I'm sick of sick

         Motherhood can hurt. Literally. No, I mean literally--just today Livia has already tried whacking me in the face twice. But let me back up to the Tuesday before last, Nov. 25th. I was dreaming that I felt sick to my stomach when I woke up. You know that huge feeling of relief that it was all just a dream and now you can get on with your life? I love that feeling. Unfortunately, that feeling lasted about the length of time it took me to get my hiney out of bed and stumble into some workout clothes. Once again I felt sick to my stomach. My daughter missed the memo and instead of waking up at her usual time, decided that a half hour early would be a better decision. Nature waiteth not, even for toddlers, and she ended up getting quite the show, first thing in the morning. It turns out that puking up sweet potatoes, just two days before Thanksgiving, is a bad thing. The rest of the morning was a bit of a blur as I did everything I could just to stay up until Matt came back from a meeting to work from home. Thankfully, just as I was contemplating the merits of super gluing my eyelids open, Matt walked in the door. 

        As it turns out, the low point of my day was just the beginning. The fun was just getting started :) Feeding Livia later that evening I got up from my chair to take off her bib, a giant fuzzy blanket wrapped around me (yes, this is the stay at home mom version of a sick day). Forgetting that I'd scooted back the chair, I went to sit back down and of course, missed completely. So there I was on the floor: a tangle of fuzzy blanket, one very dirty bib in me and a smarting elbow (the result of whacking it sharply on where my chair actually was on the way down). Livia, startled from the commotion (I had made quite a bit of noise on the way down), got so scared that she tossed whatever she could find at hand off of the table. 

        The problem was, this was her unfinished dinner plate and her flinging target happened to be my face. Once I'd gotten over the initial shock of it I managed to get her down, reassure her and laid myself out on the carpet to recuperate. She grabbed her sippy cup and headed over, convinced that she now needed to keep a close eye on Mom. Unfortunately, just as she was taking a swig of milk she happened to spot her pacifier. Dropping the sippy cup, she reached for it. What I didn't mention before was that she happened to be just above my head when this happened and that very full sippy cup hit me smack on the jawline. Whenever the going gets tough I try to remember that Momma said 'there'd be days like this' but I have to admit that Momma didn't warn me that there would be a single day where I'd puke my guts up, feel as if I'd been run over by a tractor, topple to the floor, have luke warm peas thrown at my face, and then get punched in the jaw by a sippy cup. So I did what any mature, grown, hormonal woman would do: I rolled over and cried like a baby. 

        Surely, I thought, this was the worst of it. Light started glimmering at the end of the week. It had been a hard week, I was still weak from my stomach flu but life was going to get better and on Saturday we got to celebrate Thanksgiving with good friends. Take that: Life 0 Tal 1. That night Livia had trouble sleeping. Lots of it. When she was no longer comforted by me holding her I started to panic. Matt was gone and at first I couldn't reach my mother in law (a doctor). And then she puked a couple of times. Wait a minute, this is all too familiar, right? We just did this dance earlier this week. The next morning Livia was up at 6 crying. It was too loud to go for a 'selective hearing' approach and since it was my morning to get up with her I slowly complied (I say slowly because we'd been up most of the night with her and my body was feeling it). When I shuffled out to the living room I just stared dumbfounded. In an act of solidarity, the cat had thrown up all over the living room. You have got to been kidding me. Seriously? 

        And so it continued. Livia, sick and grumpy all day every day--no more throwing up at least, turns out that that had been caused from excessive coughing--sick and grumpy all night as well. One night she was up just about every hour, sometimes multiple times. One day in the haze, her and I were going through the box that contained her new play kitchen for Christmas (more on that later) and had just arrived by special delivery. Trying to be helpful, she turned around to give me a longish wooden rod, only to whack me smack in the forehead with it. Later that day she had a tantrum (one of many when the girl is sick apparently) and tried to scratch anything in a toddler arm radius. This just so happened to be on my neck and sternum area, leaving behind scratches that are horror film worthy. Thankfully it looks like hope might be on the horizon and I'm going to attempt going to work tomorrow. All this to say, however, that one lesson has been imprinted on my mind over the past two weeks: parenting is definitely not for wimps. But it might make one out of ya! ;) :) 

