Compare and Contrast

S needed to get the oil changed in the van today so I accompanied him to the oil change place. When he asked how long it would be the attendant told him ‘une bonne heure’, a good hour. So with over an hour to kill we went off to a baby store to see what we were up against.

We found these gorgeous little bedroom sets, crib that converts to a toddler bed, changing table with removable top to become a regular bureau and a matching wardrobe, they seemed well made and they’d only set us back about 2000€!!! For that amount of money the boy should be able to take his furniture to college with him. On the other hand, compare that to the Ikea crib and changing table set for about 200€, at that price we could also splurge for the little table and chairs set that match.

In the stroller/car seat department we found a great stroller with a pram insert for the newborn baby (they use prams a lot here). It also came with all sorts of foul weather coverings, diaper back pack and a baby carrier that snaps into it too with a base for the carrier to snap into the car for an infant car seat. It comes in two color schemes and all this can be ours for the low low price of 549€!!! We’re talking about spending almost $700 for a stroller!!! Ok, stroller and infant car seat, but still…

They also had those fabulous three wheel jogging strollers. I’m kind of partial to them they do look so sporty, and on the bright side they’re not as expensive (by French standards). Sean liked these too and said they were more macho and he could see himself pushing one of those around.

In comparison, we saw a stroller we liked on the Babies R Us web site that is a stroller with the baby car seat that snaps into it and two car seat bases and a diaper bag for $199! We were hoping to get one here to avoid having to give up a suitcase to bring one back with us. We could check it as baggage on the plane. Aside from that one small down side there is the addition disadvantage that when we get it here we’ll have to pay an additional $100 at customs in import taxes. I guess saving $400 is worth the hassle...

As a third option, and it looks like this may be the way we go. There’s an American woman here in Toulouse who is returning to the states and is selling all her baby stuff. She has a couple of strollers for sale that are about 4 or 5 years old, but are what we were looking at today. She’s selling them for 200€. She also has a pack-n-play for sale and a set of baby monitors among many other things. We’ll look at them tomorrow on our way out to pick up Emily and Peter from the airport.

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On a personal compare and contrast note…

I used to always joke, back when I was allowed servings of alcohol and caffeine, that I was careful to balance my stimulant/depressant intake. Enough alcohol to get a nice buzz, balanced with enough caffeine to keep me from falling asleep.

These days the balancing act is a bit different. With all the vitamins and supplements I’m taking, I have to be very careful what I eat. It turns out that pre-natal vitamins contain large quantities of iron and calcium (among other things) these items tend to do unspeakable things to the digestion, especially pregnant digestion that is already not at its best. So I find that I must balance all the goodness of my vitamins with substantial amounts of fiber and water. Timing and quantities are important. If I happen to short myself in the fiber/water department I spend the whole next day feeling like I ate an entire wheel of Wisconsin’s finest cheddar.

Not a pleasant thought I realize but I’m into sharing today.

"In a dream you are never eighty."-Anne Sexton…But close to it?

When I first started working at the Montessori school in California I had, in my group of 12 kids, 2 brothers. We’ll call these two Derek and Dylan.

Now, first of all, Derek and Dylan couldn’t have been picked out of a line-up as brothers even if there were only one other person in it. Derek was 4, tall for his age, blond and blind as a bat without his glasses. Dylan was 2, of short stocky build, had no neck and dark hair. But unbeknownst to me, there was another issue of which I would soon become painfully and embarrassingly aware.

That fateful day stands out starkly and brightly in my memory. I remember it like it was just yesterday………………..

We were out in the courtyard doing a bit of gardening, me and a group of 8 or 10 kids; just enjoying some late summer/early fall weather. Some kids were weeding, some were dead heading the rose bushes and the younger ones were watering the container plants with teeny tiny plastic watering cans. Of course the younger ones were sloshing water mostly on each other and themselves, but we were all having a really good time.

Well near the end of the day this gentleman comes out the back door into our little beehive of activity. He was a cross between Colonel Sanders, a cowboy and a hippie. With long white hair down to his shoulders, a Colonel Sanders mustache and beard and a dark blue tie dyed head band. He was wearing a dark blue plaid cowboy shirt complete with mother-of-pearl snaps down the front, jeans with a belt buckle the size of a dinner plate and fabulous cowboy boots with shiny silver toe tips. This man was not as odd looking as it sounds, he had a presence about him and was rather attractive for an old dude.

