Restigne Pub Crawl

Restigne's Caves St. Martin

When I used to hang out with the Irish girls back in the olden days in Paris, I discovered the meaning of the words "pub crawl". This basically means going from bar to bar until you're too sloshed to continue.

They don't have pubs in Restigne. So instead they have cave crawls.

After the fouette cook-off last week the men worked a few more hours on our house, and then decided that they needed to go for a drink. Since there is only one decent bar in the area (depending on your standard for "decent", which you would probably have to be lowered quite a bit to consider this particular bar "decent"), and since they had already been there the day before, Bertrand suggested that they go to his cave for some wine.


The individually rented wine cellars at the Caves St. Martin.

Many people have either a natural cave or a man-made cellar on their property. Those who don't, rent spaces in larger caves. Bertrand's is part of the renting group, his cave being part of the collective cellars at Restigne's Caves St. Martin.

There seem to be two types of wine cave in our area. Those that serve only as wine storage, often with a ceiling that is too low to allow one to stand up. In these one sees only rows of bottles in racks along the walls, often with pieces of slate or wood indicating the year or type of wine.



Then there is the drink-in cave. People will build a little bar inside their cave so that they don't even need to go back outside to enjoy the contents of their collection. Bertrand's cave is this type, as is Jean-Pierre's, where the men moved after two hours of drinking chez Bertrand. After another two and a half hours of hard-core wine consumption, the men remembered that they might be expected home for dinner at some point. They called it a night, officially ending the cave crawl at 9:30p.m.


The entrance to Jean-Pierre's cave, complete with copper-topped bar.

In Paris, there is an semi-fictional institution called the "cinq a sept". It means "5p.m. to 7p.m.", which is the time that men visit their mistresses (and women their lovers, of course); a time when they could for all intents and purposes be leaving the office, running an errand on the way home, etc.

I have a feeling that the "cinq a sept" in Restigne is instead spent inside one's buddy's drink-in wine caves, imbibing quantities of Bourgeuil. I'm sure the Restigne wives prefer it to the alternative.

Lying to Children: Part II

Back in September I named my late Grandpa the All Time Champion of Lying to Children.

I think he might have met his match.

I was talking to some friends recently who told me the following story. Their son, who is now an up-and-coming artist, was going through an especially turbulent time in his teens - so much so that his mother sent him to live with his father and step-mom, saying she couldn't handle him. It seemed that the son wasn't coming home at night, and no one knew what he was up to. No amount of groundings or disciplines could make him spill the beans on his nocturnal wanderings.

One day he decided to take an older friend into his confidence, and admitted that at night he would wait until the Paris Metro closed (at midnight) and hide so that he would be locked in. Then, when it was clear that the trains had stopped running, he would jump down onto the tracks and walk back into the tunnels to paint on the walls. He said it made him feel powerful because he was painting where no one else could go.

As all good friends would do, this person went directly to the sixteen-year-old's father and told him the whole thing. Instead of blowing up (and this is where he wins the award), the father somehow got his hands on some SNCF (Metro) stationary, wrote a letter to his son, and sent it to him (at his own house) by registered mail. It read,

"Dear M. ___ ______,

Our security cameras have caught you on several occasions walking through the subway after closing hours and defacing the walls in the tunnels. Because of your age we have not taken any action up to this point. But if our surveillance catches you in the subway after closing hours on any further occasion we will have you thrown into jail.

Sincerely,

M. ___ ______________
Superintendent of Subways
SNCF


Needless to say, the teenager never went into the subways at night again.

And nine years later, he still doesn't know that his dad wrote that letter.

Get a Job

Gaston Cantin, The Quarrier of Lourdines, circa 1930-40

Etienne once suggested that I mention what I do for work on my blog. I've told you about all of the "odd jobs" that I've been doing: including tour guiding at Langeais Castle and teaching at the University of B... But my "real job" is buying paintings in France and selling them in the U.S.

I put "real job" in quotes, because it seems more like a hobby than a job. I make such a small amount of money from it that I am able to pay my gallery bills, pay my assistant in Connecticut, buy some new paintings from time to time and then use any leftover money to pay off the monstrous credit card bill I got from Max's IVF procedure. However, it does allow me to take any number of things (like my trips to NY and Paris) off my taxes as expenses, so I feel that counts for something.

This is how it works: I go to auctions here in France, or visit one or two sources I have in the countryside and buy a painting. I then bring it back to New York on the plane with me (shipping them costs as much as a plane ticket, so why not get a "free" trip to New York?). I drive them up to Connecticut and hang them in one of two antique centers where I rent walls. The staff at the centers takes care of the selling, and Donna, my paid-by-the-hour assistant in Connecticut takes care of labeling, straightening, depositing checks, etc.

This arrangement suits me well because I am a terrible salesperson. I don't know if it's my "southern lady" upbringing or just a missing gene, but I just can't do it. It seems kind of "in bad taste" somehow. Like ads on a blog. (I have avoided them up to now, but just added my "favorite reads" Amazon links because that just seemed like fun and aren't in-your-face ugly.)

So having other people sell things for me would be a perfect situation if it actually worked well. As it goes, it just works ok. I keep my prices low, and sell a painting or two a month.

Most importantly, it allows me to occasionally do what I really like: choosing good paintings and doing research on them. Give me a squiggle of a signature and I can decrypt it, find fair market price and get a good biography in less than an hour. I can spot a nasty, ruined painting and know how good it will look after restoration.

So in a terrible marketing pitch that is straight from the non-salesperson heart of this ex-Birmingham Belle, if you haven't bought all of your Christmas presents yet, have a look at my paintings website. I'll send you a Restigne fireman's calendar with any purchase. And throw in shipping for free.

Home Again, Home Again

Max during the 20 minutes of the 4 hours of train travel that he actually slept.

Because of the tricky child-management problems at J-F and Carol's house we left Pau a day early and hopped a train for Saintes. The photo above shows Max during the 20 minutes out of 4 hours of train travel that he actually slept.

I thought I was being smart by buying 1st class train tickets. I thought "less people and more space", and with the "Enfant Plus" annual subscription that we had bought for 60 euros, the trip on 1st class was still very cheap. (Max travels free, but up to 4 adults traveling with the baby get 1/2 off their tickets.)

However, our co-1st class train travelers were all business people who were either trying to work on their laptops or had obviously just come from a very stressful meeting and needed a nap. They were people who had paid more for their tickets in order to get away from the noise and hustle-and-bustle of the 2nd class "little people".

However, no one had explained this to Max, so we spent a lot of the trip in the no-man's land between the cars with him where his boisterousness bothered no one and where he could spend hours pushing the buttons on the candy vending machine and trying to get into the bathroom so he could stick his hands in the toilet. (He never succeeded, thankfully.)


Another impediment to carefree travel was Max's "lit-parapluie", or fold-up travel bed. Those things look like pure genius, folding up into a suitcase-sized package. But they weigh about 20 pounds. If you notice the enormous duffel bag on the left-hand train seat above, most of that bag holds the lit parapluie. So during the change of train in Bordeaux on the way there and the way back I had that enormous heavy bag and a stroller and Max to get on and off the trains. Luckily people are incredibly helpful in France when they see you have a baby, and I had people offering to hold Max, get the bag on and off the train, inform me that I had left both of our coats back in the 1st class compartment, etc.

Once in Saintes, Paul picked us up at the station and carried everything into the house for us. Max spent the next 24 hours being held by Paul and Nicolas, spending some quality time with his old girlfriend Odette, and being as loud as he wanted. (Their house is stone, so you can't hear anything between the floors.) Needless to say, he was deliriously happy the whole time and didn't cry once.

