Where ideas are born

Vacation for the kids is nearly finished and life should be returning to normal by next week which means doing the mom taxi thing, working in the house and working on my little projects here and there.

And having a husband again,
...oh yeah, him.

The best part of vacation though was that I finally got to meet an old blog friend this week. (blog friend! yes! which means English speaking! which means lots of fun and jokes! that you actually understand! yay! )

Our kids are the same age and we've sat here and watched them grow up right in front of our computer screens. It was really odd to see them playing together because you know they aren't supposed to be REAL. They're internet children for god's sake. But this is one of the really cool things about living near Paris. You actually get to meet blog friends. I've been a boonie-blogger for so long that those crazy blog people usually just stay inside the screen. That all changes when you move to the big city. People can be and are real PEOPLE.

We somehow thought in some kind of giddy, pre-meet-up reasoning that the bonus mom theory would work, two moms taking care of five kids all under five. It would be soooo much easier, right? Well yeah the bonus mom theory has it's strong points but it has its flaws too like when all of them start screaming at once.

But you know it's funny how breaking into the afternoon tequila stash makes everything seem so, so...so much e a s i e r.* (tunnel voice)

And it did.

That is of course until one of my neighbors, a mommy friend, decides to drop by the house unexpectedly to see if I'm doing okay being all alone over vacation. I think we were a quarter of the way in to our own vacation by that time,--a tropical one on the terrace, and we offered her a drink (remember it was a Wednesday afternoon at four o'clock, umm and she's French). She didn't stay long but you know it wasn't from lack of invitation or anything.**

Umm, yes okay I'm now going to be known as one of those mommies from now on. The crazy American mom who drinks her way through goûter. Thanks Doc.

But we had fun and nobody got hurt. And I think we found a small scrap of our sanity in there somewhere.

***

*Mexican Surfer--1 part Myers coconut rum, 1 part Tequila, pineapple juice + lime wedge

**actually she's a very cool mom and today when I went by her house she broke out a bottle of cidre at 4pm---(see you just have to get them to open up a little and French women can be fun too)