Mary

Dear Mary,
They say that writing can help you process your grief. Have you ever really wondered who the 'they' is anyway? And yet we all do what 'they' say. But I think it might help in this case, because despite knowing that you were a big fan of not holding back your emotions, I'm not so good at it. The whole wear-those-emotions-on-your-sleeve bit has just never been my thing.  So where were we? Grieving, ah yes, grieving. One word that sums up a world of emotions. Sometimes I miss you and I start to cry at weird moments like when washing the dishes and remembering how you had Kelsey and I wash our dishes with just a trickle of water to save energy. In a weird way those moments reassure me that I'm normal and it's normal to be sad and this is the way death works.

But mostly I'm just numb. Unable to comprehend, really, how in one single afternoon you could have been ripped from the fabric of our lives. Gone, just like that. Are we all just one car accident away from life forever changed? I play a game of maybe's in my mind. Maybe if you'd have lived closer to me I'd be able to wrap my mind better around the fact that you won't be coming back. Maybe if you'd just have waited to take off your coat or had your seat belt on, things would be different. Maybe you stopped being angry at God. Maybe your last few moments were peaceful and not fear-filled.

But the maybe game takes me around in circles so to stop my dizzying spiral I focus on what I do know: how you used to get down on all fours and pretend to eat my toes when I was small. I thought it was the best thing ever. You actually did manage to eat my daughter's toes this last Christmas! (Don't worry, she's got about a 2 second attention span so I'm sure she wasn't traumatized) Christmases long ago and the little stocking that you sometimes opened with us. Your deep soul laugh and rumor has it that it got you kicked out of a restaurant a long time ago. European reminiscing for you and dreaming for me. My first pair of 'real' chopsticks from Chinatown in Seattle. Your beautiful garden on that corner city plot. The way you said Beetle Bomb and teaching me how to play 10 High. Your insistence on 'real' hugs. Your talent for making beaded jewelry. Living downstairs for a summer in your basement apartment. My tour of the city that you took me on when I first moved to Seattle for school. Hearing that you had gotten into a food fight with your sister at Christmas. These are what I'll set my mind to dwell on and these are some of the things I'll remember. Happy things and gratitude for those times spent with you. So thank you. Thank you for teaching me how to eat with chopsticks and how to slough cards and taking a bit of time to get down on your hands and knees to play in my 5 year old world. My life would not have been what it was if you hadn't.

                                                                      Your Grateful Niece

Heave Ho

Well God just has a sense of humor, now doesn't he? I guess that might be because he created humor in the first place... Ok, moving on to my actual point (yes, every once in awhile I do have one!). Here I was getting ready to whine a bit about how I've felt so uninspired to write lately, poor me, yada yada yada when God just up and decided to give me a bit more material. You see I went kayaking with my mother in law this week. 

Let's picture it, shall we? We pull up to the beautiful, scenic view pictured above ready to kick some kayak butt. It's slim pickin's as far as kayaks go (due to going in the later afternoon) but our spirits our high. We confidently reassure kayak girl that we have had previous experience and that all will be fine. Heck, I took a class in college--while maybe not making me an expert, it does remove me from the realm of the ridiculous, right? 

I'm a little shaky getting in and I definitely had forgotten about the whole butt first rule, but I'm thinking--give me a few minutes and it'll all come back. Well it does, in theory. In practice... hmm. We could use a bit more work. 15 ft out and I'm already turning in circles. Ok, honestly. I start doing 2 strokes on the opposite side for every 1 on the turning side. Now this is getting personal. I try in vain to catch up with Agnès, who is by now light years ahead of me. Somehow I manage to fervently spin over to her.

At this point she says something like "wow, look how low your kayak is sitting in the water compared to mine". That's when I realize that she's made a good point:  I've got a whole kiddie pool going on next to my legs. It must have been from all that splashing and turning. We quickly decide to row for a nearby shore where it'll be easy to empty it. 

I'm 10 ft away when I start capsizing. 

