you.

I am amusing.
A year ago, at 42 weeks and a day, I hit a low point in my pregnancy and birth moments as the doctors were trying to .... well the literal translation would be "unclench" the cervix to allow the Peanut to make his appearance. I had spent the day and night, and then day in the hospital to that end and, just like Rachel in Friends, watched as my roommate came in with contractions, went out, and came back in with a baby, while I was sitting around with nada. After the second day waiting in the labor room, the nurses sent me to my room to eat and take a shower before deciding what to do with me and my high security portal.

The contractions were starting as I made my way through the main public lobby in my open hospital gown, holdingmy own IV up high to avoid blood loss since the maternity ward couldn't spare a rolling IV pole (are we in civilization here?), only to get into the tiny elevator where my husband wisecracked that my water would break and I would short-circuit the elevator and have to give birth standing up (don't make me laugh!!), only to find my roommate surrounded by her baby and every known relative popping champagne in our room. Well, after a good cry of humiliation, I had to admit that the walk and shower did me some good because Peanut was born a couple of hours later.

I am ardent.
In order to receive people with a heart and mind fully engaged, to go out with a light heart, or even to succeed in the skill of living at its most basic, we need to do everything possible to remain at peace with those we care about. And what a shame, what a loss, what a snag in the tapestry of human understanding to only care about those who think as we do.

I am apt.
A square of chocolate can be the sweet impetus to get you to clean those dishes in the sink. A cup of coffee with some non-dairy creamer (the white gold of France since it can only be bought in specialty shops at an exorbitant price) can give you the courage to tidy up the toy-strewn playroom. And a warm pan of brownies, fresh out of the oven, can get you out of doors to attack the gardening (and tempt others to come over as well). Even a packet of stale cookies, munched on standing up without thought or pleasure, can become the straw that broke the camel's back where you throw the packet down in disgust and go start facing all the chores that await. The Dessert Years.

I am adored.
I confessed to my husband that it is quite a blow, a round of mid-life issues that I did not expect, and that I am really struggling with the fact that some aspects of my life can never be relived. This rant went on for quite a bit and culminated a couple of weeks ago in a pique when I started wailing that nothing awaited me but menopause (!!!), at which point Mr. Welcome grabbed my hand to silence me and smilingly replied, "But honey - the best is yet to come!"

I am adept.
Learning that we were not, in fact, pleased, they assured us that there are no problems, only solutions. But I don't think they realize that solutions involve unmounting complicated beds that barely squeeze through the doors with our low ceilings, or that old furniture weighs more than modern Ikea stuff, and is going to involve relieving it of all its contents first. I'm guessing it won't be a problem for them.

So DH noticed that I'm a little dark and broody lately. Young Lady patted my head in sympathy and said, "Poor mommy. She's tired!" And Big Boy has been hoping that by raising the frequency and decibel level of his pleas, he will be able to cut through the cocoon of my woes - all to no avail. Until I snap out of my funk (tomorrow, probably, when I have to start thinking of our New Year's Eve party), I'm going to go lose myself in watching something on tv. Where there are no problems, only solutions.

I am articulate.
Young Lady is eating bean sprouts - the ones I had ... sprouted ... all by myself for the very first time.
Young Lady, "When I'm a mommy, these will swim in my belly and make a baby."
Me, "um, um, um"
Young Lady, "I saw it on the movie (at the children's science museum)."
Peeling the hull off each sprout, "Maybe there's a baby in here .... nope. Maybe there's a baby in here ....uh, nope."
Me, "um, um, um ...."

I am accomplished.
Wading through the crowds the week of Christmas (when you hope that you're the only one not working and at the mall) is like a salmon swimming upstream to spawn and die. Except that you're engaged in an activity nowhere near as useful as spawning - you're buying plastic toys that will get a short shelf life only to add to the overflowing landfills. Don't get me wrong - I'm on the more moderate end of the environmentalist spectrum, but the Christmas debauch can turn the stomach of even the least sensible.

And then the grocery shopping! I mean, someone has to get the foie gras and seafood, smoked salmon and turkey, the bûches de noels ... and it seems that it's someone from each and every household in Ile de France. My maneuvering the enormously laden cart through the aisles of Carrefour in a desperate sprint to find cinnamon sticks resembled Fantasia's hippopotamus dancing ballet to Ponchielli more closely than I'd care to admit.

I am ambitious.

I've been sleeping for the last two weeks. I've been spending long nights happily lost in dreamland, grudgingly awakened by Peanut's incessant, "Mamaaa? Mamaaa?" I've been napping under the pile of clean laundry on my bed that I'm too discouraged to put away, and reading regency novels under my covers since I had nowhere else to go. We'll call it early hibernation and I was in need of a spring.

I am aesthetic.

In the eternal life cycle of construction, heaven is the finished product - the gleaming floorboards, the graceful curtains fluttering gently out from a breeze that pours through tall windows, matte walls that illuminate chosen pieces of art by their subtlety, steam curling upwards from a tall mug of tea (unfettered by dust) posed on a three-legged table next to the loveseat, where a lucky soul is draped with book in hand. A domestic nirvana.

Hell is the week upon week of drilling, banging, sawing, shouting, hammering, scraping, demolishing, smoking, interrupting. It is the dust that covers every utensil unlucky enough to be left exposed in the kitchen, that covers every chair in the living space, every soap, toothbrush, lotion container, every article of clothing left drying in the laundry room. It is the sand and pebbles on the bathroom floor that can never be completely removed, except by the bare wet feet that exit the warm tub. Hell is the waiting, the waiting - the putting one's life on hold, hoping that one day peace will come, but never being entirely sure.

And purgatory is the weekends spent in construction, when no one is there but family, and yet evidence that your life is on hold unavoidably crowds your view.

I am Apocalypse Now.

So it was in front of the computer that I first started noticing my nostrils fill up with acrid dust. I didn't understand why all of the sudden the dust was bothering me and opened the window to get some fresh air. Instead I got a good gust of smoke, which made me immediately think that one of the neighbors had a fire in their fireplace. I started to wonder if our little fires would be as obtrusive, and what could possibly be done about neighbor's fires that caused my nostrils to fill up with smoke. I was still wondering as I went out to get YL's library book from the outside studio so she would be able to return it the next day.

