The end of our second apartment

We officially quit our apartment in Lyon's Villeurbanne suburb on the 23rd of December so now that part of our life is decidedly different. This week Seb is living out of a hotel, something he preferred to do rather than spend a great deal on insurance and electricity and all of the bindings of a rental. He seems happy about it even if I'm not. One bonus is that he'll be coming home more often. He's going to try and come back on Wednesday nights. He did this last night and it was really nice. We felt like a real couple again. We got to have dinner together. That never happens except on the weekend but then we're usually exhausted from working on the house and dinner is sort of thrown together by two very tired people.

I think I'd like to post a few photos as a catch up. I was USB cable-less for two weeks and couldn't upload anything. you may as well have cut off my right arm. I love taking pictures. Among these are the photos of our last days in Villeurbanne and well, loads of photos I couldn't get on my blog.

Here is Little S climbing ladders at our construction site (ie our house). He likes to help out with this sort of stuff. He loves saws and hammers. Our big fear is that he'll want to become a carpenter and not an enginner or a three star chef thus crushing our dreams!



I took these pictures in a series with the hopes of using them in our Christmas cards. When I lost my cable all those plans fell through. It was just as well. It gave me an excuse not to mail out the Christmas cards. I'm terrible at that! They were adorable pictures though.




Our town as seen from the top of the hill. Squint hard, move that *"@! tree and you'll see my house. Across the lake is Lausanne, Switzerland.


I got to see my blog friend L a lot in Lyon but now she isn't around as much and neither am I. She's definitely a kindered spirit. It's too bad we can't hang out more often. That's me in the first photo and her snuggling up with Little S in the second photo. She probably won't be happy that I've posted these but the photos made me smile because they reminded me of our afternoon so I hope she doesn't mind.



And then here's someone who almost never gets print space on my blog. A little S -Palooza is in order.

Escaping the doo-doo

I just spent a few days in our luxurious second residence, the apartment we keep in Villeurbanne. I say luxurious because it's a brand spankin' new T3 ie. two bedroom, that costs us a small fortune to rent each month. It's probably a little too luxurious for what we get out of it, which isn't much considering I'm often in Fountaintown and Seb always gets home late when he's there. So anyway, last month we decided we're giving it all up for a smaller, more affordable place. We gave our notice to the agency and have already started looking around. It isn't just the matter of pricey digs either. We're ditching Villeurbanne for other reasons too. We simply don't feel good there. It's not that we don't like Villeurbanne per sé, ... well okay, actually I guess it is that we don't like Villeurbanne, ...very much at all ...and we're kind of eager to escape it and all its doggie poop.

Goodbye fair suburb tucked away in eastern Lyon, I'm sorry to say that you shall not be missed!

I'm not exactly sure where we'll end up renting next but the thought of going into the centre ville and living in decidedly less mètres carrés has been floating around in our heads. My explorations around there lately have left me feeling like it could be a whole other experience living in the city's center, a good one! And hey it wouldn't be forever because Seb'sjob will eventually change so why not give it a go. Besides Seb and I both really enjoy the idea of living right in the middle of all that Lyonnaisse eye candy. I feel like our part of Lyon, the haven of high rise apartments, is really putting a damper on our outlook about being there. In fact our original plan was to rent in the city center, but the agent who was handling our immoblier dossier through Seb's company kept showing us apartments in Villeurbanne and telling us that centre ville was horrid because of the noise and lack of parking. Well I guess horrid is a relative term so maybe from her perspective it is horrid, but from ours it's quite the opposite and we find Villeurbanne rather horrid.

I've taken a lot of photos in Villeurbanne and I decided to make a little collage of the good and the bad of it. I'll admit that finding the good parts was tough, but I feel I owe it to the city to present both sides. There is some charm and there does seem to be some beautiful, stately homes in this part of Lyon. I kind of feel like Villeurbanne and Bron were the sort of poshy middle class suburbs of the city at the turn of the century. The few homes still standing are beautiful art deco style houses with a grand, little set of iron gates at the entry (see pics). Unfortunately most all of them are being torn down one right after the other to make way for progress. It's alarming how much deconstruction is going on in this area to find space for new apartment projects like those we're renting now, zero charm but lots of modern conveniences. This is why I dislike Villeurbanne the most. The city doesn't seem like it's even remotely interested in preserving the little bit of patrimoine it has and it's lack of this is the number one reason we won't be sticking around. I think this is unfortunate because I feel like they have a lot to work with if only they would stop building crap, oh and clean up more of the crap. I have never stepped in so much dog shit in my life!

So here are Villeurbanne's respective beauty and the beast collections.

click on the grids for a closer look

Having two houses is tiring

The in laws are coming to Lyon tomorrow afternoon but the problem is that Little S and I are at home in Th*n*n. and more importantly Little S is sick and he's been keeping me up late nights and then getting me up at the crack of dawn. I'm very, very tired in the way you would be say if you had someone beat you on the head with a shovel all night and then asked you to work 14 hours in a chinese sweat shop factory sewing Disney t-shirts the next day. I certainly don't want to take the train with a sick baby and the thought of driving also makes me utter a resolute UGH! The conditions at the Villeurbanne apartment are always a little how shall we say, sparse especially when there hasn't been a feminine touch for a couple of weeks. The fridge will be full of barquettes of tabouleh and there won't be any milk for the coffee, which will be stale, and the butter will be rancid and full of toast shards. It usually takes a full day to correct all these little nuances, to change the sheets and scrub the potty and arrange the makeshift kitchen pantry so it doesn't look like a bachelor haven.

