Knock knock

A great weekend in Paris is behind us (a week ago now) and Bob, Rachel, Evelyn, and Sam (who we rendezvoused with in the City of Light) returned with us to Angers for the remainder of what's proven to be a solid week of early Spring sunshine. [Some Paris photos] [Also,  chateaux II photos I forgot to link to last time]

The gang at Notre Dame where we joined up with Elizabeth.
Evelyn and Sam were off exploring the oldest organ in Paris.

En route to Paris, despite our best efforts to replace the memories of our first harried adventure on the TGV with a pleasantly uneventful saunter to our seats, we only managed to solidify the notion that the TGV platform is where you go to be separated from your children by merciless hydraulic doors (we're all accounted for). Different twists produced similar experiences on both legs of our Anger-Paris-Angers rail travels. But I'm sure we are professional TGV passengers now. Next time will be perfect.

Hillary. Is that vous?

Our Saturday afternoon walks around the Ile de Cité, Louvre, and Jardin des Tuileries, were punctuated by long convoys of dark blue Gendarme vans, two-tone sirens blaring, pretending to drive quickly through Parisian gridlock--presumably shuttling dignitaries who were in town for Sarcozy's Libya kickoff meeting.
On the same street but a different planet, our group was headed to a meeting with pitchers of ludicrously rich hot chocolate (chocolat chaud) at Angelina (a very popular restaurant which specializes in sugar, chocolate, cream/butter, and enough flour to hold things together). Sam (who along with Evelyn was making an encore appearance at Angelina) accurately characterized the activity as "drinking a brownie."

If it was cold, it'd be on a plate.

 After the first sip, it was hard to know if it was really good or detrimentally excessive. Halfway through my first portion (there are four cups in the pitcher that is traditionally shared by two), I had to stop the waiter and ask for "un café." Not understanding how I could want two "beverages" at the same time, she was apparently going to ignore me.  But Kristin intervened and, in actual French (the kind that includes verbs), assured her that while I was a bit afflicted, I was still willing to pay for some coffee. The coffee wasn't good (go figure) so I deferred to our server's sensibilities and made my two beverages one. Voila: the "best chocolat chaud in Paris" just got better. Be warned though. This cocktail will cause temporary Tourette's (at least tics & giggles), compulsive stacking of small objects, and a thirteen hour nap.

In Paris: so many knockers, so little chime.

We stepped into a few churches in Paris but I must confess, we skipped museums entirely. The weather was great and our hotel's location on Ile Saint-Louis ensured that a short walk in any direction was interesting and beautiful. So, we mostly stayed outside. One thing that really caught my eye was all the great knockers. In today's Paris, they mostly just hang there, untouched. But they're still an obvious source of pride and flair.

Needed a segue here...

(You can't put on orange wigs and boas
and act all, like, annoyed when some
random guy takes your picture)

In soccer news, Paris is coming to Angers! I know this is big news but, in case you missed it, Angers SCO qualified for the first round of the the Coupe de France and will host Paris Saint Germaine right here at our modest Stade Jean Bouin. We are trying to get a couple of tickets to the April 20 match but schedules and rules for distribution are being made up and changed daily since, according to the SCO office (via Google Translate), "this is an event without precedent." If we don't end up being able to see the game, we will be even sadder that we missed our chance to view the cup itself.

Le bus de la Coupe de France.
L'occasion pour chaque supporter
d'approcher le trophée
de la compétition.

The actual Coupe de France is being driven about the country in a Pope-mobile which stops for several hours at a time in participating supermarket parking lots. It was in Angers on March 8 after 5pm at the Carrefour Saint Serge and we just let it happen.

You might think that the apparent connection between soccer and food-staples is nothing. But the evidence keeps mounting. Nothing is unconnected from soccer. (For those keeping score with predicate logic, don't think too hard about that last sentence). This coming Saturday is Jack's soccer team fundraiser -- a sausage sale (Saucissons: natures, sangliers, noisettes, chèvre, and chorizo pur porc -- all priced at 3,50€ /200g). An old-world umbilical transfer of resources from the village to the next generation of heros. No cupcakes here. Soccer is what's for dinner.

