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)

Meeting

Slowly things are evolving. Gradually things are changing. I've started meeting people. Little French village is turning out to be a social goldmine. Who knew. I met four people last week alone. It is the charm of living in a little village that everyone wants to band together and affirm that "yes this is why we live here and not in the city." And it works. People smile and say "bonjour" and come up and just start talking.

I have been hanging out with Myla often and she tags along with me to brocantes and really scrappy thrift stores when she has time. She's starting her own business so she isn't around much. She introduced me to Etienne who lives up the street from me, a really nice mom of three who works from home. She's the one with the Dutch husband. They're a really sweet couple and Seb even got chatting to dutch husband one morning without knowing I knew him. Then out of nowhere the English mom I've met once or twice started telling me "we have to get together" which surprised me because I had written her off as not interested after chatting with her three times and not getting invited (for an American three times --that's a definite snub!). But I know sometimes it takes some (English *cough*) people more time so I've invited her over for coffee right away. I hope I'm not being too forward.

And then just yesterday a woman came up and tapped me on the shoulder. She lives right around the corner from me walking distance. She seemed really nice and I think I'll probably end up inviting her over at some point too once we get past the French obligatory three week wait period.

It seems there's a particular bond between the people who live in my little sector of the village and they even have a different name for this section of the community. It's an older part of the main village. It's like there are two distinct social circles.

What's funny is that everyone already knows our house. Many people even toured it when it was up for sale. They know when we bought it, what trees we've recently cut, when we open the shutters, they saw the moving truck, they saw that we took the ivy off the house, EVERYTHING. I don't even have to tell people where we live. They already know! Such is small French village life.

Thankfully it isn't like Chocolat (or at least not yet).

Antiquing and learning

My new mommy friend Myla finally came to our house a week ago and no she didn't cringe or comment, just took it all in and asked what our plans were. She agreed with me on several things like keeping the hallway tiles and the kitchen tomettes and on the layout of the upstairs. She tried several sketches but eventually said that yes maybe ours was the best plan. I was pretty sure of it because we've already sketched all the possibilities and this is the only one that gives us light in the stairwell--imperative if you've seen my ugly wallpaper photos and the flourescent light photos of the stairwell that I posted earlier.

Myla has impeccable taste there's no doubt but her taste runs more along modern lines than mine does. I think she might even consider mine a little old fashioned because she is French and well, I like French antiques!! but to her I think they must seem a little *yawn* boring, just as someone in America who liked Ethan Allen furniture might seem to me. But I do have a modern streak thanks to Seb and I do admire it. The problem in our house is blending the two because Seb only likes modern era furniture. This is where having the ear of an interior decorator friend helps (and getting the free advice too)!

Since Myla has been laid off from her Paris job she has loads of time on her hands lately while she waits for a call back after the crise, and I nabbed her on Tuesday to go out to Emmaus with me. I love browsing brocantes in France and the shabbier the better in my opinion, so the Catholic Charity Stores are usually a good bet and there's one close to our house. It was closed so she suggested a store about twenty minutes away, a great store that had lots of good junk to dig through at really reasonable prices. Myla was looking for her Danish modern pieces and I had fun following her around listening to her say, "that piece there would be great in a living room next to a fireplace" or "cut the legs off that one and voila..." and suddenly she had me opening my eyes to all kinds of furniture possibilities.

I can't help but hope she stays unemployed for a little while longer while I have fun going around antiquing with her and learning. We've even talked about going to The Saint-Ouen flea market together in Paris on a Monday morning! I would love that! If you haven't heard about it well, just know that it's the largest antique market in the world and it dates back to the 17th century. I've been a few times as a tourist but it would be really fun to go with someone who knows what they're looking at.

(Here's a little history about the St. Ouen flea market. It's open on weekends and Monday mornings).

Opulence

It's been a really busy time lately but also a really social time. I've met a really nice mom from Little S's school named Myla and we went to their house for a play date last week. Myla and her husband are lovely and I had in fact already noticed them because they are such a handsome couple. People watching outside of the school I'd been amused by them. They were like a sitcom family, so perfect. Her so pretty and ruggedly chic, and her husband somewhat dashing and polished and their little boy a small doll-faced blond, the kind of child you might imagine yourself having as you dreamed of having a family one day.

I felt very comfortable with her talking and being myself until I walked into their house and was a little taken back by the opulence. Their house is a palace, --three floors and five bedrooms and an office, a sitting room and a living room twice the size of my living and dining room. Myla is an interior decorator and they collect sculpture and rare furniture so the house is filled with things you might think at first glance you'd seen in Ikea, but were in fact on closer inspection the Real McCoy. I recognized things I'd seen in design books but I couldn't tell you where or which one. After I saw the house I began thinking of our house and all the broken tiles, dust and the shower in the kitchen and I felt a little out of place. But it turns out she's very nice and down to earth and interested in design so she knew our house just based on the exterior alone (touché) so I felt like I'd scored some taste points with her. In fact she's been so curious about our house that she hasn't stopped hounding me to come by for a visit but I've been putting her off until we can get through some boxes because right now it's just chaos and there is the Big Screen Monstrosity issue sitting in my living room. I'm not one to put on aires bit believe me if you saw her house you'd definitely feel odd about her asking to pee in your blue toilet with the white plastic lid. "Yeah, just lift the tank lid to flush it okay. Oh and wash your hands in the kitchen sink because the sink in there is broken (as we both stare down at the at the broken pipes jutting out)."

