Book News (Made you look!)

Big things are happening with my book SLEEPWALKING, friends. Very big things. I can't tell you yet, but the second that I am allowed, you can be sure that you - loyal chitlins readers - will know.

I have so many things to be thankful for on this American holiday, your support and encouragement being one of them. Merci a tous, and enjoy your turkey!

The Gates of Hell

The front gate and wall the day I first saw the Farmhouse.

One of the few events during our home renovation that really made me cringe was when Laurent and the workers demolished the fifteen-or-so feet of ancient stone wall running from our house to the front gate.

“It was crumbling,” Laurent explained. “Everything’s crumbling,” I argued. “We couldn’t get the cement trucks through the front gate without widening it by knocking down the wall,” he countered. I couldn’t argue with that. But the entryway was one of the property's features I had immediately fallen in love with the day I first visited the house.

So the old stone wall was temporarily replaced by a green metal fence, and the antique iron gate attached by a rope to a wooden post in order to close the yard off from the street. And then a pile of cinderblocks was kind of dumped behind the fence, as if to scream to passersby, “Home Sweet Construction Site.”

Once the cement trucks were no longer an issue, I asked Laurent if rebuilding the wall could be put at the top of the to-do list. He agreed, but it all came down to waiting for Sebastien, the stonemason, who didn’t have time. For a year.

Then all of a sudden, someone got their hands on a cement mixer, so Sebastien, my FIL and Laurent started…Step 1: Digging a long trench along where the wall would go,

Laurent using extremely scientific measurements to decide where the gate will close.

Step 2: laying a metal cage inside the trench, along with some pipes (to run electricity to the Boulangerie in Phase 127 of renovations), and

Step 3: pouring concrete over it.


Then Laurent worked on Step 4, which was to lay the foundation under the gate itself. He bought some old cobblestones from Sebastien’s father (who had gotten them from the Ville de Bourgueil when they paved the town's streets), and laid them in cement, leaving a space in the center for a metal join for the iron gate.


After that, we just had to wait for Sebastien to find some more time to work on the actual wall. Which, one year later, he finally did. (Time means something different out here in Brigadoon…I mean Restigne.)

Phase 2, Year 2: This June the three men began by building a straight wall of cinderblocks,

and then building a joint onto on end to angle the wall inwards for the gate closure.

Then the real masonry work began. Sebastien used a big pile of ancient tufa stone we had bought off a demolition guy…
and went at each one of them with a table saw, carving it down to the right size and shape for the wall. There was so much dust flying around that we had to line the windows and doors of the house with wet towels to prevent it from looking like we had raided the Miami Narc Squad’s evidence room and had a baggy-shaking party. And deeply-tanned Sebastien went home looking like Michael Jackson every day, with dust mask and artificially snow-white skin.

The cut stone was applied to the cinderblocks, using two layers of a very hard stone at the bottom (which will keep the wall from eroding), and topping that with several layers of tufa stone (which is so soft, you can make a scrape in it with your fingernail).

Dig the beer-bottle decoration atop the wall. Thankfully, they didn't cement that into place.

And finally, they rebuilt the pillar on the inner edge: higher, but in the same shape as the old one. (A tube runs up through the middle in case we want to get high-tech later and put a doorbell or gate-release in.)

And there it stood – our new wall - finished except for the fact that we still closed the gate by attaching it with a rope to a wooden post. This on-the-verge-of-being-done state lasted for five months, until last week, when my FIL, another artisan, and Laurent installed a metal piece into the cobblestones, which keeps the gate from swinging outwards, and attached the halves of the gate on either side.

Et voila! Here it is today. Suddenly, the Farmhouse is looking a lot less "construction site" and a lot more "home".

This is What I Have to Deal With

This week and next week I’m giving my students their oral exam. It's in interview format, and is based on three papers they wrote reacting to articles they found, which had to be selected from a list of topics I gave them. The interviews began on Tuesday. Here is a transcript of one:

Me, looking at scribbled worksheet: "So, I see you chose the topic of addiction."

Scruffy-looking 20-year old boy: "Yes, sexual addiction." (Smug grin.)

Me: "Well...that's new. Most people chose drug or internet addiction. But I suppose that counts. Ok, tell me what the article was about."

Scruffy boy: Explains that sexual addiction is considered a treatable disease that can be cured with medicine and therapy.

Me: "Ok, question two: What did you learn from the article?" (Look at his paper and make some spelling corrections as he answers.)

SB: Gives some barely comprehensible response.

Me: "Mmm. Let’s see...Question three: Have you or anyone you know had a personal experience relating to the topic?” (I look on the back of the page for his answer, gasp, and quickly turn the page back over.)

SB: (Huge pothead-style grin.) "What?"

Me: "Um…Your answer seems pretty personal."

SB: "Well, the question asked us to relate personal experiences." (Trying, and failing, to look sincere.)

