And on the same day

I got a letter in the mail from the Ministry of the Interior. That's generally a bad sign, or at least it has been for me.

I live here legally of course. And I have provided France with two adorable little French (and American) citizens, so I don't usually worry about getting kicked out of the country or things like that. But you never know.

I opened the envelope with a certain amount of fear. And was considerably relieved when I saw that it was about the speeding ticket I got last October. As the car was still in the ex's name, it had taken them - with our help - this long to update the information about who was driving the car. Mind you, they cashed the 90€ check I wrote to them to pay for the fine months ago. Anyway, the letter was to inform me that it had been "revealed to them" (duh, the ex and I sent them a letter telling them I had been driving) that I had, in fact been driving the car and would lose a point from my driver's license. Which is fine, I now have 11 out of 12 remaining. And if I behave myself, I'll get that one back in a year. If I don't, it'll take me three years to get it back.

So as I read the letter, I thought, oh man, I've got to be really careful all the way until next July? Pain in the ... and then, the French administration amazed me. They started the year countdown from the time of they were told I was the driver. Not the day they sent me the letter. Which is shockingly efficient and fair. Two words I don't always associate with government agencies or ministries. I need to work on that.

When you see a '98 Punto driving carefully down the street from now until April 2011, you'll know it's me.

Drive on

I spent the day with the French administration.

First there was the whole car title thing. The car's been in my ex's name since we got it and I never bothered to get it switched over to mine after the divorce. But after a speeding ticket (oops) led to all sorts of administrative hassles, it became necessary. I had to provide all sorts of pieces of paper proving all sorts of things that they already know, given that it's the same building where I got my resident's card and my driver's license. But assuming any kind of interdepartmental communication would be silly of me. So I proved where I live and I proved that I have the right to live there and I proved that I'm divorced and I proved that the car was declared mine in the divorce. I also had to prove the car had passed inspection in the past six months. It had been eight months and inspections are actually valid for two years but I had to have it inspected again because the car was changing owners. Hoops! I love jumping through hoops. You might be thinking that all of this sounds like a lot of work for a '98 Fiat Punto. You would be right. So, a few hours and 141.50€ later (112 - inspection, 2.50 - title, 27 - license plates), I officially own the car I've been driving since 2003.

On being a woman

In France.

Honestly, in some respects, it's easier here. Less...nonsense. Really, I have no other word for it. And more good sense.

And any place that considers wearing nice lingerie a sign of self-respect and not just about pleasing the man who's going to see it is my kind of place.

I don't ever hear anyone talking about age-appropriateness. You either look nice or you don't. I've seen 60 year old women here in short skirts that look elegant and attractive. Their age is not a factor in what they choose to wear, although the shapeliness of their legs most definitely is.

And while I would not say that women have achieved equality here, far from it when it comes to pay, I would say that they have had to make fewer compromises on their way. Equal doesn't mean same here, it just means equal.

Decent maternity leave, parental leave if you want it, Wednesdays off to be with your kids - not everyone can manage the last two, but every woman gets the first. And ten postpartum physical therapy sessions, paid for by social security.

I like being a woman here.

Un stylo plume

A feather pen, which, obviously, is no longer really a feather pen, but a fountain pen. I have always loved fountain pens. I got my first one when I was in high school, maybe 13 or 14. It was a big and black and fairly messy but I loved it. I practiced calligraphy and discovered I was no good at it or that it required far too much practice so I just used it as a regular pen.

Then for my 21st birthday, I was given a beautiful fountain pen. A Montblanc. It absolutely lived up to its reputation, it was lightweight and a pleasure to write with. I carried it in my bag for years and used it on a daily basis until it was stolen. It was replaced by a Waterman, not quite as nice, but still nice.

When I moved to France, I got a couple more. And then I had some clients who worked for Waterman. They invited me to visit the factory, which I did and they very kindly offered me a high-end fountain pen at the end of the visit.

Over the years I've bought a few more - they kind of float in and out of my life, lost or stolen or just misplaced for a year or two and then found on a raining Monday in June. A Rotring, some Italian brand, several Waterman, two Pilots. I still miss my Montblanc though.

Anyway. I learned from Boy1 (when he was in 3rd grade!) that you're never supposed to let anyone use your fountain pen. They started doing certain homework and in-class assignments with fountain pens that year and they were told that the nib adapts to the user's positioning and pressure and becomes personalized. If you let someone else use your fountain pen it will never write the same. (I have to say that this gave me consider comfort when I think of my stolen Montblanc in the hand of another.)