Train station bike station.

I still haven't set myself up with a Ville d'Angers free loaner bike bike but, until I do, Angers, much like Paris, has just launched a very cheap pay-bike program with the first setup over at the train station (the future is here and it's intermodal). At 1€ a day, the value of the pay-station bike system has leap frogged France's other pay-station amenity, the .40€ Sanisette, self-cleaning street toilet (actually, I think they're mostly free these days). But .40€ is still the going rate for most public bathrooms. The once commonplace free public urinals have almost disappeared (for obvious reasons I'd think). But one walk-up man-stall, or vespasienne, still survives in Angers. Since both it and I are short timers here, I figured I should visit.

Oh I can go here for free? Excuse me scooter boy. Hi mom.
Hey, yoga-mat girl. Namaste.

We walk by it often so by "visit," I mean step up to the plate. Luckily, Ella was willing to capture the moment on "film." I know what you're thinking--this is so much like NPR's Story Corps. And, indeed, like a journalist on a slow news day, this is where we are (okay, where I am). I mean, our days are full but what's left to be said about artisan bread? Actually, a mystery we keep meaning to ask about is what determines when a French boulangerie wraps a bread in a single sheet of paper with both ends sticking out as opposed to putting it in a bread bag.

Back to school special

The children of the Loire are back in school this week. This reminds us, of course, that in France, we do not  have to make three lunches before everyone heads out the door. Apparently France's carefully proscribed and well subsidized school lunch programs are more untouchable than retirement-age laws. I can appreciate that. Work another two years or start making lunches every morning... I'd have to think about that one. And, as noted before, the lunches are really good.

At least we think it's like chicken.

One follow-up item, though: the "some kind of delicious meat," that Ella, Ivy, and Jack reported on after their first French school lunch, was rabbit. This got me thinking. Back home in Bellingham, one of the many cities where urban chicken farming has had a 21st century resurgence, could rediscovery of the "urban rabbit coop" be far behind? We'll take advantage of our current access to supermarket-rabbit, try out a few dishes, and give fair warning to our B'ham neighbors if we start drawing up plans.

Wondering how this could be

rendered in driftwood. (see the owl?)

The last round of châteaux visits Saturday inspired plans for some other home improvements. Gargoyles, or at least some decorative downspouts, are just starting to seem like the perfect summer project. Of the sites we visited (Amboise, Leonardo da Vinci's house, Blois, and Cheverny), the Saint Hubert Chapel at Amboise scored highest on the gargometer. What these particular specimens lacked in winged-monkey scariness they made up for with spring-loaded musculature, penetrating flesh-crazy faces, and wicked claws. FYI, for the house, I'm thinking driftwood pandas.

Busing from town to town it (finally) struck us how all the houses are the same basic color -- beige. On a previous bus tour, our guide (who's real job is director of the foreign student program at the university) pointed out that, because we'd traveled into a different geology, the color of local stone and thus the color of buildings had changed. But I guess we hadn't appreciated how these stone-color rules have continued no mater the building materials. In the same way that everyone wears a black coat but finds flair with scarves and glasses (if you're lucky enough to have poor vision), homes are set apart with the color of shutters and doors and the occasional gargoyle.

Amboise. Stone beige.

Rue d'Angers. Paint beige.

The I-can't-believe-it's-not-a-jail

apartment next to Jack's

soccer field. House-arrest beige.

Because it's hard

to eat a crêpe
with 筷子.

Kristin's classes are going well. While here with the AHA program she's teaching History of English and Second Language Acquisition (with a bent towards the students' current experience as French learners). The History of English class is also taking advantage of location, making use of geographic and linguistic proximity to evidence and remnants of the Anglo Saxon-French mashup of the 10th-15th centuries. We're not sure we'll be able get to one of the most obvious artifacts--the Bayeux Tapestry, a woven story board of William the Conquerer's kickoff of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. But language change is constant and living evidence omnipresent. Just a few blocks away from our apartment, you can see the beginnings of shift in French-dialectal Chinese with the infusion of western characters.