It must be my week for swanky friends because yesterday Little S and I drove to Paris to see my friend Sara, the one I met in Mexico. Sara lives in Neuilly which is the poshest section of Paris and the poshest part of France for that matter. The president lives in Neuilly with his wife the singer Carla Bruni and it's very chic to have a Neuilly address even if you only live in a tiny 75 square meter apartment like Sara. I had no idea about the Neuilly reputation until after I met Sara and started telling mil and others about my friend. Then Seb would always add "her friend from Neuilly" and everyone would roll their eyes. In fact sil got into a fight with Seb on the phone recently and used that as a jab "ohh, pff all your friends in Neuilly that you have SOooo much time for and not us!" or something ridiculous like that. I began to see that having a Neuilly address was like having a Beverly Hills or Uptown Manhattan address. Anyway I was really curious to see this Neuilly place and so yesterday even though the thought of taking the car to Paris and driving through tunnels freaked me out (note GPS doesn't work in tunnels!), I drove to Paris to see for myself what it was all about. It was pretty nice and the avenues were wide and tree lined like in all the nice areas of Paris, but it did have many average looking apartment buildings (Sara's for example--not a big deal except for the address). The difference was that there were more than your average number of Haussmannien apartments but not like in central Paris, these were ones with gorgeous iron gates opening up to large grassy knolls. What's was most shocking though was the houses you'd see here and there, --huge sprawling estates plunked right in the middle of Paris. Having a house in Paris, how much does that cost anyway? We know from studying the market all these months that in an average section of Paris a 75 square meter apartment will cost upwards of 400 thousand euros so the idea of a HOUSE in Paris isn't even fathomable. Otherwise there were lots of international types, rich private school kids dressed grungy on purpose (it shows), and the American Hospital where Angelina and Brad gave birth which is about three doors down from where Sara lives. I heard lots of English as I walked by the hospital and that was weird,-- people with midwest accents talking to people with Southern accents. Snippets of conversation, "I knooooow it is so cold and then I told him I said listen if you get transferred...." And when I got to Sara's apartment I said to her, "did you really have to go all the way to Mexico to meet an American? They're right outside your door!" And she laughed. Sara got her apartment by having some inside information through her banking connections. Since she's in finance she had some kind of inside track on the real estate market. Frankly though I found the apartment a little stark and the building was average. If she paid the market price for it, which I know she didn't, I would say it was wasted money but apparently it's a goldmine because of where it is. It's amazing what people will pay for being in the right location.

So that was my week of opulence. It's kind of fun to see how the other half lives and I'm enjoying it, but also missing my quaint little mountain life with my grumpy Savoyard neighbors. Things are so much simpler there and it feels more like me.

I've got a feeling and other stuff

Somewhere in school from another boy Little S learned to draw the TGV high speed French train. Yesterday he drew about ten of them, excitedly talking about how they look and what their features were. He remembered we'd taken them "a whole lots of times" and that they were really, really long like this, and he stretched out his arms wide. "They're really a lot long!" I have no idea why the sudden interest in the TGV, or TVD as he calls it.

***

Yesterday after school I met a mom who came up and introduced herself as the la maman de Louis. She invited us to come over and have a playdate that very day but I begged off until next week mostly because Charlotte had yet to be out of her morning pyjamas (I know, I know) and they were a little dirty from her crawling everywhere. She still had them on under her jeans and coat. We made a date for the same day the following week. I've thought this mom seemed nice for a while. She smiles and we dress sort of the same, --jeans, Converse, knitted hat, so I was pleased that maybe she's one of those casual, relaxed moms that I can get along with and not uptight always screaming at her kid "arret, arret-ah" like so many of the moms I see each day. In fact she's probably the mom I would have gravitated towards eventually anyway.

I'm really pleased for Little S to begin to have friends. He's shy in groups but once he's met someone one on one he starts chattering so maybe this will be a catalyst to get him speaking at school.

***

I've got a feeling (latest Beatles song to be stuck in my head, sorry for the earworm)

Wedding bells

We should all get married in a chateau with free roaming chickens, roses climbing stone walls and a lush green lawn. I put the marriage photos on Flickr for those who want to see more.

