will WE play in Peoria?

Just a year after it was installed, our stovetop has started acting funny. Sort of working… but sort of not. Sometimes it just refuses to work. (I could insert some snide remark here about how it’s simply French.) You turn it on to boil water and full blast is, well, too much effort. So you turn it down a notch. Then another. Then another. Until you have enough heat to cook some things but not enough to boil a pot of water for spaghetti. And if you’re lucky, you notice this problem before you’ve put the spaghetti in to cook.

The other night Bill used some voltage-meter that only an engineer would keep around the house and measured the output of one of our outlets. It was less than 200. Not what it’s supposed to be. We chalked up the finicky stove to an appliance simply not getting enough power to do it’s job.

Tonight was try two at spaghetti.

I turned on the stove… watched it for a while… all was fine…. so I went about doing other chores while waiting for the pot to boil. (We all know that you can’t watch the pot if you want it to boil.) I took towels out of the clothes dryer… folded them and put them away… went back to move the wet laundry from the washer to the dryer… turned it on… the noticed the stove blinking that it couldn’t boil that water. So I turned off the dryer. And the stove worked just fine.

Maybe if we lived in a house that’s a hundred years old it’d be easier to accept the idea that you cannot run two appliances at the same time. But the house is closer to three years old. And the idea that you cannot run two appliances at the same time is simply baffling.

So I’m spending my evening sitting with pesticidal goop on my head… waiting for the timer to beep and the real fun to begin. Yes… Kaitlyn’s scratching wasn’t just a dry winter scalp. Once again I did not find the lice until they’d already created a rash on the back of her neck. After her bath I ran a lice comb through a couple of random spots and pulled out two bugs. They were so small I thought… or hoped…. they were dirt. But they moved. Dirt does not generally propel itself.

I made the unwelcome discovery just as Bill was leaving the office. He got to stop at the pharmacy to pick up two bottles of the lice-killing goop. They label it as shampoo… but goop is far more accurate.

I decided to just go ahead and treat myself right away this time. Just as a precaution. It fits right in with the loads of hot-water laundry I now have to do (and washers here heat their own water…. adding a good hour or more to the wash cycle), the fanatic vacuuming of furniture, the daily changing and washing of bed sheets and towels, the quarantining of stuffed animals she’s slept with to the freezer (we read that the bugs and their eggs cannot survive 48 hours in the freezer… which may be why I was so surprised they popped up in winter). Naturally, we leave for a long weekend in Paris in 36 hours or so. Nothing says vacation like combing through your daughter’s hair for lice eggs every night.

Off to change the sheets…..

Lots of people are going home. Lots and lots. Every evening at dinner, Bill and I compare information on who’s the latest family to be leaving Grenoble. And the list of people staying is getting very, very small.

So far, we continue to be on the list of those staying. And it’s starting to feel, well, lonely. Even though people are still here, waiting to be contacted by the company that handles relocation. Knowing that so many of my friends are leaving is just lonely. I already think this summer is going to be very difficult… just me and Kaitlyn in a house with some freakish attraction for wasps.

But it isn’t just that. It isn’t just looking ahead and seeing myself with a great deal more alone time. It isn’t just knowing that I’ll have to help Kaitlyn deal with some of her favorite friends moving away. Bill put his finger on it tonight. It’s actually that I can’t help but feel, well, a little jealous. Not that I envy anyone having to move. Ever. Not that we don’t like living here. I wouldn’t want to make it permanent, but I like it. (Well, I like it while I have friends here.) We just can’t help but feel a little jealous that we aren’t the ones looking at a new house, new cars, new school, new opportunities… and all in English. Yes, our turn will come. And when it does, we may realize we aren’t ready for it. Or we might welcome it. But right now, it just feels really strange to be on the sidelines… watching… wondering… hoping that when we are told to go home… it’s to a job… and a place we want to go.

I couldn’t be home tonight to watch President Obama take the oath of office. So driving home, I started dialing around the radio, hoping to find something… maybe a station broadcasting bits of his speech that I’d try to catch pieces of when the interpreter paused… What I found was a news station talking about our new president… and our old one. I don’t understand a lot of what’s said on the radio. But I clearly heard them call President Obama “the President of all the world.” And I also heard them call President Bush a war-loving “crazy.”

Another American ISE told me today she’d forgotten today was anything out of the ordinary. That when French people said to her “it’s a really big day for your country,” she had to stop to figure out what they were talking about. Forgot? I do sometimes feel a little out of touch living here… but, please.