Of course I believed him, Boy1 can be quite serious, especially about things he has been told at school. But I wasn't quite sure how widespread this knowledge was. Until recently. I was in a meeting, the person sitting next to me needed to borrow a pen. I opened my bag and took out the only two pens I had - both fountain pens. She laughed and said, "Lovely but useless to me Nicole. Don't you have anything I can't ruin?"

I'm quite certain this says something very interesting about the place I live.

Give until it hurts

Donnant - donnant. Giving - giving. Used in situations where we would use give and take. Or tit for tat.

I have to say that I find it very interesting that the French express that concept in such a generous and optimistic way. And I only say that because they usually admit to being a glass-half-empty kind of culture. Sometimes I wonder if there wasn't a corner that led to the turn that led to the place they are now, a turn that required the loss of optimism. A revolution or something along those lines. Anyone who knows more about French history than me (that would be most people) - please feel free to name that corner.

And I wouldn't say that it's a selfish culture either. The S word is tossed around quite a bit - solidarity - but more as an accompaniment to hand gestures and grand theories than anything else. The fact is that solidarity is legally required here every day from nearly everyone, so spontaneous gestures of generosity are no longer commonplace. Which is not, of course, to say that French people aren't generous. Oh why oh why do I write posts that require qualifications and reassurances?

Anyway, giving and giving. I don't know. It just sounds a bit off. Is it very American of me to want it to be giving and getting?

This day

There is something you should know about today.

So many things can mark a day, but you know this, of course. Tone. Mood. Play. Work. Weather.

Unmarked by anything memorable, they pass. Enjoyed or tolerated or endured. Whatever.

And then there are days like today. Hopefully, at the end of your life, you will be able to count their number and it will be mercifully small. A day that n'a pas lieu d'être. A day that does not have the place to be, the room to exist. Which is exactly why you will remember it so clearly. Despite its dissonance and impossibility, it is here. Bookmarked for life.

A day when you can only accept all or nothing but are not allowed that luxury. Never before have you understood the privilege and comfort of extremes like you do today. Because they have never been further from what is available to you.

Un coup de cafard

Coup is one of those multipurpose words with many usages and just as many translations. A blow, as in un coup dur - a hard blow. A punch, as in un coup de poing - literally a blow of the fist. A gust, as in un coup de vent - a gust of wind. A kick, as in un coup de pied - of the foot.

A cafard is a cockroach.

A coup de cafard is - well, I don't really know exactly how to translate it. It's less severe than depression but more intense than a bad mood. Maybe like being down in the dumps.

Which is what I've been for the past few weeks. But I don't want to talk about that.

I want to talk about a literal coup de cafard.

It was wednesday a few weeks ago and my favorite café was closed. So I went to a different one. I sat down on a bench. Next to a cockroach. I didn't want to make a big deal out of it so I just got a tissue from my bag and grabbed the roach with it and got up to carry it to the garbage can. Which is when it jumped out of the tissue and into my bag. So, instead of being discreet about throwing a cockroach away, I had to be discreet about finding a cockroach in my bag - which, by the way, I call my Mary Poppins bag because of what it can and does contain.

I did finally find it and discreetly dispose of it.

A hinge time

Une periode charnière.

Charnière - Hinge

Let's start with tangible.

A jointed or flexible device that allows the turning or pivoting of a part, such as a door or lid, on a stationary frame.

And let's finish with less so.

A point or circumstance on which subsequent events depend.

I'll just come out and say it. I don't like hinge times. They're hard. All that pivoting or turning, being jointed or flexible on something stationary is difficult, even in the best of times.

In the worst of times, it's quite nearly superhuman. Which is how you feel, no doubt, when hinge time is over.

Either that or like a piece of gum that's been chewed up and spit out.

What are you hinging upon?

Temperance

There have been suggestions - recommendations that I need to cultivate some of that.

Like rising up out of the pit was before it, it's on my list of things to do.

These days, however, I'm cooking. Pastry cream for chocolate eclairs and mischief meringues and lemon buttermilk sorbet and chocolate sorbet and peaches with balsamic vinegar for rare duck breast.

La temperance will follow, washed down with champagne.

On things predictable

Prévisible. Predictable. Although I kind of like the French word better - things which can be pre-seen as opposed to pre-said.

I was sitting in the dining room looking out the window and I saw a very large truck driving down my street. You know, my street, my little one way street that has parking spots on both sides running along the sidewalk, my little street that a fool driving a Hummer would have a very hard time getting down, my little street that ends at another even littler street that runs perpendicular to mine and is cobblestone. And the truck? It was one of the those big huge trucks 18 wheels or something like that.

