Falling for fall

Yes, it's that time of year again.  Time for me to blog about fall.  That contradictory season when I'm part-enchanted, part-depressed. 

The enchantment, of course, comes from the colors that never cease to wow me.  That time of year when I can't help but snap pictures of gorgeous trees.  Check. 

Or promise myself to appreciate the beauty of small things (hydrangea flowers and rose hips) and not get down about there being less light in the evening.  Check.

And focus on the fun seasonal things like Halloween to distract me.  Check. 

Here you see a sleeping Juju wearing her princess crown that we prepared for our little Halloween/tea party where she was Rapunzel. 

And enjoying the slighter calmer fall activities like puttering around the greenhouse as Remi prepares for the mum-selling period of All Saints' Day.  Check.

But it wouldn't be me without a little dose of fall blues.  I think this year has been better cause I've been very conscious of how great it is to have time to myself again after last year's studyfest.  But it's biological too.  As my coworker and friend Marine says, we're all beasties after all.  The inner animal in us can't help but be affected by the changing light and decline of the plants around us. 

Something makes us feel like we've got to shut down or at least slow down a bit.  I can't help but get downright nervous about winter and the cold and the potentially grey days ahead of us.  That's why I've got to keep myself busy and find things to warm my soul.

What are your favorite anti-blues fall activities?  What's your favorite season?  

JT dances to JT

Because her initials are JT also, just like...Justin Timberlake.  Better go now 'cause she's just cleared out the space behind the sofa so we can recreate the video!

My life in pictures

Hey everyone.  Somehow I haven't found the time to update my blog in a while.  Work has been busy (which is a good thing).  Still looking for lab jobs while teaching English. But really just happy to have a job and some stability after last year's meager earnings. 

Here are a few of the highlights of the last month...

Remi totally surprised me with an outing to celebrate my ten year anniversary in France.  I thought we were going to visit some friends for lunch but in fact he'd arranged for my good friend Caroline to watch Juliette while he and I went out to lunch (Italian- my favorite).  A very lovely way to celebrate and a touching moment.  Here you see us all together when we joined Caro and Juju in town after lunch.  She was a fabulous babysitter, too!

Another Sunday we visited a war cemetery around here (there are tons) from the First World War.  It so wasn't Juliette's thing but was a nice outing anyway.

She's also mastering writing her first name (though her alphabet kit only had one T and E).

And finally a bit of art I put up in the bedroom  made with some fabric samples and cheap Ikea frames. 

Nothing very extraordinary going on, but after my intense year of studying and stressing, I truly enjoy the down-time and being able to enjoy the little things.

Four is fickle

Nobody tells you that after the Terrible Twos and Troublesome Threes, that four is Far From Finished. Or maybe they did but I wasn't listening because I was too distracted by the challenges of young toddlerhood to worry about what was around the corner. Naively, I thought that once potty-training was finished and pre-school started that things would magically fall into place.

But as my high-school friend and fellow mom, Lauren, says, once you figure out the stage they're in, they change. How true.

Whereas four-year olds are definitely more verbal and can at least tell you what's wrong, more often than not, they don't want to tell you. At least mine doesn't. She'd rather whine and cry and roll up into a ball in her room than come out and say she's sorry for swatting one of us or going postal on us for asking her to eat dinner. I can say "use your words" till I'm blue in the face, but until she decides she wants to get out of her tantrum mode, not much will happen. Or I must trick her into easing back into a good mood by pretending nothing has happened or getting her to help me with a small chore.

All of this would be tough enough without the "outside world" giving me stares and/or unsolicited advice. I'm still a bit at odds with the in-laws and sometimes my husband as to how one should react when a child is screaming because they don't want anymore food. It's been tough lately. Once again (!) I've been reminded of my cultural differences in terms of child-rearing. Luckily I recently met a Canadian expat with two small kids and she's been a great comfort reminding me that I'm not some kind of slimy green alien with radical ideas.

The thing is, four is difficult. They are schizophrenic. They are becoming model citizens with their pleases and thank yous, but they are also primal beings wanting their way. All the time. A year or two shy of the age of reason but past the babbling baby stage when you could just blame their bad behavior on being babies.


And then there are those golden moments when she plays contentedly and tells me hilarious stories. She says funny things all the time and I really should write them down more. She tells me I'm her "snuggle puppy", from a book we like to read. And sings songs about "fascinating" cause it was the word on the day on Sesame Street. And tells me she's shy at school because her "volume isn't working." I can tell she's got a mind that's taking it all in and sometimes she is the sweetest thing. But sometimes she's a devil child.

So, I'll just have to hold tight and enjoy the good moments, like her holding my hand tightly as we walk (when she's willing to hold my hand, and when she's willing to walk...), her snuggles and her silly laughs. I love her despite the tantrums and I know she'll grow out of them (just like I did, right, mom and dad?).

So we'll end on a positive note, with her dancing away to that catchy Shakira song.

Italian food and Swedish dreams

Typical. As I try to get over my post-vacation hump, I find myself baking (to recreate flavors from home) and wanting to decorate (to "cozify" my place to remind me of the comfy décors of my family's places).

On the baking front, I made a recipe I'd tried in the US for calzones. We saw the recipe on a cooking show, Kelsey's Essentials, and as I love Italian food, I wanted to try it out. I simplify the filling recipe though, and you can add other things according to your tastes, like Italian sausage you've sauteed, mushrooms, spinach... In the US I used ready-made pizza dough, two packages. Here I tried an easy pizza dough recipe and rolled it out. Worked out pretty well.

Here you see the calzones ready to go in the oven. I just scooped the ricotta-cheese mixture in the dough and folded it over to get a half-moon shape. Don't forget to put slits in the calzone to let steam escape (Kelsey says so).