Since getting Kaitlyn to bed, I’ve been glued to the online coverage. The speech was touching. Watching the new President and his wife walk along Pennsylvania Avenue was something else. But I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay awake to watch the rest. I did see the float from Illinois touting John Deere. Good thing Bill had already gone to bed.

I’ve had a problem with my car I’ve been ignoring as long as possible. But with the spitty winter weather, I can’t ignore it anymore. The problem is that the windshield wiper fluid doesn’t spray when you push the button for it. Which means seeing out of my windshield is nearly impossible. You know it has to be bad for me to even notice; I’m notorious for keeping a dirty car. Years ago when I bought a convertible, my mom asked me how I was going to keep all my shit from flying out of it.

The real problem is that I don’t know the words necessary to explain this problem. I finally broke down Friday and got the owners manual out of my glove compartment, found the page that talks about windshield wipers. Armed with a page of nonsense and my freshly acquired vocabulary word “la truc” (which means “the thingie”) I dialed the dealership. I told the woman who answered I needed an appointment. She asked if it’s for routine service. No, I have a problem. Oh, then you need to talk to so-and-so, who is with a client. He’ll call you back. I assumed that meant he’d call me back before the US officially has a new president. But like everything else here, it didn’t happen quickly. So today since I was going to Carrefour anyway to have a crummy morning, I figured I’d stop at the dealer and try to get their attention in person.

I started with presumably the same woman who again told me I had to speak to the service guy. Who was on the phone. So I hovered around his desk and waited. Two phone calls later, he acknowledged my existence. I tried to explain the problem. Said “la truc blah blah blah”… then acted out spraying and wiping. That was when he stood up and suggested he just go look at the car.

At least I ended the embarrassing ordeal with an appointment. Although the guy couldn’t spell my name right no matter how many times I spelled it out. Whatever, I don’t think he’ll have any trouble remembering me.

I think it’s safe to say… I should stay clear of ski school groups on the mountain.

Generally, when the class needs to take the lift, the teacher just asks adults waiting to ride if they’ll go with one of the kids.

This afternoon at Chamrousse, no one asked me when I ended up riding the lift with a little boy. I don’t know how old he was.. I’d guess 5 or so. He didn’t say a word to me the entire ride up. I didn’t say anything to him, either. It’s hard to strike up a conversation with a little kid, especially in a foreign language. So I opted to enjoy the quiet. He did start to count the chairs passing us going down the lift, confirming that he was French.

As we got to the top, I raised the safety bar, said “un, deux, trois!” then hopped off the chair…. realizing too late I didn’t know how to say “stand up.” But I figured they’d at least gotten briefed by their teacher, if they hadn’t already made the trip up this afternoon. Apparently, I was wrong.

As I started to ski away from the lift, I realized the little boy wasn’t next to me. I turned around and saw he was still on the lift, riding it as it turned around to go back down the mountain. The operator stopped it, and the boy leapt off. The operator then lept from his booth and yelled at me that it’s dangerous to jump. Well, no shit, dude. I didn’t tell the boy to jump. The operator seemed to chalk up my stupidity to not speaking French. Whatever. I struggled to help the boy get his wayward ski back on… moving him out of the way of the chairs. Finally his teacher made it up. He probably didn’t see the boy’s leap of faith and he thanked me for helping. Little does he know….

Driving home today I realized how much I hate the person I become when I do my shopping at Carrefour. No doubt, the giant grocery chain has the most selection around and probably the best prices. It’s like a giant super Target… you can buy toys, motor oil, luggage, a refrigerator, a television set, and food all in one place. I won’t call it convenient, because that it isn’t. But it’s all under one roof.

People at Carrefour go there and become the most self-absorbed humans trodding the planet. They push your cart out of the way. The push the cart into whoever happens to be unfortunate enough to be in it’s path. They push you out of the way. I found myself pushing into people today because there was no other way to get past them. No one apologizes. No one cares. It’s just par for the course. They restock the shelves in the middle of the day which means putting big piles of boxes in the middle of the aisles while the stock person stands in the way of whatever it is you’re trying to get to. I’d think they read my list and move in front of whatever they see written down, except that my lists are all written in English.

I once bought cheddar cheese there. They keep it behind the counter of the cheese section, as if it’s a delicacy. So you have to ask for it. When I did the woman working there had no idea what I wanted because I said “cheddar” instead of “sheeeeah-daaah” or however you’d say it with a French accent. It wasn’t even that good; I’ve skipped it ever since.