It's at this point in time that I remember my first experience in Canoeing and Kayaking Class when my foot got stuck in the drifting kayak and my other foot, well, stayed on the dock. That day I got as close as I'll ever get to doing the splits before a full dunking in the Seattle canal. And then there was the time where I got distracted and flipped the canoe. Perhaps this would have been a good thing to remember from the get-go. At least my disaster training kicked in (that would be funded by the A.E.C. [Awkward Experience Club]) and I quickly prioritized the essentials: my shoes. Then paddle and semi submerged kayak, of course.

Wonder women that we are, we manage to get the kayak turned and emptied. Agnès very nicely trades kayaks with me because we're convinced that mine has issues (the guy who used it before me had had issues as well). Then it's back to business and out on the water again. This time things go better for about 30 seconds longer. I resist the urge to scream and attempt to patiently better my strokes in an effort to stop the merry go round. 

No such luck. Agnès, while occasionally stopped by a push from the current for the most part breezes onward. "Sit up straighter" "Not so intense" "Pull from far in front" I try all the advice; nothing helps. Nothing like eating humble pie every now and again, I decide (for the sake of my sanity). 

Then I start capsizing again. Only this time, I'm in the middle of the river under a bridge. 

With a feeble yell at Agnes I start swimming for a ladder I see attached to the side of the bridge's bank. This time emptying out the kayak won't be so easy. Being one who likes a challenge and the occasional stupid idea, I decide to climb the ladder and empty it from atop the bank. I am kayak woman, hear me roar. Minor detail: there's about 5 ft of distance from the water to the top of the bank. No prob, I think. Very carefully I edge the kayak up each rung of the ladder while Agnès steadies it below. Gently I slide it off the ladder and rest the tip of it on the bank's stone edge. Turning it requires some awkward straddling and hugging but I get 'er done. Little do I realize that as I'm emptying my kayak, I'm actually pouring it into Agnès' kayak. Thankfully, she has less of a talent for capsizing (it must be my spiritual gift, really) and she remains afloat. 

Just about the time when we had finally gotten the kayak emptied, upright, and waiting beside the ladder, I realize that there is an old man with his wife next to me on the side walk taking pictures of the whole darn ordeal. I must be more exciting than fishing, I guess. I manage to give the guy my best drowned rat of a smile and get back in without diving in for a third time. We decide to head back to kayak girl and just as we're coming around the bend of the bridge I see another fellow member of the A.E.C. who has also biffed it--in front of three girls no less--I smile to myself, feeling a bit less alone, and wonder how in the world I passed Canoeing and Kayaking Class with flying colors. 

Why I hate living in Paris...Part Two

Time to finish what I started. (Chalk it up to the new year and such) 

Some of you probably remember that back before the tornado of holiday bliss hit I had set out to write a list of the top 10 things in France/Paris that I just can't stand. In the process I discovered a deep seeded hatred for grocery stores here and was never able to finish my list! But before I get to that, I think there's probably a few disclaimers I need to throw back in here:

 1) In case you're ready to tar and feather me for being the world's most negative person, please be aware that I did do a post on some of the things that I absolutely love about France [click here for that post].  Anyone who has lived in a different culture comes to realize that the question is never "Do you like it/hate it living there?" but rather "What are the things you love and what drives you crazy?" It's a both and, not an either or. 

2) I spent the first couple years of married life living in Paris proper. Now we live in a very close suburb (Zone 3 out of 5/6). So my frustrations might be very specific to the orb that is Paris and it's very close suburbs. The farther you up you get in zones the less likely these particular frustrations apply. Someone living outside of Paris (even in a medium sized city) will probably have some very different daily frustrations that quite possibly I can't identify with. 

3) We also have a rather tight budget. Thus we sometimes have to put up with more crap for better deals...alas, money can buy a fair degree of daily comfort... 

Do you think it's a bad sign that my disclaimers have already taken up half the page? Let's just say one of my strengths is not brevity :) Ok, so here goes:

Here were my previous three:

1. The dreaded Prefecture (and paperwork in general!) 
2. Paris rudeness
3. Grocery shopping! (I got pretty worked up about that one!)

And now the rest:

    4.  How gosh darn long it takes to get anywhere is this city! 45 minutes of driving in my hometown in Oregon would get you to a whole different city yet here, it's our average church commute! Which is by no means that odd by Paris standards. Before we moved out to the burbs I was commuting to work an hour each way--now when I tell people that it takes me only 20 min to get to work and I can avoid the dreaded transports (aka any form of public transportation) with my bike, most gush about how lucky I am and how great it must be living so close to my work. Ah yes...perspective. 