And that's when I saw all the live coals. "You've got to be kidding me,"

I am approachable.

When we would cross each other I would say, "Bonjour." And she would nod. NOD. I wasn't even worth her opening her lips. So I thought, "I may be friendly (think puppy - eager, pant, pant - prostitute for affection), but I'm not a glutton for punishment. I'm from New York and I can snub with the best of them.

I am abandoned.

But it's not my physical bearing that's the problem. At merely forty, I feel old. Past sorrows weigh me down like a set of weights: memories of lying with my face on the cold bathroom tiles as I try to come to grips with the fact that my brother just committed suicide; the deaths and cultural tensions we faced in East Africa that warred against our humanitarian efforts (meanwhile the attacks on the Twin Towers happening in the very town we left behind); the knowledge that nothing is ever permanent or promised, and the very beings I love the most in the world are gifts .... or perhaps loans, meant to be fully treasured and cared for. This tires me out sometimes, the fact that nothing is permanent or promised in this life.

I am altered.

I carried his body, heavier in death than it was in life and sat in the truck waiting for the driver to come. Tears streamed down my face, my chest constricted with grief that there was no more life in this baby. We drove to the orphanage and as soon as we pulled up, one of the older orphans started pestering me about getting them a computer. I said, "Not now, Dowood." He looked at me in astonishment and said, "Teacher! Are you cry?" With tears streaming down my face I nodded my head. He asked, "But why?" I choked out, "because Moguay died." He said, "but .... don't cry! It's just an orphan!"

Big Boy

2010-06-23T14:42:00.000-07:00

I had pasta for dinner. Pasta with cheese and butter. It was warm and comforting and filling and ... completely fattening and not at all what I need a week before I head to the beach. There will be no fancy tie-in at the end of the blog. Just thought I'd share.

Big Boy was induced at 41 weeks. Actually Young Lady was induced at 40 weeks, Big Boy at 41 weeks and Peanut was induced at 42 weeks and still took 36 hours to come out. It's a good thing I'm stopping at three (in theory) because they're getting more and more reluctant to leave.

But I was sure to be induced at 40 weeks with Big Boy because I thought - no I was sure - that I had lost some water (I won't go into details for those who haven't pushed a human out, have no desire to, or simply can't because they have a penis). But the midwives said no he wasn't ripe, so I came back a week later where they said - "but the amniotic sac has a tear! He could get an infection! He should have come out sooner!" grrrr.

So they induced and I did my usual gig of waiting til I felt the contractions for awhile before begging for the guy to come and stick a long needle up my spine. Aaahhh heaven. Except you have to wait about thirty minutes for the heaven (after waiting for about an hour for the guy to show up). Thirty minutes of hunching into as much of a ball as your round belly will allow you while a nurse shoves her elbows down on your shoulders, and then you shouting for them to wait because you have a contraction (which is coming every minute), so they have to wait cuz they can't stick a needle in your spine when you're having a contraction. But then aaah cocktail. Heaven. I can get into this breezy dreamy, warm all over state. I can get into to it all too good (which is why I no longer take alcohol or any other controlled substances).

But then I got a fever. The kind that could do Little House on the Prairie proud (where they're put in a bathtub filled with ice as they convulse theatrically). I convulsed theatrically. For hours. As I contracted. And then I pushed him out, my little 9 pound baby. And boy did I feel it! I thought Young Lady had paved the way and that I would hardly feel the stretch. But no.

It brought me back to the time during our engagement when I came to France and met the Welcomes for the first time. I browsed through old family photos with an increasing feeling of panic because all five of the sons had very large heads! Their heads were as wide as their shoulders! And the problem was those heads had to come out of somewhere. I almost backed out of the deal there and then.

So my little 7 lb 4 oz Young Lady did not pave the way at all for the ring of fire that awaited me with (very) Big Boy. But I got him out. And then he was rushed off and I was alone with my convulsions.

When Big Boy was born he didn't breathe. They couldn't resuscitate him, but it didn't occur to me to worry. Mr. Welcome was very worried, however. He saw this baby dangling unresponsively by the foot as they tried to get him to take his first breath. He tried to stay positive for me as they whisked him off so I wouldn't worry, but I was in my own dazed world. We were living the same epic event in two different realities.

After nearly an hour they came to tell us that he was alive, but that his vital signs were not strong so they were going to bring him to me for a little while before taking him to the NICU. I still didn't worry or think about what that meant at the time. I had the luxury that every woman expects to have - I've done the work, now bring me my baby. And as is not always the case, I was given my happy ending.

So they brought him to me, and ... well, nothing could prepare me for the SHOCK of seeing this fleshy purple creature with swollen lips and eyes and a huge nose. He looked nothing like Young Lady, who came out of the womb bird-like and delicate with nary a bump or a bruise. He was .. well he was the kind of baby only a mother could love.

So instinct took over and I took him in my arms, breast-fed him a little bit and talked to him. I caressed his face and his head, saying, "Hello little one. You are my prince. I am your mommy and I will love you forever," and other such things. Unlike Young Lady who was both sleepy and interested in everything around her, Big Boy was interested in one thing only (and very energetically so). Me.

I tried to fight sleep and keep talking to him and touching him, amazed that the midwives let him stay with me as long as they did. His eyes never left my face the whole time I was with him. The midwives and nurses were murmuring to themselves as they watched us together, and when they finally said it was time for him to go, they said that his vital signs were so much stronger from the time he spent with me that he would be able to go to the regular nursery on my floor and wouldn't need to go to NICU at all. They had never seen anything like it. And I will never forget this about him.

Big Boy is a second child, making his appearance with a big sister not even yet two years old. That miraculous first connection was quickly shoved aside by routine, by a demanding older sister, and by a frustratingly colicky nature where only love could fuel me to continue to meet his demands (sometimes every 45 minutes at night). As a second child, he generally follows good naturedly in his big sisters' footsteps, going with the flow and demanding nothing. But sometimes this beautiful side of him that was born needing relationships will come out and break through his sometimes dreamy, sometimes hyper state. He's not coy. He just says, "I want yooooou."