Another linguistic discovery has been the sighting of a some potential cover art for the second edition of Kristin and Anne's textbook. Some may remember an unenthusiastic response to the publisher's choices for the first edition cover. Abandonment of the first "final choice" was granted but the replacement, by the same artist, while avoiding the folk genitalia church banner motif, wasn't exactly a fresh take.

Take one:

What's coming out of what?

Take two:

Behold the tongues.

You say tomate, I say tomâté...

So just down the street (where, you may have noticed, everything is), past the cafe, left of the boulangerie, and a few steps on from the tabac, is La Fontaine du Dialogue: a bronze sculpture of two in conversation atop a pedestal adorned with lizards and faces whose open mouths gurgle out the eternal flow d'eau. Could this be the stuff of the next book cover? While taking the picture of la fontaine (down on a knee, right eye on the viewfinder and left eye closed) a german shepherd stealthily maneuvered nose to nose with me and, at the click of the shutter, let loose with rapid fire power barking that made me an instant believer in animal language. Cujo's owner sounded apologetic but we had no dialogue.

I've never had a photograph with

brass eyelets before. The closest I've
come to piercing.

In bureaucratic news, Kristin and I are officially legal aliens. I suppose we were partially legal with our visas but we needed to get resident cards, too. This eventually ended up requiring four trips to the prefecture. The clerk on the first visit said that I didn't need any additional documentation but that Kristin did and sent us away with a new form (they don't let you fill out stuff in front of them and they DON'T make photocopies). The second clerk said we both would need forms so we only left with Kristin's temporary card and more forms for me. On our third attempt, the lobby, the entry hall, and much of the steps leading into the prefecture office were filled with North Africans at various stages of naturalization I suppose. Even though the crowd was simply large, not unruly, the prefecture apparently called the police who came speeding up in several cars, sirens blaring. About ten officers seemed unsure what to do. They announced to the crowd that would have to form a line to the left. That got no response. They then tried to physically create a line with their own bodies. As they tried to nudge the throng into some kind of linear arrangement they'd simply be re-enveloped, left standing in the thicket with pathetic looks on their faces. Since we'd at least got to witness a good comedy, we decided to leave and come back the next day. Luckily, we got the same clerk as on our second visit. She noted that we'd dutifully recopied all the same information that we'd had with us all along and issued my temporary resident card. She even noticed that she'd messed up Kristin's and had to re-issue it. To cover her error, she had to extend the timeframe on our cards from June 9 (one day before our departure) to June 14. (While the consulate claimed that the visa's term started upon our arrival in France, the prefecture clerk claimed the clock started ticking on the visa issue date.) It made no difference to us but she had given Kristin grief about "overlooking this" on visit #2. So, it was almost amusing to be reminded of how arbitrary and mood-based these potentially important judgments are.

Rowing in Angers has been a special treat I must say. The club coaches have been very willing to muddle through our mutual language barriers and get me dialed into the routine. The bateau I typically take out is listed on the equipment roster as the Languin. It's not named per se. That's the brand name and it's the only boat from that company in the boathouse. So that's what goes down on the log sheet before heading out on the river: "Conroy, Hugh, Languin, 1x, 16h15." It sounds like a cross between "languid" and "sanguine" which I suppose could result in an even keel. My standard route is north up the Maine river (pronounced, men) a little over six kilometers to the town of Ecouflant.

Eau d'row -- View off the bow having turned around at Ecouflant.

It's tempting here to conjure an embellishment about how I park the Languin for a bit and saunter up to the boulangerie behind the church for Perrier, croissants, and a quick game of boules but, the whole thing seems fictional enough as it is.

Art brew d'Anjou. Phew.

