Have you seen her?

My car has gone missing. My very pretty, nearly new, low mileage, sport edition pretty, pretty car is gone. Poof, vanished.

She was last seen in my driveway at 4:45pm Tuesday as I unbuckled three kids and thought about bringing in the remaining Christmas gifts from the trunk and the Christmas box from my mom, "nooo, I'll get those later when I have a free hand." I locked her by remote and took the kids inside for a snack. Fifteen minutes later she was gone.

Call it women's intuition but my bones are rattling. I'm pretty sure that it's someone we've dealt with, maybe not them per se but maybe they served as a tipster. Someone who worked in the house. It doesn't seem possible that it's random. We live in the country, woods all around. We have two or three neighbors we pretty much know, wave to and get along with. It's not the city and our road is nearly all local traffic. It's not like I was parked in a public parking lot or anything. It was stolen in full daylight when the theif knew I'd be in the basement with the kids and couldn't see out very well, or knew that if I did look out I wouldn't see much from that angle. And there's the issue of my spare car key that "disappeared" from the house a few weeks ago. We blamed Charlotte for stashing it somewhere but now I'm not so sure. The only people who know all these things or had access to the key rack were the people who've been working in the house lately. Oh yeah and there's the day I even let the window installer move my car for me telling him "if I'm blocking you my keys are always RIGHT HERE" and I pointed to the key rack, DUH. We won't tell the insurance company about that.

I'm sad. I feel like I lost a close friend.

Favorite pjs

Charlotte at 24 months



Little S at 26 months


It's so fun to make comparisons. They don't have the same face or physique but they do look like brother and sister.

The new hallway tile

The tile in the hallway has been finished for a few weeks now and the new door was installed just afterwards but we had so much debris piled up it was hard to take a decent picture.

So here's the before... (with the wrought iron window grills removed for painting)


...and the after! (you can't see the iron grills very well in this photo but they're back in)



I actually liked the old entry tile but since the floors were sagging it made it hard to properly install the new door so I finally relented as long as we got something that looked like it might have always been in the house. The biggest reward is when people ask "did you clean the old floors or something?" Yay it's what I had hoped, nothing too shocking and keeping in the style of the house.

Now we just have to redo the baseboards and paint.

Another project that's finished is the living room floor. We chose a prefinished oak, a little light for my taste but we LOVE our new floors. I'll do a better picture next week when I can show off my Christmas tree at the same time. Right now the tree lights aren't working and it's bugging me. For now here's a sneak peek of where the hall tile joins the living room.

My double personality

Seb comes home soon, whew. These trips seem to drag on and I'll be happy when he (one day) changes jobs and doesn't have to travel so much. He's been gone nearly three weeks this month with his other little Europe trips earlier in the month. It's tiring being a single mom of two!

I've kept busy though and I'm happy to say the artist block seems to be lifting. I've been painting every night once the kids are asleep, working in my mixed media/agenda book. It's really helped me to work in paint instead of drawing. I think I was just too tired to draw and it was feeling forced to drag out my moleskine each night. I just needed to shift gears and let loose a little bit with the paint and scissors. My results are terrible but I know it's just a way to get to other things that I *do* like so I'm really okay with the fact that my pictures are ugly. "You gotta work to get the cream!". I wish I'd understood that years ago in school.

My social life is in complete overdrive. I guess it's the holiday season added to an already busy schedule. I was laughing today because there are definitley two mes and there always has been. There's social me who makes big plans like the Art Ateliers and Kid Movies Night, which was tonight. The idea behind Kids Movie Night is that a bunch of the neighborhood kids, mainly the art atelier kids, watch a film together in the living room on Tuesday night while the moms sit back and enjoy a glass of wine in another room. It turned out fun but antisocial me was dreading it all day saying "why on earth did you plan this?!" to social me. Cursing, cleaning and saying "agh! we only have the tiny tv for French movies (because of the pal secam problem). The kids will hate it!" Social me always does things like this. Never consults antisocial me because she's BORING and she'd say no anyway. Turns out they all loved it and had a blast. Parents came and went for three hours. At one point I had seven adults in my little basement kitchen laughing, taking goofy photos and measuring their feet (don't ask). It reminded me of how social me came about. My grandmother was a total "social me" and I think of her each time I have a house full of people. It makes me happy to hear the laughter and the conversation, coffees being made and kids all talking at once. But there's still the other me. The antisocial one. The cave rat. I think I have to learn to balance the two and stop worrying. I do need some "me" time which is why I am not planning any art atelier for tomorrow. Time to rest.

My movie night thing isn't unusual, just something silly and new. Lots of my neighbors do things like this so it's always fun around here. There's so much interaction it's almost too much sometimes. A long time ago an Anon commenter left a snarky comment on my blog just before I left Mexico saying they'd get a kick out watching me *try* to make friends in Paris (got to love the anons, big meanie!) and my Paris friend in Mexico warned me "you know don't expect to make friends so easily once you move to Paris, it's not Mexico" She was being nice about it but preparing me for the shift. And so of course my first few months I was a more than a little worried with Seb travelling all the time. I even blogged about it because my car stalled and I was all alone! Oh dear! Boy were they ever wrong and I had absolutely no reason to worry. Not only have I met lots of people but they're all French which is amazing because it's hard to meet French women. The ambiance is really friendly and open. People left nicely dried firewood on my doorstep this week. My neighbor's husband came by to take Little S to school two mornings last week. And I can barely keep up with things in the village, art shows and little jazz concerts, coffees and after school playdates. Lots of fun happenings that exhaust antisocial me.

By the way I'm the only mom who doesn't work. I thought I'd mention that before an anon jumps up and says something sarcastic of the "it must be nice" variety, or before anyone even thinks it. Most of the moms who live here and who I see work full or part time but Wednesdays are usually days off for at least one parent, and so this is why I do the ateliers then and why a Tuesday night movie night works well since it's like a Friday night in many respects in France. A lot of the parents popped in on their way home from work and stayed to chat with everyone which made it feel even more like a weekend!

French Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all my stranded expat friends!

I've invited an English friend for pizza and movies. A girls night out to make up for being alone. Seb always seems to be gone at Thanksgiving time. This makes four years now. He obviously doesn't understand the importance of the holiday (grrr).

I really miss my family today. I don't really care about missing Christmas or Fourth of July, (well I DO but), but, missing Thanksgiving is really hard.

Eat lots of cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes for me if you are lucky enough to be at home today.