My typical response is "I'm here babe," accompanied by a hug of varying degrees of distractedness. But when I can remove myself from the cacophony of life and really see him, my heart whispers, "You are my prince. I am your mommy. And I will love you forever."

Mr. Welcome's Welcome

2010-06-21T11:56:00.000-07:00

Biological Warfare and The Finger of God

2010-06-18T09:42:00.000-07:00

As you've read, I love to be disciplined by God. It makes me feel special that he would pay that much attention to me. I have no idea where this penchant comes from – I was such a docile and obedient child, not at all interested in attracting attention to myself by acting out (stop laughing Mom and Dad). Nevertheless, there it is. I love to be personally singled out by God, even if it's in the form of a rebuke.

And perhaps I needed a rebuke. I have been guilty of neglecting my children, my back to them while spending hours in front of the computer. I peruse the blogs, laugh (and ignore my children when they ask what is so funny), comment, surf the web, and escape in general. I have fleeting bouts of guilt and lots of justification in face of such neglect, yet I continue to do it. That is, until I was "encouraged" to do otherwise.

Saturday morning very early, around 4:00 am, Mr. Welcome and I heard the absolute loudest thunder clap I've ever heard. It sounded like something exploded on the cement right outside our house and I fully expected to see a burn mark somewhere the next day. To give you an idea of how loud it was, I never wake up for anything (unless a child sighs in his sleep). When we were living in Africa, some discontented person exploded a bomb at our next door neighbor's doorstep that shook the foundations of our own house. Every team member and guard woke up in our compound except ... yours truly, who was happily lost in dreamland. So you'll know that if this lightening (or thunder clap) woke me up, it means that it was very close. And very loud.

Let me diverge for a moment here to express a recurring argument Mr. Welcome and I have had since that fateful moment, debating where the noise of a thunderclap actually comes from. He says it's from the lightening and I say it's from two clouds bumping together. He still laughs condescendingly indulgently at how his little wife's brain works. But I ask you, esteemed readers, which one of us is right?

Anyway, upon inspection the next day, absolutely nothing was harmed – no burn marks, nothing.

Nothing, that is, except our Internet box. Call me crazy, but I am convinced it is Divine Discipline at work and I shall heed it's call. In any case, I have no choice considering it will take weeks, nay months, before our connection will be up and running again. In France, the home where strikes and the spirit of bureaucracy are at the heart of every governmental and non-governmental organization, employees tossing dossiers back and forth in a game of limbo chanting, « How slow can you go? » I suspect I will be sitting in attendance upon my children and twiddling my thumbs from morning til sunset for some time to come.

And that is why you will not see many new comments on your blog in the coming months or many new posts on mine. It is not that I am no longer hanging on your every word, it is simply that I have no access to it. I shall have to meditate on your past genius and chuckle at your old posts until we are connected again. And, on a different topic, let me take this moment to say that I am so very grateful when you comment on my blog. It really makes my day. If I don't respond to your comments, it is simply because I assume you don't come back to read the comments. You comment and then move on. If that is not the case, and you have been waiting for unrequited comments, do let me know.

Technical interruption:

All that was written a week ago when the thunderous deed was done. And knock me over with a feather if it isn't fixed already, for it only took one week. A guy came over this morning and I am connected again in time to actually post this. There will be no more tears, no more separation. I am once again yours (inside the hours of 8:30 to 4:30 when the kids are in school, and after 9:00 at night. I shall heretofore not neglect my kids in the interest of entertainment, blog or otherwise. I shall not find the meaning of my life in how well I can express myself, how many followers and comments I get, how my statistics hold up, or any other self-interested behavior that ignores the well-being of my progeny.) .

Okay, moving right along to my other purpose of writing. We have been invaded by, what is called in french, « puçerons. » It means little fleas. These little creatures have absolutely attacked our bay-leaf (laurel) and apricot trees, curling the leaves into themselves and covering every available leaf with crawling white vermin. To rid our garden of them, we will have to employ chemicals, which would hinder our attempts at having a completely organic garden.

So as I bent my mind to this problem while weeding the garden, Mr. Welcome breaks through my rêverie with a « Ah ha! There she is. A little ladybug. »

Me: « What are you going to do with it? »

M.W. «I'm going to put it on the infected leaves. These guys eat the puçerons, and so do their larvae. If I can find enough of these, I can eradicate the problem. »

Me: (humoring him with my silence).

M.W. (excitedly): « Oh, a ladybug and a gentlemen bug. They're out to make lots of little larvae together. Come on, guys, let's go. (To himself) I 'm going to engage in a little biological warfare. »

I look on in astonishment that we could be married.

I do seem to be surrounded by such mad scientists, so shouldn't be surprised to be married to one. My sister's husband tells me that the first time he came to her apartment when they started dating, he opened her refrigerator to find it empty except for ketchup and fish food.

Me: « Fish food? What kind of fish food needs to be stored in the refrigerator? »

Sister: « Snails. My puffer fish eat them so I have to store them in the fridge. »

Sister's husband (while tickling her): « She likes to pretend she's God and have her own eco-system. »

Me: « You send the snails into a certain death and watch the puffer eat them? »

Sister (giggling): « Yeah. It's kinda fun! »

I look on in astonishment that we could be related. (Actually I could really use those puffers right about now - the snails are destroying our lettuce).

Moving along, Mr. Welcome's idea seems to have some merit. Take a look:

The puçerons:

The ladybug:

Modest courtship:

Lady-of-the-night Bug (Parents, cover your children's eyes):

They lived happily ever after and had lots of children:

Take that, you puçerons!

I think with such determined human engineering, I'll take the Divine rebuke anytime.

Young Lady

2010-06-10T12:32:00.000-07:00

Young Lady is the spitting image of me - my replay button stuck when I hear her playing teacher, playing mother, playing general, expounding on subjects she knows nothing about and ordering people hither and fro. I don't know how to press the pause button at times and it freaks me out.

