Sometimes things that don't seem like they're worth the hassle are worth the hassle

Flying to Bath, England with two small children for a 48-hour stay?  That's a ridiculous idea.  Let's do it!

A cool thing happened on the way to Bath.  While waiting for the train to the airport, a woman came up to us and said cheerfully, "Happy Thanksgiving!  Have a good time in England!"  I must have looked confused, or maybe even scared of the magic lady who knew everything, because she quickly added, "Oh, you don't know me but I read your blog." 

I didn't get her name, but whoever you are, nice blog-reading lady, thanks for making my day. (And congratulations -- you rendered Alex speechless which is super hard to do.)  

That encounter made my day for sure, but only until we got to the airport and I was confronted with this: 

Then my day was most irreparably broken

My fear of flying is alive and well.  The smaller the airplane, the greater the fear.  I always swore I'd never get on a prop plane.  But then the airport shuttle pulled up in front of this rickety old pile of bolts -- I swear the Wright brothers themselves had a hand in building this thing -- and the shuttle driver opened the doors.  The phrase, "my blood ran cold" never held much meaning for me until that very second. 

Alex stared out the shuttle window and whispered, "Oh God, please don't let that be our plane."  It wasn't for fear of his own safety;  he just knew there was about to be an ugly altercation in which he was going to have to pry my fingers from the back of the bus seat and drag me towards the plane as I screamed, "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" 

But of course I got on the plane. I calmly climbed the whole three steps it took to get onto the rinky dink little thing.  I was resigned to my fate and hoped my parents would be able to carry on after the crushing blow of losing all of us at once.  But as always, once we were up in the air, cruising along smoothly and drinking apple juice, IT WASN'T A BIG DEAL and I am an idiot.

We were picked up at the Bristol airport by a driver named Paul who looked like a cross between a teddy bear and a hitman.  The winding drive to Bath, through pastures and tiny villages, would have been enjoyable except that Lucien, who is apparently no longer used to cars, started to heave and turn pale green. 

Al grabbed a bag of Cheerios out of my bag and held it up to Lucien's mouth.  I, for reasons I don't understand, yelled, "No, not the Cheerios!" and tried to dump the contents out before our son retched all over them.  Cheerios flew through the air.  It would have been delightfully festive if there hadn't been so much tension in the air about vomit. 

Lucien, thankfully, didn't get sick and returned to his usual loud self as soon as we arrived at New York Family's house.  Paul looked happy we were out of his car.   

And then we were with friends and life was so good.  New York Mom and Dad's home in Bath is very big.  It's like a real house!  Look at this real kitchen!  What do all those thingies do?  I've been cooking with a glorified toaster oven for almost two years now and can't remember.

The Moms stayed in that first night, preparing pies and cranberry sauce and whatnot for the following day.  The Dads went out to a local pub after putting the kids to bed with surprisingly little trouble.  We assumed The Dads were out having a rowdy night but were proven wrong when they came back early and the first question out of their mouths was, "What else did Jane Austen write besides Sense and Sensibility?" It appears The Dads have forgotten how to have fun.

But it was nice to have them back. We had a few drinks and many laughs in the kitchen. Al confessed he cried at the end of Armageddon.  Then Alex made us play a word association game where "Slash" (from Guns-n-Roses) was linked with "interesting hats" and "Richard Gere" was associated with "gerbil."  I realize none of this makes sense to anyone who wasn't there, but if it's any consolation, it didn't make much sense to those of us standing in the room, either.

The next day, Virginia Mom and I stepped out to investigate the cuteness of Bath (verdict: ridiculously cute). We ducked into a few shops and heard English people say adorable things.  A young man turned to his girlfriend and instead of saying something dull like, "I'm hungry. Let's eat," he said, "Darling, I just need a bit of sustenance.  A bit of sustenance really darling, and then I can push on."  Man, that was so cute I almost gave him a big hug from behind.

While the turkey cooked, the men took the kids to a nearby playground.  Several kids returned with injuries.  When we asked what happened, The Dads said things like, "Gosh, we don't know.  I mean, we piled them all on top of each other and shoved 'em down a slide but we really don't know. Kids just get hurt, I guess...."

The mauling of the children by the menfolk continued in the living room:

 

Not even the littlest was spared:

Then there was a lot of food.

