Unpacking

That's a lot of stuff. "Why do I have so much stuff?" I always say when I sit down and look at a box of things.



It's the pottery.

Brakes on as we pull over to the shoulder of the national road. "I'll just be a minute." Usually I just browse. It makes my heart beat faster to see a whole shop filled with pottery. Food for the soul. Old pottery makes me swoon. The chipped, battered pieces tell a wonderful story. In France you can imagine anything that has to do with food service and all of the stories overheard at Christmas dinners before the war, during the war,...after the war. Life here revolves so much around these meals. There is romance and history in old pieces.



Oaxaca, Mexico the hands that touched the pieces. Who are they and what are their lives?

Revisiting my pottery makes me happy. The house suddenly begins to feel normal. "It's starting to feel like home finally" say Seb. He has no idea why.

Full moon

I have been dreading this full moon for a few weeks, ever since I read forward to December to see what the holidays would have in store for me. I was a little worried because the moon was in home and family and it said:

A very difficult full moon, December 12, plus or minus four days, will immediately rivet your attention on your family or a home / property situation. I will not kid you - this full moon is a monster, for it will lash out at Saturn, Uranus, Mars, and the Sun. That's a lot of planets to take on at once, and all those planets will be quite literally in four different quarters of the sky at the time. Emotion will be high, and adjusting to unanticipated events will be hard, particularly if you were born near March 11, plus or minus five days.

You will need to do your holiday preparations early so that you have a completely empty calendar at midmonth. There is no way you can handle more than that full moon - you will have to drop everything once news hits. By the time you resume your life, it will be December 17 or 18 or even later, and the pressure to get things done for the holiday will be unbearable. Be smart and get shopping, wrapping, and shipping done by the December 6-7 weekend. If you plan to put up a tree, do it that weekend. If you have family members, especially children, who are depending on you to make a holiday tradition for them, you will absolutely need to be ahead of schedule.

As I watched the boxes file into our house yesterday completely filling our small rooms and towering to the ceiling in some places I then knew what my full moon was all about. It was about my stuff. It was about the fact that my house is so small and I have way too many things to put inside it. My family is being thrown into chaos and the storm is suddenly upon us. Our abundance of stuff, what will we do with it all?



There is a mountain of boxes in every room. Stuff, stuff stuff it's everywhere! The t.v. that I reluctantly agreed to let Seb buy in Mexico is far too large for our living room. It's frightening to see that I now have a bachelor pad style living room--sounds system and computer fill the small space. I had to ask the movers to put the sofa and chair outside and cover them with a tarp while we figure out where to store them. It's an impossible situation. Our bedroom is too small for the armoire we have and we have nowhere to put our clothes. And how can I say anything to Seb about his big ugly tv with my sixteen boxes of kitchen supplies. Sixteen boxes! We are in stuff hell. It looks as if Barbie is trying to fit her things inside a Playmobil house. I feel like putting it all outside with a sign. An impromtu French yard sale, yes!

It's our own fault. We made the mistake many expats told us not to make. Mexican houses are enormous and we felt that enormity and tried in vain to fill our very empty Mexican house with things. And now we have an even bigger problem because we're in Paris where the houses are smaller than the average French house.

We talked last night and Seb said "yes but this house is only 80 square meters (800 square feet). What do you expect?" We have plans to expand it to 160 sq meters (1600 square ft) with some of the work, making the kids larger bedrooms, a small office and of course a bathroom. But for now living in 80 square meters with all this stuff is impossible. We are living in a storage shed.

Seb started laughing at me. "When we first met we lived in 27 square meters. That wasn't all that long ago." "Yes but we didn't have two kids and a cat. And we had no furniture! We were really poor."

We have become spoiled. We're so used to having space that we've accumulated too much. In Mexico for the year we were there our house measured over 250 square meters (2500 square feet) We stretched out and when we went to buy a sofa we bought a set because the one sofa looked so lonely in the enormous room. I can't believe how empty that house looked with all of our things in it and how full this house looks with everything. And I have what I have always loathed. A giant media center dominates my tiny living room.



Full moons always crash in to your life and create chaos. If it's aligned with some difficult planets it can be a real firestorm in your life. But the good news is that the chaos usually brings better things. It's like a forced spring cleaning. When I traveled to France in 1999 under a difficult full moon my sister and I had a huge argument and I bought out her portion of the Europass. We went our separate ways both crying and telling my mother over the phone what a bitch the other was being. But luckily we did separate. I ended up in Annecy sitting in a cafe next to my future husband and if the waitress hadn't spilled an entire pitcher of water on the table we never would have met.