Although I encountered the rudest of all today in the produce section. You have to get your fruits and vegetables weighed there in that department… get to the cashier with an unweighed bag of carrots and you’re in big trouble (you then either have to run the bag of carrots back to the guy at the scales, holding up the inevitably long line behind you, or just ditch the carrots all together). So I was standing at the little weigh station today with several things that needed to sit on the scale and this man hovered his bag of green beans over my scale… so I actually started sliding my next item on as I was removing the weighed item… the way Indiana Jones slid that bag of sand onto the pillar holding the golden statue. There was another scale no one was using; he could have easily gone there. Or he could have asked. But finally he caught me with my back to the weighing process getting the next item out of my cart and he took my food off the scale so he could put his on!

I know I pay more when I go to the stores that are nothing but produce stores or when I go to the butcher for steaks and pork chops. But I don’t care. It’s worth any price to not become one of those people who shops at Carrefour.

I admit it: we were all so impressed when FedEx delivered a box here from California in just a few days… for something like $35. The thrill tarnished today when I opened my mailbox to find a bill from FedEx… for the French VAT tax.

Theoretically, they can charge you the sales tax on everything shipped here. But nothing we’ve gotten via the good old mail has come with the extra bill.

I know it’s a hassle for anyone thoughtful enough to send us something from the US. But it seems that the post office remains the best way to ship things. Until someone from the French customs office reads this…..

We welcomed the new year like so many people… by recovering from the night before. Not because we drank too much. Because we had a party.

Including us, there were 12 adults and 10 children here. That’s a lot in this house. The kids mostly stuck to the playroom in the basement, which they left in the appropriate stage of disorder. I didn’t let the other parents make their kids pick up… I tell Kaitlyn two things: that’s her room to do with what she wants and if you invite friends over to a party you don’t expect them to clean up at the end. (Although someone did clean up Kaitlyn’s room upstairs, leaving it in better shape than it had started the evening.)

One person brought over some fireworks that he’d had leftover from Bastille day. A little before midnight, all the men went in the backyard to watch him set them off. Good thing there isn’t a house in the lot just below us… and that the neighbors we do have didn’t complain about the noise.

Then our friends who’ve lived here for 12 years or so taught us a traditional French way to ring in the new year. Never mind the champagne. You buy boxes of party supplies at the store… with hats and streamers and noisemakers… and… tubes that you load with tightly packed paper balls to blow at your friends and family. I nearly got beamed in the eye with one fast moving ball and it hurt! The grown ups were the ones trying to hit each other with the little blow tube thingies. The kids were content to just blow the noise makers. It was quite a sight. We’ll probably be finding those little balls in corners of the house for weeks.

After unloading and reloading the dishwasher, avoiding vacuuming and generally goofing off…. we finally headed to the basement to clean up that mess. The kids had proudly showed off how they had gathered every toy downstairs and dumped it all in a pile in the corner. I still don’t really understand why. But I do know it was a horrible mess to pick up. They poured all the monkeys out of the barrel… all the pieces of a puzzle… every polly pocket shoe… every doll…. it was horrible. But was was more horrible was the pile of wood on the floor. Sometime in the middle of the night, part of our ceiling collapsed! We’d noticed it sagging last night, but had no idea it was so close to just falling like that. For those who haven’t seen it, the ceiling is some thin boards like you’d use to panel a wall. Turns out, they were barely tacked up. The tiny nails used to hang the boards had pulled out and the wood fell out. We are really lucky that it didn’t fall when all the kids were down there playing! Bill drilled screws into the boards that didn’t fall to hold them up. I have enough excuses not to get on the treadmill, I don’t need the fear of being clobbered by my own house added to the list!

So, happy new year, landlord. A whole new problem to tackle in 2009!

We’ve returned home from our week in a nearby ski resort where we spent Christmas. I don’t know that it was what I expected. Even after checking out the resort this summer (we drove around for about 30 minutes on our way home from our vacation in Italy… hardly serious research).

We stayed in Alp d’Huez. It’s only about an hour from here. I’d really left the selection of the resort up to Bill because he’ll spend hours studying the piste map and determining if the place has enough easy, intermediate, and advanced runs to satisfy everyone going. And this year, it was the three of us plus Bill’s sister, who hasn’t skied in about 15 years.

The hotel wasn’t at the base of the slopes. Those were far too pricey. But it got good reviews on Trip Advisor, and it was affordable without being so cheap that you’d wonder what on earth you were in for. We checked in and went to our rooms… opened the doors.. and discovered that Debbie got a fairly big room with a balcony overlooking the mountains. We got a room of about the same size but with a twin bed stuffed in, only a desk and small closet for storage, and a window a small window with a view of an apartment building. Nice. As the week went on, I started to peek into other rooms when the housekeepers left the doors open while cleaning… and noticed armoires… big rooms… two double beds… oh, well.