Me: "Ok." (Turn page back over. Read a little. Turn red. Hide page with my notebook.)

SB: (Showing all of his teeth.) "Go ahead, read it."

Me: (Unable to turn down a dare, let my eyes flit over the answer.) "Wow! Ok." (Can’t stand it any more and turn page over definitively.)

SB: "Don’t you have a question for me?"

Me: "Um, yeah. Is fifteen times a day even physically possible?"

SB: Leans back in his chair and gives me an extremely self-satisfied Look.

Me: Realize that’s the question he’s been waiting for the whole time.

Lulu the Loud

Do you remember me telling you about that rabid badger spirit that used to possess Lucia during her temper tantrums, leaving her (and anyone within a mile radius) flabbergasted as soon as it left? Well the badger’s back. And it’s decided to stay. Permanently.

We’re talking a full-blown possession…Exorcist-style. “Why can’t it be a sweet furry bunny spirit?” Laurent and I say as we watch the animal demon go to work on my previously mild tempered 2 ½-year-old. “ARRRHHHHHH!” she screams back at us at eardrum-bursting volume. Her affinity for screaming her displeasure at decibels that would land us with noise pollution fines if we still lived in New York City has led me to change my theory about Lucia’s future career from prima ballerina to lead singer in a death-metal band.

And do you remember Max’s book, “My Favorite Word ‘No’: How to Use It Effectively in Every Situation”? Lucia has now self-published. Just look it up on Amazon under author name "Lucia The Rabid Badger". It's entitled “Never, Even If Your Life Depends On It, Say ‘Yes’: How to Rule the World With a Two-Letter Word”.


Lucia threw herself on the floor for a rolling screaming fit exactly five times (I captured three for posterity) before deciding that position was too uncomfortable for her princessness. Now she warms up with a bit of foot-stomping, fist-clenching, and face-reddening as she says, “No, NO, NOOO!” and then breaks into banshee-style shrieks. This happens any time anyone speaks to her, looks at her, or otherwise invades her inalienable personal space. And, more often than not, there is no evident reason for the tantrum.


If you want her to do anything without turning into HellBoy, you have to either make it into a song, (for example the lyrically inspired “Peepee in the Potty”) or whisper it to her like you’re telling her a secret (“Hey, Lucia, know what would be really fun? If you went over and sat at the table and ate all of your broccoli. But ssshhh…don’t let Daddy and Max know that I told you this.”) Any other tactic is a lost cause.

Whereas six months ago, just the sight of her beloved Papy walking through our door made her launch into an aria of giggles and kisses, now she shoots him the evil eye and refuses to kiss him. If he asks a second time, she goes over to the animal table, picks up the elephant, and throws it at him. Then starts screaming her displeasure in her best Sid Vicious impersonation until he slinks off somewhere out of earshot.


Lucia can’t be bribed with candy, stickers, games, or (Max’s favorite coercion) a previously-agreed upon number of kisses and tickles in exchange for the requested task. Whereas Max slavered over the stickers he got to slap onto his pottytraining poster, Lucia couldn’t give a shit. Literally.

But unlike Max, who just gets angrier when he’s punished, when Lucia is sent to the corner, the waterworks begin and she tearfully calls out to the other parent – the one not responsible for her humiliation – for a hug. She has to be reassured that we still love her, even though just seconds before that seemed to the very least of her concerns.

It’s hard to tell you much more about her right now, since that part of her personality is dominant about three-quarters of the time. We all kind of tiptoe around the house and stay out of her way in order to avoid tripping her emotional guy wire.

But, delving past the vocal Metallica riffs, I can come up with the following: she is speaking a lot in French, and a bit in English. Her favorite animals on the animal table (besides the projectile-weapon elephant) are the giraffe and the cow. Her doudou (lovie in English?) is a pink rabbit that she treats like it created the earth in less days than God. She refers to the scribbles that she makes at her nanny's house as "mes tableaux" ("my paintings"). And she likes to ride her tricycle in circles around the house butt-naked.

Besides that, if I think really hard and try to forget the irate midget that has usurped my daughter’s place at the dinner table, I recall snippets of our days where her laughter rings out like a bell through the house. And I can bring to mind how her nose crinkles up when she finds something funny, like it has done since she was a baby. And I can unearth from the very, very rare times when she deigns to utter the word, how she pronounces in her tiny, lispy, Cindy Lou Who voice, “Yes, Mommy. Yes.”

Anatomically Correct Toddler

Max drew his first pictures of his mommy and daddy the other day at school. (Before he had just drawn random stick figures who he didn't try to identify.)

He told me that this one was me. I double checked the next day to make sure...and yes, he confirmed - this is maman:

Mommy by Max, age...almost 4

I might take offense that my son thinks I look like a screaming grasshopper with ear-muffs and a crew cut, except for the fact that I'm busy counting my blessings that he didn't portray me with thick green facial hair and a penis that looks like a tail.