Maybe this chaos will bring good things. Maybe it's time to pare down and clean house. The universe is sending me a message. "You have far too much stuff!"

Seeing the lake

We leave tonight for two nights in Th*non, a welcomed trip away to our old home turf. We have to do some papers and pick up some tools from our workroom so we have to go. I'm as excited as a little girl. I'm really looking forward to turning that bend in the road that lays the lake out in front of me. I love that moment. It represents home to me. And I'll be able to see some of our neighbors which will be nice. I'm not looking forward to seeing our old house because it kind of makes me sad that we can't live there any more. I know it's still our house but I also know that it will be a long time before we can have it back for us and that it will be rented for so many years that it won't be the same house when we do get it back and we'll have to start over with the work and making it ours again.

The good news is there are warm winter clothes stashed in the little storage attic outside in the workroom. If we can get permission from the renter to get in those storage rooms we can get our things. I think I remember putting my warm boots and jackets in a box at the last minute. I hope so because I really need them. I'm freezing to death.

Hopefully we'll have our stuff from storage next week too. I can't wait! I know we will probably be completely overwhelmed with it all. It means finding a place for stashing kayaks and sports gear and extra furniture all at a time when we should be enjoying Christmas, but I will be so happy to see my clothes and beauty products and kitchen things that I won't care. Living out of our suitcases for over five months should merit us some medals. It's been really difficult and I haven't bought anything except for the pair of jeans and boots I bought last week. I am Miss Frugal Living!

Some vacation in the middle of it all

We're checking out of casa Holiday Inn tonight and heading to Normandie for the wedding of my dear friend Jess. Then after the wedding we just have a couple of days of roaming and work days until we go on our two week family vacation in beautiful Haute-Savoie. We get to spend two weeks in our old house which I imagine will be just as weird as it was at Christmas. Oh well at least it's some semblance of home even if it does have all kinds of strange sixty-year-old bachelor furniture in it and it smells weird (not a bad smell just strange). I just hope this whole thing doesn't confuse Little S too much and I will kill Seb if he even thinks of lifting a hammer while we're there!

I'm not sure if there's internet at the old house. Nevertheless I'll be back soon!

Bullet brain

There isn't much of a blog post to write mainly because there's just a lot of ramblings in my brain which is normal I think given all the change and shock of returning somewhere (anywhere) after spending considerable time in Mexico. Mexico is so different from anywhere else, but especially France with all its ...how to say...Frenchness. It all feels strange right now.

This is going to be a bullet post which I hate but can't do anything about unless I find the gumption to pull it all together into one post (I won't) so...

We are staying in the airport hotel in a little village called Roissy en France. It's an adorable little town with cobblestone streets and flowers everywhere, kind of surreal like a movie set or something. French towns can be like this sometimes, especially if they're small. Every ten minutes or so a flight attendant rounds the corner or comes out of the boulangerie carrying a baguette and it occurs to me that this is where they live. It makes sense because it's about five minutes from the airport but it's surreal to see them milling around outside of the airport like regular people. Anyway it's a good transition phase for me and Little S--kind of comforting to ease our way back into the country because it feels like we're still at the airport or Disneyworld or both.

I've become to think that French people are way too anal about kids and their behavior. Maybe the Mexicans were too liberal letting their kids do whatever they wanted but today a French grandma screamed at her grandson "on monte pas le toboggan comme le jeune anglais--c'est interdit!" (we don't go up the slide like the little english boy because it's against the rules!) and all Little S was doing was going up a baby slide backwards in a playground with no kids. And we also stopped going to the breakfast at the hotel because of the dirty looks we keep getting from the staff and customers. It has been like this since we got here. I never noticed this before but really notice it now. And not many people smile at the kids. What's up with that?

I feel a little lost bit luckily the weather is nice and there's way too much going on to notice.

My little, black polka dot dress is way too short after going in my mom's dryer (I'm anti-dryer) and it will now have to become a shirt. I really loved this dress but I can't bend over in it anymore.

The hotel staff discovered that we have a cat. This really portly African maid accidently opened our door without knocking and noticed the calico streak flying through the room to seek refuge under the bed. If you know these women and their accents you will find humor in her screaming "eeel eee ya una shawww!" and then she said to her boss "may say pawr ecreevee sur le fish" (there's a cat but it isn't written on the roster). I burst out laughing because it was clear that she was scared of cats and because she was just so funny. Evidently animals are allowed in the hotel for a supplemental charge. This is France after all. I still haven't offically declared her though so I'm awaiting the cat police.