Anyway, he comes over to me and says ‘Hi, I’m here to get Derek and Dylan.’

‘Oh, ok’ I say as I turn to Derek and say ‘Derek honey can you go dry off your brother and get your stuff together, your grand-pa is here for you’ the words are just out of my mouth when I hear a soft cough behind me and the old dude says, ‘Actually I’m their dad’………………..

Yeah, exactly………………..

Ok so fast forward 20+ years and here’s my dream………………..

I get to the school to pick up my little darling and I approach the new classroom aid who is probably about 15 and so fresh out of school that not just behind her ears is wet. I walk up to her and say ‘Hi, I’m here to pick up Junior Walters’ and she turns to my child and says ‘Junior, get your things together honey, grand-ma’s here for you’………………..

I’m just saying, it could happen and it would just be karma at its best…………………

Oh, and by the way, that man was not really Derek and Dylan’s father. As it turns out, they’re mom told me years later, she had been artificially inseminated. For Derek she had selected donor sperm from a man with a high IQ and for Dylan she had selected donor sperm from an athlete. So I guess karmic-ly speaking my punishment is not fitting. Life is not fair.

Noctuidae Moths

We’re cleaning up after dinner. Bringing dishes and food in from the patio, in the quickly falling darkness. As we finish we stop in the office to chat a bit with the back doors all hanging open. Johan, a co-worker and friend of S’s from South Africa (well, from Hungary now as he’s just been re-assigned) is staying with us for a few days. Johan is standing nearest the door between the office and garage and he pauses mid conversation and cocks his head, ‘Is there something in your garage?’ he asks, listening. We all stop to listen and I can hear something but can’t really make out what the sound is. ‘Well we’ve had dogs wander into the garage before and several times a neighborhood cat or two, maybe one of the cats is back for a visit.’ I suggest not really hearing anything anymore. S and Johan go out into the garage and turn on the light. I hear S say, ‘It’s a giant moth!’ Now we all know how I feel about bugs so I shout out, ‘Well close the door before it comes in here’. They both ignore me and continue to watch the moth in the garage. After a while they come inside and S says, ‘That moth is the size of a hummingbird.’ Still I assume exaggeration and don’t bother to go look; I’ve seen big moths before and don’t really need to see another one. I hate moths, though not as much as I hate spiders; I hate the unpredictable way they thrash around in the air when looking for an exit and how they leave that powdery stuff behind when you smack them. In the night I fleetingly think of the giant moth in the garage and think, ‘I wonder if it was a bat and not a moth.’ In the morning when S gets out of bed to go drive Johan to the airport I sleepily mention my suspicion to S who says ‘No, it’s a moth.’ Yet, still I’m not really alarmed or worried and I’m only mildly curious. So later in the morning after S has returned from the airport and we’ve had breakfast, I ask if the moth is still in the garage, he says yes it’s out there but it’s sleeping. Rolling my eyes I say ‘Ok, show me the moth.’ We go into the garage and he tells me to look up at the ceiling beam, ‘see the tip of its wing hanging down; right there in the middle of the beam? That’s where it is.’ I see the rounded tip of a moth wing hanging down from the other side of the beam and mentally picture the rest of the wing and say ‘I’ve seen bigger.’ I start to walk back into the house and S says, ‘Go look on the other side of the beam.’ I tromp over to the other side of the garage, mentally rolling my eyes the whole way and look up. Seriously the thing did not move but I squealed and jumped back anyway. The thing was the size of a hummingbird and it definitely was a moth. I ran in the house for cover. I then made S take a picture of the hideous mutant and then asked him to be sure the thing left the garage (preferable dead) before he leaves for Brazil on Sunday. Here is a photo of our friend. It was a full 3 inches long. I know 3 inches doesn’t sound like much but get a ruler and see if a 3 inch moth wouldn’t scare the pants of off you!

”On the bat's back I do flyAfter summer merrily.”