We had a quirky local rainy Sunday excursion to the adjacent town of Trélazé where the community center was the site of a regional artistry-in-food exhibition. Of course all food here strives to assert artisan qualities. It was as good a cross-section as any that featured an organic bread bakery, a Buddhism-inspired insect-diet guy (mostly about chocolate covered crickets), the all-things-saffron table, chocolate face masks, mushrooms-on-toast guy, purveyor of miniature macaroons,  food-inspired femo-dough earrings, many others that escape memory, and Mademoiselle Micro-brew. The beer we've found here has been, pardon the irony, nothing to write home about. Mostly, it's just too sweet/malty/mediciney.  On Sunday though, Biere d'Anjou was on the scene with some micro brews that were a welcome find. They've definitely given the regional varieties a shove in a great tasting direction (from our pale-ale point of view). We gave a four-pack a shove in my backpack. They are gone now. I'll have to track down some more because I imagine d'Anjou brew would be some kind of delicious complement to rabbit.

Zone A de Staycation

Week one of winter break delivered some spring to the Loire. The magnolia trees (or magnolia-like trees) near our apartment popped--apparently reacting to a few recent warm afternoons. And while we haven't headed east to the Alps or Pyrenees with our comrades from winter-break Zone A (yes, France is divided into winter break Zones A, B, & C with separately dictated two-week school breaks so that ski resorts and trains don't get too crowded), we have continued our incremental discovery of Angers.

Ella, Ivy, and Jack have all been able to use their vacances to build their local social networks. Jack spent an afternoon at Alex's house and a nearby field playing pickup soccer. Ella and Ivy explored le Mc Donalds and department stores with Elisa and Véda.  I have a new appreciation for how digital cameras save money. Apparently the satisfaction of buying clothes is easily replaced by posting 87 pictures on Facebook of yourself trying on clothes.

Bonjour, kemo sahbee.

Vacances has also given Ella, Ivy, and Jack time to do some of their Bellingham school work, this week working through the new internet-based course on Washington State history (a state requirement for 7th graders). Having just read sections on U.S. policies towards Native Americans, it was a bit of a coincidence to walk by a fresh store window display up the street of cowboy-&-Indian imagery like I haven't seen in the United States in a long time. While it would be easy to think this is simply a legacy of U.S. films, I know too well the indelible impact of 1970s Euro-rock videos. I posted this on Facebook well over a year ago but, any excuse to bring it up again shall be used: Apache (it's over four minutes long but 30 seconds oughta do ya -- unless of course you're completely mesmerized).