 

There ain't just a turkey in the oven.  There's a bun in the oven, too.  whoot whoot!

 

How many dark-haired men wearing glasses does it take to carve a turkey?  Two, I guess.

Virginia Dad's wine looks super heavy

Happy Thanksgiving, Ms. Cokes

It was pointed out by New York Mom later that we were so caught up in making the food bend to our will (some of it was ornery) we forgot to say a darn thing about the point of Thanksgiving to the kids.  As far as the kids knew, we just washed 'em up, slapped some fancy clothes on 'em and made them eat turkey at a small table in the corner.  They had no idea why.  Oops.  

But other than missing the entire point of Thanksgiving, the whole thing really went off without a hitch.  The kids were fantastic.  I mean, sure, Lucien is still Lucien --

-- but he did his best.  He told me later, "Next time I want less princesses and more FIGHTING."

When you're far from family, friends become your family.  We always felt that way living in Seattle because our families were far away.  Now that we're even farther away -- and far from our friends who became our stand-in family -- we've made new friends who have to function as both family and the stand-in for the stand-in friend family.  They have many responsibilities and I must say they're bearing them beautifully. 

We'll miss Paris when we leave.  God, how we'll miss Paris.  But what we'll miss even more are the people.   I hope that wasn't our last time all together with some of our favorites.  Really, guys, it just can't be the last time.

 This is how my posse rolls in Bath

And that's a goddman propeller out the window on the flight home.  Goddammit!

Aerosmith!  Liz Taylor!  Happy Thanksgiving!
MJ

Perfect Party and Rainy Running

This one feels like a long one but that's OK because then I'm going away for a bit and you won't hear from me until next week.  I'm feelin' a lot of photos coming on, too, including a few more crappy ones from the iPhone.  Let's grit our teeth and try to get through.

Saturday was perfection, just the way I like 'em weather-wise.  Blue sky, crisp, clear, cool but not cold.  I left Al with the kids so I could "run a few errands" but I really just wanted to skip through the streets by myself and feel the sunshine on the top of my head.

While twirling through the streets, I passed one of my favorite Saint Germain residents -- a gentleman who always carries a wooden cage with a parrot inside.  The cage door is usually wide open and the man often leans down to kiss the parrot on the beak.  Just an old-fashioned love story between a man and a bird. 

We went to a party Saturday night.  For anyone who's been reading this blog for awhile, you may remember the infamous pirate ship bed story from last Christmas.  "Hilary," the protagonist in that tale, had a birthday this past weekend so her husband threw a party in grand style.

We stopped at this florist on the corner, just down the street from their apartment, to buy some festive flowers.  Their 'hood ain't too shabby, eh? 

It was a great party.  I drank a lot of champagne.  Every single person I talked to was awesome and made me laugh really hard.  I had a conversation with a woman from Mexico who, when she found out I was from Seattle, threw her arms around me and yelled, "I loooove Seattle!"  I was surprised yet pleased, and assured her I, too, love Seattle so she could stop digging her fingernails into my forearms because we were on the same side, and asked her when she was last there.  "Oh, I've never been to Seattle" was her response, "but I loooove Twilight."

I tried to explain Twilight is not, in fact, set in Seattle.  It's set in Forks which is many hours outside Seattle on the Olympic Peninsula.  She didn't care and continued to drunkenly hug me and discuss Team Edward.  I think she thought Edward was my neighbor.  I can't believe I'm talking about Twilight again.

Mexico Mom then declared she's seen all the Twilight movies and only hated the second one.  I laughed and told her I'd recently had a playdate with the director of the second Twilight film.  She wrinkled her nose in disgust and told me to tell him he's horrible.  I will not do that.

Here are some pictures.

This is a crappy picture I took with my iPhone!  No, I will not stop!  I took it to illustrate the doors featured in the pirate ship bed story, the ones the bed was pushed through from the dining room into "Harry"'s room.  I did not get a picture of the bed because Harry was asleep in it and goodness knows all hell breaks loose if you wake up Harry in the middle of the night.  I'd probably have to pretend I was the Tooth Fairy.

Here's me and Australia Mom and New York Mom (trumpet fanfare!New York Mom returns!) being Charlie's Angels with champagne flutes.