Southern Sojourn

This is the gorgeous country home of our friends Jean-Francois and Carol where Max and I have been staying since Thursday. It was built in 1806, but the same family have been living in other houses on the property for 300 years. The main house has been restored and now they're starting on the guest house and barn.

So you would think that this beautiful of a setting would be an idyllic weekend getaway. Well, you're wrong. I can't think of many places I would rather hang out with friends, wander through the pastures, walk through the woods looking for mushrooms, or sit in the backyard in the windy warm breeze looking at the purple-hued Pyrenees mountains in the distance. But with children it is pure hell.

Sitting outside after the market - without coats.

When we called to say we were coming, Carol said to me, "The house isn't very child-proofed." "That's fine," I responded thinking that since my friend Hilary, Carol's sister, was bringing her 3-year-old and 1-year-old it would be the perfect kiddie holiday for all of them. That was my first mistake. "The more the merrier" is just not true when there are children in the equation. And since Jean-Francois and Carol did not renovate the house with children in mind, you have to keep an eye on every step they take.


First of all, there were the beautiful large slabs of stone serving as front steps that Max cut his head on during the first hour we were there.

Then there are the Rail-less Stairs of Death that we had to barricade with a bench and some chairs. (Why are kids so obsessed with climbing stairs?)

And finally, being a wooden house, there is no noise insulation. When Max woke up at 6:30 the first morning and the rest of the house got up at 9:00, I spent the first hour an a half with him playing in a downstairs bathroom so that we wouldn't wake the house. Then as soon as it was light outside we walked in the pastures for another hour.

This morning he woke up at 6:15a.m., and the Playing-in-the-Bathroom technique didn't work. The more I tried to keep him quiet the more upset he got and the louder he cried. Finally we went out in the pitch black of pre-dawn morning and sat in a field until 8:00, at which point I noticed lights in the house and we walked back.

View of the Pyrenees from the back field.

The moral of the story: I am going to beg Carol and Jean-Francois for a re-take of the weekend where I come with Laurent and leave Max with the grandparents. How does anyone travel with children?

Goin' South

Max and I are off today to Pau (5 hours on the train...hmm.) Might be out of touch for a day or two, but will try to post from there.

Maternity Clinic Modernization

Wake the children: the maternity clinic where I had Max last year now offers epidurals 24/7!!!

I don't know if you remember my angst about this last year, since epidurals were only offered between 8:00a.m. and 11:00p.m. Apparently the clinic only had one anesthesiologist and she had to sleep at times. (If you had an emergency c-section, they would wake her up to come in.) I was terrified that I would go into labor at 11:05 p.m. and have to give birth without at least the choice of having drugs.

So I was interested to see the above sign on the clinic wall last week when we went for my sonogram. "They must be updating the facility," I thought. As Laurent and I sat in the lounge for an hour waiting for our appointment, I perused a health magazine from the waiting room stack. I kept noticing that the prices of the clothes in it were listed in francs, not euros. I finally looked at the front of the magazine and saw it was published in 1997. My confidence in the clinic's modernization program dropped back down a notch.


Once we got into the sonogram room, I started noticing things like the water-stains on the ceilings, the scratched and peeling 1980s wall paper and the white garden furniture that was being used as the technician's desk and chair.



I never noticed these things last time because I didn't think I had a choice of where I went, this clinic being supposedly the best place in the region to have your baby. It was only after Max was born, when my aunt from Idaho visited the clinic, that I started suspecting things were not as good as they should be. "That place looks like it should have been in some Eastern-bloc country under Soviet occupation," was her judgment.

When I told her I was pregnant this time she said, "Please promise me that you won't go back to that clinic." She wasn't just referring to the decor. There was the fact that there were a couple of botch-ups during delivery. (Luckily none affecting Max.) And then the fact that none of the nurses or midwives could answer any questions about breastfeeding. And also that the only position and location allowed for birthing was Flat-on-Your-Back-in-an-Operating-Room.

I have to return to the clinic for my prenatal check-ups since my ObGyn's office is based there. But after month six I can schedule the birth at another facility: there are two hospitals within 45 minutes' drive. In any case, I promised Auntie Kay, so I better start looking around soon.

More Craziness from Across the Pond

Let's say you're on an airplane, reading a novel and waiting for take-off when this handsome guy above sits down next to you and buckles his safety-belt. "Hi," you say politely, and go back to your book. He nods and smiles. During the meal he starts chatting with you, and somehow the conversation turns to women's reproductive rights. (Not on your initiative.)

He says he is against abortion. You politely say, "I know it's a very sensitive topic in America," and turn back to your book. He continues, "Not only that, but I'm for abstinence before marriage." "OK," you say, suddenly wondering when the drink tray is going to arrive.

"And birth control should be avoided at all costs, even by married women. I think that if you use any form of birth control you are going against the will of God." "What god would that be?" you wonder. "Must be that one they worship over at the Church of St. Stepford."

"Are you a preacher?" you ask. "No, I'm a doctor. And I give speeches at abstinence conferences all over the States. I'm kind of famous for writing about how if you have more than one sexual partner in your life your neurological capacity to experience loving relationships is diminished." He sits there and looks proud of himself. "Good thing you're too cuckoo for anyone to take seriously," you think to yourself, as you pretend to go to the bathroom in order to ask the stewardess if you can change seats to one that is preferably not next to a crazy person.

But then George W. Bush decides he's tired of traveling first class and moves back to coach and takes your seat next to the weirdo. Within minutes they're chatting about birth control, and Bush likes what the guy has to say so much that he appoints him to oversee a $280 million reproductive-health government program.

"A bad dream", you ask? No, last week Bush appointed Dr. Eric Keroack, your insane airplane-neighbor to be the head of Health and Human Service's Office of Population Affairs, which funds birth control, pregnancy tests and other health services for 5 million poor people annually. That's like appointing the Pope to head up America's birth control program. Except that would be kind of funny and this isn't.

Didn't America tell George two weeks ago that it didn't like the way things were going? Then why appoint someone whose beliefs are so far off the path of normalcy that even my ultra-conservative family members would laugh the guy out of town?

And what's even weirder is that George W. doesn't even believe all of that stuff anyway, so why should he expect other people to live by rules that he doesn't. He started out his political career saying he was for "personal choice" regarding abortion. And one might guess that during the alcohol and drug-fueled days of his youth, he probably significantly diminished his neurological capacity to experience loving relationships.

But to give him a break, I will completely support Bush's new appointee on one condition: if he invites Dr. Keroack to sit down with his daughters, Jenna and Barbara, and give them the "no sex and no birth control talk". That will, by complete coincidence, be the same day he encourages them to sign up for the army and sends them to Iraq.


If you think it's mean of me to post this photo of a wasted Jenna Bush humping a girl's leg at a fraternity party, just know that I have another one that shows her at a college party, passed out on a picnic table, surrounded by beer bottles, wearing only a thong. And I didn't post it. So I'm actually being nice.

Quote of the Week: Nouveau Beaujolais

My mother-in-law told me yesterday that she saw the French food critic Jean-Pierre Coffe on t.v. the other day saying, "We keep hearing about Nouveau Beaujolais tasting like banana or raspberries. When is it going to start tasting like wine?"

How to Make Fouets (by Laurent and the stonemasons)

Make a big fire in the bread-oven. Let it burn all morning.


Order bread dough from the boulangerie, cut into pieces, and roll it out on floured surface.


Around lunchtime, shove pieces of dough into piping hot bread oven.


As soon as you pop them in, watch them rise until they form pockets. Take them out in less than a minute.