I can't find anything in these suitcases because Seb packed our stuff in Florida and of course used shoes and spare luggage spots as space to cram underwear and face creams and fill-in-the-blank for whatever belongs to me. Living out of suitcases with two kids and a cat will drive you mad. I bought Little S his school clothes for the year and Seb packed them with all of his regular summer clothes and it's all such a mess. "shorts? no, ski jacket, oops.!"

Next week we get to live in our old house. Talk about weird. Our cat will be the most weirded out of all. She'll be standing there thinking "wait...didn't we...weren't we...hmmm." Yes I will take pictures of her reaction.

I have to wash my hair but I don't have any shampoo or money or even a car, all because Seb and I haven't organized any of these things yet. It has suddenly become clear to me that returning home and restarting your life can be just like going to a foreign country and starting your life.

I make a bad bohemian. I miss all my girly stuff and have each time I move or travel. I like perusing my closet and choosing necklaces from my jewelry. I like washing my face with exotic new soaps. I like an enormous bathroom cupboard full of products. I make a grumpy bohemian traveler.

We had to buy internet time from the hotel at an exorbitant rate so I've been composing my posts offline and I haven't been reading many blogs or if I have it has been sans comment. It will be nice when we get settled and have internet again. I wonder when that will be? Hmm

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My new camera

I have my new toy, my Canon 40D. These are the first few photos I took with it. It's the main reason I bought the camera too. I want to take better photos of my kids.

I haven't uploaded many of my new photos from it yet but I do have lots of recent photos from my other camera on my Flickr photostream--our quickie visit with the in-laws and our prospective new house find. This house is so amazing it could make me want to stay in this area for a long, long time.

More new camera photos to come as soon as I have time to get organized and read the manual.

Bonjour Paris!

We're finally here in Paris. We're Parisiens!

We arrived on Friday after a really long flight. There was a theme to our travels--mishaps and misunderstandings! It made everything memorable to say the least.

First of all we had a lot of carry ons because we were carrying our valuables. No problem on the dinky flight from Florida to D.C. but of course Air France insisted we check the extra one on the big flight. It was ridiculous and I argued because technically we had no diaper bag and with a baby you're allowed that extra carry on, but they insisted that our diaper bag was more like a suitcase so we had no choice but to comply because we were already the last ones to board. Of course Seb in his grumpy haste accidentally gave them the bag with the baby diapers because he'd mixed up the carry ons. Luckily I had one diaper in my purse but it was still a soppy flight with just one change in over seven hours.

For the transatlantic portion there was some sort of mix up where our seats were canceled and we ended up separated for the entire flight, all three of us at opposite ends of the plane! Eventually they got Little S together with Seb but we never did get to sit together or get a bulkhead seat for the baby so she was literally a lap baby the whole seven hours which made eating or drinking impossible. We were so relieved to get to Paris and get out of the plane! Then we realized much to our horror that our seven bags never made the flight and Air France had no idea where they were. We spent two days in an airport hotel standing by waiting and biting our nails because of the things we threw in our luggage the days before leaving like jewelry and childhood photos, flying by the seat of our pants--dumb mistake. Finally they found six of the bags and eventually the seventh, but whew! what a time to lose our bags! Everything important we owned was on that flight.

Even our plans for where to stay this week have been confusing. The original idea was for me and the kids to stay with the in-laws for the first week back but when we visited them yesterday mother in law had a fit about our cat and said it was rude of us not to tell her we were coming with it so now we're back at the hotel. I can see her point about the cat but life is short and given the choice of spending a week with my grandkids with or without a cat I wouldn't care one way or another about a germy cat. Especially since our cat is old and fat and sleeps all day. Anyway, better to have her be honest right away than live with the tension of it all week.

So yes, one short week in Paris before we leave on vacation in Haute-Savoie with all of our bags. Life is definitely crazy right now!

The here and now

Life is a doing a little immature teasing right now and I am just sitting back, arms folded waiting for it to finish its annoying little game. I've learned to not worry or stress or think what might happen and just concentrate on what is happening. It's a wonderful trick I wish I'd learned earlier in life but I just learned it in the last year and right now it's serving me wonderfully. There's no more worry or stress. I'm just living in today! And it's not as if it's part of a new age philosophy or anything I picked up from television or a book. It's just become my way of dealing with getting myself and my family though to the next phase. I gotta tell you it's much easier!

