will WE play in Peoria?

Kaitlyn is so tired from her first day at school that she put together a puzzle then asked to watch “a little tv.” I turned on Food TV and she is watching it. Maybe she’ll make dinner tomorrow. Nah, it’s Bobby Flay and I don’t want her trying to use the grill.

When I picked her up and asked her what she did today, Kaitlyn said “ate upstairs.” That’s what she calls the canteen (because they also eat a snack in their room.. which is downstairs) If that is the first thing she mentions, it must be the highlight. And if eating at school is the highlight either my cooking leaves that much to be desired, or food at school here is a lot different than when I was a kid.

Also, her little friend cried today when her mom picked her up for lunch because Kaitlyn was eating at school… so now that little girl is going to eat there on Mondays to be with Kaitlyn. How cute is that?

Today was the first day of school.

Amazingly, Kaitlyn and I got up on time. She still wanted to wear the outfit she picked out last night. She was happy and cooperative. She ate her oatmeal and put on her shoes and put on her backpack; she was really anxious to go back to school. (I must be that boring)

I’d been told that the first day of school is something of an “event” here. The place was crawling with Dads carrying cameras (and camcorders). I hadn’t even suggested to Bill that he be late to work to go. For one thing, I figured if he were there Kaitlyn would want him to stay. For another, I didn’t believe it was that big a thing.

Kaitlyn was a little bit disappointed when I led her into the same classroom she was in last year. I’ve spent the last few days telling her how she’s such a big girl that she’s moving to the big girl class this year. I had warned her that it was a big girl class in the same room and with the same teacher… but that reality didn’t sink in until we walked in. Once she found her hook and hung up her backpack, though, she was fine. She squeaked out a bonjour to the teacher, who was thrilled by it! Then she sat down to color and gave me a kiss and pretty much wanted me to leave.

I felt a little guilty going to the grocery store alone and being so happy to do so. (I also felt a little like a loser for having a solo trip to the grocery store be such a big deal) Lunch was kinda lonely sitting here all alone. But I got a lot of housework done. And now I have a little time to sit and relax before going to pick her up. I kind of miss her being around. Tomorrow she eats lunch at home. We’ll see how that goes!

Now that we’ve lived here for nearly 11 months, we’ve come to realize that owning two clown cars is, well, silly. Granted, Bill has been griping about his car ever since Kaitlyn threw up in the backseat and it took him weeks to get the smell out. I’m kind of surprised that in the summer heat (when we actually have some) he doesn’t say that the smell makes a comeback.

Earlier this week, another ISE family moving here at the end of the month asked if anyone knew of someone selling their cars. I sent him a fast reply… we’re thinking about selling one of ours. Sure, I suppose I should have mentioned it to Bill before shooting off that e-mail. But, honestly, we have been talking about it for months now and if they are interested and it gets us out of one of the cars without taking the giant loss one suffers when trading-in… what’s the harm?

Well, the harm is that apparently Bill had decided that we could solve all of our space problems by buying a car top carrier. Oh, but did he mention that the luggage we bought when we moved here won’t fit in it? And there’s definitely no way that house guests who fail to travel light could stuff their bags into that with much more success than we currently stuff it into the hatch of the clown mobiles.

It didn’t take too long, though, for Bill’s love of car shopping to prevail. He’s now spending moments at home looking up cars online and moments in the car driving to car lots.

And it turns out that we now know that neither of us intended to buy the cars we got. Both of us thought we should buy a station wagon but neither of us said it or said it forcefully enough for it to penetrate the I’ve-just-moved-to-a-foreign-country fog we were living in when we bought our cars.

We haven’t heard anything back from our potential buyers ever since sending them our prices. We didn’t price low.. since we don’t have to sell. Whatever happens, we now know that when you move to a foreign country… you should talk about what you think you need. That will probably hold true when we move home… with our car-top carrier.

I have made an important discovery. Just like everything you do here takes longer than it should (grocery shopping, going to the poste)… tours taken here last longer than they should.

Today we went on the Chemin de Fer de la Mure. It’s a little train that goes along an old coal mining route over some extremely high aqueducts, alongside a beautiful lake (the one we took a boat tour of two weeks ago) and through several tunnels.. including one that lasts for about a kilometer and they turn out the lights inside the train so you can’t see a thing. That’s the “mystery tunnel.” Oooh.

This voyage takes an hour and a half. Most of it is very pretty, but the final 20 minutes or so approaching the station at the end of the line is forgettable scenery of old train cars left along old rails and people with their laundry hanging out to dry.

The train station itself offers little more than bathrooms (I opted for the port-a-potty when faced with the ladies’ room which consisted of porcelain holes in the ground), a cafe and a place to buy ice cream. The stop is for an hour which is just enough time to think you can sit and eat leisurely but not quite enough time to actually do so. We sat to eat and the waitress asked us if we were on the 14:45 train. So she knew our schedule. It was the same schedule as everyone else sitting there.

We finished in what seemed to be plenty of time, but by the time we wandered over to the entrance to the platform, there was already a line. And by the time we got onto the platform, the two open-air cars were full. Given that we ended up in a car in which only about a third of the windows went down… it was annoying to have missed the chance to sit in comfort. I got so hot and stuffy on the ride back I thought I would pass out. You can’t move between cars, so there was little relief.

So the hour and a half ride would have been just fine. Add on the hour sitting at the cafe and that wasn’t horrible. But the hour and a half ride back was just about 90 minutes too long.

