Weird week

Some weeks are just not predictable.  Blizzards.  Sick child.  Potential jobs and house loan dramas and, please, somebody stop the world and let me off! 

You see, I'm kind of like Monk in some ways, as I've mentioned before.  I'm still not quite a "go with the flow" kind of gal.  I dream of a world that is orderly and goes as planned.  Preferably with big black arrows telling you which way to go and what choice to make.  Ah, wouldn't it be just great?!

But instead, we got some insane amount of snow and snow drifts that made Tuesday a surreal day.  Four hours of lessons cancelled, trips to and from Juliette's school only to find her teacher couldn't make it in.  Battling whirls of flurries and bitter wind and sidewalks full of white stuff.  As we tried to make our way to the school with the little Tunisian mom in her black veil and her kids in their parkas, we all giggled and marvelled at our strange white world. 

Remi set out to go to the greenhouse, 30 minutes south of us, because the weight of the snow on the glass had broken some panes. Arctic air was filling the greenhouse and hurting the plants so he felt he needed to go and help his parents.  Only the snow drifts were so bad that way he had to abandon his car at one point and walk to a café.  And be pulled by SUVs and a tractor on three separate occasions.  After leaving here around 7 a.m. he came back at 1 p.m., never having reached the greenhouse.

"Hey, where am I gonna sleep?"

He stayed home Wednesday since the roads were still terrible that way and built a mega snow "mouse" with Juliette.  

Meanwhile my colleagues and I carpooled into work not knowing if the highway would still be blocked on the way back.  We saw big trucks and the poor cars stuck in between them at a standstill on the other side of the highway.  The truckers and drivers were standing by their cars talking since there was nothing better to do.  Luckily the highway cleared when it was time for us to go home in the evening.

Then in the wee hours of Thursday morning Juju called out and I felt her burning forehead.  She had a fever so I had to keep her at home.  Four more hours of lessons lost, salesguy not so happy, but what can you do.  My little girl has to come first.  She was a little droopy in the morning but back to her dolls and stuffed animals in the afternoon. After a nice nap, that is...

And in between it all there was a cancelled job interview (due to the weather) and issues with the loan that seem to have been ironed out... we hope.  Sometimes life is just so... confusing. And it can be too much for a non-spontaneous girl to cope with.  Do you think there are night classes on how to deal with life?  Sign me up.













 

"Lazy girl" lives up to her name

Lately I really feel lazy...

Last year when I was in school was quite the opposite.  I never had much time to chill.  Even evenings were usually spent studying or making notecards.  When I finished last June I tried to be very gung ho about writing cover letters and calling companies for lab jobs.  Now the French economy is not doing very well and jobs are hard to come by.  My work teaching English is kind of slow lately due to the school vacation period.  So I'm feeling like I'm in a bit of a holding pattern. 

And I'm starting to wonder if I need to kick things back into gear a bit.  My typical evening nowadays consists of chilling on the couch and checking my smart phone for emails or FB updates (evil technology that prevents me from being efficient!).  Last year I kept telling myself how great it would be to have all this free time again and how much I could get done.  But my motivation to do those tasks seems to have withered.

Like finishing Juliette's baby albums.  I've just recently finished her first year of pictures and still have a hefty pile to put in the album.  Not to mention all the photos I still need to print out that I have stored on the computer!

I could blame it on winter (and I will).  It has been cold and snowy lately and that's not conducive to getting out there and getting things done. Seriously.  As I write this I'm kind of shivery and drinking tea to warm myself up.  Not exactly get-up-and-overhaul-your-life kind of weather.  More like curl-up-and-pet-your-fat-cat kind of weather.

Snowy weather is beautiful but...
you can only take so many brisk walks in sub-freezing temps!

"Let me suck you into my world of naps..."

I am slowly trying to clean and organize things in my apartment in preparation for the move (let's hope).   One day, ONE DAY!, people, my house will resemble the Ikea catalog closet section.  Everything in its place.  We're not there yet but it's a dream.  I feel much cleaner mentally when things are clean.  Too bad the inertia of the couch prevents me from cleaning more. 

I also feel that I'm not physically moving around as much as I should.  I do walk into town sometimes but that's it.  I know I need some kind of aerobic exercise but am somewhat restricted by when Remi gets home.  Or I could use some of those holes in my work schedule to do something. But I've been saying that for about five years now...

