Into the Woods

I've been in quaint little Sauzet since Sunday mentally preparing for Christmas with someone else's family. It was a little rough the first day, but things are settling and I'm managing to get into the spirit. It's tough spending a Christmas cooped up indoors with the cold, rain and snow outside when I'm used to sunny mornings, tea on the porch, and Saturday beach trips between present wrapping.

Did you know that in France it's tradition to put your shoes under the tree for Santa to put candy and... oranges in?? Everyone here thinks I'm crazy for not knowing about it.

Today TMI and I went foraging in the cold winter woods above the village to take some clippings from pine trees and red berried bushes to decorate the home. While we were out there I'm pleased to say we couldn't resist the primal urge and made love like the cavemen before us pressed up against a frosty tree; keeping an eye out for mammoths, or.. hikers.

Also TMI's sister shares her brother's good looks and is making me very self conscious about my own physical appearance as she breezes around the house ever day. I think it's karma from how persistently indifferent I was to my brother's girlfriend the first several Christmases she spent with our family. The "I know she desires my approval but I'm going to stay completely smug in the knowledge that my brother is my brother regardless of what ladies may come in and out of his life" syndrome. For the record, she's now prego with my first and future nephew and I love her as part of the family, but still, I didn't make her acclimation easy. I can only hope TMI's sister accepts me without me having to pull the parental card just yet.

The Weekend, and the Story of B

I had the good fortune to spend the weekend yet again in the colorful South with TMI's family in Sauzet.

Between delicious and drawn out meals, we went on walks, runs, bike adventures and gallery visits, plus one outing to a river to swim around in the icy water. We made our usual constant and creative love on every rock, table, park bench, and physically possible place that turned up throughout the weekend.

Despite all this goodness, about half of the time, I was totally plagued by two extremes: A) I really love this guy and am insecure and think he's gonna break my heart and this makes me miserable, or, B) I'm not really in love with this guy, and, if I stay with him, I'm just missing out on something better and this also makes me miserable.

While problem A can be jotted up as typical insecurity and latent desire to keep a little turbulence in the romance, problem B is a little more complicated, and, well, embarrassing.

Last summer, when I first came to France and fell head over heals for the repulsively unattractive, smoking, and foie gras farmer, B, I somehow convinced myself I wanted to marry the guy and invited him to Hawaii to meet my family. I incessantly gushed to my parents about how great he was and how much I loved him. (uuugghghhh this makes me want to puke now) Then, he shows up in Hawaii, and, in the harsh light of my own reality: my family, the island where I grew up, my friends, my language, I saw B for what he really was: a completely wrong for me, stinky, dirty, and dull French guy who I could barely communicate with. I had to break his heart in a drawn out, pathetic, and hugely uncomfortable drama that continues to nauseate me to this day. The man had brought a diamond ring with him which he gifted me in front of the entire family christmas morning. Yeah. Messy. I no longer trust my own eyes, heart, or brain.

The B incident proves that I'm insane. So now, with christmas visible on the horizon and TMI and I discussing love, the prospect of him visiting me in the Pacific has surfaced and filled me with subsequent terror. I want to be in love, but I don't want a repeat!

Worried Mothers

Today, while I was taking a shower, or rather, attempting the freezing uncomfortable struggle that B calls "a shower," the buzzer started going off at our front door. Weird, you can't even get to our door without a key to open the one downstairs in the street. I'm naked in the tub though, so there isn't much I can do about it. While I cling to life against frost bite the person outside, seemingly very impatient, is pressing the door bell over and over and over again. B is, of course, asleep- and, as I've said before, if it don't wake the dead it aint gonna wake B.

By the time I was out of the tub and had a towel around myself the person was gone but had left a note under the door. It was from B's mom. oh yeah.. I did send her an enraged email last night about B lazing about all day.

The night before I lost my usual chipper and caring composure when B was still asleep at 9 pm. I was SO FRUSTRATED WITH HIM that I screamed and kicked a box across the room at him. He still didn't stir.

I simmered down a little, and, like I used to do with K when he was in a similar funk, I prepared an offering of food. That finally got him up. Then, while he ate, I asked him if it was his medication that made him so tired. When he said yes, I told him that he needed to change his prescription. The drugs weren't helping him if they were making him sleep away his life. He explained that they were good because he didn't have stress and worries while he was asleep. I insisted that the only cure for his depression in the long run is to lead an active lifestyle.

Then he gets irritated and whimpers "Pleeease Lea, I iz knowing what iz good for me, okay?"

Then I loose it. I yell at him that "No, you obviously have no idea what is good for you!" I try to explain further that drugs that make him sleep instead of facing his problems are only prolonging his depression. Then I storm out, cry, and write a frustrated letter to his mom. whoops.

So I send her text saying that the door is unlocked and she comes back. I hide upstairs while I hear her crying in the kitchen with B. Dang! Looks like I stirred things up a bit.

Fortunately when I showed my timid face in the door I learned that she had come for other reasons as well. While B had been spending his life asleep, he'd been neglecting his adult duties; paperwork involving hospital stuff and rent stuff and work stuff that I couldn't really understand, so his mom had come to get some of it straightened out.

I ended up having to take her around the town to various places in centre ville to drop off paper work for B. She tried to talk to me about his problems and I explained the best I could, but she doesn't speak any English and my French is still terrible.

Anyway! I did notice when she jokingly called me B's nurse. So that's my life abroad, I guess. Laaaaaame. I mean, hurray, I'm helping someone by living with them, I suppose, but I'm starting to feel like I've been baby sitting depressed jobless men for the last 6 years of my life.

So, to perk myself up, I posted some more adds around town as an English tutor and sent some emails to piano teachers asking if any would risk giving lessons to an illiterate. I look forward to a more active life! I do I do!!!

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!