Daddy by Max, age...almost 4

(And yes...that is a penis. I asked Max if daddy had a tail and he said, "No. It's for going peepee.")

Max the Maxnificent Update

Max sporting the impromptu haircut his grandma gave him.

“Your son has the character of a pig.” The woman gave me a conspiratorial grin as she spoke the words, as if she expected me to join her in a laugh at the expense of my almost-4-year old son.

I was speaking with Isabelle, Max’s teacher from last year, and my second and only friend in Restigne besides Sabine. Why would this woman be gossiping about my son’s porcine personality with such a friendly smile on her face? A neon sign illuminated in my mind that read “Cultural Misunderstanding Alert”. Which is why I didn’t slap her or break down crying in the middle of the preschool classroom.

I was suddenly transported back thirty-something years to the day when, just months after moving from Idaho to Birmingham, another 2nd grade mother told my mom, “Your daughter Gretchen…she’s such a mess!” Mom cried for around three days, and then after that we didn’t leave the house without having every inch of our bodies scrubbed and sparkling. And then a year later we discovered that “a mess” is Southern-speak for “so cute”.

“This has got to be code for something else,” I thought as I nodded at her, dazed with cultural confusion. Then I went home and called Mags, who told me that “caractere d’un cochon” meant pig-headed. Ok so my son was stubborn. I could deal with that. I couldn’t deal with him snuffling around for truffles in the schoolyard and rolling in his own shit.

Max on his first day back to school, 2nd year of pre-school

So, as an introduction to Max after a writing pause that took up about one-eighth of his life: my son is pig-headed. He is also a wildman. He got kicked out of speech therapy after a mere four sessions because he can’t concentrate on anything for more than a couple of minutes at a time. Which I was thinking was pretty good. His focus used to last only a few seconds. That’s big progress, in my book!

Max is good at focusing, as long as the activity is exciting enough...
like taking pictures of the inside of his nose.

The speech therapist told us to bring him back in March, when she’s hoping he’ll be more mature. But, considering that his mother still has the sense of humor of a fourteen-year old boy and his father has an online gaming addiction even though he’s turning the big four-oh next year (ok, it’s just Scrabble, but still…we’re talking HOURS!), Max might have a bit of a genetic disadvantage in the “growing-up” domain.

Fearless Max leaping into the pool during our group vacation in August.

Max’s favorite word is “caca”, or if he’s feeling particularly eloquent “caca boudin” (poo-sausage). His second favorite word is “peepee”. He seems to feel that these three words comprise a well-rounded vocabulary, and doesn’t really say much else.

That is, unless he’s bugging his sister, who he can’t leave alone for more than ten seconds before he’s calling her. He must have her in his sight at all times, and if she is not paying attention to him he will do something to remedy the situation. Like take away the toy she’s playing with and run far away. Or hit her.

“Then all is well,” you might say. “He’s right on the mark developmentally.” And I would have to agree. Especially as far as Freud would define things. Twice now, Max has climbed into our bed in the morning and told Laurent, “You can leave now. I’m here.” When Laurent was in New York a couple of weeks ago, Max pointed at the mommy and daddy in a picture book and said, “Mommy and big boy.” “Not ‘daddy’?” I questioned him. “Not daddy. Big boy.” Gotcha.

Since we’re not raising our kids in the Christian tradition I was raised in, we’re having to come up with other ways to manipulate his behavior. In situations where my dad would say that I was making Jesus sad, I have substituted The Fireman (firemen being right up there at the top of Max's pyramid of respect, along with Papy and Spiderman). As in, “If you don’t put your seatbelt on, The Fireman is going to cry.” The Fireman also gets upset about littering, pooing in the yard, and throwing things. I hope this doesn’t create some kind of imbalance in my son…like some kind of strange Firefighter fetish or a paralyzing fear of heat-resistant helmets.

Max at the Restigne coiffeur.

The final story I will tell you is one that you will have to promise never to bring up in front of Max if you happen to run across him anytime after say…his thirteenth birthday. He got this weird skin problem called “molluscum contagiosum” a few months ago. It’s kind of like warts, but really contagious, so it had spread from two bumps on his tummy to twenty bumps covering his abdomen and around the other side on his lower back and butt. The dermatologist scooped them individually out with a little metal scooper, but an hour before that, to get them ready, we had to put a cream on each one, put a little square of Saran Wrap over it, and tape it down.

The problem is, one of the bumps was kind of far down in Max’s butt crack. We saved that one for last. And as I laid the plastic wrap down on it, and Laurent applied the tape, Max began to FREAK OUT. “I won’t be able to poo!” he screamed, and then insisted on sitting on the toilet until the moment we left for the doctor’s.

