When Taking A Weekend Vacation to Basse Normandy

Wake up absurdly early in order that you can ride the RER when it is completely empty.

(This is what the RER looks like at 5:30 in the morning. In case you were wondering.)

At the train station - because you are so tired - drop the lovely bottle of wine you were going to give to your hosts, shattering it into a million tasty shards on the floor next to the panini stand. Cry.
Not that they will care, because they are fabulous. To make the best of the day, eat lunch in a little town by the ocean. Wander towards Luc Sur Mer picking up shells and thinking that more places should be by the beach.

(No sun, but I don't need my ocean with sun in Normandy.)

Indulge in the weirdness that is America in France.

('6th of June Barack Obama will be here!')

Have a nice dinner with your friends and then go to bed early because nobody thinks it is a good idea to wake up early just to be on vacation. Arise at a reasonable hour the next morning and take an hour long bath because - nobody minds and how long has it been since you could stretch out like that???

Have lunch in Texas.

(I had to ask to be sure but yes, this sauce was made in house. YUM!)

Or at least what tastes like Texas because suddenly French people have mastered the art of making barbeque sauce? Yes, I think so. Officially go off your diet because, yes food really is that good!

Pose for pictures and make your mother's face.

(Toady's first beer. No, really.)

Reconvene apero chez your hosts house and drink entirely too much wine.

The next morning, after trying to kill your boyfriend with your very own form of biological warfare (and your terrible mood), vow to go right back on your diet before the rest of the population is harmed. Take another (too) early train and spend the day recuperating from lack of sleep in the comfort of your boyfriend's parents house. Enjoy cuddling in front of their fireplace and playing with their random collections of miniatures.

(Not touching with my hands not looking with my eyes.)

Live Happily Ever After.

I Have No More Excuses and I Am Officially Lame

I want to write. I want to write I want to write I want to write. I want to write ANYTHING. But no, because suddenly - as if cleansing my colon had the inverse effect on my creativity and inspiration - I have nothing to say. I am not even writing on the train these days, which has always been the refuge I could go to to turn out the ideas in my head. Even if nothing came of them at least I was writing. Now I am not. And I am perpetually frustrated.

I have ideas though. I have them and they all come to me at exactly the same time each day: right before I begin my few short hours of work. I want to put out a blog or sketch something in charcoal, getting up to my elbows in black. I want to start a collage. I want to write a story or work on my various stagnating books. Each day it's something different that I put off because I should be cleaning (like right now, for instance) and then I will work on English with the young one and then I will make dinner for the family followed by dinner for me and by nine I have to do my homework or else I would like to do some yoga or maybe my brain is too tired and I will just make some phone calls but anyway you slice it I no longer have motivation to be creative.

The ridiculous part is all of the hours I have between work and school, and how during those hours I feel dry and uninspired. People would give various appendages for this kind of time and me, now that I have it, I find myself frittering it away. Which leaves me with the nagging desire to bang my head furiously against the wall. Physically, I mean, because I am already doing it metaphorically.

Alas, banging my head against the wall is not as pleasant as banging out a little bit of a story on the keyboard. So I skip that part.

In other news I am going to Caen for the weekend with Toady. We taking a nice four day weekend and I expect that I won't be writing a blog during that time either. Maybe I'll surprise you, who knows.

Because also? Host Dad sent away and had repaired my beloved and long lost iBook, and I am back in the business of portability for writing. It should also serve my addiction to the internet quite nicely as well.

Now stop your bitching already, you spoiled art brat.

Photo Meme Because I Still Have Writers Block

I refuse to look at the date of my last post. Not looking. You can't make me. I'm doing a Meme instead. I was tagged my DecoyBetty, a lovely expat over in Australia. I am too lazy to tag (it goes right along with being too lazy to write) and so I'll just say whomever would like to do this one, go right ahead. I tried to choose pictures that weren't so obvious, just to see what people might THINK I am talking about. Do comment.

DIRECTIONS:
- Go to Google image search.
- Type in your answer to each question.
- Choose a picture
- Use this website ( http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php ) to make your collage.
- Save the image for use in this note.
- Post and tag all your friends.

QUESTIONS:
1. What is your name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What is your hometown?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. What is your favorite movie?
6. What is your favorite drink?
7. What is your dream vacation?
8. What is your favorite dessert?
9. What is one word to describe yourself?
10. How are you feeling right now?
11. What do you love most in the world?
12. What do you want to be when you grow up?