I have two thoughts, one is of course I don't want to force my in-laws to put up with the bachelor pad and the bachelor food for a night. The other is I don't want to have to drive three hours to Lyon with a sick baby to clean and cook, only to return the next day, to clean and cook here in Th*n*n where there will be so much built up construction dust from two days work that you won't be able to see the floor.

The apartment in Lyon is difficult and I don´t think the inlaws will be comfortable there. We are forced to cook on a campstove and take cold showers because we keep missing our rendez vous with the guy from GDF to turn of the gas. They won't like that either and we'll get the darty eye thing. I hate the darty eye thing!

There's a lot going on right now that I can't really discuss yet but our little plate is overflowing with stressful decisions. We are probably nuts and should just STOP torturing ourselves but nevertheless we can't seem to do this. I'm sure there are lots of quotes about adventure and risk taking that are appropriate to insert here, and could offer some clue to the dilemmas we're facing, but risk and adventure are leaving us a little weary as it is and the thought of more is well, frightening and well, tempting.

Meanwhile let me go pack because we're still riding out this last adventure and it's making me very tired.

Jiggity jig

We're back after a week away. This is the first time we've been in Lyon for a whole week and it was making us a bit stir crazy by Thursday. There isn't much in the apartment in Villeurbanne and although it's nice to do big city stuff with the world at our fingertips, there's only so much of that to do before you want to get back home. Try as we might to adjust to a new life, home is still on the shores of Lac Léman.

We returned home to find our cat missing and the neighbor's report that he hadn't seen her for a few days. Last night after a tour of the neighborhood we heard loud meows coming from the mean renovation guy's house a.k.a. cat-hater extraordinaire. I'd heard his little boys playing in front of our house one day and when they spied our cat lounging on the steps outside one of them said to his playmate "on aime pas les chats!," he then proceeded to shoot her repeatedly with a toy pistol. A whole family of cat haters, great. So, I'm waiting for mean renovation guy to show up so I can explain to him that my cat has been trapped in his house for three days now and could he please not beat her over the head with a shovel, thank you. That is if he shows up this weekend.

cat update: Seb is a god among mortal husbands because he got up at seven a.m. on Sunday morning and rescued Milly from certain shovel bashing death. The mean renovation guy is always kinder to him, solidarity in bricolage and all that, so he probably cushioned things. Nobody can figure out how she got in there though. Cats are damn crafty like that.

Because Ikea is a mini universe

I should get some kind of award because I spent six hours in Ikea with a toddler. I really did and I'm here to report to you that it is possible, if you want to go to Ikea bad enough that is. I did.

It all came about because in Lyon I am carless. No not careless, although you you could probably say I am that too I guess. No, I am without car. I suppose I could just drop Seb off at his job in the morning and take the car, but there is a bigger issue at hand. I am completely without balls. I hate, hate, hate city driving. I have huge fears of going down a series of one way streets and eventually emerging somewhere near an exit for Marseille stranded in a lone fishing port far, far from home. I am a bus and metro girl. Let the big boys do the driving, me I'll buy a ticket. So of course Ikea was all about getting there and not having to drive, even though technically it's outside the city but still I would have somehow ended up in the city center during rush hour I'm sure of it.

Seb came and fetched me at the apartment and he kept repeating, "are you sure you'll be okay?" He'd come at the tail end of his lunch break to deposit me at Ikea's doorsteps. "I may not be back to get you until 7:30 or later." I waved him off with a shrug. I was really eager to get inside and browse. "Yeah sure, no problem!"

I won't go into the whole sorted story about how I ranged from feeling tired, and angry, to elated and fascinated to finally bored and exhausted. I will just say that I did finally come to the conclusion that it wasn't such a bad place to spend an afternoon, even if your shopping companion insists on spending inordinate amounts of time crawling inside the lower bunk of a carefully made up child's display room and throwing all the little colorful pillows out into the aisles, and even if the little guy slobbered on a 6 euro giraffe that you couldn't pry from his clutches for five hours and you felt so guilty that you had to buy it for him, even if you had to gag down a soggy, salmon sandwich with decaying lettuce, even then you could say you'd had a good day because a) your husband wasn't there bugging you with a finger tapping his watch and b) you could finally people watch uninterrupted.

Cliché KRAPP seen in Ikea:

Land of the very pregnant. Am I missing something at the entrance?

How many gay men on cell phones calling their better halves to argue over lighting fixtures or sofa table legs can there be in one store on a given day? I saw at least five.

Two practically identical families shopping together. Two husbands, two wives, two six year olds and two new babies. We're like best friends and we do everything together. How fun is that!

The new mom breastfeeding in the corner of one of the kiddie bedrooms. Her husband kept shielding her and he was the "lookout" trying to pry everyone's eyes the other direction. I felt like walking over and saying "Umm, yeah I think the latch isn't quite right. You might want to tilt his head a little towards the ...could I just..okay theeeere you go!" If only they would have asked me. And hey we were there first so why should we have to leave Mr. Breast Patrol. Go hide behind a fern if you want privacy.