So as I watched the truck drive down I thought, "I should really go out there and tell him to back up now, he'll never make it around the obligatory corner at the end of the street." But it was morning and I was lazy and I thought he'd probably dismiss me with a "I know what I'm doing lady," kind of thing so I just stayed put. And waited. And as pre-seen, a few minutes later, I heard the beep-beep-beep announcing his return, tail end first.

Question for the day: what is the difference between pre-seen and pre-said?

In your eyes

Un oeil, des yeux, un regard, un coup d'oeil. An eye, eyes, a look, a glance. Do not ask me why the plural of eye looks nothing like the singular, I have no idea. Some linguistic quirk that, no doubt, took root in logic a long time ago but is so far from home that now it just looks quirky.

I witnessed an interesting conversation about those things recently. A group of people talking about reading people and reading their eyes and things to be seen there. Boy2, as we know, keeps good things in his. Boy1, I would say, has a whole world in his. That group of people said a few things about mine but I think they were drunk on the nice weather.

So here's the question for the day: when we look in your eyes, what do we see?

In mine? Blue-green and some yellow flecks. That's it.

These days

I walk through the halls of my house and my life and nothing, really nothing, is how it was. Or even how I thought it would be. It's not bad, well, some of it is, but mostly it's just not what I expected. And some things, some of the really bad things, even as I stand in the very middle of them, resist me. Or I resist them. Whatever. Despite all the evidence, the things and I, we resist and we do not believe what we see.

There should be more words for things, in the generic sense.

Like in French.

Un truc, une chose, un machin, un machin-truc...et j'en passe.

A thing, a thing, a thing, a thingy-thing...

Forget the bed, let's talk about the bathtub

I was talking with a friend the other day. A French friend. And we were talking about movies and then actors. And then commericals with actors in them. And then hot actors. And then sex with hot actors. That last sentence is going to get me some weird referrals from Google.

I mentioned, in reference to one or another hot actor that there was an expression in English from my youth (the 90's) that was appropriate - I wouldn't kick him/her out of bed. Friend laughed and said they had a similar one in French, Je ne le ferais pas dormir dans la baignoire. I wouldn't make him sleep in the bathtub. I like that.

Something like an urban legend

So, there's been talk of an IKEA opening in Rennes. As a matter of fact, they've been talking about it for years. And then they started building it, or at least that's what everyone said. And they've been saying that for a while. Yesterday, internet searches, phone calls to friends who often go to Rennes and phone books revealed that, in fact, there is still no IKEA in Rennes. Will there ever be? Is it really under construction? Will everyone just have to keep going to the one in Nantes for years to come? I cannot say.

But I can say that I've learned a new word. L'arlésienne. Which comes from a short story by Alphonse Daudet. And which has come to mean an inexistent person or an overexistent person. Like what's his name in the Usual Suspects. Like the IKEA in Rennes.

I know, I know, IKEA isn't a person, but the one in Rennes is definitely both inexistent and overexistent.

Ah, le mercredi

Wednesdays are funny in France. It's like a parenthetical notation in the sentence that is the rest of the week. Grade school children don't have school so you see them everywhere. Either with their mothers or grandparents or caregivers or in groups with adults from childcare centers being led around the city center. To the library, to the cinema, to the shops, to the bakery.

If someone mentions work schedules and says quatre/cinquième (4/5), chances are the one day off is wednesday. When a mother says she's returning to work, after a parental leave, for example, the first question everyone will ask her is: As-tu ton mercredi? Do you have your wednesday (off)? All the sports activites and music classes and pony clubs and whatever else are on wednesdays, which means most moms spend the day in the car.

I don't know quite how I feel about it. I like having a break in my work week, it's a day to catch up on papers I need to grade or lessons to plan. And it's nice for the kids to have a break too, their school days are really long, especially on the two days when they eat at the cafeteria. 8:30-4:30. That's 8 hours. It's organized well, recess happens twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon, but still. I sometimes wonder if they wouldn't do better in a system that had fewer hours everyday, including wednesday. It's been talked about occasionally here. But then everyone who has a job linked to the current schedule throws a fit. The teachers because they like the break to do the same things as me. The sports and activites people because they like to be able to do things all the same day. And then of course everyone starts tossing out the French classic: mais ça a toujours été comme ça. But it's always been that way.

Not Miss Météo

I'm not really into the weather. I don't monitor it, other than to decide which clothes to set out for the kids to wear to school.

I've never been particularly weather sensitive, other than to the heat. Over 75 and I start to melt.