The thing is, I know she will have a hard time ahead of her if she continues to be so pontificating, so (s)mothering. And I know that from very personal experience.

Like the time 7-year old me called 6-year old neighbor "honey" like the indulgent (s)mothering friend that I was, and 8-year old neighbor embarrassed me by asking me why I called her "honey" to which I promptly said "no I didn't" to which she responded "yes, you did."
Like the time I thought the two friends who had confided in me about what they didn't like in the other needed to clear the air so we could have peace, so diplomatic 13-year old me told each what the other thought and then arranged a Camp David (where I spent the rest of junior high in the outhouse).
Like the time college-aged me told my friend what I thought she should do with her life, using such persuasive arguments that she was forced to remain silent in order to escape the conversation, and then was left to be astonished that my excellent reasoning had not prevailed with her.

Oh college was a banner period for failed attempts to control. Let's move on.

Actually let's skip right to present. With a few years behind me, I have learned that what works for one person does not work for another. At least not in the same way. It's no good to try and control who they are, what they should do, and I certainly now realize my way is not better than theirs. Okay, okay, it's still better, but at least I'm smart enough not to tell them I think so.

When we were walking home from school today, Young Lady's "amoureux" Ewan was walking along with us. I mean, this kid is gorgeous - a smile from ear to ear, long straight blond hair that hangs in his big blue eyes, cool clothes and jaunty step even at tender the age of five. You just know he's going to be a heart-breaker when he gets older. (He had better be breaking someone else's heart).

He's a year younger than she is, but the class is split so fate threw them together. He seems to like her and carries on a determined conversation with himself, his face partly turned in her direction. He yells at the bigger girl he's walking with that he's not talking to her when she has the misfortune to say, "what?" Young Lady is conscious of his every word although she smiles to herself and doesn't answer. She marches confidently along in the power she exudes having worn her blue skirt that twirls.

Young Lady is beautiful too, bias aside. She did not inherit my rounded arms, protruding belly, knocked knees or dull hair. She got her father's athletic build with tiny wiry arms that looked beautiful today in a little white tee shirt with capped sleeves. She has a long torso, elegantly set off by the swinging navy polka dot skirt and little ballet flats at the end of long slender legs. She has thick blond hair and her own set of green eyes. She's going to be a heart-breaker too (and can break anyone's heart she pleases).

But beauty will come to nothing if she cannot temper her tongue. In the series Cranford that I'm re-watching (I'm such a sucker for classics), one woman advises another who expresses her fears at having no interesting conversation to catch a suitor, "Men do not care how well you talk, as they do how well you listen."

I hope Young Lady will find her own pause button one day, and not care so much about what she has to say. Or send her suitor's letter back to him with all the spelling mistakes underlined in red. Or mock a suitor in front of his friends. Or talk a suitor's ear off so successfully that his glazed regard only finds clarity in another girl crossing his line of vision.

Fortunately for Young Lady, she has time to learn all of things.

"Ewan," she calls with a giggle. "I burped!"

How Does Your Garden Grow?

2010-06-07T11:05:00.000-07:00

Why, how kind of you to ask!

We are inundated with green, as a matter of fact, and I'm wondering if anyone has time to come over and help us weed. Also, why don't any of the vermin eat the weeds since they are so prolific? Why must they attack my vegetables?

I always said that our street was the french version of Wisteria Lane, so how befitting that we plant a wisteria to grow up along our gate and form a canopy of heavenly scent over the door? It just sat there for so long, but finally sent it's sentry out and here we are! (That dark blob is the mailbox to the right with a branch of laurel sticking out above it).

And now for the trees. This is our hazelnut tree at the entrance to our vegetable garden. I don't remember it creating such a dense ceiling of leaves last year. But I was still in suburban shock back then.

And (sniff), our one apricot tree that produced fruit (apparently) for the first time, after much pruning and coaxing from yours truly to nourish that fruit, ended up contracting a parasite and lost all its silver bells and cockleshells. Sniff!

However, there's still the other apricot tree, which I just learned from the neighbors (who came over to explain the ways of the garden to us) sprung up all on its own. This tree is doing just fine, but I thought this branch was interesting - on its last legs and bearing one last fruit, kind of like me having a third child.

I have loads of people offer to come help make jam.

Now, on to the fruits and veggies. Our raspberry bushes are producing already (and I just noticed my first strawberry, but only after I had shot and downloaded all these pictures). I know the berries are miniscule and not even red yet, but I'm going to have my very own fruit salad one day! And if the gulf stream continues to be threatened, I can add pineapple and bananas to the mix! I'm so excited!

These are the sunflowers along the wall. (And all the weeds alongside them - gulp! I'm found out).

And the zucchini with the potatoes beyond. I know it's not a big deal to you, but I put seeds and stuff in the ground, and all these plants came up! That's pretty miraculous to me. Not as much fun as making babies, but pretty cool nonetheless!

The corn. You can't buy husks of corn in France, at least not anywhere near me. SO. I'm pretty excited about the corn. Okay, admittedly this picture is not exciting at all. It's neither artistic nor impressive to anyone other than me, kind of like showing pictures of your kids to strangers on the bus (which I don't even do), but there you go. That's Sally there, and the one whose ears stick out is Ronald ....

Alright, let's speed things up here. Tomatoes to the left ...

Chinese cucumbers to the right (which I'll have to stake, as they are climbers). My Chinese friends brought the seeds back for me; you have to cook these cucumbers. It should be fun.

So that's how my garden grows. I was pretty excited to go out and cut my head of lettuce for lunch, and decided to go crazy and dig up one of my onions ... see the bulbs there? No, neither did I. I think they're not quite ready to be dug up. But we cut the green stems over our boiled potatoes and pretended they were chives. Yum, yum.

Okaaaay. Are you all sufficiently impressed? (Or bored stiff)? Good! Stay where you are and you can be my pretty maids all in a row.

Sigh. Time to Brush Up the Resumé?