Cut the pockets in half and spread the insides with garlic-parsley butter or rillettes.


Sit down and enjoy.


(Oh, and don't forget the wine.)

Commentary (by Amy): I love European men. How many American or British guys do you know who would get together and bake bread? OK, I know these men had been working all morning and were hungry. But still... Sandwiches, Doritos, beer and the Superbowl, maybe, but homemade bread pockets with garlic butter and several bottles of wine amongst a group of straight guys? I think that's illegal in several states.

How to Know When You're a Parent

When Max was first born I didn't know what to say to him. I had read that you are supposed to talk to your baby, but I had no clue what I was supposed to say. Baby-talk made me feel stupid, like Max would overhear it and think I was an idiot. Those days are over. I know I am a parent now, and not just legally and biologically speaking.

This morning Laurent and I actually had a conversation about whether or not we preferred "Mr. Noodle" or "Mr. Noodle's Brother Mr. Noodle".

How do you Spell...Fiasco?

The beautiful campus of B.... University.

I taught my Computer English courses yesterday at the University of B. All I can say to you teachers out there is...respect. My first class was a complete disaster.

When he hired me, I asked the director what level of English the classes had, and he told me that it ran the spectrum of students at a very basic level to people who had lived in English-speaking countries. So I prepared a medium-easy class, starting with very simple computer terms (keyboard, mouse, printer), working up to medium-hard (USB port, ISP, OS, software/hardware) and ending with blog/MySpace/YouTube terms (profile, block user, comments).

When the 8:15 class started, the students filed into the classroom saying, "Bonjour", and I replied, "Hello." I took attendance, introduced myself, and told them what we would be covering in the class and how it would be graded. It finally dawned on me about ten minutes into the class that they hadn't understood a word I had said.

I was just launching into the second page of vocabulary words, covering internet connection terms. “Let’s say you’re at your grandmother’s house with your laptop (point to recently learned word on vocabulary list) and you want to connect to the internet. How do you do it?”

I was, of course, looking for the word, “dial-up”. I would have even accepted “telephone line”. Then I realized that we were stuck back on the word "grandmother". So I started over. “YOU are at the house of la grandmere. You have your portable – your laptop. You want to see your emails. What do you do?” Silence. “Does la grandmere have DSL?” Silence. “Does la grandmere have a telephone?” Deadpan faces. I almost made an attempt at making the creaky dial-up sound, but then realized that as a teacher I was supposed to project at least an iota of dignity. I paused, and then asked the question in French. Everyone snapped into action and started giving me answers. I might as well have been teaching advanced Romanian for all the good my English was doing me.

Things digressed from there. After the basic vocabulary I showed them MySpace, Blogs and YouTube. I took them to some pages I thought they would find interesting. Once we played some videos people seemed more into it. But the 3-page article from the New Yorker about YouTube that I had photocopied for them was a very bad idea. Laurent later suggested that showing an Elmo video might have been a better idea. On the videos there is a computer that sings "Elmo has mail; Elmo has mail", so it wouldn't have been completely off-topic.

After an hour and a half of torture, we had a fifteen minute break, during which I popped a "You've Got Mail" DVD into the computer's DVD drive, and got ready to line up the scenes I had chosen. (I know...I was supposed to use "The Net" instead, but Sandra Bullock's whiny voice bugged me so much that I ended up selling the DVD at the vide-grenier.) The computer spit the DVD back out. I tried again, and nothing.

Let's back up. On Tuesday, I had driven 3 hours to the university and back in order to be sure I had all of the equipment I needed. I connected and reconnected everything with the I.T. guy, and when it turned out that I had not brought a DVD to test, the guy said it didn't matter. He was sure it would work. Why wouldn't it?

Maybe because the computers in the lab did not have DVD-reading software installed.

So during the break, I had to run up to the I.T. room, tell them what was going on, and ad lib in class for 20 minutes while they found a DVD player and brought it down to the room. However, they hadn't been able to find the remote control for it, so I couldn't play it with English subtitles and the sound was so low that no one could hear it. Needless to say, the second half of the class wasn't any better than the first. Most of the guys in the back of the class watched YouTube while the movie played.


My set-up (including 2 computers, a DVD player, a video projector and about a million and a half wires).

I spent my lunch break taking everything over to another computer lab that had been assigned to me for my afternoon class. I tested all of the connections and found that the computers in that room didn't have DVD playing capability either. I went back to I.T. to get the DVD player, and this time they found its remote control. I weeded the more difficult materials out of my stacks of photocopies, and changed the course around as much as possible to be easier. By the time the second group filed into the room, I felt I was ready for anything.

This time I had one guy that spoke English really well, and probably six or seven (out of 25) that understood some of what I was saying. I used French words when it was obvious that no one knew what I was talking about.

This time when we looked at YouTube, I mentioned that Zidane's head-butt during the last World Cup was one of the most-watched videos, and that got most of the guys in the class clicking away. And this time, before starting up the DVD, I went around and turned everyone's monitor off. (I had asked them to do it themselves, but "computers off" repeated ad nauseum didn't seem to have an effect.) Though the sound was still a bit low, we had subtitles in English this time, so everyone was able to follow. After a fill-in-the-blank exercise, where I ended up doing a dramatic reading of sections of the "You've Got Mail" script since the sound was too low and the actors speaking too fast, we were done. Twenty minutes early.

I said, "OK, the class is over a bit early. You can leave now, or those who want to watch some more of the film, feel free to stay." Everyone sat there and stared at me. I said it in French. The classroom emptied in seconds.

Can I Be More Tired? "Ich Don't Think So"*

This should tell you how long I have been up today. I was making photocopies in the university copy-room at sunrise, and the university is an hour and a half drive from my house. (e.g. I've been up since 5:30a.m.)

Have been teaching all day at the University of B…., so too tired to write. But I promise to tell you all about it tomorrow.

In the meantime, I have to go look for my list of “things I definitely don’t want to do with my life” and add “teacher”.

(*Sorry for the obscure Sacha Baron Cohen-playing-Bruno quote in today's title, but since his Borat movie hits French theaters today, I thought it was justifiable.)

Max Goes to the Hospital

Laurent and Max outside Tours's children's hospital.

I don't know if any of you have noticed in my photos, but since he was born Max has always had a little tear going down the left side of his face. (If it's not in the photo, it means I just wiped it off.) He was born with a blocked tear duct. This is common enough in babies, with medical websites quoting anywhere from 6% to 20% of newborns having it. It means that the eye's drainage system is blocked: they can make tears but the tears can't absorb back through the tear duct and go down the baby's face instead.

Example: let's say you watch a DVD of "You've Got Mail". Your eyes fill with tears when it gets to the mushy bit, but you don't actually cry. A few minutes later your eyes are dry. That's because the tears were able to go back in through the tear ducts instead of spilling over onto your hankie.

A lot of babies' blocked tear ducts clear themselves up. Some people recommend massaging the duct. Others say that's an old wives' tale. In Max's case, neither massage (which we tried until he started throwing fits any time anyone got near his eye) nor just waiting it out cleared up the problem. And often he didn't just have tears running down his face - he had a gross wad of mucous in the corner of his eye and sometimes couldn't even open it in the morning.

So last Thursday Laurent, Max and I drove to Tours to the children's hospital where Max had an appointment that I had scheduled three months previously with the ophthalmology department. After we arrived a nurse took a look at his eye, said it looked like a bad case, and said we would go ahead with the duct-clearing procedure.