The people with very bad taste who go shopping with friends. There were quite a few of these. They usually use make overly animated exclamations, "c'est vraiment chouette ça!" And then the other friends will turn and say "moi j'adore ça" pointing to something equally frightning. They presumably go through the whole store like this. You just want to scream, "read some decorating magazines people!"

The Erasmus students! I loved you guys and kept seeing you all day. I even got to go to the checkout with you and saw what you bought. A purple toilet brush, a white rug for 97 cts, and some awful cookware that will likely last you the one year you're in France if you're lucky. And yes the "sac bleu" bought for "seulement" 60 cts at the checkout "ça il peut servir à beaucoup des chose, nest pas?"... said with a very pronounced German accent *snigger*

Finally we called Seb from the checkout line with a gentle nudge of: "where the hell are you and how soon can you come and rescue us?!" We bought what we had come for: a comforter for Little S, a pillow, a plant in a white ceramic pot, a garlic press, a meat mallet, an oversized roasting pan, some light bulbs, and oh yes, a very wet giraffe.

From country to city

On Sunday we left our home in Haute-Savoie for our weekly sejourn in Lyon. It was a lovely day mountainside. (Les Aravis, Haute Savoie)

We left a little late so a picnic on the shores of Le Lac du Bourget was cancelled because the sun had already set long before we arrived.(Aix les Bains)

The next day I took pictures of our street in Lyon (Villeurbanne)

And pictures of our six floor apartment building. It's so new it hurts your eyes to look at it! (Villeurbanne)

Lyon life from my perspective

Since we've been living in the city of Lyon now for about two months I have had what I consider enough time to form an early impression of it. Okay, frankly I love the city but I hate the living in the city part if that makes any sense. Honestly I wonder to myself each day I'm here about folks who live in the city. How do you do it each and every day? How does city life just become a habit? If we stay in the Lyonnaise region I think we'll have to carve out a niche somewhere in the suburbs or further afield. I just don't see us becoming city folks for many reasons.

My list of complaints is all very mundane. Who hasn't heard someone complain about it all--the clichés of an urban existence. But here I go adding my same complaints to those I've heard myself a hundred times. For example there's the noise. Boy howdy there is noise! There's noise at four am with garbage trucks, at six am with early morning commuters revving up their cars, at the wee hours of the night with people locking up their cars drunk at three am. Noise, noise, noise it never stops! I'm constantly jarred awake with a rotating carousel of all manner of people conducting business at their own hours, oblivious to mine.

There's dirt and grunge. I'm okay, well perhaps used to living in a clean, tidy French village with it's own brand of bottled water, but the city grime is really awful. I think after they clean the streets they must have to start all over again at the beginning right away in order to keep up! Dodging doggie doo is a dance I haven't yet mastered, especially at the abundance of what seems to be a pile every other building front or so. I keep asking myself, if you see this trash and dirt every day how do you keep your spirits up? What does this do to the city dweller's morale. I don't consider myself a snob but I do feel the need to be surrounded by something other than crumpled sandwich wrappers and grimy splattered bus stops each and every day. I would hope that staying in the city for a period of time wouldn't condition me to overlook this, to accept it. Somehow this damages the soul over a period of time, right? Maybe that's why everyone in the city is so rude and grouchy, another little thing I've come to notice. In a country where nobody ever smiles, the city seems to be the place where everyone really, really scowls. It has to be the grime that makes them grumpy.

Finally there's just a general sadness that everyone seems to easily overlook. I immediately noticed the increase in the number of homeless people when we moved into our city apartment, completely normal in a large city, but what galls me is the lack of sincere empathy in the local people. Maybe I'm generalising but as an example, one of many, a homeless man stumbled into a Quick restaurant where I was drinking a coffee with my mother. He was asking for food, anything. He looked very sad and very hungry. You could see it in his eyes. Not many people looked up at him or made any eye contact. The manager came over quickly, scowled as if to say "not again," grabbed his arm and tossed him out. I understand the manager is just doing his job here and I guess I find that normal but how awful to work in an establishment where it's your JOB to throw out hungry people. Over and over again I see sadness and misery and poverty and callousness in the city. It's the callousness that bothers me. Would I become like this if I stayed? Would I stop noticing or caring?

There are many things to love about the city, and Lyon is such a beautiful city. I love the bridges and the stunning arteries of two gorgeous rivers running through its center, always basked in sunlight. I love the Roman theatres of Fourviéres perched on the hill overlooking the town, and I adore the lovely arched passages of the old city that make you feel as if you've suddenly fallen backwards in a time capsule to a place where you could easily see yourself bumping into a toothless merchant in robes. The food in this city is amazing, and a gastronomy exists that boggles the mind. The idea of being in a city with culture delights me, the opera and the theatre will be a treat I'll save my pennies for each season. I could definitely learn to love this city, don't get me wrong. I'm just not so sure I could come to love the city life, or that I want to become the type of person it would take to dutifully accept living here.

Life, butt kicking and other menial stuff

Now that I have the computer back I'm having a hard time getting used to writing each day again. I really missed not being able to write for the first four weeks of our saga, but after a while it became normal. After six weeks I started to sound like my friend Mathilde who claims with much panache that she "wouldn't know where to find the time to use a computer even if she had one." Oh dear, it was lucky we got back up and running when we did. I almost lost my verve.

