The Latest Lawn Mowers

Once again, it's that time of year when the back field becomes a massive jungle of stinging nettles, dandelions, and weeds. Ever so beautiful and ever such a nightmare to cut. Last year, you may recall that we had some horses come and help us out with all that and it was lovely. They strolled around in the back garden, ate the grass, and just looked majestically stunning out there.

This year, we were asked by another neighbour if we would could help them out by letting their three donkeys come and have a go at our field. She swore up and down that they would be much better munchers than the horses and even eat those pesky stinging nettles. Alright then. Why not?

Well, let me tell you a little bit about Caramel, Chocolate, and Tornado....

Caramel is the lovely little wonder, nicely nibbling at the grass in the picture. She seems relatively sweet and just meanders around, following the other two where ever they go. Like a gentle, naive younger sister, she seems happy just to see what the other two get up to.

And speaking of the other two....

Tornado is that rasta-looking donkey giving us "that look." She's pesky, curious, and has taken to scratching herself with some strange J-Lo butt move on the wall. She's knocked over the cement mixer, eaten a package of cement, and played football with an old plastic bucket. She and Chocolate, the little one in front here, have this thing for climbing up the rock piles in the garden and playing King-of-the-Hill.

These donkeys run, romp, and cause mayhem. They let you rub their ears for hours and then go and eat the swing-set. They've figured out how to bray at the dogs and get Typhon to howl without the bells. The love The Princess and have a thing for Bubba-Love's little wheelbarrow. (I just hope it still has its tires. Not sure I'm eager to see what donkey poop de pneu looks like.)

Yes, they definitely are a change from Melting Pot and Calisse, but for some strange reason, I think we might be a much better fit for a bunch of asses.

April in the Auvergne

There's that famous song out there somewhere about April in Paris and if my computer had speakers, I'd actually go find it and link you to it here, but since it doesn't, I won't. But I'm sure most of you might have an idea of what song I'm referring to.

"Aprillllll.....in Paris." I sing so well, don't I?

Yes, April in Paris is a wonderful thing. Or so I've been told. I think I was in Paris one April about 10 years ago and it rained the whole time we were there. The Man and I toured the major museums with my sister & her family and then at the end of the day, we did what other people have done when it's raining in Paris and well, we got a nice little souvenir we call MH... ah yes, "Aprillllll.....in Paris...."

Ok. Sorry. Once again...I digress.

Right, it's April and we are no where NEAR Paris. We are miles from Paris. Decades, one could claim even, from Paris. This is the Auvergne. And here April is all about allergies and cow poop, baby lambs and blossoms, warm days and chilly nights. The grass gets so green this time of year. It's like I forget that this colour exists and then one early morning, the sun hits the field behind the house and I'm transported to Oz, with Dorothy as my guide. Green, glowing, alive and beautiful. Not a café or a museum in sight.

April in the Auvergne is how I will always remember France. The village, still only inhabited by year-round residents, is quite and peaceful. My people watching consists of observing the new leaves dancing with the wind. The grey volcanic stones of the houses are no longer dull and dingy with winter's light, they are now brilliant and sparkling, the perfect cadre for purple blossoms, white flowers, yellow daffodils, a sharp blue sky, and that green, green grass.

Close your eyes. See it. Sit with me on my front steps, have a coffee, and watch the world go by, one meandering cow at a time.

Souvenirs of my Auvergne. Sing it with me, "Aprillllll.....in Paris....."

And We Grow

We went for a hike with friends a couple of weekends ago and came upon a magnificent tree. It stood there, stoically stretching its branches up to the sky, laughing at us as we traced the outline of its belly button. 

At first, I thought that the tree had been hollowed out, shaped like that by man, but it soon became apparent that the tree had actually grown this way. Old decayed wood had fallen away exposing the delicate nature where the sun and wind had passed, but overall, the trunk was true and solid.

I stood amazed at the determination of this old soul. How it must have struggled to reconnect its base and find the will to grow tall and strong even though something had split it centuries before. Its desire to be one, to be whole, was obvious...

Perhaps I'm waxing too poetical about this tree. Perhaps it was nothing more than mere chance that it is still standing and that it really didn't fight its way back to wholeness. Perhaps over time, bugs and bees had nibbled their own right of passage through it and that's all. All sorts of things may have troubled this tree and created this space that shouldn't be.

But I don't care. 

To me, this tree is still strong, it's still one. There it stands, giving hope to those branches who are unfazed by whomever or whatever tried to take it all down. They are there still, reaching towards infinity.

May It Always Be So When It Comes to Homework

We got home from school last night and the big two, MH and The Princess, sat down at the dining room table to do their homework. The Princess pulled out one little red book and sat scribbling away at math problems contentedly for the next 10 minutes.

MH, on the other hand, pulled books, one after one, out of his back pack and placed them strategically on the table. He started with the blue one of a certain size, then the slightly smaller green one next to it. In the middle he placed a large yellow folder, and then to complete the left to right arch, two red copy books of about the same size.

He looked over his display and then closed his eyes and tilted his head towards the ceiling. He sat there in quiet concentration for about 2 minutes and then slowly, in English, started saying the days of the week.

"Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday. Saturday. Sunday."