2010-06-02T12:25:00.000-07:00

Sigh is about right. Is it the 6 year maternity leave at the forefront of my c.v. that has me in a quandary? Or the fact that I was never that good at PowerPoint or Excel, even when I was still employed to use my brain (so how much worse for wear are those skills now that my brain is permanently vacationing in the Bahamas)? Or is it that I'm not exactly sure I want to return to the corporate life I was so anxious to shake the dust off my feet from? So I'm not sure if I should type up that resumé and put it out there to see where it leads.

But I'm not quite the SAHM that I thought I would be either. (It means Stay At Home Mom for everyone who is as un-tech-lingo-hip as I am). I thought I would have a tiny waist with an A-line skirt and a frilly apron. I thought every day would be filled with baking and expeditions, and running through fields of flowers with my long flowing hair (half of which fell out post-pregnancy, plus I pretty much pee my pants every time I try to run) with the children laughing gaily at my side as they stare up at me adoringly. I thought we'd be learning to read together and doing little activities, stopping briefly to partake of an organic snack flowing with milk and honey. I thought ...

But it's not. It's me at the computer with my back to the kids while they watch yet another DVD and yell out of the sides of their mouths, "Maa! I want a snack" - this without diverting their eyes one inch for one second from the screen. It's Big Boy running around scaring his big sister, flapping his arms up and down behind Young Lady as she screams and runs full-force into me, just as I'm taking a pan of scalding food to the table. It's me bribing them (with candy) to take a nap (age four, okay fine, but age six?). The truth is, I need the naps. It's me calling Mr. Welcome at the end of the day to ask when he's leaving, either valiantly trying to hide the panic in my voice, or snapping at him outright (look here, you impregnated me so you can darn well get home and face the consequences).

I have my fairer moments. I have my friends (see previous post). There's always Peanut, who is learning to communicate. "Mamaaa? Mamaaa? Mamaaa? Mamaaa?" It means "I want something." So charming. And chucking his water (or biscuit, or pacifier) on the floor with all his might means, "No, no mother, that is not what I wish for." Just adorable.

And there's Mr. Welcome who came home to our dinner of organic roast chicken, salad from the garden and a gluten-free raspberry tart, and said, "Wow. Do I, like, actually get to eat in a one or two star restaurant every night?" He was so clearly bursting with pleasure and pride that I knew he was being sincere. So wrinkling my nose, I said, "Only one or two out of five?" He retorts, "Well, there's the ambiance too, you know. Like how clean the place is." We both take a moment to laugh.

But I think I'm unhappy and in need of a change. I need to recover my lost sense of self. I need to get my driver's license (enfin), then go ahead and drive myself to the swimming pool and get off my fat butt do some laps. I need to communicate in iambic pentameter, or at least with multiple syllables, or at least hold a conversation about something that doesn't involve a bodily function. I need something more out of life, and maybe that thing is a new job.

Or I suppose I could always have another kid.

That Which We Call a Rose

2010-05-27T00:52:00.000-07:00

This is the rose bush that is trained in an arch over our well. It's so beautiful, isn't it?

Except there is no scent. None. I suggested to Mr. Welcome that we replace it with one that has a heady scent and wild looking blossoms, but he said, "Do you know how long it takes to grow and train a rose bush?"

His brother had a better idea. Just buy some rose-scented deodorant and douse the bush just before guests come over, then discreetly re-spritz at regular intervals. Hmm. Not bad.

The Rules for Friendly Engagement are different in France than they are in America (or anywhere else for that matter). One is to be as closed and unfriendly as possible, opening up one small petal at a time in the course of a lifetime, in the name of being mysterious.

In America, you're as friendly as can be, until you no longer have reason to be (New Yorkers excepted).

So, as you've read, I've barged into the elite little groups of french fashion mothers, stroller en première like a bull in a China shop, realized it was not an effective battle tactic, and shelved my enthusiasm while practicing my pout. In general, it seems to work well and people are starting to finally smile at me and make some basic chitchat - with one exception.

Let's call her .... Rose.

I always saw Rose standing back and standing off, even more aloof than the other moms. And I thought to myself, "Awwww - she just needs some sugar!" So one day, I approached her and plastered my biggest smile on with the words, "You know, Young Lady and your Rosette are best friends. We should set up a playdate sometime when our construction is finished."

"No."

whaaa? Did she just say what I think she said? Okaaaay.

But I was not to be deterred. Another time I saw her and asked her how she was. Then I put on a bright smile and asked her where she was from originally (since she was obviously Southeast Asian, even if she did grow up in France). Okay, okay - I know that's not a politically correct question, but I love to learn about different cultures and piece information together like a puzzle. And I certainly don't mind when people ask me where I'm from, although perhaps I might if it were my own country and I weren't white.

But she couldn't have looked more shocked and said, "No one has ever (dared to) ask me that!" So I bumbled around an apology, explaining that I had lived in Asia and Africa and speak some Mandarin so I'm interested in cultures, Asia especially. Rather than thawing her ice floe a bit by our commonality, she merely commented that I had moved around a lot and then went her own way.

Okay. Pull up the britches. Grit my teeth. I'm used to difficult people - she's not going to get me down. It's time for Young Lady's birthday party. For once, Rose waylays me to respond to the invitation. But it's a no. With no explanation. She said, "I'm afraid we're going to have to say no again." I said (in a smilely, friendly way), "Oh noooooo. That' too baaaaad....."

And she cut my protestations short with a "Young Lady and Rosette can see each other in school."

Okaaaay.

I started to get little glimpses about her from Young Lady, like when she always has to be after Rosette, whose reasoning is that her mother said she couldn't be last - she had to be first. My hints to Young Lady that maybe her friendship with Rosette is not such a great idea (because her mother is a psycho!!!!!) falls on deaf ears.

So after the birthday party rejection, I still made an effort to be friendly once or twice. I congratulated her on her pregnancy, which I think she would have preferred to have hidden until the baby was actually born. But all she did was smile - a smile so tight only two teeth were showing as she thanked me.