We were sitting out back after having just enjoyed a fabulous dinner prepared by our neighbors Ann and Gilles. It was that time of evening, around 10pm, when it’s not yet absolutely dark, but the sun has set; the dusk having just slipped into twilight and the breeze beginning to finally cool after another scorcher of a day. I was drinking my umpteenth Perrier and contemplating my umpteenth trip to the potty, when I looked out over the orchard and saw a small brown winged creature swooping into a tree.

I assumed it to be a small owl beginning it’s nights hunting, but on second look out toward the trees I noticed dozens more of these brown winged things and realized they were bats.

Not scary screeching black ‘Batman Begins’ bats, but small graceful brown bats. They were flying, swooping and diving into the trees. I don’t know much about bats and didn’t get a good enough view of them in the almost total dark to see what type of bat they might be, so I don’t know if they were diving into the trees for the shriveled and desiccated remains of cherries or for the bugs that might be drawn to the little black and shriveled ex-fruit.

They were amazing to watch though, gracefully and silently flying in and out of branches. At one point one of them flew right towards the back of Gilles head and at the last moment made a 90° turn back up into the sky, Gilles remaining ignorant of his near miss with something small brown and silent. It was even more amazing that within about 20 minutes in that quickly fading twilight they were gone again. On their way to greener pastures (dried icky cherries can’t be much of a meal) or they had never been there to feed in the first place; just to visit and move on. I was sad to watch them all slowly disappear; they seemed so peaceful and friendly.

Say it isn’t so!!!

Sorry all, Harry Potter arrived on Saturday, a full week earlier than I’d expected (bless Amazon.com), and I’m currently on my second reading. Last year I cried when Syrius died, but this, this is worse. I’m still in shock! I’ve never cried so hard reading one of these books. It’s all too much, I kept reading between the lines hoping for an out, hoping for a glimmer of hope that it had been a mistake, but no. It’s all I’ve really been able to do anyway, it’s just too hot to go anywhere or do anything too ambitious. ……………………….. Ok, so someone sent me this Link in response to the rabbit question, it explains everything quite clearly. …………………………

While J was in town we did a whirlwind 4 day weekend in Paris. We were finally able to visit Giverny and we also tried to take J to Versailles, but unknown to us we were there on the day of the Live 8 concert and couldn’t get within a mile of the place. We also did a quick Normandy tour and visited the American military cemetery as well as a quick visit to Mont St-Michel. So below I have a few photos of the trip. …………………………

The interior of the Musée D'Orsay, it's just a short walk from the Louvre and though only about a tenth its size, I liked it better. They house a fabulous collection of impressionist art. It's also a really cool looking building.

Monet's garden at Giverny. Looks just like the paintings doesn't it. Though the walkways that wind around the large garden are roped off making it hard to get around in the crowds of hundreds of milling tourists.

One of many photos that we took at the American Military Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer. It contains the graves of over 9000 american soldiers killed in action. The cemetery overlooks Omaha Beach. There is also a wall inscribed with the names of 1557 soldiers missing in action. The cemetery is beautiful and immaculately maintained. It's quite eerie to walk among the crosses and Stars of David.

Mont St-Michel is one of the most popular tourist sites in France, so get there and tour the Abbey early before the crowds arrive or visit in early spring. The Mont receives over 3 million visitors a year and is quite the tourist trap, however, it really is a site to see and the views from the abbey are really something.

View from the cloister of Mont St-Michel. No it's not really wide open like that, thee's a Plexiglas sheet to keep people from plummeting to their deaths on the rocks below.

The Rabbit Died?

First just for fun I submit the following, regarding the most recent London bombings. It's stolen from a London friends blog who stole it from a friends blog who…..well, you get it.