Warmer weather means haircut. Migration at some point requires finding a barber shop -- barber's pole, big leather hydraulic chairs, a rack of electric clippers, and big jars of black combs submerged in Barbicide. Well, maybe because bloodletting fell out of favor (blood letting or blood sausage--you can't have both), I haven't seen anything resembling a barbershop. Not to worry. Coiffeurs are many and, as part of what I tell myself is evidence of 21st century European sophistication, they serve hommes and femmes in equal measure in exchange for globally standardized unequal prices. With few noticeable differences to base prejudices on, I headed to the closest coiffeur right across the street from our apartment--Pascal Meipnan, Coiffer Visagiste. I'm going to agree with myself here and say that "visagiste" sounds better than "beautician." This is because [cue the Miss America on-stage Q&A segment] I believe true beauty comes from the inside. But then, when it comes to visagosity, the French got it goin' on. But back to the haircut.  Pascal's shop looked okay from the outside. Walking past on our way back from the Saturday market I even saw another guy getting a cut proving that the hommes-price on the window wasn't just an attempt to expand their femme business (it really is hard to tell). Once back in our apartment, I pulled out a phrase book, turned to the "hairdressing" section, and trained for my mission. The first phrase listed was, "I would like a blow wave." I didn't even look at the French for that. But I read through the translations for "I would like a haircut," and "I want it short," and got to the point where I figured I'd actually memorized the words for haircut and short.  Inside the front door I approached the woman at the register and executed plan A: "Parlez-vous un peu d'anglais?"
"Ohhhh (head shaking negatively)."
"Uhhhh. Coupe?"
She looks at a computer screen while speaking French and then looks back to me for a response.
"                "
"...vingt minutes?"
"Ah, oui. Vingt minutes. Okay. Oui." I started towards what looked to be the waiting area but she stopped me.
"Vingt minutes."
"Okay, oui." This time I walked towards the door but was still getting a pleasant, we'll-see-you-soon vibe.
So, I returned 20 minutes later. Pascal had left but another of his coiffer staff (maybe even a visagiste) was back from lunch. Now, this is going to sound crazy, but it was Keira Knightley. I know. I know. The coiffeur/scheduliste who had made my "appointment" went over and whispered to her -- apparently to let her know that when she was done laying in highlight foils, she needed to give a haircut to the guy who goes, "coupe." We worked through a "consultation" that resembled rock-paper-scissors. My big achievement was to point at the side of my head and say, "plus court" (more short). Keira was right with me. So since we were all fluent like that, she pinched some hair on top of my head and said, "...vuuhwuahdurezieauhur...?" I was stuck but it was not the time to be stuck. Remembering Reese Witherspoon's speech in Legally Blond II ("...if you don't speak up, you're going to get a bad haircut..."), I feigned comprehension (always hard for me) and said, "Oui, merci." Keira looked surprised, like, "Wow, most people don't take me up on that." Had I just ordered up color? A scull wax? As much as a crazy Euro-doo would liven up this blog, there were no surprises. The shampoo was a rejuvenating citrusy lather. The coupe was snippily expert. And the phonetic blur that I'd agreed to was a once-over with the thinning sheers--always a prudent transition to spring. So I'm thinking, while we're in Angers, it's probably better if I keep my hair really short.

CT working the diabolos.

As it turns out, lots of stars were in Angers last weekend. The performing arts center, Le Quai, across the river was hosting Festival Cirque[s] Angers--a convergence of small circusy acts (hence the "[s]") performing over three days. We tried and failed to buy standby tickets on Saturday night so, while we were over there, we bought tickets for the only Sunday show that wasn't sold out--Compagnie Tr'espace. It was really interesting. Three was Compagnie: two dancer/juggler/acrobatish vegetarians (going out on a long skinny limb here) and a bass player/utility-performer omnivore (just a hunch). I had never heard of the diabolo but I am very familiar with it now. If you know not of the diabolo, it's a string strung between sticks that a spool is spun on--a distended yo-yo if yo will. To keep the spool spinning the performers do a lot of asynchronous arm cranking. If you weren't holding a diabolo you might make these motions to stop highway traffic. So, you can appreciate how challenging it is to integrate these mechanical responsibilities into an hour of choreography and storyline. The story seemed to be about opposing forces in life (punctuated by quirky yet emotive bass riffs): the push and pull, the holding on when everything's spinning around you, and finally, surrender to the fact that joy and meaning come from the endless (or at least 60-minute) struggle for balance rather than from balance itself. That's the spin I'm puttin' on it anyway.

Prior to the Sunday circus, we explored Angers on the west side of the river checking out a couple of parks and trails. We came across a marker from the Voie de la Liberté (Liberty Road) the route of the Allied Forces in 1944 as they advanced south from Normandy. And, while on the final leg of our route towards Cirque, looking for a boulangerie open on dimanche, we came across a very cool traffic circle. Yes, this is another digression into transportation, but traffic-circles get a really bad rap back home in Washington and so I think there's a lot to learn from this example (cue embedded video!). It's got cars. It's got long, articulated buses. And it's got ART! I'll probably have to start an album of traffic-circle art but in the meantime, way to go, France.