    

    5.  You've all probably heard that Paris is expensive. What maybe you didn't realize is that groceries aren't all that expensive and wine can get down as cheap as 1.50 euros a bottle here (not that you really want to drink that wine of course). So where is all the money going? Why, into the pockets of landlords and real estate agents. Yep--we pay just under a thousand euros for our 2 bedroom, 592 sq ft apartment. For the same amount outside of Paris we could rent this 4 bedroom, 2 bath, 1,388 sq ft house.... And it's the same thing for buying as well. The farther you get out of Paris, the less impossible it seems... 

  6. Old ladies telling you what to do. Okay so not every old lady--but let's face it; here, the elderly are often the worst culprits! They are the worst line cutters, the grumpiest neighbors, and the most opinionated when you do finally get them to talk. It's a dog-eat-dog world at times in Paris and only the toughest and often meanest make it through. 

  7. This is probably a big city thing but it's ridiculously hard to get to know your neighbors here. Some won't even respond when you say hello and Parisians have passive-aggressive conflict resolution down to an art form.

  8. The educational system which is a whole post that this teacher will leave for another day. Just trust me on this one. 

  9. A lack of go getter-ness and initiative taking. This one is linked to number 8 so I won't go hugely into detail (plus you're all probably wondering when I'm going to just finish this post already) but essentially in Anglo-Saxon cultures there tends to be more focus on creativity, breaking the "rules", and plenty of verbal praise to help you become "who you were meant to be" (is this starting to sound like a Disney song?). While I do think it can become a little excessive sometimes at home (when we're sooo afraid of hurting someone's feelings that we stop being honest)--here France is at the opposite extreme of the verbal spectrum and man do I miss that encouragement every now and then! 

  10. Getting your drivers license. This is where you're like, she's joking, right?? Oh sadly I am not. After seeing both my sis-in-law and my husband recently go through this process I break out in hives just thinking about it! [ps. Matt had to go through it because due to complicated driving laws, he was allowed for a long time to drive on his American driver's license but then recently was forced to go through the French process from scratch] 

There is no rush to the DMV here when you turn 16. First, you're not yet legal. (That comes when you turn 18) Second, it's so gosh darn intimidating and expensive that if you live in Paris, chances are you put it off as long as possible. While most of the people in Matt's driver's ed classes where in their early 20's, he did encounter a few in their mid to late thirties, that's how long they'd waited! Your first step is the passing the written test (aka le code). If you pass it on the first try, consider yourself to have successfully bypassed all kinds of traps questions like how fast does a jaguar run and the like. 

Next comes your stint with drivers ed. It cost 55 euros an hour but most of the time you have to buy a package deal with them--I looked up one randomly online and their deals ranged from 1,260 (20 hours of driving) to 2,120 euros (35 hours). So you slave away, give up your first child's future college fund and finally, you've done your time. Ah, but it's not over. Now you fork out another couple hundred euros for the pleasure of taking a test that you might or might not pass (each time you pay). Chances are you probably won't, because it would look like they're being 'too easy' on the first timer and both the driver's ed school and the government will get more money out of you if you fail--they have a vested interest. 

So you take your test and let's say you fail. Now you get a minimum of another 10 hours of driving to pay for, and there's no guarantee as to how long you'll have to wait to take the test again. You might wait months. So you do your time and finally the chance of breaking out of your driving prison emerges...that is if you pass it the second time. Not kidding you, a friend of mine and very safe driver failed the test 5 times. And a couple I know from church both failed so many times that eventually they gave up on it all together and decided to just rely on public transportation! Alas, many do eventually get through it (you only have to come visit Paris and see all the traffic to attest to that!) and then it usually becomes a sort of conversation starter at dinner parties with everyone sharing their battle stories and such. Ah, well, I'll get my turn soon enough! 

So there you have it! A bunch of things that I don't particularly like about living here. That's okay though because every culture reflects in some way God's image and yet is à la fois marred by it's own sin. So it's okay that I don't love everything about here--France isn't perfect, but then again, neither is home. I'm okay with living somewhere in the messy in-between. 