That doesn't mean I'm not nervous about the next phase. It's odd but I feel like that woman who got on a plane to move to France ten years ago, like it's all beginning again. I don't know why I feel like this all over, the newness of it all. Maybe it's the complete mystery of not knowing where we're going. I'm going back to France, but going somewhere new in France. Most of the friends that I've met in France, mainly American and English, have lived settled in the same French villages their whole expat life and when they've left for a while they returned to the same spot. I've often been jealous of them for this because I've lived in six departments and eight cities over the ten years I've been there! For me life in France always changes. You'd think I'd be use to it by now. Each time we move my gypsy soul just goes right along, but this time I have to admit there is a little fear and a little reluctance. I'm not buying into the fear part of it and to make it more palatable I've decided to call it an adventure. Besides the fear isn't real fear but more like a roller coaster fear. An adrenaline fear!

Shuffling through my photos on the computer the other night told a little story of just how crazy life has been this past year. It all began in Haute-Savoie, France at home with birthday pictures of Seb, then next was Florida's palms, then Mexico's mountains spilled across the screen, back to Florida again pregnant celebrating Little S's third birthday with my family and me looking very whale-like, then back to Mexico very pregnant, then our beautiful baby arrives!!, then on to Normandie with the in laws and lots of relatives for lots of meet ups and then to Haute-Savoie to visit our house and the neighbors with the new baby, then Mexico again with parties and social functions and parks, then Paris again with Eiffel Towers and pyramids and rainy Normandie and then my birthday party with Seb, Dee and the in-laws, then the beautiful turquoise waters of Cancun, and lots of little Mexico trips with sable colored mountains and desert sunsets, and now Florida again, whew! and now soon...Paris. I wanted to make a picture grid showing a photo for each month because it was amazing to browse through these photos and I wanted to share the craziness of it all, but as I was composing it all of it started overwhelming me and I had to stop and just make the picture pile you see above, which in fact feels more fitting with life all scattered about in a mess on the floor. The past year,-- it was all just so much movement and change .

Seb has been standing by in Mexico as movers packed up our life and he's coming here next to to retrieve me and the kids and our cat and a lot of luggage so that we won't be alone on our trip home, which would be impossible. We haven't decided where we'll live yet in Paris but like I said we have a few prospects in mind. It's all part of the fear excitement aspect.

Honestly my biggest fear is how will I travel with all my key possessions that can't be sent in the move? I have in my carry on --all of my valuable jewelry, my laptop, my Ipod, our p&s camera, my new camera + lens, my leather jacket, baby gear including a stroller system and car seat, Seann's coloring books and toy cars, and my cat! Will they even let us on the plane with all of this!?

Once this trip is finished I'll be so relieved and I can go back to living in the moment. But travel with kids, pets and sentimental jewelry is always a little difficult even for the most zen amongst us.

Strangeness

It's another crazy week here in Florida on our little month long visit. My poor mom has had the flu and she's been in bed for nearly two days. Mom is never the type to ever be in bed and I don't think I've ever seen her too ill to wear makeup so it was weird to see her that sick. She's feeling somewhat better now but we were all pretty worried about her and are still kind of worried about her general health. Anyway I have taken over managing the house for now and feel lucky to have been here to help her out and run her to the doctor and fetch things for her. She doesn't know when she's supposed to stop and take a break and recharge her body. Even now when she should be resting she's running around doing things. I think I have to tie her down to the bed to get her to rest.

Seb is in Mexico and the movers are there packing up our life. I'm a little stressed because I can't be there to make sure everything gets put away. I feel completely helpless sitting here in Florida but I know I just have to let it all go. When you don't have any control over something you have to let it go and I guess have to learn to do this. I'll be happy when things are back to normal!

*Milly my calico is at the front door of my parent's house.

Herbie loves Mexico: 6

The owner of this car very sweetly disappeared into a house in a huge hurry and left me plenty of time to molest the scenery and snap a dozen or so photos. She was running as she left the car, running up to a house, and a Mexican who is running is very late let me tell you. Mexicans don't often run to any appointment so I imagine she probably was due there last night or something. Anyway she left me plenty of time and space to shoot my Herbie photo of the day. She also blessed me with a Mexican parking job by leaving a ton of space at either end, and that left me with no need to crop out an ugly Nissan or a big ugly pickup truck. Thank you late person.

So this is possibly my last picture. Herbie is nearly done and so are we. We leave in one week for the our month long visit stateside and we must say our goodbyes to beautiful Mexico on Thursday evening as we board our flight to Mexico City.

Ahh, what's beautiful about Mexico? I'm so glad you asked. ...