And lastly, for the kids whose families haven't whisked them away to the Pyrenees for the last ten days, the Ville d'Angers sports complex organized an indoor soccer tournament that the non-skiers of Jack's team participated in. After a warmup game played cold, Jack and Alex got their groove on to become a goal machine for the next three rounds. In between games, the teams got to hang out in some kind of all purpose activity room. I walked down there at one point to check in with Jack and what's everybody playing with? Diabolo! Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Frenchiladas

Last Sunday we had our first dinner guests. All being American, Mexican food was the obvious choice. And for a crowd, enchiladas are always an easy way to dish up the portions. But, having been to the grocery store many times now, we knew this would be an interesting venture into fusion cuisine. Some might say a reckless force-fit of stuff-on-a-plate.

Why we might die here. 

Muddling through another country's food-selling system is a good way to discover nuances of society and culture--or at least collect some prompts for cynical conjecture. The grocery stores we've shopped at in Angers are pretty similar to what we're used to in the U.S. but there are enough quirks to keep it interesting. Part of the discrepancy is our reluctance to embrace a French diet. While we have been eating exquisite cheeses and drinking local wine with a frequency I won't document, we don't seem to have gone native with our three squares a day.

One of my favorites: Choucroute garnie
ready-to-eat (or cook perhaps?).
Conspicuously absent: blood sausage.

A walk around the grocery store we shop at most (Monoprix), observing relative quantities, depth of selection, and shelf-placement, indicates that the local man/woman (not meant as a comment on gender ambiguity but, now that I think about it...) is comprised of bread, cheese, pork sausage, wine, and dried pork sausage. The shelves between the main groups hold second-tier staples: lentils, pâté, endives, mustard, cigarettes, blood sausage, and Nutella.
You already know that some U.S. products have not caught on elsewhere such as peanut butter and Cheetos. But our Mexican dinner preparations highlight new examples of heretofore under-appreciated North American specialty foods which we've now invented or attempted substituions for. We then tested these on our friends/subjects (not meant as comment on social science but, now that I think about it...).

Cheddar: the other orange fat. But

you wouldn't want to ruin a good

serving of pork with it.

1) Cheddar cheese. There have been sightings of cheddar but we've been prostituting ourselves to mimolette, a mild and unimposing orangey stand-in. Our other tactic was to blend mozzarella and gouda. Pros: We avoided forcing edam, emmental, and comté into a Mexican menu (all deemed not-quite-right by the three-kid jury). We could call our dinner "fromage a trois." And, we avoided the goat-cheese enchilada zone (though that sounds like territory worth exploring). Con: our enchiladas took one step towards mexi-calzone.

Old El Paso has about

cornered the French

market for

mex-in-a-box.

2) Refried beans. Refried beans, or even never-once-fried whole pinto beans, are not for sale here. The beanish aisle offers 15 types of lentils, white beans, and kidney beans. There's a little wooden-shelf display at an endcap with some specialty lentils and popcorn that also includes small mesh bags of what look very much like dry pinto beans except they are labeled "red beans" and priced at 4.90€ for two cups (almost $7). So, for anyone who still thinks a suitcase of blue jeans is the quick way to pay off your plane ticket to Europe, get hip: suitcase of pinto beans. Our faux refritos were concocted of equal amounts of canned white beans and kidney beans dumped in blender. Texture, check. Color, check. Salt to taste. Fiesta.
3) Chorizo. Okay, here's a wild card. I found a meat product labeled chorizo. Unlike the chorizo back in the old country, it's a cured and dried sausage. A package of sliced chorizo looked sufficiently like extruded pork'n cumin. The list of ingredients just said pork and spices. What, no love? It was tasty but a better complement to mozzarella than tortillas and enchilada sauce. Another small step towards mexi-calzone.


Châteaux

Far from the world that you prepare your own food in, last Saturday we bussed east along the Loire to three châteaux: Azay-le-Rideau, Chenonceau, and Chambord: stunning relics of the Renaissance, that time of unchecked imagination and cheap home-heating fuel. Pictures at: châteaux Picasa album.
In the same way that blogging exaggerates the relevance of disconnected stimuli, the châteaux are a gratuitous mashup of architectures and curious personal hobbies. Thus, I fear any attempt at description would only miss the point. These are LOOK-AT-ME! houses. The chât is the story. (Thank you for politely ignoring that I know nothing about these places). So, if you check out the collection of photos (or even if you don't), here are a few possible captions that merely respond to the eye candy that is chât d'Loire.