Writing is like a muscle. If you don't use that muscle it gets all flabby. My writing muscle is officially flabby. I can't seem to get what I want to say on the page. I have too much to say so that might be part of the problem.

Okay so what's going on here on Lac Léman you ask. Work on the house is slow and to be honest the house is full of fleas. We have to methodically chemically bomb it each Summer. It's embarrassing but true that we are the proud owners of a flea shack *. Apparently once the walls are finished this won't be a problem, one can only hope. Meanwhile we scratch and slap and do a dance. Meanwhile the cats live outside because they can't take it.

We've moved about 20 percent of our belongings to Lyon. We're part city folk now! We rented a brand new two bedroom apartment in Villeurbanne in the eastern sector of the city. It's kind of cool living in the city but frankly and to be perfectly honest we feel really, really lost. I'm only there three days a week for the moment and I feel like I'm living in the middle of some strange reality show. maybe it's because the apartment is so empty and we haven't had time to venture out yet. Maybe it's the strange noises or the view out the window of well, the other building, or maybe it's just that we're spoiled beyond belief. We do feel like we live in paradise in spite of the fleas.

The butt kicker stuff was simply the move which surprisingly took a lot of energy and caused lots of tears. We had no electricity for two days and currently no gas, and thus no hot water! The movers were lame and forgot to move our new refrigerator, failed to show up on the right day, chose to not deliver our stuff on the same day (because of their not wanting to miss the stupid World Cup...might have let us know before Seb took half the day off!), and just caused a general mess of things. We chose Les Déménageurs Breton and they were positively horrid. They charged us ie. Seb's company 3,000 euros to move just 15 pieces of furniture two hours away...outrageous. They were completely dishonest and did all the comparison bids "themselves," sneaky bastards. Seb let them get away with it because he was too busy to find the three comparison quotes. Also let it be known that these people simply send local movers to your house, a sort of subcontracting affair. The local movers were completely unprofessional and scratched a lot of our furniture because they stacked it on top of each other. Okay now I have chair marks on my sofa table and a big gouge in our new coffee table. Now we know better than to ever use them again. We tend to move a lot so that's really saying something when you lose our account.

My friend Bea left the week of our move and then we went to do the IVF transfer. The following week we were waiting for our bank loan to come through on the house...we're still waiting. When it rains here it really pours. Hopefully the rest of the Summer will give us some breathing room. My mom arrives in two weeks and I could use a little time to just hang out and relax with mom ...no stress.

* The fleas are in our walls because the stones are mortered with straw and mud. Until we repoint all the masonry we will contine having a Summer flea revival each year. What's funny is how the fleas arrive right along with the Summer tourists.

Kaboom! ... knock my socks off May

I was so sad a few weeks ago, I literally couldn't pick myself up off the bed for a full afternoon as I lay there reading back issues of Southern Living and staring out the doorway at the dark, cloud-filled sky. I'd just returned from a visit to Bea and it had thrown me into a funk. Nothing it seemed was going right. Seb was in Lyon and I wasn't seeing him much. The baby making trials hadn't worked and now one of my best friends was leaving. Add all that up and you get a mess of emotions all surging together into a wave of pent up adrenaline. Throw in some PMS and you've got a real tsunami heading to shore.

I'm feeling better now. Seb and I have decided to take a very small apartment on the outskirts of Lyon near his job so that Little S and I can join him a few days most weeks. For the past month and a half he's actually been living with some colleagues in a communal situation and we hadn't been able to visit. This job seems to be something he actually likes and if the "liking" trend continues we're going to ease into a life over there, ... uh, emphasis on the word ease as you may have noticed.

As for the fertility treatment, I've started the IVF and although I'd love to say I'm feeling uppity and positive, I'm way beyond the positive vibe rah rah rah cheerleader crap at this stage in the game. I'm going to leave it at saying I'm feeling advancement in that little compartment of my life. Advancement though is a good thing. It's better than standingf*ckingstill. Three cheers for advancement!

The PMS is gone for now thank you very much.

And then there's Bea and all of that "friend who I will miss more than I can imagine" baggage I've been lugging about. But, strangely things are a little better on that front too because in the past few weeks I've had a luxury. I've spent lots of time with other friends and it's been very, very nice. For example I've recently discovered a blog friend Riana, a sort of sprawl on the bed friend, meaning simply that you feel so comfortable with this friend you can sprawl out on their bed barefoot and chat until you're hoarse, or until their husband comes in eyeballing you to give back the wife and the bed you've so readily stolen. And there's Dee, a longtime SBF who will now be one hour north of me instead of the usual two and a half hours. Because while I'm in Lyon it will be a much shorter trek to her house. We're already busy planning lots of Summer visits. And finally I've gotten to know My Turkish friend Huri a lot better in the past month. We both like cooking and baking and Huri does a great job cutting hair so I think she may be snipping mine a little next week. The other day as I was sitting, not sprawling mind you, on Huri's bed she paid me a very nice compliment, "I feel really comfortable around you Chris. I feel like I can be myself and say what I want." I liked hearing that. It made me feel it was possible to build new friendships and make new connections. I think that was where my fear has been with Bea leaving. I was afraid I was losing yet another "I can be myself with her" type of friend. After all, living in another country there aren't so many of those type of friendships around. I think maybe there are a few more out there than I'd originally thought though and that has significantly eased my mind these past few weeks.