When we would cross each other I would say, "Bonjour." And she would nod. NOD. I wasn't even worth her opening her lips. So I thought, "I may be friendly (think puppy - eager, pant, pant - prostitute for affection), but I'm not a glutton for punishment. I'm from New York and I can snub with the best of them.

So that's what I do now. And she can watch me flit around from one friend to another and eat her heart out. (Or not).

Her name is not really Rose, obviously. But it proves that sometimes that which we call a rose, by any other name still doesn't smell as sweet.

The Current

2010-05-21T01:06:00.000-07:00

I'm lying on the bottom of a canoe. The vast sky remains constant, but the clouds don't fly by as quickly as I know I'm going. I can just see the longer branches of the trees hanging low over the river, brushing the periphery of my vision as I go past them. I'm swept up in the current.

On the bank, there are things that clamor for my attention. There are the blog posts to write and the lovely favorite blogs to read. There is the budgeting to do, the filling in of gaps left in our budget by plane tickets, taxes, construction. I don't know how we will do that, but I'm not too worried. I'm already leaving it all behind with my canoe. There is the kitchen to clean and the laundry to wash and fold. I can never seem to bring a task to completion - the current carries me along too fast for that.

There are the doctors appointments to make, the numerous friends and family to return calls to, e-mails to. I don't give them much thought as I pass by - I would be too overwhelmed if I did. In a vision, Big Boy interrupts me and tries to grab the broom out of my hand to beat the rose bush and get his ball. I slap his hand away and immediately regret it. He cries. I apologize and hug him - the current sweeps me along.

There is this feeling of desolation as I can't seem to keep up with the rapids the canoe carries me over. Just as I go over one and regain my equilibrium, another one waits for me ahead. I can't retrieve my lost energy, and my youth is fleeting before I ever have hope to get it back.

I consider solutions, exits - a job? Another degree? Acting? What will give me my joy back, the strength to go over the rapids on my own terms? I'm not sure there is a solution - perhaps just a new character, but that's not easily for the taking. I'm still lying down, the rapids are behind me now; my head sways gently with the current and my stomach lurches comfortably with the movement.

What's this under me? An oar.

I force myself to sit up, every muscle groaning at the effort. I half-heartedly direct the canoe towards the bank, towards the trees. It moves quickly and it's hard to fight against the current. Ahead is a fork in the river, almost imperceptible as the trees fight to protect their secret.

On the right-hand side is a much narrower river, a gentler current, almost non-existent. I steer towards the easy current and suddenly slow down to a gentle roll as I enter it. I put my oar down and lie back down, contented. Out of my periphery, I see a house up ahead. It looks comforting, familiar. I see my family waving excitedly on the bank. I smile to myself and wave feebly back with no intention of pulling over. But it is not to be.

"Maman! Maman! Maaaaamaaaaan!"

"Moooooom! MA!"

"Ih wull be what for dinner?"

Tarte a la Moutarde

2010-05-14T12:07:00.000-07:00

This is our first harvest.

Yum, yum, crunch, crunch .... boy do I feel virtuous - vegetables and home-grown!

Would you like to win friends and influence people? Get a marriage proposal? Well heeeeeeere's how! Below is the recipe of the all-famous, and yet little known, TARTE A LA MOUTARDE!! (Mustard Tart).

I learned how to make it while au-pairing in France and served it for a picnic on one of the early dates with Mr. Welcome. Apparently it was his absolute favorite dish that his mom made back home, and it totally blew him away that a little american girl like me knew how to whip one up. The proposal was not long in coming after that.

Okay, if you live in France, you go to the supermarket and buy a pâte brisée. Of course it's already rolled out to perfection, protected by wax paper, and made with real ingredients, like flour and butter. But then, if you live in France you probably already know how to make the tarte.

For the rest of us (or those with gluten intolerance), you have to make the pâte brisée. And here's where it gets sticky (literally, if you're using gluten free flour), because I don't have an exact recipe. I'm not a measuring type in general. If you can handle that, you take about 2 cups of flour (I used corn flour with xanthum gum mixed in, plus brown millet flour). You chop cold unsalted butter, probably about 3/4 of a stick, and you knead it with your fingers until the flour becomes kind of greasy with little tiny lumps of butter. You throw in some salt. If you can get your hands on some large-crystal sea salt, it's well worth the trip to the grocery store. It sets the crust apart from anything you've ever tasted. Then you put the bowl of dough next to the sink, run the cold water next to it, and splash in two or three light handfuls of water into the bowl. You then knead it all together until it sticks into a ball. See what I mean about not really measuring?

Okay, if you can't handle being without a recipe, here's a good one. Oh yikes - looks like the butter is more like a cup, which is probably closer to the truth; however I hold to the large crystal sea salt suggestion and add that it should be more like a teaspoon, rather than a half.

You roll out the dough between two pieces of wax paper, that way you just have to take the top layer off and pick the crust up by the bottom wax paper and place it in the quiche pan. Cut off the excess wax paper from around the pan. Here's what it looks like:

Cover the bottom of the tarte generously with dijon mustard. Make sure that you don't glop it too much on the sides, as it tends to really pack a punch if there's too much. (Have you ever seen the movie "Wasabi?" It's a great flick). See the mustard layer here:

Fill in the tarte with grated swiss cheese (or émmental or comté if you can get your hands on it). It looks like this:

Then cut the reddest, ripest tomatoes you can find (one day from our garden, I hope) and scallop them around the tarte, overlapping the slices. Make sure you cut them in such a way that you see the chambers with seeds of the tomato, as it's prettier that way and the french are all about looks. And make sure you don't skimp on the tomatoes, because when the cheese melts, the tomatoes have a tendency to slip off the slice, and then you're all like "where's my tomato?". No bite should be tomato-less.

When it's perfectly filled in, sprinkle pepper (you don't need salt if the pâte is salty enough) and fresh basil. I use frozen for lack of fresh, although even dried will serve up in a pinch. Here:

This last picture is the cooked tarte, although you really can't tell. I ended up putting it back in the oven for some more baking with the heat turned off and it was much better. The crust should be brown and the tomatoes wilted, the cheese well-melted. Oh yes! You should have pre-heated the oven to 350° and you're going to end up baking it for about 30 minutes (and then perhaps leave it another 20 minutes or so with the oven turned off). Just base your decision on how it looks.