Vacation plans

Vacation started off well. We had a beautiful two days in a Norman chateau for the wedding of my good friend Jess. What a wonderful job her and her beau David did organizing such an event. We were really impressed. It might sound from reading this that they drive matching BMW's and spend their summers in The Hamptons but the actual fact of the matter is that they're just a regular working class couple from Manchester with a lot of creative ideas and they pulled off this amazing feat all by themselves. I have to post photos later because the whole thing looked like something a wedding planner had done. It was gorgeous!

After the wedding we spent a weekend in Paris and then headed South to Haute Savoie for a two week rest in our old house. We were as keyed up as two little kids during the drive and I felt like I would explode with anxiety as we drove past Lac Léman towards our old neighborhood. I have missed my home so much!

But life throws funny things in your path and plans can change quickly. No sooner had we posed our bags in the kitchen of our old house, then the renter rang to say he'd be coming back from his planned leave and he'd be bringing his two teenage grandkids with him to stay for the rest of the month. We sank into one of his strange leather easy chairs and sighed. Originally we were to have the house for the next two weeks, a sort of unwritten arrangement we'd worked out with him when we rented him the house last year. We'd planned between us that he'd always have the two first or last weeks blocked out in August and let us have our house back. He good naturedly welcomed us to stay with them but of course we said no. It wasn't at all what we had in mind for our time off. Oh well it was a good lesson. It isn't our house for the next two years or more and we just have to accept that as difficult as it may be. Next year we will plan on going somewhere else. It make me sad to think that we can't go back and stay in our home for a while.



After lots of scrambling about and two hours of telephone calls we ended up securing two measly days in a nearby hotel and it was nice because we were able to see all of our old neighbors, especially our pseudo grandparents Mr. and Mme. P who cried when they saw us. I really miss them. They won't be around much longer and it breaks my heart not to have them right next to us anymore. Our other neighbors were genuinely upset to see that we weren't coming back and it surprised me because many seemed so blasé about our living there the past four years but they were sad to hear we'd not be there for even the two weeks. Others were still the same, including Mme. B (the B doesn't stand for her name but for something more fitting...ahem) who greeted me with the same cold "hmph" and it made me laugh to think that she was always going to hold this invisible grudge against me and now obviously my baby. Some aspects of French village life never change.



We left after our short two days to wander off to an old haunt of ours, a small village near Macon. My friend Dee graciously opened her apartment to us and it was a good thing because this is the week in August in France where everything is booked solid. Dee is gone on her own vacation and it's weird to be in her place without her but very sweet of her to have left us a key. We're lucky to have such good friends in such a crisis. Even the Holiday Inn in Paris where we more or less live was booked for these next ten days. Vive le quinze aout!

(I must find a way to attach a French keyboard to my laptop because I can't memorize the keystrokes--in the meantime please pardon mon mauvaise orthographe)

Oops missing a day

I took this picture yesterday at the naturey place near S´s school. It's really quite pretty there and I´d definitely love to explore those hills if I could.

I said in another post that I was bound to capture a baby milestone in the 30 days of photos and I wasn't wrong, and the other thing that I knew would happen was that I would miss a day of taking photos. Technically I have all day to put up a photo but the thing is the photos are shot the day before and posted after midnight or thereabouts so today I didn´t take any photos. I have a ton of extra photos from other days but that's not going to help me in my creative pursuits and I am just going to be cheating myself if I don´t make the effort to follow my creative challenges to their end (artistic integrity!). That´s okay. It just wasn´t a day I wanted to be with my camera. We all have days like that.

I´ll just catch up on me...

I have a new French friend as I mentioned in my friendship post and I really like her. Sara´s got a boy in Seann´s school and so we hooked up by doing a play date for the boys at the park (she and I got stalked at the park, remember) and we have been doing a lot together ever since. I see her at least three times a week now. Both our husbands work for The Company and in fact we all travelled together to France on the same airplane at Christmas but unfortunately we weren´t friends yet back then. We also both have boys with language learning problems. Her son Thomas doesn´t speak well either and will be needing a lot of speech therapy because like Little S he speaks nearly a full two years behind his age. And get this... the other day she shocked me by saying they are moving back to France this July! They haven´t told anyone yet so she swore me to secrecy but the coolest thing is that they are going back to suburban Paris so we´ll be "kind of" neighbors in the future depending on where we end up living. It's so nice to have a friend right after losing one, and especially one that is so easy to talk to and that I get to take with me. Sara is like talking to French family and she and I have a lot in common as I found out when I spied an embroidery project spread out on the table at her house. She´s even promised to take me around to a few of the hip craft stores in Paris when we get settled in. I will definitely love that.

Seb will be home for nearly eight days on Tuesday and I will be numb by then because it´s kind of like getting all dressed up for a date and the the date is late so you get all keyed up because "is he gonna show?" and all that is running through your head, and then eventually you get grumpy about it and then eventually you just sort of don´t care and fall asleep in your black sequined evening dress and smush all the feathers on your pretty hat, which is where I am now. Husband? What husband?Ohhhhhhh HIM. Uh yeah send him on over I guess.