It is a million things, but mostly it is the colors. It's a blue sky, a pink house a black dog, the crimson colored bougainvillea that are everywhere. It's a brown desert hillside contrasted against the bluest sky you'll ever see and it's the rich green of palm fronds and the turquoise of the Carribean. It's the diversity! Not just in the scenery but in the people, amazing diversity in both that will throw all of your prejudices about Mexico being third world or backwards out the window. We heard this from friends and family and sometimes we felt it ourselves. Yes it takes a few visits to dispose of these prejudices, not look over your shoulder for them, but over time Mexico gets under your skin and you see nothing but the beauty. There is a lot of beauty here. Don't miss it and make sure you visit this country at least once in your lifetime.

I'm going to miss this place!

Los problemas?

Little Charlotte turned seven months yesterday and on the very same day she got her US Passport from the consulate in Monterrey. I'm so relieved to be past all this paper collecting and so happy for her to be able to travel to the US. She's a real American now, or at least it feels more official since she has a passport.

Too bad she isn't feeling so well. The poor thing has been vomiting nearly non-stop for the past 24 hours and seems to have the same icky, little bug we all have. Seb delayed his departure by a day so that he could help me out with our plague filled household, and I am so thankful that he was here. Our water was cut off for four days for a few mysterious reasons and I think I will always have fond memories of rinsing baby vomit from my hair with the precious supply of bottled water we were left with. It's amazing how after nearly a year in Mexico these sorts of things like not having water for days on end don't even phase me. Two weeks ago there was a mysterious problem with the gas for five days and we had no hot water or cooking capabilities. "No problem!" I said and just cooked on our campstove and heated water for washing up things. Mexico has definitely taught me not to worry about trivial things. The joke about the country is that the unofficial national motto is "no hay problema" and this may be true from an outsider's perspective. I think it's probably become my motto too over the past year.

We are selling our car today which is kind of sad. We'd have liked to keep it but the logistics are just impossible--continuing the payments without help, carrying the insurance, transport fees, and the idea that we may not even be able to register it in France. It would just be too much to worry about with all the other things we have going on. Oh well, life changes you know and sometimes it's for the better. Still I loved that car for the short time we had it. I'm refusing to go outside while Seb transfers the title because I'm afraid I'll get too sad. Not so much for the car but because it represents the end of our time here. I always have a hard time with endings and I need to learn to see that there are often better things around the corner so it's best to not fight change. I'm still learning this. "No hay problema," right?

Little S is being all weird lately, packing all kinds of things like his trains and his favorite stuffed animals. I don't know where he got this idea of our leaving from because even if we hinted at it we never really explained it to him. The funny thing is he thinks we're moving to Florida because I heard him pack Elmo* and say "we're going to Florida Elmos..." very matter of factly like you know "I hope you're cool with that." So I guess we will let him go on believing this because explaining all the steps involved in our moving is leaving me baffled. How do you explain the difference between a short term expatriation in Mexico, a vacation to Florida and a new home in France? He already calls our house in Mexico "Mexico" because he thinks when we travel to France and say "we're going back to Mexico"that it means specifically our house and not so much the country, because country is such an abstract idea to a three year old. So when we go grocery shopping and return home he spies our house, applauds and says "It's Mexico! yay!" It's cute and we don't really think it's worth correcting him because would he even understand all this crazy stuff? No probably not. I don't want to belittle his capacity for intelligence but I just think he lives in the moment like most kids his age, and hey maybe we are doing a little of the same thing too right now, and to that I say wholeheartedly "no problem."

*yes Elmo is still with us.

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.

The routine

The weather here has suddenly turned fom mild to downright hot and we would normally be able to leave the sliding doors open if we didn´t have the swimming pool to worry about. The original plan was to gate off the back portion of the garden to allow us access without worring about the pool but the expense of doing that seems frivilous with our leaving in two months. I just hope it doesn't get much hotter. I am always sweating like a sow anyway because of my breastfeeding hormones and I´m running out of deoderant options as it is.

Life around here suddenly got a little more difficult since Seb left to start his new job in Paris. We were a little sad all weekend knowing that this is the start of what will be a lot of time apart. The plan is that he will come back every three weeks for a small week until the month of July when we will leave for good. It´s going to be a long two months but at least Little S will get to finish school and we won´t have to move so quickly. This also gives us time to do Charlotte´s American birth declaration and passport which takes about three weeks from the date you apply. She can´t enter the US without this so it would mean I couldn´t take her on vacation this Summer to meet everyone. So once again I'm destined to be the single mother.