Breaking News Londoners 'peeved' by continued bombings, Australians all out for 190. As London is hit by the second wave of bombings in two weeks, the Government has raised the terror warning level from 'miffed' to 'peeved'. Whilst many people commented with respect at the stoical attitude of Londoners to the first wave of attacks, Londoners are losing their traditional reserve and may soon require the terror level warning to be raised to 'irritated' or even 'a bit cross'. A government spokesmen commented upon the seriousness of the situation. "London has not been a bit cross since the height of the Blitz in 1940 when supplies of tea ran out for almost three weeks", said a representative of the Security Services. "It is as a mark of the seriousness with which Londoners are taking the situation that we have recently been forced to recategorise suicide bombers from 'tiresome' to 'a bloody nuisance', and the last time we had a 'bloody nuisance' warning level was during the great fire of 1666." On the streets, Londoners reacted with uncharacteristic anger to news of the latest attacks, with some members of the public reacting with harsh language to the news that they might be delayed on their homeward trips by up to twenty minutes. "It really is the absolute limit," said Reginald Boggis, 42, of East Ham. "These terrorists. Not content with blowing things up, they then have to spoil the day for everyone. That's just irritating, that is. If they wanted to get things changed, they should write an angry letter to Points of View. That's what my wife and I always do." Tony Blair is expected to make political capital out of the situation as soon as his focus groups report on the mood of the nation. In other news, Britain reeled today at the news Australia were all out for 190 runs in the first test. "Good heavens!", said cricket fan Stan Higginbottom. "We showed the Aussies, what for, eh? What's that? More terrorists? Well, that's bloody typical, isn't it?" ..............................

Our neighbors, Ann and Gilles, are expecting their second child. Yes the sweet and adorable Miss Carla will soon have a sibling. Yes, her reign of terror will soon come to an incomprehensible end. When I think about what awaits her highness in the wake of a new baby in the house I could almost feel sorry for her. What a rude awakening for a child who has been the only child for 4 years now. Yet, in a way I'm gleefully anticipating the show. Ann was one of the first people to know of our news. Actually after S was apprised of my suspicions, I phoned Mags to see if, and where, I could get my hands on a 'pee on a stick' test. When all suspicions had been confirmed, I had a chat with Ann about who her doctor was and where I should go. Ann was quite excited about the news and informed me that this had happened because I had been foolish enough to touch her expanding belly. That's what happens you know, pregnancy is catching if you touch a pregnant woman's belly. I asked her why she hadn't warned me as I reached for her belly and she said she thought I knew what I was doing. How could I have known? I'm not French! ..............................

It fell to poor, wonderful Mags to call and make an appointment for me for the doctor. The AIT guidebook lists English speaking doctors of every field. There were about 8 doctors listed under obstetrics and gynecology who spoke English and one of them belonged to the same clinic that Ann had recommended. The clinic, by great coincidence, also happened to be near Mags' house so that's how that decision was made. Mags called and asked for an appointment with Dr. Alec Finkeltin. When the receptionist heard how old I was she insisted that I come in right away, I was able to get an appointment that week. I found that to be just a bit disturbing, though internet research on the subject of 42 year old pregnant women is even more frightening. When J and I arrived at the huge clinic, J was in town then and let me say that I wouldn't have made it through the following weeks without her help, I was unpleasantly surprised to find that my doctor would not be Finkeltin. My case had been assigned to Dr. Jean-Baptiste Benevent who, oh by the way, speaks no English. This, however, was the least of the surprises that awaited me on that visit. In France the doctor does everything, meaning he doesn't have a nurse. I was ushered into his office, where I sat at his desk while he entered my history and all other pertinent information into his computer. This actually went better than I'd expected, since we were able to understand each other with little difficulty. The most bizarre portion of the visit was the exam and here ladies you'll understand how odd this was in comparison. He ushered me into a closet sized examining room adjacent to his office that is jam packed with all of the obstetrical gadgets you can imagine. The first oddity I noticed was no stirrups, and you know that that would stand out. He asked me to remove my clothes as he busied himself gathering and preparing things for the exam. No leaving the room, no paper gown, now paper sheet, no supervising nurse, nothing, just remove your clothes and hop up on the table while he waits. I had been warned about the French lack of modesty or prudishness, I guess, in their view, but it still was a bit of a shock. Quick exam and then I was asked to dress while he gathered things up and then back to his office. He did literally everything. After the exam he scheduled my next few appointments for me, asked me for a check for 50€ and gave me a receipt. It was fast and efficient and required no third parties. ..............................

Poor J, I'm sure that this was not how she imagined spending her European vacation (scusi, scusi). But she didn't seem to mind. She was happy just not having to work or study or be anywhere. If it hadn't been for her the garden would be completely dead and I probably wouldn't have gotten out of bed all day. Between the nausea and fatigue, I was not good company, but she amused herself with books and the internet and going for walks. She is a real trooper. I thought of how Miss Carla would feel about the intrusion of a new baby after 4 years of being an only child, but somehow don't think J will suffer in the same way after 22 years of being an only child. Not the same dynamic I wager. ..............................