First came a series of drops to prepare his eye for surgery. A nurse came out to the waiting room to put the drops in every five minutes. I think the first was to clean it, another was to dilate it, another to numb it, etc. After a few rounds of drops, Max had gotten tired of all of the toys in the waiting room and decided he wanted to practice his walking skills in the hallway. Laurent and I took turns following him up and down the corridor. You could see the minute the eye-dilating drops took effect. Max acted like he was stoned, and started giggling and falling down. At least one of us was having fun.


Max plays with the gas mask.

After all of the drops took effect, we went into the doctors office and stripped Max down to his onesie. The nurse let him play with the gas mask for a second, before placing it over his nose and mouth. This was supposed to relax him, but it sent him into a frenzy. The doctor and nurse were both obviously used to this, and wrapping a sheet around his flailing limbs, asked us to hold him still.

Then the doctor stuck this white tube down his tear duct to dilate it for A HUGE WIRE PIPE CLEANER THINGIE that she then stuck all of the way down through his tear duct into his sinuses. We're talking inches of this thing went into his face.

Needless to say, he was struggling. Even though he supposedly wasn't feeling pain, it has got to be alarming to be held still with a mask on and have something moving around in your face. I was holding on to his feet with both hands, while simultaneously crying and turning the other way so I wouldn't see what was going on. Laurent was holding his arms. Both of us were trying to sound calm and talk Max through it. I don't know how Laurent managed to watch the whole thing, but he did. Although the procedure probably lasted all of 4 or 5 minutes, it felt like an hour.

Everyone had told us ahead of time that this was a very minor surgery, really nothing at all. All I can say is that they must never have had to hold their child down during the pipe-cleaning procedure, because it was pretty traumatic for all three of us. In Laurent's words, "c'etait chaud".


Max in sunlight with dilated pupils.

Max was crying pretty hard after it was over (his angry/confused cry), so I dressed him and went into the hallway so that he wouldn't alarm the other children. I carried him up and down the corridor singing his night-time song and hoping it would relax him while Laurent took care of the paperwork.

Have you ever gone to the optician for a glaucoma test, and they give you the little paper sunglasses so you won't have a wreck on the way home from driving with dilated pupils? Well, they should have given us mini-sunglasses for Max's still-dilated eyes because he couldn't open them in the sunlight for at least twenty minutes after we left the hospital. However, thanks to the French medical system the whole thing cost us only 20 euros ($25), so I'm not complaining.

The doctor had said that there was a 70-80% success rate. If it failed and his duct remained blocked, we would have to go in for a real surgery, general anesthetic and all. It has been less than a week, and his eye is now perfect. No goo, no tears, and no more doctors. For a while at least. Knock on wood.

Mystery Meat

I just wanted you all to know that we don't have the monopoly in the States on pre-processed pre-packaged nasty food. Look at what Laurent found at Champion supermarket the other day.

It's an all-in-one Alsatian sauerkraut meal, including two types of sausage and a very fatty meat presented smashed on top of a bed of sauerkraut. I don't know what the white lumps are underneath, but am guessing either potatoes or blobs of cheese.

But not only do you get this hearty meal "for two, ready-to-cook", you get 25% more free!!! Is anyone else feeling queasy, or is it just morning sickness?

Vide Grenier!!

Christiane and I work our stand at the Restigné vide grenier. We were assigned a great spot at the crossroad of the two main streets, which I suspect was thanks to Anita, Max's nourrice, who was on the table-assigning committee. (I'm the one with the yellow shirt and funny hat on.)

"Vide grenier" means "empty attic", and yesterday every able-bodied Restignon converged on the town center bringing treasures from their attic, garage, barn and anywhere else they find saleable junque. I had been preparing for this garage-sale extravaganza for a few weeks, gathering stuff that I had stored at my mother-in-law's for the 8 years Laurent and I were in New York as well as things we found in the farmhouse: old tools, ancient umbrellas, dishes, bottles, tin boxes - anything we didn't like enough to keep.

Jean-Pierre and Christiane shared the table with us, bringing just a few boxes of their own things. Then, having heard that we had reserved a stand, their neighbors turned up unannounced with a box of items and a list of prices they wanted us to charge for their things. Then they left to enjoy the vide grenier.

Native Restignons had to reserve tables ahead of time, but our spaces were free of charge. However, more than half of the stands were food vendors, clothes merchants and antique dealers, who were all charged rents for their spaces.


Main Street, Restigné is mobbed with people who had nothing else to do on a sunny Sunday afternoon. (Freeloading neighbors can be spotted in yellow and red parkas to the left.)



You could find everything from fine antiques to bread to baby clothes to gourds.


This guy was roasting chestnuts the old-fashioned way, singing while he turned the barrel over the fire.



The teenagers all hung out by the bumper cars and test-your-strength punching bag. (There was loud rock music playing in the bumper car stand, which was obviously the signal to the 40-odd adolescents that this was the correct teenage place to hang out.)



Back at our stand...

Almost everything I sold went early in the morning. As Laurent and I tried to unpack the cars we were mobbed by antique dealers with flashlights, who crowded me out of my own trunk as I tried to unpack the boxes. Finally I said, "If you want to look, you have to unload one box each. You, strong-guy, you're first," and I handed him the heaviest box. Everyone laughed and helped me out.

I can't say we made out like bandits, but Laurent's and my take was 200 euros for a bunch of junk (most under 5 euros each), which ain't bad. And more importantly, there is now space to walk around in our garage, and the "grenier" in the Farmhouse is completely "vide".

House Progress: How to Rebuild a 200 Year Old Fireplace

This is the "before" shot when the farmhouse was still up for sale. This room was being used as the kitchen, but now it's going to be the living room / salon. Being the room in which we will probably spend the most time (besides the kitchen), we wanted the fireplace to be the centerpiece of the house.


Step 1: knock all plaster off of walls and tear wood paneling off of fireplace, door and alcove. This uncovers ugly metal bar that supported the ceiling above the alcove. Also, since this door will one day be the "front door" (accessed through an entry atrium), Laurent decided to knock the left wall of the alcove down to make the entryway larger.


Step 2: choose the style of fireplace we wanted to recreate. Our fireplace used to be in the "gothic" style, as they call it in this region, which basically just means massive stones with a mantle supported by curved corbels. Laurent and I looked at several fireplaces for sale at antique dealers', but I finally told Sebastien, our stonemason friend, to base the style on the 300-something-year-old fireplace above that is in one of our "dependences" (the smaller houses on our land we're making into vacation rentals).


Step 3: find big, old stones. You don't want to use new stones for this type of project if you can avoid it, so Laurent bought a big pile of old stones that Sebastien had recovered from a demolished house. They also found some large old stones in one of our fields. Since the corbels have to be enormous, we had to buy these newly cut from a quarry. The stones were then cut to size by Sebastien and his assistant, Paul. Notice the branch-shaped grooves carved in the stones. Once the blocks are placed in their correct spot, cement will be poured down these grooves to secure the stones.


Step 4: The stones are piled on top of eachother following the design Sebastien had drawn.


Meanwhile, the metal bar above the niche is replaced by two wood beams: one covering where the niche was and another stretches across the top of the door. The niche wall is knocked down and the corner replaced with better stones. Notice the crumbling stones above the doorway...


Because Jean-Pierre is going to replace all of them.


Step 5: The stones are almost all in place, and an inspection is done of the inside of the fireplace to make sure there are no blockages or holes inside.


Step 6: Smoke test. Laurent, Jean-Pierre and Paul stand in front of the completed fireplace. They built a fire at the level the floor will be to make sure the smoke goes up the chimney and not into the room. If it did, they would build a stone platform inside of the fireplace, making it taller than the floor and lifting the fire up closer to the chimney.