I guess I'll never be a blogger chef due to my lack of precision. I'll make a great grandma, though - they never measure either.

So once that was dished up, much to the immense delight of Mr. Welcome and the horror of Peanut (what's that? mustard?), I washed the salad.

I know it's really hard to capture it because I apparently used manual focus instead of macro, but there's a nice juicy (blurry) spider down there on the white grid. Casualty of home-grown produce. He did not make it into the salad, but scared the heck out of me.

Since there was already mustard in the tarte, we just ate the salad with walnut oil and salt, not the usual dijon mustard dressing I usually make. We're really into dijon mustard over here.

So that, my friends, is how you make a really scrumptious french meal. Or get Mr. Welcome to marry you.

The Squabbles of Nice People

2010-05-12T23:40:00.000-07:00

Mr. Welcome and I occasionally fight, which is not an easy thing to do for such nice folks as us. Now he's thinking, "What is she talking about? What is she going to write about? We haven't fought lately, and even if we did, I certainly wouldn't want her to elaborate on it for the public eye!"

No, honey, don't worry. This is just a playful portrayal of our rare disputes, nothing that could be made into a sitcom or anything.

One of the things we can get into a tiff over is getting ready to leave. For someplace. Usually church. The routine is that he takes a shower while I prepare breakfast and feed everybody. Then I want to sit down and eat breakfast after everyone is finished, at which point he usually reminds me that we have to leave in 20 minutes. (dangerous glowering from me that he's not quite attuned to).

Forty minutes later, our conversation in the car goes something like this ...

Miss Welcome: "Honey, my expectation is that since I've made everyone else breakfast and gotten all the kids clothes out (otherwise, you never know what might happen), you will prepare the kids from head to toe, prepare the diaper bag, and seat everyone in the car so that all I have to do is dance out of the door, lock it and take my seat in the car."

Mr. Welcome: "Well, that's pretty much how it happened today."

Miss Welcome: "Um, well I had to ask you to prepare the diaper bag and I noticed that none of the kids had their shoes on yet .."

... followed by a brief clarification as to what exactly it means to prepare the diaper bag and whether or not that includes pacifiers and snacks for after church.

Another tense point is that I'm extraordinarily messy in the kitchen (oh ho - looks like a tornado hit here) and my joking with the friends that they don't need to stay and help clean as we've got a dishwasher (named Mr. Welcome) might grate on his nerves more acutely than I notice.

Mr. Welcome, on the other hand, is terrible at putting his dirty clothes in the hamper each night,

"Honey, where are my boxers?"
"Oh, they morphed their own way into the hamper this afternoon."

and my attempt at providing him with a standing butler for Christmas one year (big gifts are not necessarily more exciting - his friend was like whaaaaa? when he heard what he got) was all in vain as his jeans got thrown on top of them haphazardly, and his briefs got thrown on top of them like a jellyfish in mid-flight.

And when he actually did manage to put his dirty clothes in the hamper, I would inevitably find his dark socks and light underwear all tangled up together, which would then have to be untangled (by me) to be sorted for their prospective loads of laundry. I asked him to pleaaase remove his dark socks and place them separately in the hamper from the underwear so I wouldn't have to do that extra untangling. So the next day I found his white underwear ... with one dark sock tied around each leg in a knot ... after which event of nefarious humor he promptly forgot that I had ever asked him to do any such thing.

And since I have the floor, I'll confess that I am annoyingly shallow about what gifts Mr. Welcome gives me. Is it something I like? Did he put a lot of thought and money into it? Although he can sometimes charm me out of a scandal, like when he forgot about my birthday and Monoprix was the only thing open, which served to dish up a scarf, a sudoku book, and a really sheepish card about what a heel he was for buying my gift at Monoprix. So good he got forgiven right away.

But one of our fights was after I received a rose on Valentine's Day and sulked for an hour before saying,

"I know I'm really shallow but you only got me one rose and it's practically dead!"

and him saying, "I'm so glad you brought it up. I'm sooooo sorry!! I know you love red roses and that was the only one they had left. I feel like such a jerk for giving it to you but I really wanted to get you a red rose since it's your favorite."

And I got a proper live red rose the very next day. (Although honey, I really love tulips and peonies too, and I would rather have a yellow rose that's nice and alive than a red rose which is dead). He needs it spelled out sometimes like that.

The only big fight we got in lasted a whole weekend right after we got married, where he said two surprisingly insensitive things, and when the third one flew out, I said, "Three strikes and you're out!" and stomped into the other room. I have no idea what the three things were. And since we managed to live a year in the desert together in difficult conditions, after being married only six months, I'd say we're on the right track to long-term peace.

So what would Mr. Welcome reproach me with? I don't know - we're both so mild mannered ... oh, except the time I swore at the vendor near the Eiffel Tower, nine months pregnant, because I was sure he was ripping us off on the ice cream cones (as Mr. Welcome inched out of the radius of people that might actually know me). Apart from being constantly messy and occasionally short-tempered, I can't think of a thing. But then again, I have the floor.

See honey? I managed to recount a rather accurate, yet tame inside look into our marriage. No airing of the dirty laundry or anything.

Oh wait -

Chelsea and Dorothy

2010-05-11T00:39:00.000-07:00

My grandfather passed away yesterday, and his name was Chelsea. When my father announced to him that we had chosen to give Peanut "Chelsea" as a second name, he responded, "Now why'd they go and do a thing like that?" He had always hated his name. He was, of course, very moved.

His death comes as less of a shock than my grandmother's, which was a couple of years ago. I guess you just get used to things going on as they are, even if your grandparents are getting old and even if they are very far away. You think life is going to keep going on in the same way.