Well there you have it, an update of what you missed while I was busy with J and being nauseous and tired and unmotivated and pretty much all around nuts. The sonogram on the 20th has confirmed me to be nearly 3 months along with what so far appears a healthy baby *****. (Won't say because there are some of you who still insist on being surprised)(Nut cases the lot of you!) Starting to feel better and join the land of the living. Am blogging not out of motivation really as much as fear of those of you who have sent me thinly veiled threats via e-mail. (Shame on you don't you feel bad now!) Does anyone know where the expression came from or what it means? The title of the blog I mean. Though not something that is used much anymore, but I remember it from movies and vaguely from an episode of M*A*S*H*. Well that's enough for now, I'm late for a nap.

Jean Naté

Ok, show of hands, who remembers Jean Naté body splash? I remember visiting my grandmother’s house and my aunt had Jean Naté body splash. I still remember that great feeling of cooling when you put it on. We lived in the desert and as desert rat kids we played outside all day in the 115° summer sun (110° in the shade) without so much as a second thought. Sure, lessons on heat stroke and staying hydrated were a part of our in-born survival skills (along with heading for doorways during an earthquake), but we didn’t seem to notice the heat. There is nothing I remember more fondly, however, than being sweaty and hot and going into my aunts bedroom and drenching myself in her Jean Naté. It was a quick cool off that served the dual purpose of cooling me and masking the odor of hot sweaty puppy, which seems to be the universal smell of all hot children, with the cooling and refreshing scent of citrus. Funny how something that had to be so bad for your skin, I mean it had to be basically citrus scented alcohol, could feel so good. My poor aunt, she must have had to stock 3 or 4 bottles at a time to keep me in coolness, but she never said anything. I used to love to eat her Ultra Bright toothpaste too, couldn’t get enough of the flavor, but that’s another story. Do they still make those products?

I think of this today because it’s so stinkin’ hot and an oscillating fan just doesn’t do it for coolness when it’s darned near 100° outside and over 80° inside no matter how dark I keep it. And I’m getting sick of sitting in the dark all day. So I was fondly remembering how impervious I was to heat in those desert years how refreshing that citrusy splash was. When I go home these days I stay in San Diego, I have to be threatened with bodily injury – and even then I weigh the cost – to make me go to the desert. Ah, but at least that was a dry heat.

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We were invited to Carla’s end of the year school program. You know I can’t pass up a group of 3 & 4 year olds singing and dancing. Of course the weather all week had been hot. Highs in the 90’s all week, but what the heck I’d take a bottle of cold water with me and suffer through, after all, it’s for the kids.

J came with me and so did Barbara (J’s roommate) who is visiting us for the week on the last leg of her European summer vacation. (Hmmm, should ask her how Amsterdam was. ‘scusi, scusi’)

We arrived in time to join a crowd of proud parents and grandparents all trying to fit into the only patch of shade in the courtyard were the performance was to take place. Kids were rounded up and dragged from their parents to line up in three rows. Introductions were made and then the singing began. It was a typical little kid concert were only one third of the kids actually sang while the rest either stood in terrified silence, waved at their parents, made faces or just chatted amongst themselves. There were the usual types, the show-off who sang loudly and proudly making sure to make eye contact with everyone, the crier who stood there blubbering during the ENTIRE performance, the class clown who made faces and inappropriate gestures to the embarrassment of his parents and of course the wanderer who just walked away from the group following his own investigative agenda in the crowd. There was a song about a cat, a song about the 5 senses and a song about listening, I could be wrong since they were in French and I could barely hear them, but I watched their hand movements carefully and I think I may be right.