And then, just as methodically as he had placed all the books on the table, he began to rearrange them in his backpack.

"MH, what's going on there?" I piped up from the kitchen.

"I'm done my homework," he replied.

"Already? That was quick."

"Yeah, I just had to learn the days of the week for English." he said.  "Boy, you have no idea how hard THAT was!"

Yellow Card

I wish I could explain to everyone just how good things are between The Man and I right now. Seriously, it's like we were both in a coma for the last two years and WHAMO all of the sudden, we're alive. It's good. It's fun. It's chaotic. It's love. But this doesn't mean that everything is all happy clappy. We've still got our moments and we've still got a lot of people to face and that's not just live ones that live around the globe, but some old demons that lurk in our ingrained behavior.

For example, on Sunday we hauled the troop and two of our friends from Scotland out for a hike around the village. There was a major trail race going on and I was hoping that we would be able to catch my running buddy as she finished her 75k course. We followed the last part of the course as it meandered into the woods and down the hills towards the infamous cascade, a rather large muddy section of waterfall at about the 73k mark. 

Unfortunately, we had had a fair amount of wet weather around these parts in the last couple of days so to say it was muddy is putting it lightly. To say that a hippo might have been happily hidden in one of the puddles we needed to splash through is more correct. Of course, this little jaunt had been my idea so I was feeling rather sheepish about the amount of mud The Man had to push the jogging stroller through. Rosie was happily bouncing along as her dad muttered various four and five letter words in several languages at her mother. Luckily for all of us, good humour prevailed and we all made it back to the B&B in one piece. Dirty, but happy, everyone kicked off their shoes outside and that was that.

Monday night rolled around and I realized that our furry friends had been locked in their prison since Sunday so we needed to let them out to play. The Scottish duo kindly did so and got them fed. Once again, tails wagging and wine being opened, that was that. Or so I thought.

Later that evening, we noticed lovely bits of black and purple material that had been chewed and flung all over the garden with only soles left as reminders of what once was. Unluckily for The Man and The Princess, their shoes had taken a direct husky hit.

It was at this moment in time that the ugly demon of stress and frustration that lingers in the soul of The Man raised it's ugly head and got angry. Really, really angry. And this ugly demon, in my opinion, blamed me for the dogs having eaten his boots. And it was then that my own ugly demon of righteous indignation, that at first tried to remind The Man that anyone could have brought the shoes in, couldn't handle all the crap that's been going on between us for years and decided that throwing that mangled boot at The Man was the right response.

Of course, I missed. 

Damn it all.

But you know, it's funny when parents in their forties have tantrums: we look exactly like all of our children. And since consistency is key in dealing with tantrums in children, I promptly put myself in time out in my room, where I sulked and smothered that demon with my blankie. When The Man came up to bed a little bit later, he hugged me and whispered a simple, "I love you," as we lay there.

The Man and I have been laughing a lot about the shoe since then. He knows he blew his cool and I know that I countered his stupid tantrum with a stupid stellar one of my own. 

Though, I have to admit, I'm glad we had this little tiff. It's cleared the air once again and reminded us both that we still have some work to do. But trust me, it's good work if you can get it. 

Go On, I Dare You to Try and Pronounce It

So the latest craze over here at the moment seems to be loads of ados wandering around ice rinks, malls, and parks wearing this:

Yes, that would be a Franklin & Marshall sweatshirt. And what's funny to me is that I'm sure not a single one of these ados have any freakin' idea what Franklin & Marshall is. Which is such a shame because the admissions office of that fine school in Lancaster, PA might be able to tape into a massive influx of international students from this part of France if they knew what was going on.

At first I wondered if there was some sort of exchange program already in place between the local university and F&M, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I just wish I had jumped on the bandwagon sooner and started marketing my own Alma Mater's sweatshirts. Sure, Marquette may be just a bit too easy for French ados to say, but one could have tried, I suppose.

You have no idea how much I want to grab one of those kids and say, "Oh my GOD! Did you go to Franklin & Marshall too?!?!?"

All We're Missing is a Space Mountain

We've had a kid swap this week. French Me kindly has taken the resident grumpy guts, aka Bubba-Love, for two nights and in exchange, we've got her oldest. And I have to admit, it's kinda nice having three kids over the age of 7 to deal with. There's just something about cranky 5 year olds that make me break out in hives and dream of drinking large bottles of Jagermeister.

The Man left for work early this morning with Rosie in tow, which meant that I was free to actually make the big kids some pancakes for breakfast. French Me's daughter watched in wonder as I flipped the pancakes over and asked me to clarify just what the difference between pancakes and crêpes is. I mumbled some stupid reply about the fluffiness of pancakes and how they only get folded over hot dogs in diners, but she seemed to glaze over so I quickly changed the subject.

As they sat down to eat, I watched as all three of them first went for the syrup, then for spoonfuls of sugar shaken like they were all in detox, and then finally some rather large glops of Nutella smeared all over those poor pancakes. I'm expecting the sugar rush to end sometime this evening.

At one point, French Me's daughter looked up from her very sticky plate and said,

"You know? Being here and eating pancakes reminds me of the time we went to Disney Land Paris and we had pancakes and coffee with Goofy."

Yes. Yes. I know. If the shoe fits....