I´ll actually be excited to see him I suppose, especially because I´ll have someone to clean my pool and cut my grass (mexican gardner=unreliable) and someone to hold my ginormous baby from time too time and more importantly someone to watch two kids while I go get my hair cut ! How do single moms get hair cuts? I guess they have the grandmother factor which is something we desperately need here. I have even considered faking passing out or having a brain hemmorage or something on the webcam so my mom will come to Mexico to visit for a few weeks, but guess what? She probably still wouldn´t come, she´d just say "oh honey you look really busy so we´ll chat later...okay sweetheart kiss those babies, byyyye!"

Anyone have a grandmother they´d like to rent out? She´ll probably need a passport if she isn´t Mexican.

Crafting friendships

Friendship for me has always been tough. I don´t meet people easily. I´m a social disaster, shifting uncomfortably in my chair waiting for the party to finish so I can run as fast as I can in the safe confines of my home. I´m the clichéd woman hiding behind the plant. When I do make conversation there isn´t a lot of wit, I tend to ramble about this and that and ín lieu of intelligent conversation you´re apt to get the meanderings of my brain at that moment--grocery lists, "hey what´s that?" and probably me blurting out whatever is going on at the moment in my life even if it might be best to wait and share that information at a more appropriate time. So yeah, collecting friends is not my style and even if it were I would be hard pressed to feed my desire for a collection. Most of my friends are the result of a very patient crew who have put up with my lone wolf mentality and stood around long enough to wait for me to catch my breath and realize what their friendship means to me.

Lately making any new friends has been really hard for me, an expat in this new country. I am completely horrified by the local expat friendship club here--large gatherings every Tuesday night where you have to mingle and laugh at all the appropriate cues, or at least that´s how my anti-social brain sees it. I´ve only been to one small event and that was extremely difficult for me. Sitting in a circle with the country club chit-chat and these stunningly sharp and witty women who have travelled the world and are charming and interesting...and then there´s Maude me. In avoiding these events I have alienated myself from the expat community and been left with a small handful of people I say hello to here but no real community of friends. (although I did just recently meet a wonderful, interesting French mom who I´ve been hanging out with).

So since it is physically painful for me to make small talk I often ramble. I think in my ramblings I must blurt out things that other people filter quite well and in this I think I come across as conceited or maybe egotistical. I don´t really know. I am really confused by the label of snob that I ofen get slapped with . I am the all original United Colors babe, all about having friends based on their diversity and not to further my politics or my agenda. I´m just shy that's all.

I know you musn´t worry what others think. I mean it´s true that you can´t control what others think about you but at the same time isn´t it nice to be able to convey the message well of who you are and what you stand for. I often feel like my awkward nature is a severe handicap in my relations with people and I am constantly sending out the wrong message without even realizing it.

Forever the backwards teenage girl who just wants to be liked by interesting people...

A goodbye lunch

My buddy Haley is leaving this weekend for good and I'm definitely going to miss her warmth and caring and her adorable little family. To thank her for being around so much and inculding me in so much of her life these past few months I made her and her daughter a final farewell Mexican Fiesta, --steak fajitas, fresh corn on the cob, homemade mint apple tea and baked cinnamon bananas.

I know she´s a little tired of Mexican food but I know when she´s back in the northern US she´ll have fond memories of all of the wonderful foods she ate in her year here. I wanted to be a part of that memory.

I hate losing a friend. It is so difficult making them and such a difficult thing seeing them leave.

The routine has changed

We went to the park again today because you know I have my little routine, and It was something we looked forward to because we would be meeting up with the French mother Sara who I´ve been trying to get together with for a while. She´s really nice and I met her at S´s school because I heard her speaking, ...err screaming actually to her boys in French saying "on fait pas les betises les garcons!!...s'il vous plait arret ca tout suite!" or something like that. I immediately went up and talked with her because if there´s anything I´m nostalgic for it´s the musical notes of French women reprimending their kids in public places. The things you miss when you leave a place I tell you! It turns out Little S and her boy Thomas are the same age by only a few weeks and they have the common trait of not talking very much and both have articulation problems. And then we quickly discovered that both of our husbands work for The Company so we had lots to chat about, especially at all these Mexican kiddie birthday parties we seem to always be going to. Whenever we leave the parties we always end up saying "we should get together sometime" but we never actually got around to it yet.