Et voila! Lined with old bricks and sporting a repaired bread-oven, the fireplace will be completed once the floors are put back in. This project took four men (two of which are skilled stonemasons) about two weeks. And it is built to last at least another couple hundred of years. Anyone for brick-oven pizza?

Postscript: Bringing You Up-to-Date

I see room in this photo for one more person. Don't you?
(Vanity disclaimer: in this photo I had just gone through almost a whole day of labor. In real life I do not have a double chin and D-cup boobs.)

Before we get off this baby subject and back on to la belle vie à Restigné, I will fill you in on what has happened since that fateful pregnancy test.

A week and a half later, I sat down across a massive oak desk from my ObGyn and was silent while she flipped through my file. “So, is this just a regular check-up?” she asked. “No, I’m pregnant,” I replied. She looked up at me quizzically and then looked back down at my file. “You had your last one by IVF?” “Yes,” I said. “You’re going to be f***** years old next March?” “Yes,” I affirmed. She looked up at me again and said, “Well, congratulations!”

“The thing is,” I said, leaning in to her, “I’ve been having symptoms for a while, but since I didn’t think I could get pregnant, I kept explaining them away, so I guess it’s possible that I’m more than a month pregnant.” “Well, let’s check it out,” she said, and directed me to the changing room.

As I left my clothes in the tiny dressing room and walked butt-naked to The Chair (French doctors find the notion of giving out paper gowns ridiculous), she got out all of the usual scary-looking instruments and started prodding around. Then, as she turned on the ultrasound machine and I looked to the t.v. monitor on my right, a full-fledged baby came up on the screen. Not a little round indecipherable thing like the 1-month-old Max that I had seen on the monitor after IVF. This baby had arms and legs that were kicking around.

“Looks like it’s at least two months along,” she said, and got out a little pocket calculator and, based on the date of the fake period and when I guessed the last real one had been, said, “Yep, a bit over ten weeks. Congratulations – you’ve passed the danger point already.” As I did during all of Max’s ultrasounds, I leaned my head back on The Chair and cried at the wonder of it all.

Once I was clothed and seated back across the oak desk from my doctor, she said, “So are you happy?” This made me wonder exactly what expression my face must have been showing. “Yes, I’m happy. I just don’t think we would have decided to have one right after the other if we had been planning it.” “Then it’s a good thing that you weren’t planning,” she said, tapping her pen on her desk. “If you had waited a year or two this might have never happened.” I closed my eyes and tried to hold the tears back.

She continued. "18% of women who have had IVF can have a 'natural conception' afterwards. But the number for women under 27 having 'natural conception' after IVF is 37%, so at f***** that brings your chances down to less than 10%. You should consider yourself lucky!

It was when she started writing up a prescriptions for blood tests that I remembered my list of questions. I said nervously, “I have a few questions to ask you.” “Yes?” she replied. “Well, I went on this trip to New York a few weeks ago and drank a bit when I was out with my friends.” “What’s done is done,” she said. “And ate mussels and sushi and steak tartar,” “That’s ok”, she said, looking back down at my chart. “And dyed my hair. And took sleeping pills.”

She looked at me steadily. “Anything else?” she asked. I thought for a minute. “Not anything I can think of at the moment, but I’m sure there’s more.” “You’re fine. Just don’t worry about a thing, stop taking sleeping pills and drinking and start eating right.” I breathed a sigh of relief, but still wondered in my mind if my baby was going to come into the world with a strange predisposition for gin gimlets and Ambien.

So now we’re up to date. I am twelve weeks pregnant, no longer nauseous, but still so tired that I feel like the walking dead. My due date is May 19, American, and somewhere around May 30, French. (Max followed the French schedule, then added a few days.)

Laurent and I have moved from shock to fear to happiness. And then back to fear. Let’s just say we do a lot of flip-flopping.

But even though life in the countryside is isolated and oftentimes lonely (why do you think I've been traveling so much?) and we still don't know quite what we're doing here, I know that Restigné is a good place to base our rapidly expanding family. Plus the mayor is going to love us. We're going to be bringing her population up to a whopping 1247.

Last Installment: Shock and Awe

So you just got a sneak preview of what might one day turn out to be a book, knock on wood.

One of the reasons I told you this part of the story was to explain to you just how special Max is to us, and just how big the leap was when we moved to France to start our family.

When I first wrote them, Laurent couldn’t even read those passages. He started to, and then said it was too painful to be reminded of that period of our lives. This led on to a discussion on whether we would ever go the fertility treatment route again, and we both decided the answer was “no”. It was too hard on our relationship, and I don’t think I could stand months and months of feeling like a crazy person again.

We talked about adoption, which is a long and complicated process anywhere, France being no exception. Finally we decided that it might be nice for Max to have a brother or sister one day, so when we finished the house and one of us had something slightly resembling respectable employment, we might start looking into it. A few years from now.

Now (FINALLY) without further ado, I will show you something I wrote for all of you last month. This is my REAL reason for leaking this particular section of my book…

Hello Chitlins and Camembert readers. I am writing this for you on October 28, and will hopefully be able to post it within the next few weeks.

Last Thursday I was at my friend Mags’s house in Tours. She offered me something to eat. “I couldn’t eat a thing, this sinus infection is making me so nauseous,” I told her. “What do you mean?” she asked. “That gross post-nasal drip stuff always gives me a sick stomach,” I replied. Mags looked at me suspiciously. “Are you sure you aren’t pregnant?”

Mags knew what we went through to have Max, so I just laughed and said, “Yeah, right. " I thought for a moment, calculating. "Even if it were possible, I was in New York at the magic moment, so there’s no way.”

But then in the car on the way back to Restigné I started thinking, “When WAS my last period?” Doing a mental calculation, and then taking a few glances at my Palm Pilot, I figured that it was about six weeks before. And then I remembered that it hadn’t been a normal one – we’re talking extremely minimal. (My apologies for TMI “too much information" to any queasy boy-readers out there. You can keep reading - the bad part's over.)

I stopped by the Restigné pharmacy on the way home and picked up a pregnancy test. In the back of my mind, however, I knew that a pregnancy was not possible in our case without major medical intervention. So when I arrived home to find Laurent eating lunch, I said, “I don’t want to worry you, but I think there’s something wrong with me. I haven’t had my period in six weeks, and the last one was really weird. Maybe things didn’t ‘settle’ correctly after Max was born. I’ll call my gynie for an appointment, but I’m going to take a pregnancy test first just to make sure it’s not that.”

Laurent gave me the same, “Yeah, right,” response I have given Mags that morning, and gave me a little hug. “If it’s positive, you be sure to call me,” he said winking. “If it’s positive, I will come to the construction site and tell you myself,” I said, and didn’t think any more about it until a couple of hours later, when I finally sat down to take the test.

Within 2 seconds I had two blue lines. I have never seen two blue lines in my life, even though I took so many tests in my 20s and 30s that I should have bought stock in the pregnancy test industry and become a wealthy woman. I was so shocked that I sat frozen on the toilet for a full five minutes, turning the test around in my hands to make sure I was seeing it right.

Then I got up. I couldn’t feel my hands or face – they were numb from shock. I threw my coat on, got in the car, and drove over to The Farmhouse where Laurent and the stonemasons were hard at work. When Laurent saw me driving up his eyes got as big as dessert plates. “No!” he whispered as I walked up to him. “Yes!” I whispered back, trying to act normal so that Restigné’s stonemasons wouldn’t be the first to hear the news. “But how?” he asked, stunned. “I guess the normal way,” I replied. After standing there gaping and stuttering at each other for a few minutes, I said, “Well, I guess I’ll go home now,” and I did.