So well, let's hope the feeling better stuff continues. I'd like to see May end with a bang and not a fizzle. I'm really not in the mood for any more fizzling. I'm ready for some real fireworks as the rest of this month plays out. Come on May ...show me the magic.

How to be not so nice...I'm going to write a book on this

We braved the train to Lyon again yesterday and you know what, we made it almost, nearly, puuurty much near on time. We did have to get off of the train and take a bus in Bellegarde, but who cares, we made it in one piece with a good part our sanity intact.

Since I had a pretty important doctor's appointment in Lyon I wanted to get there early, and since past experiences had proved that if anything was true about SNCF it was that they are an UNPREDICTABLE lot, we decided to take the morning train. They didn't let me down. We did make it but there was an annulation and a changement and les chose imprévu and oh heck, the typical stuff I've come to expect from this fine, fine agence de voyage.

The bus was very nice though and a welcome diversion from taking the train. I think I'd consider taking the bus to Lyon in the future as long as the price is similar, which I think is not the case. It was a lot more comfortable than the train and you get to stare at all the truck drivers which is a sport in itself. Some truckers are surprisingly HOT and then some are so cliché it's almost scary that they aren't aware of it, wearing wife-beater t-shirts and sporting tattoos over the majority of their upper torso.

With about four hours to kill in Lyon I had grand plans of going about on foot, eating diced fruit in the sunshine and contemplating all the statues of Le Géneral this and and Le Roi de that, but the weather gods, having no statues erected to them, had decided differently and so we spent four nauseating hours in the Centre Commercial de Part Dieu contemplating with passive interest. . . perfume and scarves, FNAC's very limited selection of overpriced English paperbacks and visiting the tackiest accessory store you ever did see called Claires where they forcefully give you a panier to put all of your purchases in, as if the pink, plastic rhinestone bangles and the Hello Kitty! bijoux de portables knockoffs would be too weighty to be held in one's dainty hands for the ten minutes you might spend in their store.

The most annoying thing about Part Dieu mall for me was the bathroom, well that and the lack of a place to SIT, because why would you want to put seats in a mall? Oh dear people might want to stay and buy stuff. Why that's sheer madness I tell you! But oh yes, back to the bathroom lady on the lower level next to the pizza restaurant who caused me to lose my temper, which is something I've been doing a lot lately come to think of it. Baby S was out cold in his stroller after a 15 minute crying jag in the pouring rain, and so I entered the baby changing area and asked ever so politely to the fifty-two year old attendant if I could use the handicapped, pregnant lady, war veteran's etc. toilet to which she had the key, and to which she was letting every fifty-two year old mamie in and out of with lots of nods and smiles and winks. She said "no madame c'est interdit" and she said I should leave the baby in the hallway and use the other toilets. Ummm, okay right. A woman with a heart and a brain. I protested politely and then scoped out the other toilets, impossible to enter with even an oversized handbag, let alone a baby stroller and diaper bag, and so I went back and asked again, politely and she said "madame vous etes pas enceinte, j'ai déja dit que vous devrez allez vers les autre toilettes ... s'il vous plait!" and I felt that hotness that I felt last week with the Bulldozer, rising higher and higher and so I said "oui madame alors, je suis enceinte de trois mois!" and I proceeded to barge my way into the toilet anyway. She grabbed my arm and physically stopped me and I pulled my arm away dramatically, "c'est incroyable madame vous êtes en train de agresser une femme enceinte avec un enfant. . .vraiment incroyable!" everyone stared at her and I pushed my stomach out a bit for effect. With a public toilet full of waiting women staring she said a little too dramatically "je vais appeler le sécurité madame" and I said quite cleverly I think, though probably not in the most correct French, "madame c'est ne pas une coincidence que vous travailler dans les toilettes ici" , with sarcastic emphasis on the word toilettes and I marched away triumphantly.

The problem was I had nowhere to pee for the next three hours. That was until I discovered two and a half hours later that there was another toilet on the third floor, and that there was a third floor for that matter. The third floor toilet attendant was like the Cinderella to the other ugly stepsister attendant downstairs and she actually agreed to watch my petit bout-chou as she called him, while I peed. By this time the bout-chou was awake and so it wasn't necessary but she was sweet as southern pecan pie and more than made up for the sewer witch on the first floor. It was like visiting the antipode of the "water pipes/hand dryer" world.

I finally left the mall and took a bus across the town to my appointment, which can be read about later in my other blog if you care to nose into that part of my life, but which went well and left me feeling happy and full of hope. So all in all the day ended on a positive note in spite of the twists in the day.

My one regret was not being arrested by mall security for going to pee. It would have given me something fun to blog about and something fun to do for the next few hours, and they probably would have let me pee since every prisoner has at least that basic right, ... right?

Grève: French for the customer is always stuck in the middle

Warning: complaints, grievances and venting. It's not pretty but I have to do it!

Okay, I think I'm cursed where SNCF is concerned. I believe that they will eventually change their company logo to "Si Vous Etes Sur Notre Trains, Vous Suffrirerez....Vraiment" and then they will look directly into the camera and wink, and I will realize in a moment of paranoid schizophrenia that the publicité is destined specifically for me.

...or how about if they start using the Bob the Builder tag line, "Can We Grève It?...Yes We Can!"*

...or better yet, "Si Nous Sommes Pas En Grève, Nous Sommes Pas SNCF..."