Today we met at the section of the park where I've been going each day now for a few weeks, sitting under the trees drawing and feeding the baby while Little S runs around making new friends under my watchful eye. I have enjoyed our outings and the fresh air but I don't think we will continue going. One reason is because of the mosquitos which are killing us. The other reason is because of the freaky thing that happened today. I was sitting on a small blanket chatting with Sara and suddenly we noticed several school kids standing by us which happens quite often actually. I greeted them and they didn´t answer which I found odd because the kids usually respond but these kids were a little odd, they just kept staring. Then they started touching the baby and she started crying and gradually more kids came and stood watching us until there were about fifty kids just staring at us and at least five at a time touching the boys hair and face and at least ten circled around touching the baby--it was freaky because they were so wide eyed and I understand now how a celebrity must feel panicked when she loses her bodyguard and people get all freaky-weird treating her like an object. Yep it was a Whitney Houston moment sin Kevin Costner. Even when we tried to move to the swings they followed us in a very large group, touching, touching and whispering. At our cars as we struggled to get our kids strapped in one at a time they pulled at the other child, pulled at the baby and the stroller and just stared like we were part of a play they were watching.

I realize they were most likely kids from the projects brought to the park on a bus from the mountains for dia del Niño which was today, and they had probably never seen an entire family of fair skinned blondes before (Sara and her boys are blond like Little S and Charlotte) and the combination of the light skin, light hair and the unusual French stroller along with this family must have all seemed so alien to them. I see these project kids from time to time at the park and I often chat with them, or try to in my bad Spanish. They are generally nice one on one. One boy last week was doing the funny stare thing and he wouldn´t really talk to me and then he just blurted out something in Spanish, and I heard the word "gringa" like a label and I said to him "no no...no soy gringa...soy americana... norte americana" You know kind of reprimending him. And he looked very confused after that because I´m sure his parents have taught him gringo but not taught him the geographical signifigance of the word (not to mention the racist connotations). Anyway my shock was in how many of these kids there were today and how they treated us like objects and not people. It was freaky for us and for our kids because they were being touched all over and not in an "Oh you´re such a cutie!" way that happens in the supermarket time after time, but in a weird "zombie from the dead" kind of way, because the kids were so seriously intrigued that they weren't respecting our personal space at all.

Sara told me later that her husband doesn't want her to go to this park alone and she felt like I shouldn't be going alone every day like this, to the same spot, especially with Seb gone and me being in the country with no one here. So yes I think we´ll find another activity from 4-6 or at least go to another section of the park with a friend next time we go. I´m not fearful of ten year old kids acting like this, just annoyed, but if it were older boys having that reaction, like the countless teenagers I´ve seen there, I would have been really frightened instead of just slightly freaked out. Time to find a new place to hang out I suppose.

When we got home the landlord dropped by to ask if he could show our house tomorrow morning at ten o´clock (meaning 11 o´clock Mexican time...see I´m learning!) I said fine but inside I was not feeling fine about it because it meant I´d have to do a huge clean to make the house presentable. The house is a huge mess with Seb gone and this big house is impossible to clean anyway. So I have spent half the night scrubbing and cleaning and I am cursing Seb´s company because ordinarily I would not have to be doing this because we shouldn't be moving and ordinarily my husband would be here, right? I have this fantasy where I walk into a huge board meeting and I just rant at everyone important for about thirty minutes (it would be convenient if it were that time of the month too so I can rant in style). I talked with Sara today though and she has issues with The Company too and feels that the family is just a nat under the heel of a very big, smelly combat boot. They feel like things need to improve or else The Company is going to have some serious issues piled up. I was so happy to hear her say that because we were feeling pretty alone here in our mess and while it doesn't seem like her mess is as big as ours it's clear that The Company needs to revise their expatriation protocol because they aren't exactly turning the wives into company cheerleaders.

Showers

There was a shower today thrown for my friend Haley and her little boy who is lovely and sweet in all of his tiny movements. He has the most delicate fingers and eyelids and these sweet soft, downy cheeks with the slightest traces of that newborn fur coating they seem to lose in the last days before birth.

At the party I realized that this is the first baby shower I have ever attended. It´s not something really done in France, you´re more likely to get a present in the month after the baby is born. The exception is your parents who will usually contribute to buying the very costly and trendy European stroller everyone seems to have. I guess all this tradition of not buying gifts is left over from old world days of low infant mortality rates and superstitions.

I had forgotten all about showers. I´m not really the silly, party games type so I felt a little out of place a few times with it all but I thought it was wonderful being in the middle of all the female energy that radiates from such an event--laughing and trading stories. It was all good harmless fun and Charlotte had a blast getting passed around like a party favor.

One of my gifts to Haley was to take some photos and I made a video from these photos. This is my idea of a nice gift because so many people forget to take pictures. If you want to see the video I will send you an invite to my private video collection on You Tube since I've pretty much stopped linking the family videos here. E-mail me at misschrisc(at)gmail(dot)com and if I know you then you can have my link.

An evening out

Last night we we're invited to a barbecue* at the house of one of Seb's colleagues, a super nice French couple we first met in January over an apéritif. I felt bad about not having called the wife back but it was one of those cases where I had meant to get together with her but for some reason didn't get around to it even though she lives in the same neighborhood. The evening was fun and about thirteen people showed up, many couples and all bi-cultural mixed couples with a French connection which was even more fun.