We’d also opted for taking the hotel’s half-board. That means breakfast and dinner was part of the price. After a day skiing, it’s just easier to know that you can walk downstairs and eat, rather than try to find a restaurant and mess around with reservations and the like. I’d read that the food was good. We ate things that surprised all of us: gratin of mussels, venison, oysters (only Kaitlyn ate that and she loved it), perch, crab tacos (not really tacos, don’t know why they called it that), Chartreuse ice cream (tasted like frozen Nyquill). The food was excellent. The service was suburb. The last night we were there we finally went into the lounge and sat in a corner playing games. We should have done that every evening, it was a lot of fun. Ok, I ended up “playing” chess with Kaitlyn which consisted of letting her move the tokens around the board however she wanted, but she enjoyed it so that was all that mattered.

The dinners were excellent, but long. Generally by the time dessert came around, Kaitlyn was too tired to stay at the table, so Bill and I took turns taking her upstairs to the room. Christmas Eve was my turn. We set out the eclair we’d bought at a bakery for Santa (it’s France, he has to eat what they have here) and an apple we’d picked up for the reindeer to share, and a bottle of water since we didn’t have any milk in our room. That got Kaitlyn to thinking… where does Santa stop to pee while he’s busy delivering gifts all around the world? She seriously needed this question answered. I told her that Santa has helpers stationed around the globe, giving him a place to go if he needs. She was ok with this. Then she wanted to know how Darth Vader pees in that suit of his. Before I could dream up something for that question, she decided that he doesn’t have to pee because he’s only partially a real person. And with that, she rolled over and fell sound asleep.

During the day, Kaitlyn took ski lessons in the morning and ate lunch with the other kids before we picked her up. I ended up not getting in as much skiing as I’d have liked… partially because Bill usually took her to school then came back to get me, meaning we only had about an hour to ski before we’d stop for an early lunch. So I can only blame myself for not getting ready faster. Bill’s sister only skied a day and a half. The first day she ended up walking all over town wearing her ski boots and we think that’s what caused strange blisters to form in rings around her legs. It was a couple of days before she could put anything on her legs, let alone ski boots. Then when she gave it another go, she took a pretty good spill on one run and I think that did her in. She says she had a good time shopping and resting and riding the gondola to join us for lunch. She did try sledding with us. You ride the gondola up and take a sled run down. It’s not nearly as scary as the one we tried last year in Switzerland. But it was too fast for her. And we got there so late that we only got to go down once before the gondola closed for the night. (Kaitlyn isn’t good at switching gears… we shouldn’t have let her go to the room to rest… oh, well)

One of the neatest things we saw was on Christmas night. We went to the ice rink to skate, but it was closed because Santa was walking around it, tossing chocolates to the kids lining the outside of the rink. That wasn’t the cool part. Then we looked up the mountain and all the ski instructors (there are a couple hundred at least) skied down the mountain carrying torches. The kind you take to rid your village of an ogre. It was very pretty… a line of orange dots snaking down the mountain… all the way into town! They walked from the piste to the ice rink where they put out their torches and stood together. Then there were fireworks. Luckily we were not so close that the noise upset Kaitlyn and she could actually watch them and enjoy them… with my hands covering her ears.

Friday night there was a concert of Christmas songs at the church in town. The concert was being played on the pipe organ. It’s a unique organ because it’s made to look like a giant hand. I wanted to see this. And I like Christmas music. But by Friday night, Kaitlyn had no interest in doing any such thing. Neither did Debbie. I’d resigned myself to just sit in the room when Bill told me he’d go with me. So we walked to the church. Our ski pass got us into the concert for free. Which turned out to be a very good thing. Because when the guy started to play, it was stuff I’d never heard before. I peeked over the shoulder of the woman in front of me to read the bulletin (I refused to pay the 12 Euros for it)… 6 songs… not a single recognizable Christmas song. I videotaped one. Bill offered to hold the camera for me and I told him to point it anywhere, I was just trying to get some nice music to use in my home video of the trip. Just then, the organist struck a chord and started playing a song that sounded more like something from a horror flick than a Christmas song. I started laughing and couldn’t stop. I laughed so hard my stomach hurt. I’m sure the people around us weren’t pleased, but I didn’t care. I mean… that was the most un-Christmas sounding Christmas concert I’d ever been to.

All in all it was a good week. Got to rest. Got to visit. Got to ski. Got to laugh. Found a restaurant worth an hour’s drive. Next year.. we’ll try yet another resort.