Why I hate living in Paris...Part One

 

For all the times I've ever gotten, "What, you're kidding! You live in Paris! How can you have problems??", I refer you to what has been dubbed the Paris Syndrome. Yes, apparently there is a phenomenon among Japanese tourists that might make you think twice the next time you're hesitating between travel plans to the city of lights or a beach in Tahiti (regardless of what you look like in your bikini this year). Looking for paradise on earth and all that jazz, these tourists infiltrate Paris every year only to be shocked by the reality that awaits them. Forced to return home in a disillusioned stupor, they are then diagnosed with clinical depression. And that's how the sad little story ends--don't believe me, check it out on Wikipedia here. 

So I apologize in advance if I give some of you who have never been to the Frenchy capitol a small case of the Paris syndrome, but there are some misplaced happy bubbles that need to be popped today. Of course, some of these stress factors might not be applicable to those visiting and might be exclusively reserved for those living here. You might have a grand ol' time, completely unaware of what the reality of staying a bit longer than your week long stint entails. 

1. The prefecture. This topic deserves a whole post so I gave it one here. 
2. It's a big big city with lots of people. And with any big city, you'll find busy, stressed, I don't give a crap about you people as soon as you step out your front door. Be prepared for some rudeness. 
3. But do you wanna know what my biggest cultural shock was when it came to moving to France? Grocery stores! Who would have thought right? Living in Paris proper it's rare to own a car and even if you do, you're certainly not going to face the definite probability of a silly traffic jam just to go to the grocery store. No--you're going to buy a granny cart! (true confessions--this took me a year to realize and another to find one and buy it...before I was trudging all those plastic bags by hand!) 

Ain't she a beaut? 

Now imagine that you roll that thing to your local grocery store. You can try to shop for the week, and maybe if you're an Italian supermodel, you'll actually manage to get everything that you plan on eating into that ever so fashionable granny cart. That is of course, if they have everything in the store.  A few things that stores haven't had in stock while I've been grocery shopping: eggs (that lasted a month!), flour, paper towels, toilet paper, skim milk, and  specialty items (at least in France you can always count on them having wine, cheese and yogurt in stock!). 

Heaven forbid you hit the cheaper grocery stores where they make up for the discount in lack of customer service. You quickly learn to never ask a salesperson where a food item is. I've also been followed around the store (because I look so suspicious you know!) then chastised at the counter by the guy because the cashier forgot to ask to take a look in my granny cart before checking out (as if that was my responsibility). Let's not forget the time where the store alarm had been tripped and remained blaring my entire half hour shopping experience (it would suddenly stop, everyone in the store would start clapping, then it would start up again...). Once an entire aisle was flooded with water and I don't know how many times I've seen the staff at various stores decide to do their food stocking or floor polishing right during rush hour (they even sometimes get mad at you, the customer, who's in their way!).  

Then there's the vegetables--sometimes it's up to you to weigh and label them (you'll get angry stares from everyone in line while at checkout for that one bag of tomatoes that you forgot) while other times the cashier does it for you and still other times there's actually a vegetable guy who does it for you (and no signs indicating which one it is!). And then if you actually survive making it to checkout the battle's not over yet: first you'll wait in line from anywhere from 3 minutes on an amazing day to 20 on a more typical that you'd think day. Once you finally see the end of the tunnel, have you decided how you're going to pay? Every store (even those belonging to the same chain) will have different requirements. Some allow you to use your credit/debit card from 1 euro onward, some it's 8, some it's 10 or even 15. Checks are accepted in some stores, not in others. Forget the cash back bit. You'd think cash would be accepted everywhere but be careful--I've had a one euro coin refused because it was too dirty (I promptly went home and cleaned it and didn't have a problem the next time), and I've gotten glared at because I paid for a minor things with a 20 or I didn't have the right amount of cents to go along with it (I now apologize right from the start if I know I'm paying for something with a larger bill!).  

And to top it all off, you get the privilege of frantically bagging your own stuff so as not to hold up the line and lugging that stuff up the x amount of flights of stairs to your awaiting mini fridge. Lucky are those in Paris who scored an elevator as part of the deal. 

 We'll just have to save the rest of the list for another time!