This is nowhere near the magnitude of a mid-life crisis (though the big 4-0 is not far off...) but I think if I don't make a change in my lifestyle soon I might get "stuck" this way.

So how do YOU get motivated?

Soggy summer

Greetings from very wet/misty, grey France. July has been a dud in terms of weather. The weather ladies and men keep promising us sun but there is very little of it. Luckily I know I'll be getting plenty of sun and hot (even stifling) temperatures when I go back HOME in a week and a half! Can't wait and I intend to enjoy every minute of my vacation and spending time with family and friends. Sometimes I think I can only truly be myself when I'm back home, though I think I've made progress letting my real personality come out in France (family-in-law aside where I sometimes have to bite my tongue...). Yes, three glorious weeks in the good old US of A. I so need it!

Despite the grey weather, I really have been enjoying myself already these past two weeks since I'm no longer in school. I started back at work and it's going ok. It's weird to speak English all day again as I'd really gotten used to cutting up with my classmates in French. I was a bit hesitant about being a teacher again but I think it's come back to me and I do like the contact with the students. So we could say being back at work is practically like being on vacation already as it's great to chill with my English-speaking coworkers and rediscover my American accent (if you can believe it!). Sure, I do speak English with Juju every day, but not necessarily the way I would with an adult.

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been taking advantage of my freer time to do things like baking and some house cleaning and finishing books I started a year ago. Banana chocolate cake, sugar cookies...I may even try my hand at some cake pops this Saturday for a little birthday bash for Juliette. Thanks to aunt Sunny for sending me the scrumptious recipe book. Anybody out there tried those yet?

And as every time I go back home, I start reflecting a bit on how things will have changed back there and how long I've been away. There are days I feel downright Frenchie in my habits (drinking morning milk out of a bowl and often eating dinner at 8), but don't be fooled, I'm still American in my roots and my general way of thinking.

How about a little list of the American things about me I'll never lose...

1. My love for relaxed sleepwear. Crystal knows what I mean! I don't know if this is strictly American, but while watching 500 Days of Summer the other day, I noticed how the girl was wearing striped pajama bottoms and it just seemed so American. Especially since Remi sometimes doesn't get how cozy this is.

(source: ex.com)

2. The need to say "Dude!" at any time. I don't know if real (current) Americans still say this, but sometimes the need is overwhelming. And I just feel quite myself when I say it.

3. A love of customer service. I may be getting used to frowning or just blasé French customer service. But I just melt when I call a US number and hear a cheery midwestern voice ask me how she can help me.

4. Sarcastic American humor. Even though it gets to me when the teens on Disney shows use it all the time, I think it really is part of our culture to come back with one-liners and jibes. Strangely, this aspect of humor is really hard to translate and most times Remi still isn't sure when I'm joking or really angry.

5. I love me a good burger. Not just McDonald's, but a nice homemade one. I've started a burger night that we observe at least every month. Along with breakfast dinner.

6. An unabashed love of convenience! This is why I love my dryer and wonder how I lived without it for so long in France. I barely ever iron now. Two years now and I still sometimes marvel at my Whirlpool.

Don't know if I've convinced you that I really still am American. Perhaps I'm more of a hybrid now, whether I want to be or not. Expats are probably confronted with this duality all their lives, even if they go back to their home country. Maybe home is just a state of mind anyway.

What makes you typical of your nationality?

Worry, chocolate and sunny days

Worry poisons my existence. I wish it didn't. And I've been wishing that for years. Sometimes I feel it eating away at my like a parasite in my stomach. No amount of fretting satisfies it. It keeps asking for more and more of my attention until I don't feel "right" if I haven't worried sufficiently about something. I read something interesting the other day. That sometimes spending twice as much time (or we could say worry) on something generally only adds 1% of value to the end result. That perfection is unattainable anyway so we should learn when something is "good enough". I'm gonna try and put that in to practice. But in the meantime, any remedies for kicking the worrying habit? Mine lately seems to be an obsessive need to read other people's blogs to see if any of them are experiencing the same life situations as me. It's more than my normal Internet addiction.