Laurent called twice that afternoon. The first time he asked if I was ok and I asked if he was ok, and we both said yes, and he said he would call me back later. The second time he said that he was still in shock, but now he had a smile on his face that wouldn’t go away.

Early Christmas

A note to my family:
No one needs to send me Christmas presents this year. I just got mine.

Installment 4: Shooting Up in the Bathroom

IVF, or in vitro fertilization, is the top rung on the fertility ladder. It cost nearly $10,000 for just one try and involved six weeks of hormone treatments, a minor surgery, and then, if it worked, another six weeks of hormone shots.

Laurent was now so used to giving me the shots that we had become blasé about them. Because they had to be administered within a one hour window every day, we hadn’t dared leave the house for the first few months. Now we began to take more chances. One night we were at a fancy restaurant with friends, when Laurent looked at his watch and gave me a look. “Excuse us, we’ll be right back,” I said to our dinner companions.

“Where should we do it?” Laurent said, looking around the restaurant. Walking outside onto the crowded sidewalk, we spotted a dark alley across the street. We looked at each other. “No way,” I said. “Well, it will have to be the bathroom, then,” Laurent replied. We walked back into the restaurant and made our way to the back of the crowded room. “Wait here,” I said, and walked into the ladies’ bathroom. “It’s empty,” I called, and Laurent and I locked ourselves into the handicapped stall.

I got the needle and vial out of my purse, and Laurent filled the syringe and daubed my stomach with rubbing alcohol. “Ow!” I said with a muffled squeal, holding my hand over my mouth as Laurent jabbed me. “God, it hurts so much worse standing up!” I blurted out.

It was then that I noticed a pair of high heel shoes through the crack of the stall door. They had been silently hesitating just outside our stall, but now turned around and left the bathroom quickly. “Oh my god, she must think… Holy cow, she’s going to report us to the manager!” I squeaked.

“Go, go, go!” I whispered, pushing Laurent out of the door. I waited a couple of seconds and then followed him out to the table. Our friends were silent as we sat down. “What in the world were you doing?” “Fertility shots,” I said, smoothing my rumpled shirt down over my skirt. “Tell that to the lady at the bar!” they laughed.

I looked at the bar to see The Heels, being worn by an extremely sophisticated grey-haired woman. She was leaning over, whispering excitedly into her middle-aged companion’s ear. The man looked back and forth at Laurent and me, and then with a naughty grin on his face, gave me a thumbs-up and winked.

Snow in our Williamsburg, Brooklyn street the day after Max was conceived.

On the day of the surgery it snowed. It was New York City’s first snow of the year. I took that as a good sign. As we rode up Lexington Avenue in a taxi, snowflakes softly dropped onto the windshield and “Bye bye Miss America Pie” came on the radio. I love that song. Another good sign, I reassured myself.

Eight days after two embryos were “transferred” into me from their happy home in the petri dish, I went to the doctor for a blood test. A nurse called me at home a couple of hours later. She had the results: I was pregnant.

I screamed and Laurent came running in and hugged me, and then overwhelmed with emotion he said, “I have to go to work,” and left. I stood there alone, looking around the room in shock. I knew how Laurent felt. In the space of a 30 second phone call, our world had changed forever.

(Continued here!)

Installment 3: (In Which I Turn into an Alcoholic Reality T.V. Addict)

For the next year and a half I underwent five inter-uterine inseminations, known in the baby-making world as IUIs. Each time, Laurent had to give me daily hormone shots in my stomach the two weeks before the procedure took place. To summarize a year and a half of hormonal ups and downs, the shots made me crazy and the negative pregnancy tests made me depressed.

After the first couple of failures, I started getting acupuncture since I heard that sometimes helped. I paid a hefty sum for a feng shui expert to tell me that I needed more earth tones in my bedroom. The doctor said that I needed to relax so I started taking yoga and got cable television. I avoided watching the news, which distressed me, and opted instead for reality t.v. I took up knitting to accompany my t.v. watching. I quit my stressful job, and started doing consulting work from home. Since I never had to leave the house, I wore pajamas round-the-clock.

During the fertility treatments I wasn’t allowed to drink alcohol. So as soon as I got a negative test, I would hit the martinis to dull the pain, until the next non-alcoholic month of treatments started. Laurent and I fought constantly. I felt like Liza Minelli. On crack.

One night Laurent got home and found me crying on the couch. I turned off The Bachelor, put my hundredth scarf down on my knitting bag, and dried my eyes. “I can’t stand it anymore,” I said. “I feel like our lives are on hold, and our futures are at the mercy of my ovaries. Who are not to be trusted. I think we should just go ahead with one round of IVF and plan what we will do if we don’t get pregnant with it.”

We decided that if the IVF worked, we would move to France within the year in order to have the baby there and start our new life from scratch. If it didn’t work, we would take our time tying up our affairs in New York and move to France a year later, perhaps starting the whole fertility process again once we got there.

(Continued here!)

Will Someone Please Vote for Me Tomorrow?

Itty-bitty lunchbox.

Not vote for me as a candidate, of course, but vote in my stead. I know you're not voting for president this time, but at the same time, you kind of are. You're voting for the guys and gals who will be passing the president's ridiculous laws with nothing but a wink and a nod.

Like the "right to torture" law that Bush was trying to pass (did it finally go through?). It's not like I'm against torture in certain cases. If given the opportunity, I would pull Bin Lauden's finger- and toenails out with my teeth. If I was sure it was Bin Lauden.

But lets say you're a German car salesman who unfortunately has the same name as a sought-after terrorist. And you get nabbed by masked men, stripped naked and shackled and flown to Afghanistan on a Boeing jet rented by the CIA. Do you ride first class with a martini in one hand? No, you ride chained to the floor and injected with sedatives. You are then treated to a chauffeured ride in the trunk of a car to a dank cell where you are kept for four months until Condi Rice hears about it and lets you out.

If you were that man, would you vote Republican? What about if your tax dollars paid for that flight? And how about if your tax dollars paid for the crew of that Boeing to go on a two-day all-expense paid vacation to Majorca as a reward for the dirty work they had done? (I'm not joking here, the last two paragraphs are true.)

And I don't have a problem with Hussein hanging for killing over 100,000 people. But did he do it with his own hand? No, he had flunkies carry it out. Just like George W. Bush, who, through his pet-war has killed more than five times that amount of people. As Laurent keeps asking, "Can they try him for his war crimes once he's no longer president?" Yeah, like that's going to happen when he's been dishing out money for the last six years to some of the richest and most powerful men in America.

Bush reminds me of that saying that goes something like "the smaller the zizi the larger the car" (I'm substituting the nicer-sounding French word for the crass English one). I'm sure Laura Bush isn’t telling, but let's assume that a SUV would not be big enough to compensate for a certain lack-of-lunchbox in George's case. To feel better about his manhood he would have to buy a monster truck and smash it against other monster trucks in monster truck rallies. Except he's a multi-millionaire, so instead of a monster truck he gets a country to smash instead.

I think all politicians are corrupt to a greater or lesser extent, or else they would never get further than being the governor of Vermont. But people - wake up! If we're talking morals here, I would rather vote for the party that backed the guy that got a blow-job from an employee than the one who backs a guy personified by lying, greed, power-hungriness, xenophobia, lack of compassion for the poor, murder, torture, hypocrisy, and of course, the worst of all evils, an itty-bitty package.

Installment 2: Fertility and Frequent Flyers

The pregnancy test: you spend your whole life trying to avoid two lines, and then when you finally want to see them you only ever get one.

