The Great Debate

Enough about Estelle and vacation. For those on the other side of the pond who don't know, in France we are 4 days away from Change with a capital C.

Did you know that a new president will be elected Sunday? It's true. Jacques Chirac has been in power for, wait for it, TWELVE years. You think 8 with Bush seems long? Try 12 with a man who is 75 or something. Yet hats off to Chirac who, during his first term as President, changed the law to make the French presidential term only 5 years, instead of 7. Hence his 12 years from 2 terms. He rides off into the sunset as the lacklustre president, it appears to me from what I can gather from my French sources.
And here come the two candidates swinging. On April 22 was the "First Round", where anyone who gets 500 mayors from across the Republique to sign a petition backing them can appear on the ballot for President. The rule seems to be that the top 2 vote getters advance to the 2nd round, or, if one of the candidates gets more than 50% of the vote, he wins flat out and there is no 2nd round.
So, on April 22 all kinds of people from the rightest of right wingers, hollering about all the lousy immigrants and wielding the re-implementation of mandatory military service to pot-smoking aging hippies, mailmen, or environmental leftists were on the ballot. Here's a few of them:
After that vote of the 1st round, now we're down to just two, the two everyone knew would move on to the 2nd round. Segolène Royal (a woman) and Nicolas Sarkozy, who has already been Minister of the Interior for the past 5 years under Chirac's 2nd term.
Last night was their one and only debate, and allegedly the first time the two have met face to face in 14 years. I watched the whole thing, from 9 to 11:40 pm. I won't try and sum it up or analyze it because clearly I'm not qualified for that. But one thing interested me - Sarkozy rarely looked Royal in the eye - he consistently looked down, or more often than not, addressed the two journalist moderators. But Royal looks him squarely in the eye from start to finish - almost destabilizingly so. I wondered who was coaching Sarkozy to not face off with her - it seemed a foolish tactic. I was almost pleased to see the analysts are clamouring about the very same point this morning on the "talk shows". Even in heavy political debate in a foreign language, I can still claim myself as having some perception!
Thomas says Sarko (as he is called) will win, for a hundred reasons but probably sadly because in some ways the country just isn't ready for a woman in the hot seat. We'll see.

VT, Part Deux

After returning home from MacDonald's the other day, I found my internet and phone back up. Glory Be! Let it be known I never consumed anything other than tea at McDonald's throughout all this.
More photos from VT escapades:

My dad's sister, Aunt Elaine, with Estelle.

Estelle is surrounded by 4 of her girl cousins, all daughters of my identical twin brothers. Poor Thomas, he can never remember who is who.

With Uncle Cedric in the sugarhouse, looking out at one of his chickens. Estelle has the sap cup in her hand.

Visiting Dad/Grampie with Cole.
Estelle experienced 4 true-blue barbeques once the snow melted. Everything from chicken to burgers to venison and ribs. Finger-lickin'! Here's Wesley with cousin Lillian and Cedric. Note my Dad's Chevy in the background, and the quiet Molson bottle below, a nice companion to being with the grill.

Give me the Internet for the love of GOD

So, I went home to VT for a quick 13 day trip, if you didn't know. I took Estelle. It was great. There was snow, then sun, and sap, then syrup. It was just as it should be. Lots of brothers and sisters, aunts, cousins, babies, all of it. Said goodbye to my house in the event that it sells before I go back this summer.
But there is one less than idyllic thing about home - no internet, or, when I do "get" it, it's dial-up. Painful dial-up. Works, not Word. In short, one long painful wait after another for often no results. How I looked forward to coming back to my little apt which ain't got snow or sap, but does have sun, and most importantly, wireless broadband.
But no, not to be. The internet, AND the landline, have been down for 4 days ever since my return. Here I am, reduced to going to the MacDonald's. Crazy.
Who cares. Here are some photos from our trip to Vermont:

This is us with nephew and godson extraordinaire checking out the sap on a tree on our land.

Estelle, baffled by the sled, snowsuit, glaring white, and of course, the snow.

Wayne and Estelle, whom he frequently mis-referred to as "Heather", his own 4-month old baby sister.

Does he look like a superman? He is. My amazing and talented brother Cedric, at work on a day off from his real job as wildlife biologist, in his self-built sugarhouse, boiling his sap down to syrup with his evaporator. What sheer delight that we were able to go and hang out with him for a few hours while he boiled. There is nothing in the world like the smell of the sweet steam of boiling sap, and then fresh hot syrup to dip a raised donut into. Above and beyond my absolute favorite moment of my entire trip. Estelle drank cold sap and even licked the syrup spoon. She did NOT make a face, but rather lunged for more!

My never-say-no sister Martha making Sugar-on-Snow with my other brother Wesley's syrup. She fetched the snow herself that day from the fields, and boiled the syrup down to the "right" consistency for making Sugar on Snow. Wayne and Cole looking eagerly on. We had a feeding frenzy just moments after this photo was taken.....