And when I'm nervous (or bored or breathing), I eat chocolate. Please tell me I'm not the only one. But the last two days as I took my Dove milk chocolate pieces (just two, thank you very much. Or three, or four.), I started to think the candymakers were mocking me. Because look what the inside wrapper said the last two times:



Didn't they know when they packed that bag that I would be experiencing two gray, foggy, blah days in a row? For the record we are now on day four sans sun. So definitely no basking in the glow for me. We had one gloriously sunny day last week and it was amazing how people just seemed to be in the best of moods. But these types of days are awfully rare in my region of France (the North-Pas de Calais). And I've got the stats to prove it. Lille, the main city in this region, is on the top (or bottom?) three of those cities with the lowest number of hours per year of sun. You can see southern cities like Marseille and Nice have at least a thousand more hours of sun per year compared to my region. This is why so many doctors prefer to set up practice in the south of France. And for the record, my own city in the US is right up there with 2600 or so hours per year (albeit with the humid, stifling heat sometimes). I'm starting to wonder how I've survived this long in my new nearly sunless climate!

I think only the sweet powers of chocolate can console me after learning all this. And if I don't get an appropriate message in the wrapper this time I might have to eat the whole bag.

The buzz is gone, sort of

I thought this time would be different. That I could hold on to the positive attitude I'd come back with after three warm and cozy weeks with my family. And for a few days it seemed to be working. I didn't let things get to me like I used to, pre-vacation. I brushed off the snarky comments from so and so and didn't get peeved at that jerky driver. But the post-vacation buzz went away fast. Those five straight days of grey, rainy weather (so like this region) didn't help matters. I started wondering how I'd ever survived these winter mornings when the sun didn't peak out till 8:15. And those totally inconsiderate drivers. And the messy people in my apartment complex who are too lazy to just take their bulky trash to the recycling center instead of dirtying up our complex. Oh, well, I guess my attitude adjustment wasn't permament but my need for optimism (yes, it is in my vocabulary), has made me try to keep looking on the bright side.

Just as expat-pal Crystal mentioned, this is the period when vacation nostalgia starts kicking in. I put on a shirt we washed in the US and bury my face in the fabric because it smells like US dryer sheets! Or I look at my new Almay eye shadow kit and remember how I picked it out at Target. I proudly tell Juliette that such and such family member gave her that sweater. She's really gotten into it, to the point that she keeps saying "Janie (or other relative) gave you that" even if it's not true at all. Way to go for the big sentence structure though!

Her first day back at the sitter's she apparently jabbered away in English when Tata gave her a new babydoll (her Christmas present). Remi had to translate for the sitter as Juliette went on about "baby bib, baby bottle, baby diaper..." The second or third day I could see her adjusting back into her French mode. So it must be for her to interact with her little French friends and at school. But at home she's been speaking a lot of English.

And so the routine of work and grocery shopping and telling the cat not to eat the raw ground beef from the frying pan (wish that weren't a true story...) is starting again. But why don't we indulge in a little more nostalgia (I'm still in the two-week grace period, right?!) just one more time with a few videos from when we were on the other side...

Here she is singing and talking as we ride around my sister's town:


Did you catch her talking about the green light and that it means "go"?

And here she is sort of dancing (when she's not too self-conscious about the camera) to that so baby-friendly Akon song...

I promise the next post will be non-vacation related!

Shades of grey

Or gray, as you like it. In my family we seem to prefer grey with an "e" because it seems more British and cosmpolitan. But anyway you spell it, the color is still the same. In France the weather forecasters (usually very well-dressed ladies in their fifties) will announce "grisaille" (pronounced greez-ey-ya) or grey weather, in an apologetic way. The word itself is just icky. And that's what we've been experiencing quite a lot these past two weeks. This part of France is rather blessed with greyness. A few sunny days scattered here and there to buoy us up just a little. To remind us what it's like to not have to turn on the lights at 10 a.m. or 3 in the afternoon. Just a patch of blue can be enough to remind us there is life beyond blah-ness.

Ah, as I write this, the sun is peaking through. Today's half and half. Something to be thankful for on this week of Thanksgiving. Even though I know I'm going home in less than a month (!!!), I always miss my fam on Thanksgiving. I just know I'm missing out on coziness and good food. But mom sent me some goodies again so I guess I'll rustle up some stuff to get in the spirit. And truly, I do have so much to be thankful for. As for the weather, I'll just have to try to do as the folks around here do (or at least what they like to say): put the sun in my heart since it's not always in the sky. Good advice no matter where you live.