Spring Is Inauspicious For Blogging

Today, though my blog (and my writing) has gone sorely neglected, I cleaned the apartment opened the doors and invited a friend over for Mimosas in the garden. She brought her dog and we ate a healthy lunch of fresh salad and quinoa, polishing off a bottle of the cheapest bubbly and Tropicana orange juice. While I felt guilty for not writing - because I feel guilty every day I don't write - it was the perfect way to spend a burgeoning spring day.

Similar laziness ensued over the weekend. Saturday was gloomy and called for sleep followed by a Sunday that took Toad and I all over the East side of Paris on foot, soaking up the rays meeting friends, eating, and touring.

Monday I dragged myself to class but allowed a reward of wandering Montmartre under the rouse of "exercise". Even though I felt the burn from the stairs that day it didn't last which probably means I didn't do enough. It was no matter to me. I was really out to meet the sun. I've become one of those ghostly transparent purple skin people who look as though they've been living in a cave all winter because I have.

Other than my inability to motivate myself creatively, I have been motivated in the kitchen. With this new diet I need to find the interesting things I can eat sans gluten and dairy. I really have a lot of options, but putting them together into interesting meals is the hard part. I have since rediscovered salad. Like salad with avocados, salad with hard boiled eggs, salad with nuts. It's not a ground breaking revelation but I had forgotten as salads in France are typically a bit boring.

Also, because I can't imagine a life without pastries and cakes I have taken it on myself to experiment with alternative flours available here in france. I don't have all of the same options, it seems, but I was able to find rice flour and tried arrowroot as a levening agent and it I have to call my first attempt a sucess. No pictures but just trust me it's yummy.

There are pictures from the weekend though. It's the best I can do till the creativity resumes.

In Which The People In My Town Are Super Nice

It was a typical Friday for me except that the young one is celebrating his birthday. It was last week, actually, but as the family had gone out of town he was having his 'Boom' (as they call it) today. Host Mom decorated yesterday and it is apparent that the things were mostly leftovers from years past. I was told to beg off the super cool Spongebob decorations and so I will, but some things were left to question further such as plastic trays shaped like Christmas trees and Halloween Cups. So, the kid wanted 'real cups'.

"What are real cups?" I asked.

"You know, plastic cups. Real cups," he replied.

"You mean not Halloween cups?"

"Ya."

"Alright, you got it."

I needed to get cat kibble anyhow, so I set off into what had turned out to be a STUNNING day. It was almost too warm for my wool coat.

I bought cat kibble, some wet food (because the cat is malnourished, I swear. I am not certifiable. Yet.) and the 'Real Cups' and left the store. I crossed the street and passed by a frommagery, smelling it with longing. A bus honked.

I padded along, singing to my Sansa, obliviously. The bus honked again as it passed me and I looked up to see the bus driver motioning. No, I'm not trying to catch the bus but thanks for checking! I waved in acknowledgement.

As I passed the bus stop I nodded a proper thank you to the driver and he mouthed something to me that looked like "D'accord." Okay, I thought he said. Tra la la, I wandered home thinking how nice it was of him to bother asking if I was heading for the bus. Ah, what a lovely day.

I returned home and plopped back in front of my internet.

"You have 'Real Cups' now," I called to the kid. Back to my addiction.

You have a new message on Facebook, said my Gmail. Click.

'I found your wallet. Call me.'

My first reaction was a sort of WHAT THE F#$@? thing, because you know, some people scam on Facebook, and that's a weird one to be sure. Then I checked my purse and sure enough my wallet was not there!

As it turns out, I had dropped my wallet in front of the bus. The bus driver had seen it and honked at me to grab my attention, but I was in lala land and didn't notice. A man on a motorcycle had also seen it but by the time he had grabbed it and turned his bike around to catch me I was gone already. So he opened my wallet, found me on Facebook and sent me an email.

Can you believe? I hardly can (though there wasn't anything in it worth keeping). I feel like I should offer this guy something for his generosity, but don't know what. I will ruminate on it as the black lights come on and Spongebob starts to dance in front of the fog machine.

Conundrum

It's such a good word, conundrum.

I like it's dictionary definitions: 1. Anything that puzzles. 2. A paradoxical, insoluble, or difficult problem; a dilemma. 3. A question to which only a conjectural answer can be made.