After six months of one-blue-line-only pregnancy tests, I went to a doctor who had been recommended to us as “the best ObGyn in New York City”. After a brief checkup, Dr. Cassidy told me that Laurent and I needed to go through a series of tests to try to pinpoint potential problems, and gave me a page-long list of specialists to visit.

On the way out of her office, I stopped to pay at the front desk, since I had been told that the doctor did not take insurance. “That will be $300 please,” the accountant said. “$300 for a five minute check-up?” I gulped. “Listen, honey,” she whispered and leaned towards me. “If we’re going to be seeing a lot more of you,” she glanced down at my chart, “which it looks like we will, I suggest that you get a credit card that gives air miles.”

Besides the humiliation involved, Laurent’s tests were easy compared to mine. One procedure was so painful that on the way home I was crying in the car. “What would make you feel better?” Laurent asked. We drove by a billboard for Peter Luger’s, New York’s best steakhouse, which showed a huge, juicy t-bone on a plate. “One of those,” I said, pointing to the sign. “But it’s 4:00 in the afternoon,” Laurent replied. One of New York’s best steaks later and my pain was a distant memory.

We were called back to Dr. Cassidy’s office once all of the test results were in. Sitting in plush leather chairs in front of her mahogany desk, the walls exhibiting expensive-looking contemporary art, I felt like I was in a museum or the office of a Forbes 500 CEO. At least I knew where my $300-a-pop was going. I wondered if my money was tax deductible if it was ending up in the pockets of starving artists.

The doctor launched into an explanation of the tests we had taken and her conclusions from the results. I saw her mouth moving, but what came out sounded like the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons. “From the tests, we can see that wah wah wahhh wahhh wa,” she said. I looked at Laurent, who smiled at me encouragingly and grabbed my hand.

“Since you are over 35 years old trying for your first child, wah wah wahhhh, wha wah wah wahha.” She opened a book and pointed to a diagram of an unidentifiable internal organ. “Although there are no blockages, wah wah wawawa wah wah.” Finally she folded her hands and looked at us, satisfied with her delivery of our fertility verdict. I felt like I was under water. My mouth moved slowly. This meeting could change the course of our lives. “Um, could you please summarize for us? Are we going to be able to have a baby or not?”

“You could possibly have a child on your own, but with the minor problems that these tests show both of you having, it could take years and years of trying. And at 36, you don’t have years and years to try. So I suggest fertility treatments. Here is the name of the clinic that I recommend. I will have your charts sent over to them.”

On the way out of the office I paid with my new Delta Airlines American Express card.

(Continued here!)

Sneak Preview

A few months ago I finally took the plunge and started transforming bits of this blog into a book. I wouldn’t have imagined myself ever launching upon such an endeavor, but a few of you kept encouraging me, including some successful writers. This made me think it might not be a completely ridiculous proposition, so with all of the spare minutes I have (I know – what spare minutes? I’m a mom!) I have been putting something together.

In order for the story to make sense, I had to start it pre-blog and pre-France and add a lot of stuff that I assumed everyone already knew in the beginning, since my first readers were friends and family.

I thought I might run some of that new material by you, little by little over a couple of weeks' time, interspersing them with regular posts. It won’t be in the order it will appear in the book (I’m starting you out mid-way through what is now Chapter 3), and it comes with a warning that I still have no idea what I’m doing and that it is in rough draft format.

Another warning that Laurent wanted me to add is that everything isn’t completely how it happened in real life. However, if I didn’t simplify some parts, the book would be the length of The Brothers Karamazov, and a book that long is just plain scary, especially coming from a first-time author.

“I had to summarize,” I explained when Laurent balked reading a passage where I had him say a few words that never actually came out of his mouth in real life. “But I never said that,” he insisted. I explained that I wasn’t writing a word-for-word re-enactment of the last few years of our lives. He still felt weird, and asked if he could be excused from being my first-draft reader. So there is my “this-story-isn’t-100%-word-for-word-true” disclosure.

The telling will take 4 or 5 days, and I will add photos that probably have some random connection with the part of the story I’m telling you. I’m sure the book won’t have any pictures, but I think it’s more fun to read something online if it is illustrated.

So why am I even showing you this? I have a reason, trust me. And I hope you enjoy. First installment starts……..now.

Installment 1: To Baby or Not to Baby...

My extremely cool Grammy. One of my favorite things about her is how she puts an "x" in black ink through the heads of people in her church directory when they've done something to make her mad. (She's too much of a lady to say anything to their face, of course!)

Laurent and I had avoided discussing the subject of children for years, each going on the assumption that the other wanted them, and that when it was time the topic would come up on its own. One day I was on the phone with my grandmother. “Happy 36^th birthday!” she said. “Holy cow, I’m 36?” I gasped. With Laurent’s and my sixty-plus-hour-per-week New York work schedule, I hadn’t had time to think about my age, much less my birthday.

“You know that singer Madonna? She just had a baby at age 42,” Grammy stated. “Is that right?” I replied warily. “Who knows what she had to do to have it,” she continued. “Doesn’t seem very natural to have a baby after 40, does it?” “That’s because you live in Walla Walla, Washington, Grammy. Here in New York things are different. People wait longer to have children.” “Well, I just thought you should know that Madonna had a baby at 42 years old.” “Thank you Grammy. I love you.” “Me too. Goodbye, dear.”

My mother had died three years earlier. Afterwards, her mother and sister had decided that it was their role to be my internal clock, since mine was obviously defective. It was Grammy’s job to remind me of how old I was, and Auntie Kay’s to reassure me that she was ready to take over her late sister's role of grandma for my future children.

They had been dropping hints for a couple of years, but it wasn’t until Grammy reminded me that I was 36 that I actually considered what they had been saying. Laurent walked into the room. “Hey guess what today is?” I said. “I don’t know. Pizza day?” “No, that was yesterday.” “Mexican takeout?” “I’m not talking about food.” He hesitated. “It’s my birthday!” I said. A look of sheer panic spread across his face. “Don’t worry, I forgot about it too,” I said, consolingly.

“So, I’m 36,” I said. Laurent nodded suspiciously, knowing something was up. “Madonna just had a baby at 42. Don’t you think it seems weird to have a baby after 40?” Laurent sat down next to me on the couch and took my hands in his. “Do you want to have a baby?” he asked. “With you I might consider,” I replied. He looked at me seriously for a moment, and then cracked a smile. “Why not?” he said with that sexy French accent that still made me melt after seven years.

If only getting pregnant had been that easy.

(Continued here!)

Photos from Max's Belated Birthday

We had to wait a few days to hold Max's birthday celebration since Laurent didn't get back from New York until Wednesday. So Thursday night (3 days late) we celebrated Max's first year on earth.

I love this "do a birthday whenever you want" thing, and am going to take full advantage of it until Max is able to identify Oct 30 on a calendar and count the days. Of course, he could go back later and look at the dates on the digital photos and accuse me of being Mommy Dearest, but what the hell...I'll take my chances.

Place: our kitchen
Time: 7:30 p.m. (way too late, as Max conked out about halfway through the cake-eating)
Participants: The Birthday Boy, his dad and mom, Jean-Pierre and Christiane and Ella
Theme: insanely bright colors


Max's carrot-cake birthday cake. No, I did not use Play-Doh to decorate it (Laurent's first thought when he saw it). It is some kind of colored edible stuff that I bought in New York along with the Elmo hats, the polka-dot napkins and plates, and the birthday horns which drove Ella into a frenzy every time we blew them.


Max enjoying the first dose of pure sugar he's ever had. (Max is a cookies- and candy-free baby.) No wonder he didn't sleep well that night: he was on his first sugar-high.


Ella's ready to get into the birthday spirit if it means getting cake leftovers.