As Baby S and I rolled into the Lyon Par Dieu train station, tired from an already four hour trip, I was relieved that we were a mere 20 minutes and one train ride away from our final destination in the Lyon suburbs. It was just a matter of this short stop in one of France's largest train terminals and then we'd be on our way to Seb's waiting car. We didn't even have to get off the train, it was just a brief stop.

But, then they made an announcement:** "en cause de un mouvement social, ce train continura pas à la destination prevu" When we exited the train all the signs in the central lobby were flashing "anulée" and I knew, I knew from too much experience, but I took a chance anyway and dutifully followed the sign which promised a train to the suburb I wanted. We waited 15 minutes on the enourmous quai with the other commuters, all checking watches, talking on phones and shuffling about hopefully. When the train was announced as "en rétard" we stomped a bit more, but what could anyone do really but wait? And so I waited too, baby crying from a 4 hour wet diaper, and then the signs on the teleprompters on the quai suddenly changed. They stated the name of a destination no one even knew, a made up city, and everyone scrambled for their phones. A conductor dressed in blue polyester calmy walked over and I overheard him tell four or five people around him, "no, c'est un error d'écran, ça va arrivée" but then someone said "no c'est annuleé régard la" and he pointed to the sign for "les départs" where it was now flashing "annulée" for our train.

It's a game they like to play, chase the mouse, only in their case it's a train.

I had no phone, a long story connected to another French company***which will not win any customer service gold medallion awards this year either, and I was screwed into either rushing down to the main lobby to find a store selling phone cards before they closed, or asking a kind soul on the quai if I could quickly use theirs. The mother instinct is strong. "Excusez moi, je suis vraiment désolée mais..." I punched in the numbers carefully and said "this is nuts Seb, come and rescue us before I check into the hotel across the street."

So Seb had to come and get us at 8 o'clock at night in the pouring rain outside of Lyon Part Dieu. And he did arrive, eventually. He spent 45 minutes in traffic and 15 minutes getting lost. He was tired from work and I felt bad for him. He felt bad for us for having to wait in the rain. Everyone felt bad.**** And then to add insult to it all, he got lost on the way home because he took the wrong highway. So we finally arrived at the prison barrack at 10:30 and tucked our very, tired, hungry, grumpy baby into the bed.


The official company logo? "SNCF...plus loin que vous ne l'imaginez" Okay, I think they mean "plus long" instead. Just a guess.


*that one sounds better in English, but I like it in French too: "Pouvons nous faire la grève, oui nous pouvons!"
**D predicted this grève in her comment to me on Wednesday before I left...thanks D!
***the company my friend calls Stop Fooling 'Round (and that's the nice version!)
****everyone felt bad except SNCF

Lyon and the five hour train ride

I get to cart this little munchkin on the train to Lyon for five freaking hours today. Can someone please tell me why it takes two hours and forty minutes one week to get to from Lake Léman to Lyon's suburbs and then a few weeks later it takes FIVE hours?

More importantly why didn't I even register this when the woman from SNCF sold me the ticket? That's like going halfway to China. Holy patchouli!

Those poor, tired passengers. They'll have some stories to tell their husbands and wives tonight.

Les Cochons

Well I can honestly attest to the fact that there isn't much going on in small town France outside of Lyon. It is perhaps why on Thursday The S Monster and I decided to go out exploring in the car.

Baby S sat all snuggled and strapped in while I drove south heading towards the town of Vienne, a place I knew was full of charm, shops and people. There isn't much in between eastern Lyon and the town of Vienne but sleepy farm villages and large industrial stores selling shutters, tile and strangely enough all manner of tubes. In other words we didn't make any stops along the way, we just drove and sang Motown songs out loud while passing the occasional truck or Fiat.

I was on a little mission because I'd remembered an antique store on this same drive with Seb several months earlier, and in all reality I was scanning the countryside looking for it. It had looked humongous and I remembered my heart skipping a few beats and giving Seb that "oh couldn't we...please" look, to which he'd responded by staring straight ahead at the horizon and pretending like he was in deep concentration. If only ignoring the wife's voice were an Olympic sport, what medals would adorn our walls.

I finally found the shop, much smaller than I had imagined and closed. I peeked in the windows. It looked intriguing but overpriced judging by what was on sale in the windows. I would have enjoyed a browse though. We carried on a little disappointed, only to be rewarded not much further around the bend where there appeared a huge warehouse of a troc. A trocante or troc in French is a store which sells used furniture, sometimes old, most times certainly not. Interspersed with this furniture is all manner of junk, and dirty dusty junk at that! In other words the treasure booty runs the gamut from 1978 tv sets with actual knobs to warped skis someone already broke their shins on, to intriguing copper kettles and crystal glassware. I am always interested in the latter. I have learned to overlook the former like a golden retriever trained in the finest school of search and find.

In the final phase of my hour of snooping in all of this junk, a grumpy baby S and I headed to the singing cashier with a couple of treasures, mostly pottery, and that is when I spied this little pig looking like it needed a good home. She had a decided air about her and she seemed old, reminiscent of the things from the 1930's that my grandmother always had displayed in her knickknack cupboard when I was a little girl. The glass knickknack cupboard I was sometimes allowed to open with a tiny gold key. Besides pushing my delicate memory buttons, it was a pig and who I dare ask does not love pigs?