Chelsea (my grandmother's name was Dorothy - aren't they a sweet couple?) grew up in Indiana and never lived anywhere else. Dorothy was born in the house she lived in until she was old, in the same small town in Indiana. They met in high school, both so extremely shy you almost wonder how they could possibly have enough conversations to fall in love and get married. Well it happened like this - Dorothy gathered all her courage one day in the library to sit down next to Chelsea and start talking to him so she could invite him to the Sadie Hawkins dance. He said yes and they went, but neither dared to follow up afterwards.

Fast forward a couple of years, Dorothy initiated a letter to Chelsea while he was stationed in Australia during World War II. He responded, signing it "Sincerely, Chelsea." And by the time he was ready to come home a couple of years later, he was signing his letters, "Love, Chelsea." They showed up at the Minister's house to get married on the night of Christmas Eve, but the reverend had forgotten they were coming so they had to wait until he got dressed and prepared himself for the small service of three.

They had three sons, and growing up in the mid-west during the Great Depression, they were frugal, austere, religious. My dad was rather the black sheep of the family - the one who was caught swearing at the fish that got away in the fishing hole when he was supposed to be working, the one who went off to be a musician and moved the furthest away - and also the one who called his father every single night since my grandmother died. My father is suffering.

When I was growing up, I loved my grandparents whom I didn't see very often. But I also remembered I had to handle them with care so as not to shock them. At age five I chatted away about how my parents went to make wine with their friends (my grandparents were teetotalers), and my mother nearly dropped the dish in the kitchen. Years later, we regaled our grandparents with all our musical talents, and saw their faces grow slowly more shocked when we launched into Guys and Dolls' "I got my horse right here, his name is Paul Revere, and he's the one who said if the weather's clear - can do; can do; this guy said the horse can do ........"

As I got older, I sometimes looked down on them as being small-minded. When you're a Baptist and live your whole life in the same small town, you can't help but having a small view on things (forgive me please, Baptists from the mid-west, for making such a blanket statement, because I know that is not universally true). But I always noticed that they cared about us. They gave us money towards our education and as gifts. They always wrote letters, always remembered our birthdays. Despite the fact that they were far away, they were very present in our lives.

And now what I think about is not that they were small-minded, but that they were upright. They lived their whole life on discipline and principle, something which was passed down to us. In all my wild days, I could never get very far from the morals that my grandparents, and then my parents instilled in us. There is something beautiful about that being their legacy.

I will miss my grandparents. When Grandma died, my grandfather suddenly became very talkative. He used to be as silent as could be (except when he would sit us as young kids on his lap and say, "Ickle-me, Pickle-me and Tickle-me were on a boat. Ickle-me and Pickle-me fell off. Who's left?"). But suddenly as an older man and without his Dorothy to speak for him, he found he had a lifetime's worth of words to catch up on.

And now in his absence, I find every one of them worth remembering.

Chez Moi

2010-05-06T15:22:00.000-07:00

Welcome Fellow Blog-Trotters!

For those who are not familiar with the formidable Blog-Trotting, brilliantly cooked up by Carabee, go have a look. I'm thrilled to be featured today and hope you enjoy the photos and stories. You can also submit your hometown for future visits - we all want to know what it's like where you live - really we do!

And here's where I live:

Sorry for the lack of sun to brighten the photos, but hey - pink boas will do the trick!

If you look closely, you'll see some sort of hazing going on down there with all the men in pink boas. The French can do it as well as the Greeks (greeks - as in sorority and fraternity). When my mother and father-in-law were at the university of Fine Arts (des Beaux Arts), where the students are known to be full of mischief, one of the government officials came to visit the school and found the model sitting in front of the classroom fully clothed, and every student with paintbrush in hand, naked as the day they were born. The pink boas are rather tame in comparison.

Baguettes with camembert, dry wines, ironed jeans with high heels, silk scarves, macaroons, tiny espressos in white cups with a square of chocolate on the side .... a moment's sigh of appreciation .... you've always wanted to visit Paris, haven't you? Well, here's your chance!

We don't take the subway or the tube - we take the metro. And apparently, you have to audition in order to perform underground. Now there's a shock. Although, come to think of it, they do sound better than the musicians in the NYC subway.

That's the Sacre Coeur at the back, right next to Montmartre. And below is the Opéra.

My husband works on Avenue Montaigne, right off the Champs Elysées (where I saw both Jack Nicholson and Leonardo di Caprio once - although who's looking?). In any case, this is a major "ladies who lunch" street, one where I don't dare venture in sneakers (or with credit cards).

Okay, this last one is a little weird.

Confession time. This (below) is actually where I live. (That's a little studio on our property; it's not our house. Although our house is sadly not much bigger than the studio).

Here's another shot of my charming reality:

We've been in major construction for a good ten months and, although the end is almost in sight, it's just always around the bend a bit, further down, tantalizingly out of reach, along with my sanity.

We're located just outside of Paris, about 10 minutes by train from the Arc de Triomphe and Champs Elysées, and a 10 minute bike ride to the Seine.

My blog is about life in France, food, our house and garden, along with the construction, our family (and occasionally my neuroses). Mr. Welcome and I met in New York City and moved to France five years later. We have three kids - Young Lady, who's six, Big Boy, who's four, and Peanut, who is 18 months.

Even with all the diaper changes, we've still managed to stay in love, although we don't have much time for all the romance Paris has to offer. Mr. Welcome's motto is: "I must be romantic - I'm French!" So let's tip our glasses to my Mr. Welcome who has romance oozing out of his little french pores and live vicariously through all the parisian photos together, shall we?

If I weren't forty (and broke from our money pit little love nest) I'd even push to have another darling to complete our family circle. You know, the french government gives good financial kick-backs to folks who produce more french people. They draw the line, however, at paying for plane tickets to visit the American grandparents.

In spite of the blog being all about France, there are no pictures of food today. I've just eaten dinner and am too full to contemplate it. If you're curious about our dinner (which is fairly typical), we had salmon with green beans, salad (mâche) and tomatoes with feta cheese, homemade bread and non-alcoholic white wine - I'm gluten intolerant, so unfortunately the delectable baguettes and pâtisseries are all dead to me. Hélas, one can't have it all - even if it's pretty darn close!

Thank you so much for stopping by. I do hope you'll stay awhile.