I better not show this picture to Lucien because I'm bustin' out the finger gun and he gets in trouble for that around here.  I enjoy being a hypocrite.  

New York Mom and Dad returned to Paris for the party and my goodness, it was good to see them.  We miss them 'round here.  We miss them so much, in fact, we've decided to invade their house in England for Thanksgiving.  They've courageously invited both us and Virginia Family -- even our kids! -- for a cooking and feeding frenzy.  All eleven of us are staying together in their three-bedroom home in Bath. In related news, we may all be nuts.

Here's New York Dad trying to pose for a nice picture while Alex checks his Blackberry.  Welcome to my life, New York Dad.

 They're adorable men but I think we can all agree the clock is the real star in this photo

New York Mom and Virginia Mom.  They, too, are adorable

Sunday dawned rainy and cold.  We were signed up to do the Terry Fox Run that morning but after our night of hardcore partying (sarcasm, home by midnight) plus the weather, we wondered if we could skip it.  We wondered this aloud many times, in mumbly half-asleep voices, still in bed with pillows pressed on top of our heads. Can we skip it?  Please?  Please?

If you don't know Terry Fox, you can brush up on your Canadian hero history with the below ESPN video.  It's pretty sappy, as memorial videos tend to be, so you may roll your eyes but it gives you a good sense of who this incredible young man was. It will also make you feel like a worthless punk who never did anything to help anyone, ever.  It may make you cry a little, too.  It's a very complex video emotion-wise. 

(If you don't have the patience for emotional informational memorial videos, Terry Fox was the young man who tried to run across Canada -- 26 miles every day -- back in 1980 to raise money for cancer research.  And he did it with an artificial leg.)



We totally didn't want to go outside.  The organizer of the run was onto us, though.  He sent an email the previous night along the lines of, "Well, the weather doesn't look too good tomorrow, but weather never stopped Terry so it shouldn't stop us.  He ran through all kinds of weather and HE ONLY HAD ONE LEG plus cancer, you big lazy jackasses!"

He had a point. We pulled on our clothes, grumbled about Terry Fox and wished he'd been more sloth-like and less heroic and less dedicated and less strong.  We wished he'd raised millions for cancer by sitting around watching cartoons and drinking coffee.

There are Terry Fox Run events all over the world.  The small Paris chapter (maybe 100 people?) met at Place du Canada across from des Invalides and ran/walked/rollerbladed/scootered/strollered to the finish line at The Great Canadian pub (the same place where I nearly got killed watching the U.S./Canada gold medal hockey game last year).

Starting line at Place du Canada

We ran past des Invalides

 We ran along the Seine. Virginia Mom!  Badass!

 We ran through tunnels.  That's Al up ahead with Lucien and a Virginia  daughter

(to be honest, I didn't run much; I speed walked because when I run I look like Phoebe Buffay.  If you forgot what that's all about, here's a reminder)

Terry Fox Power! 

Warming up again at The Great Canadian, Coco bellied up to the bar and ate a bunch of croissants:

atta girl

It was a YEAH CANADA day which is just fine by me.  I've got a full canuck and two half-canucks in my little family (or as I refer to them, "my escape plan if it all goes to hell") and I'm happy to honor our much mellower neighbor to the north.  Plus, Terry Fox.  He was very, very special. 

So now I gotta go celebrate Thanksgiving in England.  Our family, Virginia Family and New York Family were together last year for our Macgyver jerry-rigged Thanksgiving in Paris and this year we'll be together for a very Griswold Thanksgiving in England.  It's going to be a zoo.  I can't wait.

Happy Griswold Thanksgiving everybody!
MJ

MJ, paparazzi

You know what's funny?  When you spend your whole week sitting at your computer writing, you end up with nothing to write about your week.  I think that's irony but I've never really been sure what irony is so I can't say for certain.

I like writing but I don't like not having a life.  I must work on achieving some kind of balance.  Otherwise, my blog posts will be more like "I typety-typed on the keyboard and then I drank copious amounts of coffee and then I clickety-clacked on the -- oh sh*t I haven't seen Coco in six hours" instead of the deep well of wisdom they've been in the past.

Due to all the great crap writing I've done recently, I don't really have anything to say today BUT I had to pop in here and show you I didn't let you down -- I got a picture of Hot Thing One and Hot Thing Two at school pick-up today!  This is so great!  Now you'll know exactly what I'm talking about!