Vermont in Winter?

here we are in VT it is 8:42 i can't see i'm in the dark outsid the tozn library in my dad's old truck and can't send photos truly in the middle of nowhere
more another time with photos!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Easter Bonnet

Our Easter trip to the Maine-et-Loire: no one got much sleep, there was some interesting first-time projectile vomiting, and I introduced dyeing eggs to my inlaws.

Give Us This Day...

Give her the heel of the baguette, and all is well.
Take it away, and this is pretty much what you get to look at. There are two teeth now, officially. Sharp teeth!

Hand in the Cookie Jar

Everyone thinks that I had a lot of playmates as a child because of all my siblings. In some ways, that is true - people to give me piggy back rides, take me to the mall on special occasions, teach me how to glue shingles on a dollhouse, and keep on eye on me swimming in the pond. But for the day to day stuff, like let's play "War" with the same deck of cards over and over and over until we get bored with it, or, let's race home after school to pick up that game of monopoly where we left off last night, still set up on the old wooden card table in the basement - well, for THOSE things, it was like I was in a 2-child family. My brother Wesley was the playmate - 3 years older, sometimes wiser, but not always.
I remember punching him as hard as I could in the stomach, at his request, to see if I could knock the wind out of him. "Nope, I can still breathe. Do it again." Then there were the common moments of sibling fustration: like "You're a fool" retorted with "no you are!" followed by "no you are!" and finally, "No YOU are, infinity!". Ah, the old "inifinity" safety - inarguable in kid-world. At any rate, I think we worried my mother a little, the poor woman trying to slide gracefully into her twilight years from intensive-11-kid-motherhood.
Today, at ages 36 and 39, I can say we are still stupid. Wes is stupider, of course, but we are still wreaking havoc on my mother. Today I called my mom, like every Sunday, and like every Sunday, Wes is over visiting my mom, checking in. Like every Sunday, she struggles with the buttons but manages to put me on speaker phone so he and his son Wayne can hear our conversation. After a while I say "Go up and get the Easter eggs out of the attic for Mom". He dutifully obeys, and as he goes picks up a portable extension phone and tells my mom to turn off the speaker phone, claiming it will create feedback. Off he goes upstairs, cordless phone in hand.
"Good, now I can talk to you..." And we proceed to have a solid 10 minute conversation (or more) about not only my surprise trip to the states next Friday to see my mother, but the much bigger picture--and the main reason why I am coming: her impending decision to move out of our house and where she's going next, due to her health. We discuss the latest news, which brother or sister said this or that, who thinks what, our concerns, her options, what we see as good, what worries not just us, but the whole gang. I break in at one point and say "Where are you? Do you see the boxes with the Easter stuff?"
He locates them, with his son gleefully trailing behind with a dancing singing chick that pops out of an egg held by a bunny. But in the two old worn Milwaukee's Best cardboard boxes are our Easter eggs - ones made in the mid-1970's by he and I with guidance from our mom, the pungent smell of hot vinegar lingering. The eggs so lovingly packed away and protected, year after year, so that 30 years later, we can pull out the one that says on it with a magic marker: "This great egg was made by Wes for Easter 1979. It is great because Wes made it." What he lacked in originality he made up for in bluntness.
He heads back downstairs, and suddennly I hear him suck in his breath and then choke out a "Mom, mom---is the speaker phone still on? Have you been listening this whole time?" This is when I sat right up on my couch here in France cringing. Ah, if only I was standing in the room to REALLY punch my brother in the stomach.
We fumbled, we covered, we think we pulled it off - but who cares about the surprise - we were more worried about all the other stuff. I think, though, that after 11 kids, there must just be times when stuff rolls off you. I got Wes to get Mom off the phone with a cover about a Mother's Day gift, at which point I said "Why didn't you CHECK to make sure the speaker was off, you DUMMY!"
It felt like that time when she left us alone during the day on a Saturday and we ate an entire 13 x 9 inch deep dish apple pie she had made for a family dinner the next day. We didn't touch any of the other perfectly yummy food she had left us. I don't know how it happenned - it just happenned. He took a piece, then I did - suddennly there was just one edge left.
After much reassuring apologies from me and my bumbling brother, today's phone call ended when I said, as always: "Bye Mom, love you". She said, as always: "You too". They she paused and added "Despite all those things you said about me." and she burst out laughing. I heard Wes sigh in relief in the background. Poor Wes--I was always the sneaky one - he was, and still is, just all heart.

Funny Family

Every member of my family is funny - and when there's 11 kids, there's a lot of competition to outdo the other ones. But some people in the family, even those that have married in, are just funnier than others. Today I got an email from a family-member-who-will-remain-anonymous-but-there-is-only-one-who-has-enough-technology-savvy-to-create-these-images saying the following: "Please show these 2 photos to Estelle and see which one she recognizes as her mother:" I have been laughing about this all morning.