• Seeing as you're able to sit the better part of a day for a nude portrait, why the wet nurse?
• Angry babies with wings should wear diapers.
• All rooms should have a crowned golden H in them.
• If it were you who had cleared the earth of countless flesh-eating jack-a-lope, you wouldn't feel like you had to explain to anyone why you deserve a gigantic house. But since I've got nothing better to do, I'll show you a tapestry about how it all went down. It was an epic battle and, lucky for me, the cameras were weaving.
• Hey honey, I was thinking we could maybe take out a loan and do one of those tower-additions. We could use that new stone everyone's crazy about and your parents could stay in it when they visit.

Me so ferrous: A genuine
Invicta. 26 cm. Wooden
handle. 2.1kg. Smooth
enough for a crepe. Heavy
enough to bludgeon a
giant lizard. 

Big news in the apartment this week. We got a new frying pan! We were missing our cast iron pans and noticing that a couple of pans in the cupboard were due for retirement so a few weeks ago, we started walking into kitchen stores whenever we'd find ourselves in front of one. Sure you can set yourself up with a medium sized Le Creuset, porcelain glazed iron pan for a cool 96€ (about $130) but not only is that a bad deal, they cover up all the good iron with porcelain. What's up with that? A search of Amazon.fr seemed to confirm our fears. No basic iron pans in France. We could order something similar via Sweden but, the price was no different than the local Le Creuset. Then, in a basic stumble-upon, we walked in a little "hardware store." Right near the front door was a medium sized cast iron pan, made in France, with the porcelain only on the bottom--39€. Hey, if you cleared the earth of giant sharp-tooth lizards, you wouldn't be defensive about buying a nice pan (sorry, I don't have a tapestry of that). Before actually buying it, I asked Kristin to check with the owner about a larger size. He said no--that if they were any bigger, you couldn't lift it. Jeez. With my bare hands I deal with the giant lizards and he thinks I can't manage a few more centimeters of iron. Maybe I'll sketch the scene for him when I go back for a spatula.

Before retiring the old teflon pan, it was given a special mission that I should mention. I alluded to duck sausage in a previous post. For some reason, it sounded like it could be good. It could even become my surprise favorite thing about France. I tossed a package of two in the basket and that evening covered the bottom of Ol' Teffy with some water and set the links to cookin'. I was the only one home when I started in on this task but not too long into it the rest of the crew came in the door--a resounding OMFG chorus. Like the proverbial frog in a pot brought slowly to boil, I was evidently oblivious to having filled our apartment with the fumes of an abandoned sewer. Luckily, I suppose, we didn't have the drying-rack up with all the kids' clothes absorbing the classic French country scents for school the next morning... Yeah, well... yo mamma so stinky, she use duck sausage as air freshener...

We do have one of those drying

racks but when ya got three loads

it's time to start rigging.

We have indeed re-mastered the lost arts of hand-washing all dishes and air-drying clothes indoors. It's a charming past-time that always seems to need doing. And if Ella, Ivy, and Jack read this blog, I'm sure they'll wholeheartedly agree if not feel suddenly compelled to go wash the stack of plates that is undoubtedly next to the sink at this very moment.

Location, location, location.

(I'd wash the dishes but I'm

waiting for my jeans to dry)

Ella, Ivy, and Jack are all on day three of their two week winter break. After all, French kids have been in school since early January and it won't be until the last week of April that their two-week Spring break begins. This of course means a lot of stores and other things have whacky schedules through next Friday. Including shoe stores. I'm getting some pressure to get a couple of Frenchish clothing items -- maybe a darker colored coat and some "shoes that aren't Keens." I figure, if I've got some visual queues that I might not speak French, I need to hold on to those.

Look at my shoes. If I don't speak

French, nobody does. But then, if
you're wearing these, what's left to say?