There they are!

Let me zoom in so you can feast on the eye candy:

Here are some more:

I think this next one is especially effective:

I don't know what this is

Here's Hot Thing One with his son:

Nice lookin' hand he's got there, eh?

I am worthless.  I am a disappointment.  I know.

MJ

Memory Lane

Oh, blog.  You're like a third child these days.  I don't have the time or energy for you, I keep calling you by the dog's name and I haven't put one thing in your baby book. (yeah, this is a third child looking at YOU on that baby book thing, Jude.)

I've been busy trying to get some other non-blog related writings out into the world.  I've spent countless hours on these other writings and if they ever see the light of day, I will be paid the equivalent of .0001 cents an hour.  It's not a glamorous life, being a wannabe writerly writer. 

I've therefore got little left for you, third child blog.  I realize my last few posts have been rough around the edges, a little abrupt, and have left some people with the mistaken impression my upstairs neighbor is a horrible baby-torturing lady.  She's not at all; she's wonderful and has always been kind and helpful to us.  She just may be a little senile and for some reason she scares the shit out of Coco.

Let this be a lesson to all us bloggers out there -- if you don't spend adequate time and effort on your story-telling, your innocent neighbor may get beaten up in a dark alley. 

Moving on.  For our babysitter-assisted alone time this past weekend, Al and I went back to where we were exactly two years ago.  Two years ago Sunday marked the date Alex and I came to Paris looking for an apartment, six weeks before our actual move.  That first morning, we were jet-lagged and giddy and sitting in an adorable cafe at Place de la Sorbonne.  We were so cute and dumb back then.

 We looked fresh, excited and well-rested.  I don't know these people anymore.

We went back to that cafe on Sunday, even sat at the same table at the window,  to laugh at our old selves and reminisce.  We remembered how punch-drunk we were on that scouting trip, bouncing around like puppy dogs and saying stuff like, "Oh my God, it's going to be SO COOL living here!"  We didn't yet know about intolerable French bureaucracy, nonexistent customer service (we now call it "blame-the-customer service") and the fact you have to FIGHT for EVERYTHING.

No, we were starry-eyed.  We pictured long walks along the Seine, lots of fabulous French friends and a well-behaved child who blended in effortlessly with his French classmates.  For some reason, I also pictured myself mastering stilettos but that's stupid, like I forgot who I was there for a second.

(Paris, calm down, don't get pissed.  Of course it's cool to live here.  We just had no idea how many swear words would be interjected between the really cool parts.)

Back then, Emily was our relocation consultant, our companion on the journey, and was tasked with helping us find an apartment.  Finding an apartment is tough work in Paris.  Only after we'd met people who'd done the search on their own did we realize how lucky we were to have her.

On her direction, we assembled twenty "dossiers" before we arrived.  A dossier is a thick stack of paperwork detailing every cent you have in the entire world that proves your salary is high enough to afford the apartment, and has lots of official letters from employers and the French Consulate.  It functions as your apartment application.  If you like an apartment, you ask the agent if you can leave your dossier with him/her.  He/she usually shrugs and tosses it in a pile with a bazillion others and then you go on your merry way knowing you don't stand a chance in hell.

Alex did lots of stretching in strange places during the apartment search.  

He likes to stay nice-n-limber.

Ha!  Look how baggy his jeans were!  Pre-Frenchie influence.

It's probably a good thing Alex stopped reading my blog long ago

Renting an apartment in Paris is so competitive, and the laws so renter-friendly, that landlords want the absolute best, most trustworthy candidate and usually have a large pool from which to choose.  They want the person with a long history of paying French taxes and lots of money in French bank accounts.  Being foreigners with no French tax paying experience and a freshly opened French bank account with a handful of euros in it, our dossier found itself pathetically at the bottom of most heaps.

But then, we struck gold with this charming little apartment we call home.  I loved it at first glance and couldn't believe it when the rental agent seemed willing to work with us.  We didn't know at the time, but the owner wanted to get it over with quickly.  He made the unheard of decision to take the first people who walked through the door who expressed an interest.

As luck would have it, Emily booked us the first appointment of the day and we were interested. We had to agree to put six months of rent in a special caution bancaire account, an account the landlord could access if we stopped paying the rent, but after that the adorable apartment with the high wood-beamed ceilings in our ideal neighborhood was ours.