He was convinced we had sealed his poo-hole shut, and that thought made him extremely panicky. It was horribly funny and tragic at the same time. And not funny at all once the doctor got down there and placed a sharp instrument against that super-sensitive skin. But Max made it through in the end. It seemed to help when he found out that The Fireman thought he was very …very… very brave.

Max winning 3rd place in his class at his school's Field Day.

Welcome Back to Restigne, Y'all!

I’m back! Here I am, four months after wrapping my blog up in a few layers of Saran Wrap and sticking it in deep-freeze. Defrosted, refried Chitlins, anyone?

There is so much to say that I don’t know where to start. You've been writing me emails asking about the book, the kids, and the existence of my vital signs, and trying to answer everything at once seems overwhelming. (Actually, just clicking the "Create Post" icon this morning seemed monumental.) So I'm going to break it up into a few separate helpings and serve it up French style - course by course, instead of putting everything including the frozen fruit salad on the same plate, like we did in Alabama.

So Course #1, your hors d'oeuvres... The Writing...the reason I ditched you all for a 7'x10' room in the Boulangerie furnished with a desk and a chair and powered by an extension cord running across the yard from my bedroom window.

Let me start with my twelve-step introduction. Hello, my name is Amy, and I am a blogging junkie. Um, yeah. I had a bit of a withdrawal after leaving you guys high and dry. It took me a couple of months to get over that nagging feeling that I needed to get a post out soon or…or what? My fingers would explode?

Every time a bunch of farmers drove a motorcade of tractors up and down the streets of town pulling a miniature house decorated with vines behind them on a trailer bed and honking their horns like they were in a parade, I ran for my camera so I could show you, only to remember "Oh yeah, I'm on a break."

Long after the fact, here it is. And no, I have no clue what they were doing.

But I soon discovered that with the same amount of time I spent writing the blog I could write a few pages of a short story. And the mental space I used every day thinking, "I wonder how I could tell this on the blog?" was easily repopulated with plots and characters and dialogue.

So I launched into the first thing that came to mind - a short-story that turned out to be extremely dark and creepy and Rosemary’s Baby-ish, and when I finished it I thought, “Where the hell did that come from?” I spent a few days brushing it up in case I ever found anything to do with it (hey Nicolas - want to co-write a horror film?) and just as I was finishing, I came up with another idea.

I spent the next few months writing it into a 315-page young adult novel that I entitled "Sleepwalking". And the hardest part of writing the book was not being able to stop every few pages, show it to a thousand-or-so people, and have a few of them write back within seconds to tell me what they thought about it.

It was another symptom of my blogging junkiehood: the need for immediate feedback. Sound ridiculous? Well, that need to expose what I wrote on an everyday basis was SO STRONG that I had to find an outlet. So every day at lunch, I sat down in front of Laurent and read him what I had written the day before. (I know. Poor Laurent. I'm going to write the Pope and request his canonization: Saint Laurent of the Bleeding Ears. After all of his pain and suffering, he deserves it.)

But the only problem with that solution was that, unless Laurent has knocked back a few glasses of wine, he doesn't talk very much. And, unless the construction guys are here, he doesn't drink at lunchtime. So I had to pull feedback out of him like an particularly intransigent tapeworm. Usually when I was done reading, he would just nod, put his plate in the sink, and go take his after-lunch nap. I finally decided that I needed a better solution than listening to myself read for a half-hour every day. So I enlisted Claudia.

Claudia is married to Bill, a friend I made while working at Sotheby's in a much more glamorous past-life. She is a librarian, loves books at least as much as I do, and also happens to be in love with the same twenty-three year old British actor with whom I am annoyingly and embarrassingly infatuated. (We trade shirtless photos of him over Facebook. It's really sad.)

Claudia agreed to read what I wrote. Fifteen pages. Every day. (Except the week I spent in Nicolas's castle, when, in a productive frenzy I sometimes wrote more than twenty a day.) And she told me what she thought of each and every installment. And, just to prove her mettle, she then offered to read my re-write: three chapters a day. So thanks to Laurent's and Claudia's support, I got through the writing and rewriting of a novel in four months.

Now I'm on the final rewrite, having had a few other people read and give their opinions along the way. The feedback has been good. And I'm glad for that. As for What Comes Next, I have another book idea. I can't begin now - the semester at the university just started and I am up to my neck in lesson plans. So I'll use my writing time to continue catching you up on life in Restigne for the moment...and we shall see how things develop.

All of that to say, today I feel like I'm facing Door #1, Door #2, and Door #3. [Insert Destiny into Monty Hall's shoes and hand her his microphone.] The only problem is that those curtains all take SO DAMN LONG to swing open. Anything could happen. But it won't happen right away - not without more slogging and waiting and uncertainty. The only booby prize would be nothing happening at all. And I'd like to think that it's too late for that.