I finally got to meet the wife of Seb's best work buddy Emmanual who was also there and we really hit it off right away. We had a lot in common even though she's Mexican and I'm American, probably because we both have French husbands. Our boys are only a few weeks apart in age and she had tales of giving birth in France with him that paralleled my giving birth here in Mexico --being eight months pregnant and living in the hotel for three months and giving birth without speaking the language. We also shared some similar views on French culture and how hard it is to integrate in to it. In fact she was so disenchanted with small French village life that she convinced her husband to move back to Mexico. We talked for much of the evening and she was amused to hear that I had spent ten hours on a plane with her in-laws back at Christmas break. We had bumped into Emmanual who was depositing his parents at the airport and then we shared their flight from Mexico, their seats not too far from ours. Seb and I got on great with the parents and I thought how odd that I'd met her in-laws before meeting her, and then of course all of the mention of the in-laws brought up the elephant in the room. She'd given birth to a little boy two weeks after Charlotte and he'd only lived for three days because of a heart defect.

I was horrified by her story when I first heard it. Seb had been telling me about a French guy at his job whose wife was due soon too and I was interested because we'd be having our babies at nearly the same time. When he came home with the news that the baby had died I couldn't compute it. How does this happen? I had Charlotte in my arms when he told me and the tears started. I told him right away, "you have to take him aside for coffee and talk to him. " It seemed that no one at Seb's job wanted to talk to the poor guy. Seb felt slightly awkward too but he did finally pull Emmanual aside and chatted with him about it. Then a few weeks later we were headed back to France he was at the airport too dropping off his parents. They had come for the funeral. It was kind of uncomfortable standing there with the newborn Charlotte but we all started talking and the subject came up and we all breathed a little better that we could stop making small talk and discuss what was looming.

The babecue evening ended with Seb and me feeling sad that we were leaving, especially with all the group trading stories about living here and one newbie couple getting lots of advice from everyone else about where to shop and go out to eat. Everyone kept teasing us about rainy Paris and how they'd be sipping margaritas in our honor while we were trudging through another gray and balmy day. We laughed at the time, but walking home in the dark to our house afterwards in the cool, night Mexican breezes we both admitted that hopefully Paris is just a pit stop towards another destination. And of course there's always the hope that a job will appear out of nowhere and we can stay here for a few more years.

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* I was secretly dreading suffering through another French barbecue. Most of the time the French don't do much on the barbecue in the way of seasonings and marinades and it's often just a pile of burned up meat on the food tray because of the Frenchman's love of talking and debating. They just don't take the barbecue post seriously enough! This time it was actually pretty good.

My faithful friend

On Tuesday I had brunch with my American friend Haley. I met Haley the first few weeks we settled in to our house here in Mexico and since she lives close by and has a girl close to Little S´s age we often get together for play dates. We have very similar parenting styles and we both have a sort of laid back hippy-chic style and attitude so we seem to click really well. My only initial hesitation with Haley was her giddy enthusiasm for religion and the bible, something I´m admittedly uncomfortable with. I enjoy religion from a scholarly perspective--in fact I minored in religious studies and my shelf worn bible is completely written in, highlighted and cross referenced with Jospeh Campbell notes in the margins and other comparitive religion philosopher´s ideas scribbled throughout the text. But since Haley´s bible reading is more faith driven and mine is more philosophically driven I feel uncomfortable when she says things like "God will find a way" or "I just prayed it would work and it did." I do have a spiritual side which I think is growing deeper as I get older, but I am reluctant to attach it to any one religion for fear I guess that it will box me in and limit me. In fact I think the reason I find the idea of attending church very difficult is that religion raises so many questions for me. I really prefer to discuss it rather than sit patiently still while someone gives their viewpoint week after week and I simply bide my time listening.

One thing I do appreciate about church is the social aspect. I´m a little jealous of Haley´s vast community of women, even if I doubt I´d get along with all of them. But it is impressive. Like me she´s only been here a short time and yet she's found babysitters, household help, friendship clubs and language lessons all through her ties to the local church. Her church has dropped in her lap the community that so many expats take months and months to uncover. Whenever I´ve asked her where she´s found something she always starts off by saying "a woman from my church..." and I am always impressed with how helpful everyone is around her.

Over the past few months I have grown fond of Haley and so when she told me they´d be leaving Mexico at the end of this month, I felt a sense of relief that I wouldn´t necessarily be the one leaving first. I hate goodbyes. She is in her third trimester of pregnancy and her husband and her would be having the baby at home in the US rather than here, something I knew she´d appreciate much more because I have been there. In true Haley fashion though she had been saying all along "the baby will be born where he is supposed to be born" and she hasn´t even thought twice about the whether she´d be giving birth here in Mexico or off in the US, a far cry from me who had worried about it every day of my second and third trimester, whining and lamenting my lot in life for having been shipped off to a country I knew little about. I have been admiring this "God will find a way" quality in her for several months but on this point in particular I have been in awe of her.