And here's the end result, served with some chunky tomato and basil sauce that I bought (chair de tomates). You can also just sautee chopped tomato and onion, etc.


In other baking adventures, I've made zucchini fritters (thanks Crystal), zucchini muffins and another charlotte aux framboises (raspberry and lady fingers dessert with whipped cream ). I guess when you like eating, you like cooking...

As for the decorating part, that's where the Swedish dreams come in. Nothing kinky, I swear. Though in a given day I sometimes think more about Ikea and decorating than my own husband. I've become a bit obsessed with thumbing through the catalog (last year's, haven't yet received next year's) and projecting myself into the cozy interior scenes. And thinking how I can make my place a bit comfier.

When I was in America I realized (again) that we like carpet and rugs. And with good reason. They are soft on your feet. And as we are more often than not on the floor playing with Juliette's toys, it's only logical for us to get a rug. So we did that and are now basking in post-rug-purchase glory. Saying things like, isn't it nice to walk on a rug?! To think I waited nearly four years to get a rug for our living room. Shameful.

Here's Juliette enjoying it with all (and I do mean ALL) her stuffed animals.


Even Catki seems to like it. Maybe he'll start exercising again...


The past two weeks have been a bit odd, with not so much work (and two days free this week since the summer day care was not open and I watched Juliette). But I've been trying to master the transition and remember to enjoy myself in no matter which country I'm in. Thanks for your comments and advice from my last post. Maybe the key to living abroad is not to forget the living part, even the daily living, the little things. They are what grounds us.

My British friend used to say, when you pick a flower, it wilts, as we bemoaned our situations in France and missing our own culture. Artist Mary Engelbreit says, "bloom where you're planted." To do that, you've got to set down roots, which is the hard part.

So I suppose I can love my home country but try to establish a good support system here and a home I consider just that. I'm coming up on ten years here this month, and there are some things I'm glad I never have to go through again in terms of adapting. But it's still an ongoing process. That changes as I change and grow myself.

So to all my friends and family, hope you're doing something you love today.

Jet-lagged- body and soul

Modern air travel does a number on us humans.  Transporting you from Atlanta to Paris in 8 and 1/2 hours messes with your mind. You arrive in what is the middle of the night in US time but in the blinding bright light of mid-morning in France.  Your body should be sleeping, your mind is just trying to process everything.  Add a big dose of homesickness, having just left your family, and the fact that your vacation is now over, and it's like being in the spin cycle.

We left the US last Thursday morning, saying our goodbyes, hoping to see US family sometime in the near future.  Maybe I'm getting a little better at leaving, but it will never be easy;  My eyes smarted on the plane from tears now and then.  Hearing the hushed slightly nasal accents of French passengers and crew just annoyed me more than anything.  The Air France flight crew, by the way, all looked like they could double for Abercrombie and Fitch models, looking dashing in their uniforms designed by Christian Lacroix.

I was still in English mode and wanted to stay there.  Juliette was a little pill for the first few hours of the flight, whining "papa, papa", since we'd told her we were going home to see him.  The perfectly coiffed and probably childless French stewardess asked me if there was anything she could do for us since she saw Juliette crying.  Perhaps this is code for, what can we do to make your child shut up?!  But she said it nicely enough, at least.  "She just misses her papa," I said.

But she finally got to sleep, wherease I don't think I slept at all.  Still I had to be awake to haul my luggage off the carousel and then Remi was there to meet us at the arrivals lounge.  Poor guy has had to put up with us in our sleepy/homesick mode though he had been waiting three weeks to see us.  He had kindly bought us some of our favorite foods including some things to remind us of the US, like cranberry juice, doughnuts and oreo ice cream.

The first night I still had that mind shift going on where I didn't know what bedroom I was in, my mom's back at home or mine.  I still haven't gotten back into a good sleep pattern yet but that could also be 'cause my mind sometimes doesn't shut off.  Work's been slow as France and our students wake up from their own post-vacation bummed out torpor.  I had two full days with no classes so I'm trying to catch up on some things here at home.  That last suitcase will get unpacked soon!

As for me I'm starting to focus on the lab job search again and hoping for the best.  And trying to hold on to some of the peace and optimism that my vacation brought me.  That's what vacations are for.

Only in America

Only in our grocery stores...

We are a bit food-obsessed in America.  We like our sweets but we are conscious of the bad fats and bad sweeteners (even though you will still find them in certain foods, especially sodas).  It always amuses me to come back and see these labels.  France is just now catching on to the trans fat thing but they don't seem to use much of the high fructose corn sweetener. 

Likin' the new slogan, too! But I still prefer Krispy Kreme.

In Spanish, too, thank you.

Only in Florida...
Where the Trump International Golf Course is next to the Palm Beach prison.

Where you can't buy happiness but you can live there.  And ironically this was a very modest neighborhood.

And the Publix grocery store on ritzy Palm Beach Island looks like this and has valet parking.

And the beach where the rich and famous play looks like this:

Only in Alabama (or the south)...

Can you find stuff like this in the grocery store...

I didn't even know what chitterlings were.  Apparently made of pigs' intestines.  I know I make fun of weird food in France, but we have our share of it, too.

Like pigs' feet.  Logical to get them in a value pack.

The Bubba burger is apparently good.

And a Sunday breakfast consists of ham (that's Juju's hand sneaking a bite), cheese grits (corn-based) and eggs.  Thanks, mom!

And you can find great old favorites like green tomatoes (for making fried green tomatoes) and okra (the world's slimiest vegetable but so good fried!).

And fruits that sound so gracious just by name and remind me of when I read To Kill a Mockingbird, that southern classic.  Can't say that I've even tasted scuppernongs.

Enjoying myself immensely here and hoping it doesn't go by too fast!