In order to survive I have divided my days into little parts. Here is my daily routine --the morning after S is at school it´s all about breastfeeding and getting Charlotte down for her 10-11 o´clock nap , which is a chore let me tell you--she needs to be held until she drifts off, then there is house cleaning which isn't so difficult with only us three here, then it´s time to pick up Little S at school and eat lunch. After lunch it´s play time for him while I take care of cleaning up lunch dishes and finishing off the laundry and by then it´s our craft time which we do for an hour or more. At four o´clock I´ve started this new thing where we go to the big park for an hour and he can invite a little friend if he likes. Many of the moms don´t want to go out because of the heat (which is not really all that bad...it´s in the 80´s here) so we´ve been going alone and Little S has been making lots of little Mexican friends! Then we come home at 5:30 for the six o´clock bath and hop into pjs and then it´s dinnertime. After dinner we often continue our craft and drawing time together but he can watch a little tv if he likes. I have been trying to steer him away from tv more and more which is great, but I do need a break from time to time so I let him watch a half an hour dvd or one Discovery Kids program as long as it isn´t Barney in which case I will not be relaxed but annoyed. Then it´s story time in his room for 30 minutes and then bed by eight o´clock. Once he´s in bed I can breastfeed Charlotte for the hour she takes to fall asleep in my arms while I check my mail and read a few blogs, then both are in bed, whew--mission accomplished! Once they´re in bed I can sew or maybe have my tv time on the internet which is either an episode of ANTM* (my superficial vice) or American Haunting which I am totally addicted to but can definitely not watch while Seb is away lest I hear growling coming from the back bedroom. This show scares the crap out of me. A lot of good Seb would do in this case though because the husbands on this show always tell the wife they are overreacting to the demons throwing teacups across the room.

And so there is our day. I hope my little routine gets us through the two months and serves as a distraction. I only wish I had another adult around to talk to.


*America´s Next Top Model

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.

Hope

We´re back, tired and rundown from our two day drive home. We had an amazing time. We stopped a few times along the Mayan route and saw the pyramid and ruins of Chichen Itzá. It was so amazing and beautiful. We were in awe.

I loved the drive so much because for the first time we actually experienced Mexico. We saw the beauty, the craziness, the funny side and of course the sad poverty. It was the poverty that shocked us the most. How can the country allow this to continue? We were sad and angry for the people who have to live subordinate to a government so corrupt. It´s a disgrace to the people of Mexico that their people are forced to live like this. It made us realize how truly spoiled we are, French and Americans living with whatever we want or need an arm´s reach away.

We got ticketed for not having an "emissions inspection paper" in Mexico City. We weren´t even sure what this was but since our car is new and all the papers were done by the dealership we were sure if we didn´t have it then it probably wasn´t necessary. It was just the usual ploy. The cop said the fine was 500 dollars and our car would be impounded until we paid it. We were nervous like you get in these confrontations but we know how it works. We stayed polite and Seb slid him the minimum we had in change, a 20 dollar US bill I had tucked in my international wallet. He groaned shaking his head, "no ...5000 pesos!" But he finally accepted our little tip when we added a bit more and then he let us go. This is the third time this has happened to us since being here. All the locals tell us not to support the corruption but when faced with a gruff policeman in a foreign country it´s hard to stand up for your rights, especially when you have your entire family in the car and your language skills are limited.

On the way to Cancun and just before the cop incident Seb´s cell phone rang. It was someone from a company he´d sent his c.v. to in Mexico. They were interested in meeting up with him. We got very excited because it was a chance to stay here--a life ring tossed in our direction! Maybe we could stay longer and not have to move. As a result we spent our vacation full of exciting what-ifs rather than ill tempered resignation. So far nothing has panned out but the call itself was a blessing because it filled us with some much needed hope and happiness and let us truly enjoy our vacation.

What happens when you leave

Yesterday was the day where we met with moving company A, the first in a list of three movers from different companies who will come to bid on the move. They come with pad and pen, inspect our stuff, evaluate the size of the portion of the container we will need to cross the Atlantic and tell us a little about how it will all work. We kind of know how it will all work because of course having been only a few short months ago that we got here we have a very good reference and could practically tell mover guy A what we could expect.