The evening after our Tuesday brunch this week Haley went in to labor at 33 weeks and gave birth to a baby boy. She hadn´t shown signs of prelabor and seemed healthy and vibrant at our brunch, even suggesing we walk a few blocks away to a nearby pottery store. The baby is healthy but being monitered in the hospital and Haley is fine, happy and ever positive in the wake of it all. The birth will certainly delay their leaving plans for several more weeks as they struggle through the complications of a preterm baby and the nightmare of paperwork needed for Americans declaring births in Mexico, and yet she is her same happy-go-lucky self--content with the fact that the baby is here and healthy and here when God wanted him to be here. Her attitude is that they were meant to stay longer for some unclear reason and God will find a way to make the rest of it work.

I wish I could adopt this carefree attitude, be stronger in the face of problems, take more of life with a grain of salt--especially lately. I often wonder if it is my detachment from organized religion that makes my life seem so much more complicated than others. Knowing someone like Haley makes me think that maybe if I could learn to let things go and have the faith that "something" will take care of things, be it God or whatever I want to label it, I will release the binding that keeps me so choked up with fear and worry whenever I can´t see around a corner in my life. I am really envious of people like Haley who have the ability to do this and really intrigued by the power of faith when I meet someone like her.

* I love religious artifacts from Mexico, so detailed, intricate and facinating. This cross sits on my bookshelf near my buddha.

Changes

Yesterday was a big day. It was a religious holiday in Mexico, baby Charlotte turned one month old and I got to meet the expat women in my neighborhood.

The "meet misschris" event was held at a woman´s house who lives three blocks away from me. About five moms showed up most looking like they´d stepped out of a Ralph Lauren catalogue--(luckily I didn´t wear my birks).

I have been feeling a little lost without freinds around but I am so used to making freinds slowly that when this expat community opened up I have to say that I was overwhelmed. They are all so incredibly nice though and I guess I´m actually pretty lucky to fall into immediate friends rather than having to wait for six months or a year or more. They already did the "help the new mom thing" of cooking me dinner twice this week. And they all have kids and Little S has built in playmates so I´m pleased for him. The only thing that´s hard to get used to is all the opulance: the country club, the new suv´s, the discussion of maids and expensive private schools. I feel like I´ve landed on planet bizarre. And it´s not like they´re snobs about it, it´s just the system that´s built up around the haves and have-nots and the haves have a lot because it´s easy to have a lot when you are an expat.

This system makes me feel forever awkward. I am in the middle of the haves and frankly it makes me uncomfortable. How did I get here anyway? On the other hand I´m happy for us. Little S deserves a good school and fun activities, Seb has worked so hard at his studies, his jobs and the house these past years that he deserves his perks and an easier life and I guess I deserve a dust free house and my five bathrooms after showering outside for four years don´t I ? At least that´s how I try to justify all the benefits of our new expat life. But for someone whose favorite book has always been City of Joy it´s a little strange to find myself in the middle of Gone With the Wind,-- more of a Melanie than a Scarlett.

It will be interesting to live life here for the next three years and see what we become and how we change. For us this is just a chapter and we will probably return in a three short years to France and pick up where we left off when we left, --small cars, public schools and a dusty old house. This might be hard and I will have to reread this post to remind myself that I once found the good life diffcult to adjust to.

Travelling in Haute Savoie

Well the week is finished and we saw Jess off yesterday in Geneva for her flight back home to England. We had a nice time in spite of the crappy weather and a certain toddler who is plateuing in his terrible twos (thanks Jess for being so patient). We at least got to do some catching up and got a few hysterical laughter moments in. Nobody gets me laughing like Jess and then I can't stop and then people start staring and then we forget why we're laughing so hard.

Over the nearly four days that she was here we hit some best of tourists spots within an hours drive from us. It's too bad we didn't get to swim in the lake, take a boat or do a hike in the mountains. If only we'd had more time and warmer temps. It's awful to miss out on good weather when friends visit.

On one of our exursions we visited Morzine and Avoriaz. Season doesn't start until July so everything was quiet and most shops were closed. This is a pedestrian bridge in Morzine. Pretty scary if you don't like heights.




Teasing Jess that she needs to take the time to stop and smell the flowers, or in France's case, the geraniums! We went to St. Gingolph this day and then went around the end of Lac Léman to Switzerland to check out the Chateau de Chillon.







Finally we spent Wednesday in Annecy lunching on the quai and shopping. The sun was finally shining, we were gorging on crépes and cider and Little S was feeding the swans in front of an adoring fan club of little old ladies. It doesn't get much better than that.

The first goodbyes

We have a fun and busy weekend planned and today is organizing day (in which I am writing blog posts instead of working mind you).

