French Family, French Broken Legs

If you don't take cheese seriously, you're doing it wrong.

So! I somehow agreed to going on a road trip and staying the night in the French town of Voujeaucourt. Comme habitude, I didn't know the details until I was all ready there. We were staying with B's sister, brother in law, and their new baby Eliza.

Lets get one thing straight here. I have NO PROBLEM with babies. As far as I can tell they're just innocent bystanders. It's the relentless cloud of high pitched nonsensical sounds and songs that surround said baby that leads me to pray for nuclear holocaust. That said, I suffered greatly throughout the afternoon and evening. Prolonged hours of the usual baby treatment compounded with a group of 5 adults speaking French at the speed of sound lead to sweating and serious headaches.

It didn't help that Stephane, B's brother in law, found it perfectly pertinent to inflate the air mattress for us with a hair dryer. Bien sur, the thing melted and developed holes. So while I was curled helplessly on a bean bag, freezing, stinky, and hung over after the day of eating and drinking, the boys scurried around trying to make us a bed out of sofa cushions, blankets, and yoga matts. OK, whatever. I was so scared of Aliens the night before I hadn't gotten to sleep till 5, so I was ready for anything.

But then! In the night! An enormous crash. Tout le monde (sans B of course, since you could wake the dead before you could wake him) jumped out of bed and bumped into each other frantically looking for the meteor or tree or whatever it was that had crashed through our ceiling. Turns out, it was a car in the street literally right outside the door.

I still don't get it; there was only one car, I couldn't figure out what it had hit. Regardless, the driver side was totally smashed. We called the police and watched as Stephane and some neighbors ran out and addressed the driver. At first I couldn't understand why they weren't pulling the poor guy out. Then I realised that you could see that the motor has been pushed through the front of the car and was smashed against his legs. I was dismayed to hear that he was a young kid and thought sympathetically for his mother who would at any time be receiving a terrible phone call.

It took the better part of an hour to get the guy out and I watched nervously through the window the whole time. I wanted to see that he was ok. They had to cut the top of the car completely off. When they finally lifted him out vertically, I was relieved to see he still had both legs, but they were both, obviously, very very broken in all sorts of unpleasant ways. Ugh. Poor guy.

This whole episode passed while B slept. It worried me because I got to thinking what would happen if, perhaps some time in the night here in Dijon, the ceiling of this old monk tower caved in on me or something. If B were sleeping downstairs I'd be without hope! Bombs could be dropping and you can't wake him up!

Medieval Ghosts

B with pretty much the coolest French car I've ever seen

Things are for the most part peaceful at the close of my second week in France. B has been been incredibly helpful in the effort to find me an apartment; we've been popping in and out of places all over town for the last few days and I've found it to be amazingly fun. Everything is so old! I love wandering up the spiraling staircases to reach the front door, wondering what kind of romantic possible future home awaits me.

I've found a few wonderfully eclectic and charming old medieval mouse holes, but I'm being forced to face a rather serious problem: I'm terrified of the dark. Last night I suffered several night terrors in which I was convinced I was being abducted by aliens, tormented by medieval French ghosts, and possessed by demons all at the same time.

Does that ever happen to you where you wake up a few moments before you body does? Your eyes flick open and for a few terrible seconds you can't move your limbs? The first time this happened to me I was 100% convinced that I was being abducted by aliens and I since have never been able to sleep alone.

Last night, I had one such episode, and to make things ten billion times worse it happened at 3:33 am. I don't care who you are or what you believe but thats a dang creepy coincidence. So! I ran down the stairs and hopped on the couch with B, absolutely scared out of my wits. He ended up coming upstairs and sleeping with me. Cured my anguished fear but caused several other problems:

A) It makes me have second thoughts about seeking out an apartment to live alone in.

B) It may well complicate the just now becoming comfortably platonic relationship I've managed par extensive negotiations with B.

C) He stinks, snores, steals the blankets, can't be awakened no matter how I push, slap, shout or struggle, and, like some formidable French glacier, creeps every so slowly towards the edge of the bed throughout the night; pushing me like a doomed animal towards the edge of the continent.