Quite a few things will have to be sold because of the change in voltage from 110 to 220 volts, and even those things I thought we could run on adapters (my sewing machine) won´t work quite right according to mr. engineer husband because the Hz are not the same and the adapter will regulate the current fine but not the Hz--affecting the motor´s speed. So all of our fun, new kitchen appliances will have to be sold for at least half the price we paid for them. And to top it off we bought really nice things because we had gone so long with duct-taped appliances that we were seduced by the pretty, stainless steel "don´t I look great on your countertop" brands and so we spent quite a few pesos more than the average expat probably should have. Even with the sale of all of our appliances we will still have a lot of great new stuff to take back home, a couple of pretty rugs, our sofa set, possibly our tv (Seb isn´t sure if it will convert but he feels about his tv as I do about my sewing machine...love) and some other silly things we´ve collected while here. All of it adds up to a little bit more cubic meters than we left with and mover A estimated the value of all of our stuff at around 120 thousand dollars¨(*). I know it sounds like a lot but if you take a pen and paper and estimate the value of all of your things I think you´d be surprised what it all adds up to. Just think of your dvd and music collection alone! Then start adding up software, computers, kitchen things, beds and armoires, clothes and shoes. It adds up fast. (ed. nope he was wrong!)

Mover A did all his calculations and then said "oh yes, and you do know about the tva and the port exit fees, right?" He explained that since we were leaving before one year there would be a 20 percent tva (tax) on our things and then some sort of 30 percent tax applying to things leaving the ports of Mexico before one year´s time. That´s fifty percent of 120 thousand dollars. Our mouths were on the floor.

Later when Seb talked with moving company A the secretary said that possibly we could "modify" the value of our goods to a more agreeable price. In other words they´d really like the moving contract and they´ll pitch the flexibilty of devaluing our goods to The Company but meanwhile what happens to our stuff if things get hung up in customs because the data doesn´t match? Or what if The Company doesn´t agree to pay this fee, --or decides to chew it out which seems highly likely given past experiences. Seb asked the secretary of the moving company this and she said, "Oh it will be no problem. Don´t worry." but we are a little worried because maybe it will be no problem for anyone else if the stack of cards comes tumbling down, but all the papers have our names on them and it´s our stuff crossing borders.

Somehow I think if customs officials see our flat screen tv, new rugs, our kayaks and all of our baby gear and toys they won´t be buying the modest estimations made by the moving company. Where customs is concerned I think it´s best not to lie. I have often been on the other side of a furrowed-browed señora digging through my luggage at the local airport and she had no qualms about taking my entire suitcase apart at 11:30 pm. The customs agents here are very intimidating and I have no desire to be on the wrong end of them. We´re feeling slightly stuck in the middle again. In fact if I could put a label on this entire expat experience it would be titled just that for a lot of reasons.

It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out.

*Definitely overestimated on the part of the moving company--that´s over 20k for each room in the house! This guy was crazy!

Hotel life

Life in a Paris hotel with two very small kids for two weeks--stealing yogurts from the breakfast buffet each morning for afternoon gouter, filling up a notebook with colorings, staring out at the drizzling rain, watching mindless programming on M6, making a car ramp out of a coffee tray...praying for the weekend to come.

The new season

We are heading back to our Mexican life Saturday morning, be it ever so brief . We will take what is left of it and enjoy ourselves. Seb and I are both happy that we at least got to come for the near year we will have been in Mexico. It's been a fabulous experience and we love the people and the country. Our daughter will grow up with this special attachment to the country because of her birthright and maybe one day she will travel there and discover where she was born.

I've had a very strange week being in mil's house. Maybe it's that feeling of being weighted down from all these dried flowers tacked up on the walls and the little doilies posed on every table.* It was very nice of them to let us stay here so I shouldn't really complain, but it made me feel even more out of sorts being trapped alone in such an abandoned landscape, the winds whistling against the house from the vast field across the way. As if that wasn't enough to put me on edge, I had a few incidents this week where my faith in humanity and common decency were completely rocked. It must be the week for it.

* Eighteen doilies in total. I counted.

Strawbree fields

"Yes of course I'm still alive..." I reminded a friend in an e-mail today--an e-mail full of funny q's and z's because I'm still in France and trying to readjust to the old azerty keyboard. It has been a few weeks of those sort of readjustments as we rediscover home again.

We've been perusing Paris and Seb has been working tons in his Prospective New Position which has somehow sort of just turned into The New Job (TNJ)while we were here. They love him and he's having a good time learning the ropes at TNJ. TNJ is still with The Company, the same one he works for in Mexico, but he's now in a slightly different sector and of course back in France where it seems things are a little saner. He truly likes TNJ and everything there has been wonderful so far these past few weeks. I'm really happy for him because everything has been so difficult these past six months, something I'd love to blab about on the blog (but can't of course). Suffice to say it's something I think few people would have supported as long as he did and it explains a lot of why everything in Mexico has been so difficult. I'm proud of him for holding out so long in the face of everything. I love him so much and it's been hard to see him in such a difficult situation for all this time. I'm really glad it's all over even if it does mean we have to leave our cushy, Mexican lifestyle behind ...boo-hoo.