I like to use it in sentences in place of words that I really mean, to make them seem like lesser problems. "I have a bit of a conundrum, I'm afraid." I say it with a pretentious British accent to throw people off. It softens the blow when I admit my real faults which are terribly, terribly embarrassing.

"You see Jives," I say. Because there is always someone named Jives hanging about, "You see I have a bit of a conundrum, I'm afraid. I'm addicted to the internet."

Because saying that spending too much time on the internet is a conundrum is somehow less terrifying than admitting I waste countless hours doing basically nothing and it is holding back important forward steps in my life. I'm looking at you, my partially mostly unwritten book(s).

I would like to blame it on Paris, say that I have too many obligations and that my life is so full of new places and things and people that I haven't any time left for writing but that simply isn't the case. The truth is I have hours and hours of free time each day. More time than most paid writers probably have, in fact, and yet I somehow never get a page written. Instead I am twittering or facebooking or responding to emails or GODKNOWSWHAT.

It comes in waves, my ambition. Sort of like my sudden desire to get in shape and eat healthy. I have certain days where I feel energized to eat three good meals and walk instead of take the Metro or maybe do some yoga. These are wedged between days where I am literally resisting my hands from shoveling pastries into my face and then sleeping for three hours in the afternoon. Yes, this is just like my lack of work on said writing projects.

The computer is the root of my problems. Toady suggested that I write my book long hand, and while this is plausible with the children's books, it isn't so much with the novel. I can just imagine how little motivation I would have to transcribe page after page of stuff I've seen already. I write in my journal, it's true, partially as documentation for the book but it's different somehow. It's unformulated and disconnected. Not to mention that my longhand does not keep up with my thoughts like my typing fingers do. Even on a french keyboard I can keep up. And, at the end, it will all have to be typed out anyhow.

So I get on the computer. But I cannot...resist...the email. Then Facebook. Then I have to read blogs and oh my god how did I get 64 blogs backed up in my reader? And then I need to check my bank account. And then. And then. And then! Three hours has passed and I haven't written a damn thing.

The solution, I think, would be a computer sans internet. "Why don't you just disconnect your internet?" You say. To which I reply "Nay! It's not possible! Because I have no self discipline and an addiction to the internet!" And thus I have a conundrum.

To become a published author I must write. To write I need a computer. To have a computer means to have access to the internet, which in turn means I will be unforgivably distracted causing me not to write.

Would anyone care to conjecture an answer for me? Or maybe you know of a good support group...

France Has Organic Food Too

Even though I am not allowed to eat wheat or dairy and I have resigned to start eating in a more gluten free way, you will not find me torturing myself this time around. I love food too much for that and let's face it, it's really better for everyone around me if I have a little caffeine and some chocolate every now and then.

So I went grocery shopping and donated all my dairy and wheat things to the big house so I wouldn't be tempted by their colon blocking goodness. For fifty euros I got this:

It doesn't really look like that much, but that is always the case with diets like this. In addition I want to try a few things before I really stocked up because organic food is different from country to country and I haven't really explored it in France.

I guess I got terribly spoiled by living in Austin and working at Whole Foods. I am so used walking into a mega-mart and choosing from hundreds of different gluten free and dairy free delights, even after going to the Monoprix AND the Meudon Nature I am still left wishing I had peanut butter, silk soy creamer and Amy's pot pies. Alas, there were some interesting new choices offered up by organic France. Pre-cooked Quinoa caught my eye and though not without sugar, it is without dairy and so I'll try it.


This "Gluten Free" Bread contains yeast, which I found hilarious. Apparently France doesn't quite understand the concept yet. Though it is heavy like a brick, I thought it might be good with a morning egg, perhaps toasted.


This bread looked far more promising and I was excited to snatch it up. It's handmade Quinoa and Chestnut bread - also dense like concrete but it was decent toasted with margarine and bananas.

If it was sweeter, it could almost be considered a desert bread, but no dice on that one. After unloading my goods I tried (after the bread and bananas) some good old fashioned soy yogurt with a gluten free musli mix. It perfectly replaces my previous staple of greek yogurt and granola, so I have at least one winner so far.