When my purchases were tallied the singing cashier informed me that she had no change and would I mind if she gave me my 1,40 euros in petite centimes. Small European centimes are the size of m&m's and are very annoying, especially when your change purse gets full of them. I glanced to the side of me, scanning for another treasure when I spied the companion pig to my pig. How could I have overlooked him?

He looks like he came from the Ohio State Fair, circa 1975, and was won by my brother by throwing a baseball at some wobbly clowns. In fact I'm pretty sure he would have stolen it as a joke when the carney's back was turned.

Alas I think he was desperate to remain with his piggy wife. I've put them on the shelf together and filled their little backs with toothpicks. They make a very handsome pair and doesn't he looked pleased as pie that he wasn't left behind?

Base camp number two

We're off to Lyon on the train this afternoon. The scary part is that we're going to live in unknown territory--no man's land, or what I like to affectionately call The Bachelor Pad. Seb has very few supplies. His fridge is full of pickled beets and half eaten cans of tuna in tomato sauce which he dines on every night off of a paper plate while he watches Olympic Game highlights. And baby stuff, hmm well it never occurred to us that we might need some things like a high chair, blankets, milk, diaper wipes and Elmo videos, and that maybe Seb should have taken these when he left on Monday in the car. So we're going sparse out of sheer stupidity.

But hey, there are some supplies we simply can't risk living without...

The Bare Necessities

Milly stares out the window in the Lyon apartment...the cats don´t like it there...I'd say a cat is a pretty good barometer of happiness

So here we are alone this week. We'd meant with all our heart to go to Lyon to be with Seb, but the treatments for baby making are keeping us here. The doctors appointments are endless. I'll have had three blood draws this week and will have seen the doctor three times by the time the weekend rolls around. There's no use getting into it here. I've created an entire blog just for that issue alone. It's like a padded cell where I can go in and shout a lot without worry. It make me feel better to purge all these things. I like to keep this blog, 'How Town' for my more sane posts, as if there were any sane thoughts lately.

Seb seems to love his new job after all. He's getting along fine with everyone and well, I guess I knew he would. He's always well liked in his sort of timid "love me or leave me" kind of way. He never bends to become like other people and I've always admired that quality in him. People usually feel the same way, they love and respect this quality in him too. So the job is definitely well-suited to him and he actually enjoys the hours which he explained as "flying by so quickly he doesn't even notice that it's nine-thirty in the evening when it's nine-thirty." That scares me because I know he's got workaholic tendencies and just like an alcoholic, when he's near long hours he can't control himself and gets over involved to the point where he forgets everything and everyone around him. That usually affects our relationship and of course he doesn't see it and usually defends it by saying "after all it's our livelihood."

But Seb still stands firm. He has said that he doesn't want to move and he adores our home and the simple village life we have here. I'm still open to make the move if that's what he wants, but he says he'd rather look around for something else and try to keep our life calm and orderly. I can't argue with that but a year can be a very long time to be apart. I really think he'll end up staying in this new job for at least a year too. I've reconciled that very soon he'll have to find an apartment in Lyon and that will definitely pull us in for at least a year.

This weekend we'll be taking an appointment with the bank to help finance the work on the rest of our house. The three years of solid working have left us tired and beat up and ready to make progress. I can't even imagine what it will be like having someone working on the house for us. My fantasy has always been to have a plumber and a carpenter, get your mind out of the gutter, and I'd be able to get them to do whatever I asked okay, okay stop giggling. If you've never worked on an old, delapidated house you cannot understand how real this fantasy is. Why on earth would you waste time using a Viggo Mortensen lookalike workman as a sex toy anyway, my god he could be installing the claw foot bathtub! Or he could be building the deck with the view of the lake. I'll take that any day over a meaningless shag.

Boy you can tell my libido is all shot to hell. I think I need one of those ginseng power drinks.

Risky business

Hmmm...maybe we won't be moving to Lyon after all.

Seb isn't totally enamoured with the new job and well, we don't think it's such a good idea to suffer through all the dramas of another move if he isn't sure. We've decided to play a wait and see game. Meanwhile the husband is two hours away in Lyon and wife and baby are staying put for now. He'll drive home on the weekends and spend his weeks there. Believe me when I say it's no fun raising baby alone all week long with no one around as a buffer.

I guess we both knew this job might not be his style anyway. We knew we'd have to move and that it meant major disruptions to our carefully laid plans, but we decided if he stayed in his present job he'd never know if he'd have been better off in a big star job with lots of colorful lights and slick marble flooring. Well, here we are in Lyon two weeks into it and now he knows that slick marble flooring comes right along with management sporting silk ties with gold pins, Italian shoes costing 300 euros, and taking extended coffee breaks to discuss the morning's golf games. It means lots of long hours in meeting that go around in circles and make you want to scream "it's 9:30 and my kid is already in bed can we go now so I can at least see my wife!" Every night for two weeks so far poor Seb has seen nothing but this and he's already about to go mad with the place. They're inefficient, sort of snobby, self-righteous critters who speak a sort of strange fr-english they seem to have invented all on their own. They pepper meetings with strange phrases like "C'est tout dans le BACKSTAGE tu sais" or "si non il est KILLED" This makes Seb want to scream because as any bilingual will tell you it's extremely annoying when someone mixes the two languages for showmanship. And here's the funny thing. They have no idea that Seb is as bilingual as he is or that he has a little American family at home "dans le HOUSE."