Paris is well Paris...not much else to say there other than it's pretty and there's always lots to do but it costs a fortune to live in and there is no way we can live directly in the city even though it would be fun and is terribly tempting. We are currently sort of attracted to the far perimeters of the city though and we think we've narrowed things down to one or two villages in the 78 that we can afford and that we like. All we have to do now is check out schools on Wednesday in one of the villages we like to be sure the kids don't all have shaved heads and blackened eyes,--little "rebels without causes." And then we have to see if they have a few boulangeries and a market day. It's okay to live outside the city but I like having access to the essentials à pied in a French town, a big priority for me. Finally it really can't be too country-isolated where we go either because if I have to be referred to as l'americaine (emphasis on "la" meaning the only one) it may be a little too provincial for my tastes.

This last week of our three weeks in France I'm actually staying at mil's house and mil and fil are on vacation in the alps. It's really odd to be here without them but they offered and I jumped at the chance to escape the confines of the hotel with a toddler and baby. I was going mad like a bengal tiger pacing in a zoo cage. It's such a relief to be in a real house. My friend Dee and I (who came up north for my b-day...long story) have had a few laughs over mils drawer organization obsession these past two days. I will definitely have to take a picture or two. It's just not normal to have a junk drawer that organized! By the way we weren't snooping --just hunting for party supplies and so we had to look in all the cupboards of the buffets. Scary stuff.

Charlotte turned four months this week and she is still the worlds most smiley baby (when she isn't crying that is--she's very fifty-fifty in that respect). She is really tired of all this travelling around and so she has been quite cranky lately but still she's a doll ninety percent of the time. Seb and I took her to the nursing home to see his grandparents and we were so popular, or at least little Charlotte was, smiling and laughing at every granny and grandpa she met. It was such a sweet thing seeing these very sad old faces light up with joy when they saw her all dressed from head to toe in red and smiling that goofy grin of hers (she always wears red like Nancy Reagan--similar clothing tastes but not similar politics--or at least we hope not). Little S has taken to calling her Charberry or "Charbree" as he pronounces it. He corrects us every time we say her name and I think it's because of all her strawberry clothes. I guess from his perspective she looks just like a little strawberry or I'm sorry a strawbreeee.

Reveiwing the intinerary

Adios Mexico! gotta love that song...

We're heading out tomorrow for another three week stay in France. Yes I said another. It feels like we just got back from one of those. When I think of all the travelling we've done these past months it boggles my mind. Charlotte will have done two international voyages before she´s four months old (not to mention the two she did while she was in my stomach)! She´s either going to grow up a nomad or a rebel homebody who refuses to ever move again. I always told MY mom I´d be the latter because we moved a lot when I was a kid. Look what happened to me. She still thinks that´s funny.

Anyway, the reason we are going to be gone for so long is because The Company wants Seb in France for some meetings related to the Proabable New Position and they wanted him to come next week then come home and then come back again a week later. Seeing as he didn´t want to abandon us that long (and I´ll kill him if he does that to me again), he worked it out so we could come with and hang out in Paris doing the check out visit thing and strolling around sighteseeing (sightseeing with a toddler and a small baby in the freezing rain ...hahahaha!)

Afterwards we will head to Normandie to see the family for a three or four day stretch and then maybe go and see our house in Haute Savoie for a day or two, (against my better judgement because I honestly don´t want to stir up the I-miss-my-house emotions on top of everything else going on right now--those emotions are pretty fierce). Then we´ll head back to Paris for more Company Business (and presumably more sightseeing for me *sigh*).

Gone for so long our grass will certainly die here in Mexico and the carefully planted trees and plants we invested in will surely suffer. The pool will turn murky again and the bottom will take on a fine layer of black soot. This house requires a lot of maintenance! When I think of what we did, bringing the barren lawn back from the dead it makes me crazy to think we will leave it all to die again. The landlord doesn't care about this house.

And we´ll miss Mexico while we´re gone. Right now I am digging out winter coats for our trip. My sister in law said on the family blog that the children enjoy the videos we post because they like to see the sunshine and they wonder out loud why we´re never in pantalons. I will explain to them when I see them that Mexico is not a place where you have to wear pantalons very much because thewonderful sun is always shining and pantalons are usually opitional. Then I will give them their firey-hot bon bons and as usual their imagination will reel with excitement about this place where tata and tonton live. I´m going to miss that wonderment effect if we move.