There are certain things I refuse to give up, though, and I after years of failing this diet I don't at all feel guilty about it. Because I am not allergic to gluten or dairy (simply intolerant will suffice), and I am not technically on the Candida Diet, I will still be indulging in green tea with honey. I am cutting back my coffee consumption but not cutting it out entirely because half of my social life revolves around meeting people for coffee by God. You can rest assured that while I can freely give up beer here (it's not that great) I won't be giving up wine or champagne despite it's deadly yeasty toxins just itching to constipate me. And chocolate. Carob is great but if there is one thing I can always count on to delight and satisfy my tastebuds it's that.

So I re-commence, diving back into the world of food allergies and reading ingredients and avoiding thing on menus. Check back in a few weeks to make sure I am still alive.

All Roads Lead To A Place Without Cheese

When I was nineteen, I bought a book for my Asthma that promised to heal my lungs. I had dreams of running - albiet very silly dreams - without getting an asthma attack after the first thirty seconds. I couldn't fathom what that was like. I was ready to do anything. Unfortunately for me, the book suggested the Candida Diet: a diet sans dairy, gluten and sugar.

This was difficult for me. I grew up on macaroni and cheese and peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches. Even though, at the time, I was dating a vegan and had expanded my diet considerably it was still heavy in pasta and cheese and things like tasty cakes and ding dongs. I failed quite miserably at the Candida Diet.

When I lived in Austin I tried again. I don't remember what prompted it, but I was remember I was working at Whole Foods in the bakery at the time and walking by the Pasta Bar (and then by the cheese department) was like having someone pull out my arm hairs one by one. Avoiding the freshly made donuts every day was like holding my hand over a lighter. I just couldn't do it - not to mention my miserable attitude was dangerous to anyone within a five mile radius. Again, I gave up.

Flash forward to France, a country known for five hundred kinds different kinds of cheese and bread at every single meal. This is a place where people walk down the street gnawing on their fresh baguettes and the scent of the patissieries (places strategically like Starbucks in America with one or two on every corner) beckons you with sweet deliciousness. I couldn't help but succumb to the culture.

I haven't gotten fat, really, because I'm one of those high metabolism freaks of nature (read: one lucky duck) but since I"ve arrived here my skin has been a terrible problem for me. It makes me terribly self conscious, and for a person with already dedicated self esteem issues this is more than troublesome. I know that people have worse issues than me - I know that - but I when Toad suggested I see his family dermatoligist I readily agreed.

Saturday morning I waited in a strange office for the man Toady fondly referred to as Yoda. I expected him to look like a squat little alien by his description, but the man I met turned out to be a simple Asian man who was nearly sixty but looked about thirty-eight.

"Your problem is not with your skin," he said after taking one look at me. "You have too many toxins, and they are pushing out your pores."

He asked me some questions about my eating habits, how many bowel movements I have per week, how much gas I have and if I had any discharge. I was disturbed that he was describing all of the ailments I have been suffering from for years now.

It turns out my colon hates me and all of the cheese I eat - and the bread and the sugary sweets - they are all clogged up in my large intestine. Since they aren't coming out the back door, they are seeking other routes of escape such as my face and back.

To be clear, he didn't forbid me from ever eating these things again but he did tell me to moderate damnit. And for the first month, while I am on the treaments he prescribed me, I am not to have anything yummy. Return to the torture.

It's funny to me, though, that my life keeps directing me to eat this way. The asthma, my skin, probably all of the problems I've had in the past with my delicate feminine parts - my whole body wants me to give up my favorite treats. But it must mean that I am really vain because only now - when it comes to my appearance - I think I will finally do it. You can call me Narcissus, but damnit after all is said and done I'll have a clean colon. Which is nice too.

What To Write When There Is Nothing To Say

Writers block for the blog is particularly frustrating for me because it means that nothing in my life is interesting enough to be worthy of posting. I don't feel particularly funny and I haven't found anything exciting to share with you all.

This is not to say that I am bored, and I'm certainly not unhappy. I'm just...normal. I have gone back to French School which means I have homework, I have to sew the buttons (and a hole) in my new coat, cook dinner and do laundry - down to the last few pairs of them. I have coffee and lunches with friends, evenings of drinks and weekends with Toad. I have started doing yoga and the spring weather has inspired me to spend time outdoors walking around Paris. I have plenty to do and people to see. Nothing dramatic or life changing has occurred. This is considered a good thing by most.

I am in general agreement with this opinion. It feels like a terribly long time since I have not had something pressing going on in my life - some slightly dire or depressing thing that causes my brain to run in circles around itself. And, in truth, I should be anxious about what to do with myself after I'm finished in Paris and have to return to "real life" but it's not on my mind at all. I am basking in this foreign feeling of contentment.