This morning we had heating fuel delivered. Yes, it is August, but the heating fuel also powers the water heater, so it is rather vital year-round. Plus it’s been darn tootin’ cold for August. The other day it was rainy and 11.5 degrees. That is just shy of 53 degrees. I’m not complaining, it is easier to put on a sweater than to sit in a puddle of sweat in an un-air conditioned house. (yes, Bill bought two portable a/c units but they don’t make the whole house cool and comfy)

So when the delivery man arrived, I showed him how he could access the fuel tank in the cave (basement) by removing some boards on the floor of the garage. (which I didn’t realize the first time we had fuel delivered last fall.) Then he asked, I think, if I have a ladder he could use to get down to the cave. I told him he could just go inside and use our elevator. I was trying to tell him he could use the stairs in the house. Gads, I’m never going go get the hang of this language!

At least it’s not as bad as the woman I heard about who was looking for buttermilk and asked the guy at the supermarket where she could find breast milk.

I am so tired. I spent the night on the couch trying to sleep while still being awake enough to watch Kaitlyn.

Apparently, three slices of watermelon, a tomato and a banana before dinner then half a baguette at dinner is not good. She tossed it all up, all over herself and her bed.

I was so afraid she’d be up all night throwing up that I said I’d stay with her on the couch, covered in old blankets and towels. The only thing that was up all night was me.

Of course, she got sick the night of her first attempt at being a big girl and going to bed alone. I hope she doesn’t think there’s a correlation.

Because I needed it, I now have something else to worry… no panic… about.

At lunch today, a woman told me about GIANT wasps that live in France.

These are no ordinary wasps. First, she held out her thumb and index finger about three inches apart to show me how big they are. Then, she told me about how she caught a “baby” one once in her kitchen which stunned the pompiers she’d called to come find and get rid of the nest of them she was sure was in her attic. (pompiers are the firefighters. If you have a nest of stinging insects, you call them and they come kill it. They apparently will also eradicate nests of poisonous worms that live here. I’ve not called them for my wasp problem since you have to have a place to have them look) Finally, she told me about how they once for no reason swarmed and attacked a woman she knows. The woman was out running when the wasps attacked her head and neck. Luckily, she was running with a local running club whose leader happens to be the chief of police in that town and he was carrying the antidote and injected her immediately, saving her life. But she did still spend a week in the hospital.

Sure, it all sounds like the kind of stuff that Snopes would dispel but there’s no such website in France. Ok, maybe there is, but it would be in French anyway so I would likely misread it and think it was confirming all this.

Wickepedia does confirm some of it. But its entry on les frelons is in, yes, French. I’m sure it says it is found in the south-west of France. Note to self: don’t go there.

Another site has a picture of a woman with one of these things… which is apparently actually a hornet… on her nose. It is huge. (they grow to 35 mm which according to Google is 1.38 inches) If one of those things comes around I will faint. It’s a site that claims the hornet is a misunderstood “gentle giant.” Hornet propaganda!

Still more searching (in English) reveals that this is actually the Asian Hornet, likely brought here in a shipment of merchandise. Damn global economy. At least it isn’t the Asian Giant Hornet.

It must be good to be a man in France. Or at least, it must be handy.

Today driving home from the grocery store, I passed not one but two men who had stopped along the side of the road to answer nature’s call.

The first was a biker; I can at least sort of sympathize. Who knows how long it would be until he got to his destination? Possibly hours.

The second guy was an older man who’d stopped his fancy car to stand not really very far off the road to find relief. Now, I know that there is a definite shortage of public facilities here. But he was only about one minute (if that) past some that are actually even fairly clean. Especially if you don’t have to sit down.

Now I understand that life just isn’t fair. But maybe if they at least didn’t flaunt their ability to not worry if they’ll find les toilettes and if they do will it be more than a hole in the ground or one that doesn’t have a seat…

The strangest thing happened to me today at the park.

Kaitlyn was running around on the play ground, ordering around a couple of little girls. “follow me! This way!” They didn’t speak English, but they did what she told them to do. Kaitlyn is such a natural born leader.

Anyway, at one point Kaitlyn ran over to our picnic table where I was working on my French homework. She plopped herself down to resume the consumption of her K-shaped jelly sandwich… and the two little girls just followed along. First, they just stared at me. So I said bonjour. Then they sat down by Kaitlyn, although they still looked confused.

I told Kaitlyn it was not nice to make them follow her so they could watch her eat. Kaitlyn’s solution was to toss the ziploc bag of pretzels their way. The younger girl picked up the bag and examined it, but could not figure out that it was open. So she pushed it toward me and said “Tu peut ouvrir?”

For once, I understood what someone was saying to me. But what seemed to strange to me is that she addressed me as tu instead of vous. I’m not sure why it even stuck with me let alone why it’s sort of nagging at me… has all this French started to sink in enough that I am actually reacting to it? As if I can address someone appropriately? For pity’s sake, I couldn’t answer the girl… all I could do was open the bag and hand she and her sister each a pretzel stick.

I stayed up late last night watching HGTV (love that Slingbox), so when Bill woke me up before 7am to tell me that we were out of hot water, I was not happy. Or really aware of what was going on. Next thing I know, I’m dragged out of bed to go to the cave (that’s French… “cave”… as in basement… not as in those Geiko commercials)… and show Bill which knob to turn on the hot water heater to adjust the pressure. Except that I don’t remember which knob it is.

Then as I started to wake up, I asked Bill to repeat the morning events. He noticed the water in the shower “wasn’t as hot as usual.” OOOOOH! That’s because yesterday morning Kaitlyn got in the shower with me and said it was too hot so I turned it down. The shower is a funky modern thing where you just set the scald-level and that’s the temperature you get every day. But the setting is hard to see (I just found out it existed a few days ago myself) and easy to ignore. So the hot water heater isn’t broken.

Still, the heating fuel is nearly empty. So now I’m given the task of getting more delivered. I tried calling the relocation company that is supposed to help us. But it is August. No answer. Looks like I know what my French lesson will be Monday morning. How do you say “heating fuel” in French?