Other Favorite Pastimes

The last post neglected a few additional things that Estelle also enjoys doing:
namely, playing with a little bottle of water, cruising around in her walker, and having her photo taken:

A Day in the Life

Today included our Romanian cleaning girl coming to watch Estelle for an hour while I rode my bike like the wind along the sea to get my teeth cleaned (yeah!) at one of the good dentists in town, ironically in the bldg on Victor Hugo where I lived almost 4 years. When the other dentist in the office popped in to ask my guy a question, I was happy to be unrecognizable with my mouth wide open and several instruments prodding into it, since said dentist colleague is the same guy who backed into my bike 3 years ago and busted up my luggage rack. He paid for it - once i provided him with the bill to prove the cost. Needless to say, HE'S not my dentist!
Then, smile gleaming, I was Breaking Away-style back to our apt over on the Port. All is well, Romanian girl had it all under control, Estelle sleeping peacefully for her morning snooze. 30 mins later we were out the door to meet Madame Pontier, who is about to become Estelle's occasional "nounou" - woman who takes care of children in her home. She is a 8 minute walk away and I was put on to her by the pediatric nurses who saved my life and Estelle's back in what I now refer to as "The Dark Period" in July. Madame Pontier turned out to be lovely and her own middle-school aged childen were lovely as well. We like her and she likes us. She will be the lucky winner of Estelle for 3 hours three mornings per week. She cares for 2 other little kids too but they are quite a bit older than E.
Two private lessons of my own teaching English later, and our day was finished. In the middle of all this, Estelle had time to do some of her favorite things - chewing on a baguette, rolling around on the floor, and taking a bath in her new bathring. See Exhibits A-D below:

Who needs Teething Biscuits?

Real Vermonters don't milk goats, and real French babies cut their teeth on a baguette.

No Teeth, Can't Sit Up

Photos showing lack of sitting-up-ness and lack of teeth, fondness for yogurt: New favorite toy: the doll from the Island of Misfit Toys from Rudolph, courtesy of one of my many sisters in a fit of impulsive purchasing.

Maxence

Today we had 4 of Estelle's friends over to introduce everyone to "Saint Patrick's Day". One of her friends is Maxence. We love Maxence because she has the blue eyes that Estelle doesn't, because she has funny funny hair sometimes, and because she always smiles and lets Estelle steal her toys and give her kisses.
Maxence is 4 weeks younger than Estelle but she is bigger, go figure. Maxence and her Mom and Dad have to move back to Paris, and they leave on Friday. This makes both Estelle and me very very sad.

The List

I've been thinking a lot about shortening lately. 6 years ago, people used to say "What do you miss eating the most?" It was the question everybody asked me. I used to get on the plane twice a year and make my list on the napkin of all the things I had to remember to eat while I was home. Bagels and Ben & Jerry's were always at the top. Hot dogs, root beer, creullers (though recently I seem to have rectified that), mexican, crunchy peanut butter, Kraft Mac & Cheese. Then there were strange family things that no one else in the world eats, like salmon pea wiggle, my sisters' wierd holiday salads, and chipped beef and gravy. Essentially, the best American has to offer.
Now, the things I always try to cram into my suitcase are different. Bags of chocolate chips, cranberry sauce, canned pumpkin, crushed pineapple, holiday-themed M & M's, and Crisco.
Cooking and baking in France should be, by all rights, a piece of cake. This is the land of gastronomy after all. But when all your tried and true family recipes call for things you can never find, it leaves you wistful. Between changing everything from cups and ounces into grams and milliliters, and farenheit into celcius, sometimes, all you want to see is a can of Crisco to make things feel familiar.
I've posted inquiries about it on the local anglophone site. People say "just use margarine". It just doesn't cut it.

Fotos worth Forwarding

Sometimes, other people's kids are just as cute as mine:
My friend Karen has been trying to adopt a baby for a long time. Finally, it worked out! Here are her and her husband Mitch with their new son, Tyler! An incredible moment for them and something they have longed for, and worked very very hard for, with a lot of obstacles and challenges along the way. Welcome Tyler, and congratulations to the proud parents!




And below is a foto I meant to post up here but couldn't find it when I needed to - better late than never: here are my favorite 3 Vermont children (ages 5 and under!), from their very original Valentine's day message to their French cousin:

Seaside

The benefits of living by the Mediterranean: Friday afternoons on the beach in balmy weather.

Addictions

Some people are alcoholics, or can't kick the smoking habit. I've developed a new crutch: Bugnes.
Here is a photo of bugnes:
They may look innocent, but they're not. Today is Thursday and since Saturday I have entered 4 different bakeries on 4 different days to buy myself 100 grams of bugnes, and then I eat the whole bag, all by myself. It is sheer bliss. These donut-like delights are covered either in granulated sugar or confectionary sugar. Each bakery makes them differently. I'm slowly making my way thru the "quartier" trying them all. All my life I have been a SUCKER for donuts. I love donuts, and cruellers from a bakery in VT especially. These bugnes bear an alarming resemblance to a Koffee Kup Kruller. I think they are a lenten-time specialty. Thomas thinks they are around all year but I don't think so. I suppose for the sake of my health I should hope I'm right and not Thomas, who is shocked at my sudden inability to stop myself. But, what with breastfeeding's apparent effect on my ever-dropping scale display, I am cutting myself some slack for the first time in a long while and frankly am borderline fanatic. If you have one, you eat the whole bag. That's the way it goes.
Here are photos of Estelle after nursing and you can see the effect of the bugnes on my milk production - look at the glee!