So sod the economy for now. Forget that I probably won't be able to get a job when I return to the States and definitely should be cooking up a Plan B. Never mind that I still have debt darkening my closets and thirty is looming threateningly on my horizons. It's nearly spring. Host Mom's garden is blooming and ready to burst in the sunlight. The City is anticipating short skirts and picnics. I am happy. That's the best reason for writers block I've ever had.

Implausible Wish Friday

In the past few months I have decided that I want to save money. Ultimately it would be a cushion for me, some kind of soft landing for the period after my stay in Paris, probably for first and last months rent of whatever apartment I find. For right now, though, it's going toward traveling. I have Spain in my sights, and Morocco. I would love to see Italy, I definitely need to see London and I hear that Portugal is pretty awesome. Oh and Germany. And maybe Turkey.

The problem of course, is that I don't really make that much money to begin with which makes it quite hard. I have begun taking money out at the beginning of the week and if I have any left in my wallet at the end of the week I put it in a coffee jar by my sink. It is black so I forget that there is cash in it. This is a good system but I have recently discovered that I seem to love spending 20 euros for every lunch I eat out. Which is absurd but somehow happens more than once a week. Add to this random overpriced drinks and there you go. Not saving money to put in the coffee jar.

Last night I had a dream that I somehow got several extra hundred dollars to put aside. I had something like three hundred euros just to save! I woke up thinking that it had really happened, because three hundred euros isn't an extravagant amount of money and perhaps I had just forgotten that it occurred. I got out of bed and opened the lid to the coffee jar and was terribly disappointed to find that it had not. I couldn't help but wish that money would somehow mysteriously appear somewhere in the course of my day. A reasonable amount, you know, I don't want to be greedy. But like, more than three hundred euros would totally rock my socks off. The number one thousand has a nice ring to it. Why not? It could happen if pigs flew and hell froze over.

What implausible thing do you wish for?

And THAT'S News

"Cell phone still works after spending one week in fish's belly"

I find it fascinating that this makes the headlines. Truly brilliant writing there.

In news of my so interesting life, I have gone back to school. Getting up at six a.m. was not easy but I rewarded myself by walking around Montmartre for a few hours in the sun, afterwards. It felt good to be out and about before noon. I forget how much you can accomplish when you don't spend your whole life sleeping.

Aside from seeking the sun I was looking for Les Deux Moulins - the cafe in the movie Amelie. As it turns out, after the movie it had been turned into a dry cleaner but I assume from so much touristic attraction it has reopened. I had lunch there and though it was cool to pretend I was in a scene from the movie, I was not all that impressed with the cafe itself. There are far more charming, authentically French cafes than this one, in addition to it being terribly overpriced and carrying a menu with things like 'The Amelie Creme Brulee' and 'Amelie Suggests...'. It was sort of like Disneyland for artsy film lovers, complete with the Asian tourists. Totally true, sorry.

In other scintillating news I am now the holder of a French Social Security number. This means that I can officially get sick in France and be covered. Which is only a few months too late. But that is France. I still get my money back and I intend to take it to Spain with me when I go in April.

And right at this moment I am, for some reason, watching an orchestra play The Star Spangled Banner on a German Television Station. Which is almost as noteworthy as a cell phone in a fish belly.

A Short Bit On Weekends

Last night Toad and I were lucky enough to go to Regine's for a funny invite only London party. I shook my ass like it hadn't been shaken in far too long, got my toes stepped on by costumed gay boys in pointy shoes and ferociously elbowed tiny blond girls who leisurely strolled into my dance space.

I love dancing so much and I don't do it enough. It's my exercise - a kind that flings out all the demons I might be harboring. So even though I thought the crowd was a bit young and definitely in my damn way (the dance floor is for DANCING!) I danced until four a.m. I was dancing so hard and the music was pumping so loud that I didn't hear Toad ask to leave four times. Needless to say I have some making up to do today.

Not related to the making up, today we are going to his friends house where I will play with babies and speak French like a six year old because they don't speak english. We actually woke up at ten (after getting home at 5:30) just to buy cakes for them. And then we went right back to bed. Because five hours of sleep is not enough. I even closed the shutters I wanted proper sleep so badly. As it turns out folks, they don't really make it all that dark in my apartment after all. Go figure.