This is what it looked like the first day we saw it.  It used to have orange sponge-painted walls but we didn't mind.

In a profound moment of foreshadowing, after signing the lease we walked to the grocery store around the corner, stood in the long line and were eventually bitched out by a crabby cashier.  As we left a bit shaken, I said, "Man, THAT place kinda sucked.  I hope it isn't always like that...."

HEE HEE HA HA HAA hilarious if it wasn't so sad. 

We also encountered our first manifestation at the Eiffel Tower two years ago this week.  If memory serves, they were sheep farmers protesting the rising cost of somethin'-or-other.

We thought it was delightful being caught up in a protest.  And with farm animals!  We would no longer be delighted two years down the road, after being caught up in another couple dozen manifestations involuntarily while loaded down with heavy things and just trying to make it home to rest our weary feet.

Paris, we've been through a lot together the past two years.  We didn't know anything when we first arrived and like most relationships, the delirious starry-eyed phase soon passed.  What was left in its place is a relationship based strongly on love but firmly set in reality.  We love Paris in a different way now than we did when we first arrived -- a very, very different way -- but it's deeper and more real than the silly romanticized stuff of our old tourist dreams.

Two years ago this week.  Love you Paris, you bitch,
MJ

P.S.  I'm trying to get a picture of Hot Thing One or Hot Thing Two at school but so far, it ain't working out.  I will not give up.  I will continue to hold my iPhone at the ready every day until I manage to snag a picture of something besides someone's blurry butt.

I confront, get a job, and fall down

A weird thing just happened.  Our neighbor lady from upstairs, who has always been a very kind neighbor lady, rang our doorbell.  I felt apprehensive as I opened the door because in my experience, unexpected doorbell-ringers rarely bring welcome news.

After exchanging pleasantries, she asked if it was normal for our stroller to be in pieces down in the entryway. I said nope, that was definitely not normal, it's usually folded up in the corner.  She nodded grimly and said indeed, our stroller was in pieces and I should go check it out.  She muttered it had probably been mangled by the construction guys, who were making her very cranky by stomping in and out of the building with muddy boots. 

The neighbor lady offered to sit with Coco for a minute so I could go take a look, and kick some construction man ass if necessary.  I burst out of the elevator screaming like Rambo but stopped short when I saw the stroller nicely folded in the corner, as it always is.  The only "piece" I saw was the sunshade sitting off to one side.

I went back upstairs to tell her everything was fine.  I returned to Coco screaming her head off and the neighbor lady wringing her hands.  Coco doesn't scream her head off for anybody, ever. I now suspect the neighbor lady made up the entire stroller story so she could come into my apartment and poke my baby in the eye.  There's no other explanation, except for the one I can't think of that's probably the right one.

I've been offered a job.  The lady whose apartment we've rented several times for visiting friends and family wants me to help welcome renters to the apartment.  Usually she does the welcoming, but if she's too busy, and the lady she usually asks to do it can't do it, she's going to ask me to do it.  I've become the back-up to the back-up.  I don't know how I can leave France with a clear conscience now, knowing how important I've become to its people.

So if you need to rent a nice studio apartment in Saint Germain, let me know.  If you're lucky and a bunch of other people have better things to do that day, you'll have me and the little old gardienne to welcome you and show you how to work the dishwasher. 

I went to pick up Lucien at school today.  On my way out of the classroom, I waved and said hello to Hot Thing Two.  Then I tripped over a small chair used to prop open the door.  Of course I did.  I squeaked something like, "Oh, there's a chair!" before I grabbed the door and hung on as it swung away from me.  Hot Thing Two asked me if I was OK and I said, "OH, JUST GO AWAY AND LEAVE ME ALONE WITH MY SHAME."

Have a nice day.
MJ

A weekend in crappy iPhone photos

I didn't know how to follow the playdate with Hollywood story so I decided to post some terrible pictures I took with my iPhone over the weekend.

We saw this advertisement on the metro.  It appears to be for a course that helps high school students prepare for their big exams.  The ad says 96% of students progressed and 98% of parents are satisfied.  Alex and I want to know who the 2% of parents are who saw no improvement in their child's test scores but are still satisfied.  They sound like people we want to befriend.