The singing was followed by a couple of dance numbers that were so absolutely adorable you couldn’t help but be won over by even the little class monster. The second dance was something like the hokey pokey. Clap your hands, slap your thighs, grab your partners hand and spin in a circle. Clap your hands, slap your thighs, link elbows with your partner and spin in a circle. Clap your hands…….grab your partners neck and spin…. grab your partners shoulders…, grab your partners waste…, grab your partners butt…. Oh yeah, I swear it was like a junior high slow dance with kids dancing in a slow circle with their little hands down on their partners butts. The French were not nearly as amused as us three Americans were. It was hard not to just let go and have a good laugh, but I didn’t want to insult anyone, and explaining how it was funny would have just proven all over again to the French how prudish and repressed Americans are.

Anyway, at that point it began to rain big fat drops of rain even though there was only one little grey cloud in the sky. It was a sunny rain, and since it appeared to be just the one cloud, we all stayed where we were and the children kept dancing. Soon those big fat drops began to come down a bit more rapidly, and we still stayed. Well then it was a full on downpour and everyone ran for the school. All week long, nothing but hot sunshine and on the day that I’m watching 3 and 4 year old French kids grope each other it decides to rain. Life’s not fair.

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S is home this weekend and since I’ve not been up to taking J and Barbara any place fun, he’s dragging them to rubble. He’s quite the rubble expert. Yesterday they came home hot and exhausted and they had drunk all of the water they’d taken with them. They’re out again today and today is even hotter than yesterday without so much as one little fluffy cloud in the sky. I guess I better make a big jug of lemonade or something.

"Life is what happens, while you are busy making plans."

Where is Missy, where has she gone, you remember Missy, that adorable girl who used to keep us in stitches, swell writer, sharp of wit and sharper of tongue, cute little thing slight of build and a real sharp dresser… wait, that was someone else…never mind.

So I’m sure that you all are imagining days full of adventures and fun for J and I, after all what else could possibly be keeping me away from ‘The Precious’.

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J and I have been walking every day, usually twice a day. We walk around town and try to explore new paths each day.

The other day we were walking down a side street talking and minding our own business when a sight across the street suddenly quieted us and made our eyes snap back to the pavement in front of us. After walking on for a safe distance and when we could trust ourselves to speak without cracking up and being overheard, J mumbles out of the side of her mouth “Was that a man? And why was he wearing that house coat?”

“Was that a house coat?” The thing was a garish mix of red, black and white geometric shapes with a few silver shapes tossed in here in and there.

“I think it was.”

“Forget the house coat, did you see his feet?” My eyes had been drawn down the length of that garish dress to the hairy tree trunk legs that ended in bright fuzzy blue slippered feet.

The man needed a fashion tip or two, ‘cause those slippers were all wrong for that house coat.

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Last Sunday we were invited to celebrate the First Holy Communion of Mags youngest, Jean Baptiste. Mass was to be at 10:00 a.m. followed by a small lunch back at Mags apartment.

We were up at a decent hour and I lollygagged for a bit before hopping into the shower. I exited the shower to find that my mental clock was an hour off or that I had mistaken the time on the clock (those tricky hands on the no number clock faces) and that we would be too late for the actual church service.

Now some of you might argue that there is no such thing as mistakes and that my misreading of the half dozen clocks in the house (most of which are digital) was a subconscious attempt on my part to avoid having to make an actual appearance in a church…Those of you who know me will know that there was nothing subconscious about it.

We were forced therefore to forgo the Mass and go straight to Mags apartment where we arrived just in time for champagne and foie gras aperitifs. My timing is impeccable!

Mags place was stuffed to the gills with her ex-husbands family (all French) and Mags friends and family (mostly Irish, but all English speaking) The place was cut in two by the language and, um, social barriers, thank goodness for Paula, who was the only guest willing to cross the chasm for the sake of civility. The rest of us were content to be rude stay on our side and speak in English.

After initial introductions were made and plenty of champagne was poured, we settled in to lunch and conversation. After a couple of hours J says to me “I can’t keep up there are at least four languages being spoken.”

“Um, no honey, lay off the champagne, there are only two languages, French and English.”

“No, there’s French, French-English, Irish-English and American-English. Also what’s a ‘dirty knacker’ and should I be offended?”

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Last Wednesday night we attended a concert. I had managed to get my hands on three tickets for Joe Cocker about a month ago and I thought it would be a good time. J was unconvinced of the fun factor, since first of all she’d never heard of Joe Cocker and secondly that man on stage had to be at least 60 years old.