Max's loot: lots of fabulous books, toys and clothes. Lucky boy!

Particular thanks to 2 1/2-year-old Mariella who helped her mommy pick out five of her favorite books to order for Max. Also to Great Aunt Jessie for the tiger-print faux cell-phone and Kim and Matt for the cool books and silver animal cutlery set.


Max doing his James Dean imitation, riding on his new battery-run motorcycle (from Jean-Pierre and Christiane) and wearing his birthday shirt from Auntie Kay in Idaho.

I Need Suggestions!

Can anyone think of any internet-related films that I can show my class on November 16?

I was going to show "You've Got Mail", which I haven't watched since its release in '98...until tonight. I cried through the last half of the film. I'm a 2-Kleenex-a-film girl, but didn't remember being made to sob by Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

I've adjusted my blog so that you don't need an account to comment. So fire away!

(If I have no other solution, I'm going to watch it every day for the next two weeks until I'm desensitized.)

T-shirts of the Month

These t-shirts are all a bit less blatant than last time. So you have to dig a bit to find the logo treasure.


I was actually able to identify this strange-looking quote. It is from the song, "Love is a Many Splendored Thing" from the eponymous 1955 film (appropriated by both Frank Sinatra and Barry Manilow and now available as a downloadable ring tone). However, I doubt that the song as presented in the film or as sung by Mssrs Sinatra and Manilow had the two lovers kissing in a high and windy "bin". Also, if your fingers "tauht" my silent heart to "slon", I doubt I would be singing a song about you. (Correct words: "hill", "taught" and "sing" - and yes, you can spot other errors throughout.)


Besides the confusing title, there is no "Fifty" boulevard in Brooklyn.


But the real reason a Brooklynite would slap you if you wore this sweat shirt down, say, Atlantic Avenue, is that even though the shirt is trying to convey Brooklyn's famed coolness, we all know that the area code for the truly trendy is 718. 222 doesn't even exist.


Good vibes for fictif girls.


The Minnesota Twins is a baseball team that is not affiliated with any university, or campus for that matter. (That fact thanks to Wikipedia, since my sports trivia skills are such that my first guess was that the Twins were either a hockey team or Hugh Hefner's new girlfriends.) I don't know where the crown came from: I guess from the 24-year-old girl noted as being golden. However, I do know something they don't: living on campus is actually uncool, and you certainly wouldn't go around advertising it on your shirt.

'Alloween

On Tuesday night I was webcamming with my friend Lisa in New York when I heard the doorbell ring. It was 5:15p.m. - too late for the mail lady, and since my FIL hasn't yet discovered the doorbell, I couldn't imagine who it would be. I signed off with Lisa and went downstairs to find find these trick or treaters standing in my yard.

I have never seen trick-or-treaters in France. When I lived here in the olden days (the early '90s), Halloween wasn't observed. The day after, "La Toussaint" (or "All Saints Day"), is a national holiday, with offices and schools closed for the day. Everyone goes to their family graveyard and puts flowers on the graves. But the night before was certainly not celebrated when I last lived here.

So imagine my amazement when I saw these little girls holding out their pumpkin baskets for candy. I was so surprised that I didn't notice what they said, if they said anything. I know it wasn't "Trick or Treat". I said, "un moment", and ran into the kitchen, looking for anything that resembled candy.

Of course, we didn't have anything. Candy isn't one of our staples since it would be eaten within hours of making its way through our front door. I did have some chocolate cupcakes that I had made on Monday for Max's birthday, awaiting Laurent's return from New York for the real cake. So I wrapped four of these individually in foil, then brought them out to the trick-or-treaters. "These are American," I said. "They're called 'cupcakes'." They repeated, "cupcakes" and gazed at the pink buttercream icing dubiously. "They're chocolate. You'll like them," I said, trying to reassure myself more than them. "Merci," they all chimed, and then left.

It was time to pick up Max from his nourrice's, so I grabbed my purse and headed out the door. Stopping at the pharmacy for some liquid baby-aspirin (Max has a cold again), I noticed that they had a basket of candy sitting on the counter. "It that for Halloween?" I asked. "What?" the pharmacist said. "'Alloween," I repeated, leaving the "H" off this time. "Ah, oui," she said. "Do you want one?" "No thanks," I replied, "but I just had some little girls stop by my house, and hadn't realized that you celebrate it here. Until what time can I expect the children to come for candy?" (I didn't even try the phrase "trick-or-treat".) "Oh, until after dark," she replied. There were a few hours left until sundown.

I pulled up in front of the bakery, thinking they might have some bon-bon type of candies there. Checking my purse before I went in, I noticed I had a total of 30 centimes. Restigne doesn't have an ATM machine. So if I wanted to buy candy, I would have to drive 15 minutes away to Bourgueil, take out money, then find a shop that was still open to buy candy. I had another idea.

I picked Max up from Anita's, and sped back home, dumping him in front of Elmo while I scoured the kitchen for cookie ingredients. I looked in the cupboard in my special ingredient hiding place, and noticed that Laurent had not found my baking chocolate. It was hidden behind the box of oatmeal, which every French person I have ever met thinks is disgusting. Since Laurent usually locates and consumes any form of chocolate hidden in the kitchen while I am asleep at night, this oversight was a complete miracle.

Within 45 minutes I had whipped up a batch of chocolate oatmeal cookies, and had wrapped the first tray two-by-two in wax paper, tying them off with little blue bows. (I didn't have orange or black bows, of course, being totally unprepared.) I put the mini-pumpkin that you saw in my muffin photo on the mailbox to signal that treats could be found within. And I waited.

No one else came, of course. If I hadn't bothered making cookies, I probably would have had droves of trick-or-treaters. I guess I could have handed out squares of baking chocolate.

Sacrilege and Anti-War Warning (Grammy - do not read!)

Members of the IMB (International Missions Board, the missionary arm of the Southern Baptists).

One of my New York friends just wrote me to tell me that she was going to Cuba on vacation. I asked how she had managed to get a visa. She said had gotten a permit to go as a Baptist missionary.

My friend is not Baptist. She is Jewish. And as for the missionary part, knowing her, she is much more likely to have secured the travel permit by sleeping with the missions director than telling him that she was going to Cuba to spread the word of god.

For those of you who don't know this rule - if you are American and want to go on vacation to Cuba, you have to sneak in through either Canada or Mexico by reserving a completely separate plane ticket from either place. And then you have to be really careful not to be caught bringing any merchandise bought in Cuba back into the States. The fines are astronomical, and jail time is a possibility.

So why is it that with a U.S. embargo on tourism to Cuba, Baptist missionaries are allowed to go? Does George Bush think that a little Bible-thumping is going to bring those Commies down?

This reminds me of those people from Texas who went to Iraq as Southern Baptist missionaries just months after Bush invaded. They were killed. Not a big shocker, although sad in a "poor deluded people" way. But it makes you wonder just what was in the mind of our government when they issued special missionary visas for a Muslim country where we were already spreading goodwill with torture, beer and Playboy magazines?

How could anyone even consider, after starting a war with such blatantly contrived reasons, sending missionaries? We capture and jail your leader (not that he doesn't deserve it, but I thought we had a law against that), move our own companies in to make money off of your misfortune, and set up a new infrastructure so that you can have the same form of government we do (since we're #1). AND, by the way, we don't want you to worship your god anymore. Ours is much better, and this way if we kill you, you won't go to hell.

Isn't there a word for this type of behavior? Oh yeah. Colonialism.

[I know I don't usually write about politics, but the American elections are a week away and I can't vote!! So thanks everyone for humoring me. I promise to shut up once they're over. Or maybe not! (evil laughter)]