It's blurry from the mirth

I went to pick up Lucien from karate.  He's the youngest in the class by a lot.  He was being yelled at for not sitting still when I walked in but those kinds of things don't bother Lucien.  He continued to bounce around and wave at me while the teacher hollered at him to stop bouncing around and waving.  I cringed and tried to look stern. 

 He's the really short one, standing defiantly towards the left

We went out Saturday night with Alex's Canadian co-worker and her English significant other.  There was a lot of laughter, possibly due to all the imbibing.  Drinks + dinner + more drinks = fun.

We made a bet at dinner that the tiny French lady sitting next to us couldn't finish her huge-by-even-American-standards burger.  When we missed her plate being taken away, Alex leaned over and asked her if she'd really finished it.  This resulted in a good-natured, rowdy conversation between two neighboring tables in a very French restaurant -- this kind of thing doesn't happen so it was a very special night.  

For the record, the tiny French lady finished her huge burger.  Now the rest of us owe Canadian co-worker a lot of money but we're never going to pay up.

 Alex ordered a half-pint of Guinness at the second bar of the evening.  I ordered a full pint of whatever it was.  This made me look more manly than Alex and we all liked that very much.  Look at that pathetic beer.

I didn't feel so good the next morning (the imbibing) but it was free museum Sunday and that's nothing to mess around with.  The weather was crap, cold and rainy, but it didn't matter because for some reason I was in an unquenchably good mood. 

I love spending an afternoon solo with the Loosh.   A wise woman (Virginia Mom) once told me that having two kids makes having one kid feel like having no kids. It's true; when I'm out with just Lucien, it feels as easy as walking around by myself.  Why did I ever think having one kid was hard?  I was such a naive babe. 

I took Lucien to the Musee de l'Orangerie this time.  I love this museum.  It's tiny, perfect for a quick visit with a kid, and houses Monet's Waterlilies. Lucien was a respectful little museum-goer, further proof he's quickly growing up into a seriously decent kid.  He held my hand and whispered that he liked how "Money" used blue.  I nodded enthusiastically because I, too, appreciate Money's color palette. 

If I've managed to instill even a small appreciation of art in this kid by dragging him to museums the first Sunday of every month, I've succeeded as an art-loving parent.  

A guard walked over to shake Lucien's hand.  He said Lucien had been the best behaved kid in the museum all day and he wanted to thank him for being so good. I asked the guard to repeat what he'd said, slowly, because I wanted to savor the moment. 

Loosh did pull out the finger gun in front of the waterlilies but the guard didn't mind.  Since the Hollywood playdate, I haven't been able to get him to holster that thing.

Once outside, Lucien ran through every large rain puddle he could find.  There were a lot because it's been downright nasty around here lately.

Then we stopped to buy some tartelettes.  Lucien's was chocolate and pear.  Mine was apricot and pistachio.  They were as good as they sound and we ate them walking in the rain, which doesn't sound like a good thing but it was:

The walk home took us past Serge Gainsbourg's old house. It's a shrine covered in love graffiti.  I like how it stands out from the other austere buildings on the affluent street and appreciate that Paris doesn't even try to clean the place up. There's probably no point; it would look like this again within days: 

Lucien pulled out the finger gun again but I think Serge would have liked that.

We can't leave Ms. Cokes out of the crappy iPhone picture party.  She still shows no interest whatsoever in walking but she can throw a ball with impressive accuracy and sometimes laughs so hard she knocks herself over.  She's awesome. 

Man, I'm awfully annoyingly chipper today.  Am I feeling all right, you may wonder?  Yep, feeling fine, just feeling happy.  I've fully realized, with horror, that Paris living is going to end within the next few seasons and it's changed my attitude dramatically.  I want to enjoy the rest of our stay. There will still be many days I want to wrestle people to the ground with self-righteous anger but thanks to a handful of great times recently, I'm currently full of love and my snarkiness has been momentarily silenced. 

My attitude change could also be because -- ooh, now that I think about it, this is much more likely -- I've switched entirely to grocery delivery.  I haven't had to fight my way through a grocery store in a very long time and it's done wonders for my mental  health.  That 9 euro delivery charge is worth every centime. 

All you need is a weekend and an iPhone and voila, weird happy blog entry!

You're going to win me over yet, Paris,

MJ