After a few songs, however, some of them began to sound familiar to her. The high points consisted of the singing of ‘Up Where We Belong’ and a horrid Jennifer Warrens stand-in that sang her parts with a bit of vibrato in her voice. Eeew! During the song the cute French whipped out there lighters to wave over their heads, the funny thing is that none of the lighters would stay lit due to the cranking air conditioning in the building (it was very warm in the arena), so one resourceful French person after the other simply flipped open their cell phones and began waving those wan lights over their heads.

The final bit of entertainment came when he sang ‘Unchain My Heart’ and the French rushed the stage a bit too late and were stuck up there trying to rock to a much slowed down version of ‘A Little Help From My Friends’.

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So no, no great travel adventures yet. We are enjoying quiet times together and I think that J is enjoying not having to get up for school or work or having to worry about homework. She misses Matt and Snickers, though not necessarily in that order…kidding Matt, just kidding.

That is all.

Don't look at me with that tone!

On Monday morning, not seconds after S left on a road trip, the hot water heater quit working. By the time J went to take a shower there wasn't even the merest suggestion of warmth in the water. Not being one to complain (or perhaps setting me up for the shock of my life...hmm) the girl said nothing to me. I luckily discovered the problem when I went to brush my teeth. A couple of phone calls and two days later the plumber finally showed up. Thank goodness cause things were getting a bit dodgy. My plumber, M. Bonnet is a man of indeterminate age, neither young nor old but rather good looking just the same. He knows me as M. Walters, the American from Castanet and speaks to me in the slow indulgent way you speak to young children or those whose brains have been scrambled. Most importantly, however, he tolerates and actually seems to understand my mangled French. He wears these square European type glasses that give him the look of a kindly and intelligent grandfather but when he smiles he looks like a teenage boy. I don't stare or drool or anything, but I fear that he may be begriming to believe that I'm purposely sabotaging the heating system just to see him. Today, after explaining the fix to this weeks problem to me, he asked me if I'd opened or closed a specific lever. I said I had not and he asked me again pretending to think that I had not understood him. When I assured him again that I never touch that particular lever he looked as if he didn't quite believe me but smiled that knowing indulgent smile at me. I hope I don't have to change plumbers. In other news...I'm posting a few pics for your enjoyment.

This is the current view from my bedroom window. The Cherries are not quite at their peek yet, but another day or two of temps like today and plenty of sunshine and they'll be great. Carla has been out picking and eating everything within her short little grasp and I've seen a neighbor or three out picking a few handfuls. This year we have a ladder so we'll be able to get to the good ones higher up in the tree. I guess we'll be retiring Mark's cherry picking tool this summer.

J arrived safe and sound and was immediately put to work constructing the furniture for her bedroom. That's her working hard behind the stack of Ikea drawers. She's a darned good little builder too. Next week she's going to start on some trellises for the garden.

A fine group touring Millennium Park in Chicago. We finally get a stranger to take the group shot and mom chooses that moment to look around. She hates having her picture taken.

And finally... This afternoon J and I decided to do a little shopping. We got in the car, and after I'd pulled the car out of the garage, I ran back into the house to get my forgotten sunglasses. I got back outside to find that J had jumped into the drivers seat. I told her to get out of the drivers seat and reminded her that my car has a manual transmission. She said she knew that but that she wanted to drive. After a brief power struggle I reluctantly went around and got into the passenger seat with much sighing and eye rolling in anticipation of the afternoon ahead of us. Well, she killed the engine twice before she managed to get the car moving. When we reached the gate at the end of the driveway she took it out of gear, put the break on and got out. That's all she wanted to do, just drive to the gate. 10 feet, wow, now that's some progress. Tomorrow she'll shoot for the actual edge of the street.

Fring- The noise made by a lightbulb that has just shone its last.

J: I'm so tired...

Me: I know honey but we're almost home, we just have to stop at the store for some essentials...milk, bread, eggs, cream, Pepsi...etc.

J: Can't we do it tomorrow?

Me: No everything is closed on Sundays.

J: Mom, tomorrow is Saturday

Me: No dear today is Saturday, tomorrow is Sunday.

J: What happened to Friday then...

What indeed...Off to bed for now.

That is all.