I grew up in Illinois with the snow and the wind and the cold and the odd springs and hot, humid summers. And then I lived in North Carolina where it was, for about 4 months of the year, too hot for me. But I survived and didn't bitch about it too often. Then I moved to Seattle. Everyone bitches about Seattle weather. But I didn't. Ever. I loved Seattle weather. I loved the mist and the perfect (usually) mild summers and the moderate winters. And even the rain. It never stopped me from doing what I wanted to do. I never used an umbrella in Seattle. I didn't even own one.

And then I moved here.

And now, this year especially, I find myself feeling being somethinged by this ridiculous weather.

Les giboulées de mars. March showers. Although I find showers only hints at what giboulées really means. And believe me, I have pointed out to the skies that March is over.

In fact, it's weather chaos. Chaos linked to the passage from winter to spring. That transition from the quiet knowing that is winter to the necessary doing that is spring. Sunny every once in a while, cold, harsh wind with oddly timed showers of rain or hail or huge melting snowflakes like we had yesterday. No snow, not one flake, all winter long and then, on April 6th, it snows.

Perhaps I'm the one who got it wrong. Is it supposed to be necessary knowing and quiet doing? Either way, it feels like neither.

Against the wind

I may be fooling myself. It wouldn't be the first time.

But I currently believe that there are times when the only solution to whatever ails is to be still and just let the world rearrange and reshape. To do anything else, to force anything, would just be counterproductive.

Last night at dinner, I learned a great new expression that perfectly illustrates my point.

Qui pisse contre le vent, se rince les dents.

He who pisses against the wind rinses his teeth.

Ah, justice

The French legal system is filled with particularities. I don't know a whole lot about it really and what I may know could be incorrect but that's never stopped me before.

First of all, there are three professions that we don't really have at home. L'huissier, l'avoué, and le notaire. There are people in the US who perform aspects of these jobs, but not all. I'm sure no huissier would like to be called a fancy repo man, but he kind of is. And a notaire here has very little to do with a notary public at home, at least in terms of financial gains . As for the avoué, well, s/he is technically a lawyer, but only goes before the cour d'appel. Avoué, huissier, and notaire are all ministerial officers, while the lawyer is not. The office of the first three is called une étude and a lawyer's un cabinet.

Where am I going with all this? Well, the profession of avoué is on its way out the door. There have been a lot of reforms of the legal system here in the past 6 months, along with the obligatory strikes to show discontent.

Notaires and huissiers are about to lose their monopolies on certain activities and the profession of avoué will simply no longer exist.

How strange.

Tell me, what do you do when what you do, what you've done, and what you've become no longer exist?

Jertta's right

They do have a lot of very funny classifications here.

Bobos - is actually short for bourgeois-bohème, which is kind of like being a rich bohemian. People from well-off families deciding to live a little bit like hippies. But well-dressed hippies.

Plouc - is, gosh, I don't even know how to translate that. Low class? But that sounds so unimaginative, and plouc, as a label, is the opposite.

Vieille France - Well, for women, it would mean a lot of wool, headbands, plaid skirts, sensible low-heeled skirts, and a cross necklace. For the men, cords, an adult modification of the bowl haircut, oxford cloth button down shirts - even on the weekends.

Gauche caviar - Left-wing politically oriented people but with lots of cash. So they talk a lot about the whole solidarity thing with their hired help.

Fin de - no, I'd better stop here. I don't want anyone getting the wrong idea about France or me.

Obviously, these are generalisations and we don't judge people and we love them all and they're all beautiful and blah blah blah blah....

Please, no hate comments from any members of any groups who might be described by the politically very incorrect labels listed above. You're all wonderful people.

Ah, baba-cool

Eric asked a good question. Sarah commented on it as well. Baba-cool is one of those great French classifications. I can see where it could get translated as hippy, but it's not really that. Baba-cools tend to be politically engaged, whereas hippies tend to be apolitical, or am I wrong about that? Please, no hate comments from hippies, you're all great. My neice wears tie-dye and all that.

I had a boyfirend who thought I was a hippy. Seriously. Any of you who know me understand how absurd that is. I think it was the vegetarian thing. He just figured one went with the other. In the early stages he actually bought me PEACE SIGN EARRINGS and a LEATHER PATCHWORK HANDBAG. Again, absurd. I did use the earrings once for Halloween. And he finally gave the bag to his mother, who was no more of a hippy than I was, but she needed a bag.

Obviously, now that I eat meat, I'm no longer mistaken for a hippy. Despite my dreads. How odd.