Tomorrow night we're having a goodbye dinner for our friends C & P and their three cute little girls. They'll be moving in three weeks to the north of France and we're of course heading to Mexico in two months. C is one of my few French friends and I've really taken her living up the mountain from us for granted. P and Seb are inseperable chatting on the phone three times a week so it's sure to be a late night.

On Sunday Jess arrives (insert several exclamation marks please!!!). I haven't seen her in a while but I'm sure we'll pick up right where we left off without missing a beat. I just wish she were staying longer and we had more time. Four days is not nearly enough time. It's another sad goodbye to a very good friend.

I'm starting to hate this scenario. It's so hard to think of leaving!

Relaxing in the countryside

Little S and I are home after a whirlwind tour of some various parts of France. The first few days were spent outside of Macon in the lovely Burgundian countryside visiting my friend (Lala's mom*), Dee. She has a new apartment which is actually very cute despite her complaints about missing her little house with the blue shutters. These pictures are the views from her windows and some pictures of the cute village just outside her front door. It's always beautiful in Burgundy, even when the skies are rainy and overcast.








We took a little walk and then took our picnic into the vineyards across the street from Dee's place. Little S loved seeing all the funny, tall tractors shaped like giant U's. When I said "oh look at the tractor!" he just looked at me like "whoa, that is so NOT a tractor. Who do you think you're talking to here lady?" I finally had to explain to him that the tractors have to drive between the vines so they have to be tall like that to protect the plants. He seemed to accept that.





Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of Dee. I think we were too preoccupied with cows the day we took off on foot all together. I must have twenty shots of these damn cows. They just would not pose correctly and they kept stampeding in all directions. Check out that cow in the first photo sticking her tounge out at me. "You won't get a good shot here lady and the rain is coming, nya, nya, nya!" Apparently they do have a sense of humor.

So that was our first stop on our tour. Our second stop was Normandie chez mamie & papi's. I'll post about that tomorrow.


* Lala is what Little S calls Dee's English Setter, Ella.

Another day spent outside

I hate to keep harping on about the nice weather but it is Febrary after all and weather like this in the alpes is a little unusual. I was blessed to have everyone show up on my doorstep yesterday, friends Huri and Lily each called and asked to join us for an afternoon walk.

Even my new American friend called us but I discouraged her from coming because it was afternoon already and we were just getting ready to leave. It was a shame because I had called her early that morning and left a message and she was getting back to me kind of late.

Huri baked Turkish pastries and brought them to share. It was a really nice walk.

This goose is sort of pet that lives on the lake named Sophie. Those guys sitting there are all locals who always sit there and gossip when there's nice weather.

Huri and her little guy double M. He is definitely the devil in disguise!

Lily and her boy Little Seb. He's got this great kids bike that has no pedals. It's great for teaching kids to ride a bike. You can adjust the seat as they grow. It's called a Like Bike. I think we'll get one for Little S so he can learn to balance as well as Little Seb.


That's me and my little man in front of the Thonon swimming pool. That's like 2 miles walk from our house. He was exhausted by the time we got home. I could barely get him up our hill to the house.


A cool breeze starts blowing in. The end of a very pretty day. I hope we get more of this great weather while my mom is visiting.

Got rain?

Rain, rain, rain! The itsy bitsy spider has been washed down the water pipe so many times he's exhausted!

Okay but we're making the most of our little vacation here. It's just hard being stuck inside so much trying to keep Mr. Snick Snack entertained. Yesterday he started opening my Swedish beer collection...just for fun. Okay so it's not a collection but sort of an acquired stock. I should have put it deeper in the cupboard. My fault. Stupidity. Who knew he could open beer cans?

Yesterday morning we went to visit my new potential friend an American lady I met recently. She lives waaaay out in the countryside in a tiny village. If I had to live in this village I'd be accosting people on the street asking them to come over for coffee. Or I'd be passing out "get to know me" fliers, plastering them on cars (or in her case tractors). It's pretty but I think I'd have a hard time living out yonder.

She's really nice. We have a lot in common interest wise. She's a certified chef and an organic one at that, that's always a cool person right. She's interested in using really cool Montessori methods in her home with her kids, she doesn't use capital* punishment as a form of discipline and hugs them a lot. Good, good and good.

She lets her kids mix their play dough colors!* And she has baskets upon baskets of craft stuff for them even though they're little and can make messes. I liked that. I appreciated it. Kids need to be messy.

AND her house is kind of messy! Boy whew. It's a real relief. I hate making friends with excessively neat house people. There's so much pressure. I'm always pleased when they're messy. It lets me off the hook. Not that I'm a pig but my house is far from perfect.

We'll do something again. I want to do paper maché masks for carnival and I wanted to do it with someone who was really into it and knew what it was, and someone who would let their kids make a mess. She seemed excited about it so I think we'll do it next week.


*see comments for error correcting! haha...

**I'm very anal about mixing the Playdough colors. it really freaks me out. I hate this about myself.