The sad thing is that he's already left his other job and for now all he can do is get through this until something better gets dropped in his lap. He's a real trooper. I showed up last Monday to give him some support and to cook all week. A lot of good it did to show up or cook for that matter. He was only home one night, Wednesday night at about 8:30. All the other nights he was in late meetings or back at the job until midnight to be introduced to Mr. So and So and his team of workers and to follow along with their meetings until oblivion. Then the next morning he was back at the job by 6:45. Baby S and I were feeling a little underused.

The house the company rented for us is in a compound on a hill overlooking a stark little town outside of Lyon. When I say outside the city please don't think of it as a bicycle ride or bus ride away but rather waaaaay out near the airport someplace in the middle of nowhere. No question of exploring the town unless we get in the car and drive to this big city. The house itself is actually a little row house built in a sort of army barrack style, complete with gravel trails terminating neatly at the garbage bins. I can't complain about the newness of the place. Everything is new. The floors are perfectly tiled in a speckled gray and the dishwasher, yes, dishwasher!! still has part of a delivery sticker attached to it from last year. There's a nice, neat bathroom with a new acrylic tub--you have to love that if you've been without a proper bathroom for three years. And the huge mirror with halogen lights all around it is, I gotta say nice for a someone who loves to obsess over her skin for hours on end (okay, search for zits I'll admit it...) But, strangely enough we really hate it there. I mean really, really hate it. Seb and I feel lost. Well, Seb when he's there that is. Sure we like that tub, the dishwasher is nifty and hey there's closets! I forgot to mention that. We have loads of closets for the first time ever. But we're feeling really lost in this whole NEW LIFE adventure. We really miss our scruffy, closet-free house. I wanted to go home immediately and even though it seems childish I'm glad baby S and I did go back home.

We don't know where this will all lead us but it was a risk and you can't regret taking a risk. It may not work out in the end but it very well could have and hey it may still, who knows. It's just a shame that the job couldn't be here! Changing jobs in France always means moving halfway across the damn country. Well, maybe that's not true for everyone but it's sure been true for us. I'm so sick of moving! My basement is still full of unpacked Demenco boxes from our last move.

I'm sure Seb will pull through with flying colors. Since the day I met him he's always had golden nuggets strewn across his career path. He just seems to have things fall in his lap. Well he'd probably say it was sheer determination and a lot of hard work, but I think it's a little bit of luck too. I have faith that if he wants to he'll get out of this job and probably end up finding something better than he could have imagined. I hope so because between this and baby making crap my nails look like a second grader's. I'm ready for a little stretch of calm and peaceful.

Could be worse

As everyone in our inner circle sort of already knows, Seb got offered a snazzy new job near Lyon last month. He gleefully accepted seeing as the salary was leaping off the page at him saying, "fool, if you don't take this you'll regret it all your sorry assed life ..." I muttered a begrudging "fine," with a few sighs added in. Given that we've moved six times in five years it wasn't going to put me any further in the grave to move yet again. I mean I suppose. And the job offered lots of new opportunities that his country bumpkin company here isn't able or willing to offer him. How could we say no to The Dream Job.

But then his country bumpkin job here in the mountains where we live said that they loved him very much and didn't want him to leave. They offered him a bit more money and then a bit more. The salary started looking a little like the salary of the Dream Job. Well, kind of. Then they offered him a sort of promotion of sorts, he wasn't exactly excited about the promotion because it was lateral and well, kind of lateral and then diagonally downwards, but they said it was a stepping stone to a bigger promotion one day. A step he needed to take first. He felt flattered and loved and so, in spite of the strange 'promotion' he said "okay, I'll stay here." Besides, we love it here and we love our house and the mountains and the lake. We weren't exactly looking to move to a city where we'd have to become renters again. A big city with lots of nameless faces.

So now he has said yes to two companies. He hasn't given notice to either one. Each day he mulls over the merits of staying or leaving. He's walks around with a calculator and a perpetually wrinkled brow. We've interviewed the masses to see how they feel; friends, family and strangers who have faced similar career crossroads. The majority think we should leave for Lyon and abandon our situation for a fresh start. Everyone seems to thinks this except Madame G who said "you'll be buried in work so deep you'll never see the light of day," which was odd because Dream Company has a reputation for just that and this was a big concern of his. A career leap but at what cost? His work load would probably triple and he'd find himself getting home most nights after baby S was already fast asleep. Madame G advised him to stay put and have faith in where he is. She must have read his mind. This was what was thinking anyway, that maybe he should just stay put and keep the faith.

But then again... here before him and us was possibility. A foreign post one day, a bigger salary, bonuses, profit sharing.

Just for the record the house is a no brainer. We couldn't ever sell it. If we decided to go to Lyon it would mean we'd have to finish it within a year, borrowing what we need and then we'd have to rent it out. The logistics of this alone are frightening. It actually could be very profitable in the end, but we'd have to borrow the money and find the workers to finish the project. The first part is easy enough, the second part almost unthinkable. Finding people to work on our house for a reasonable price? Beyond impossible. So here we are lassoed to the house we love. Never love a house because it won't love you back.

We don't know what to do. We're stymied. After all we'd really rather stay put. But then again....