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2856. webfeet - 4/5/2005 1:48:14 PM O que je suis contente de quitter la France!
I have never been happier, never been more delighted than to leave la maison de belle mere. Provence, you say? I can no longer hear the cicadas sing. The sweet smell of lavande drifting in from the garden? Non, plus! Only the sound of belle mere sucking on her teeth disapprovingly, like a glacon at the end of a meal. "Tu veux encore un petit peu plus?"
"Non, merci." Cubes of rabbit in a mess of a sauce. Degoulasse.
France, you know that place where American tourists go for the gastronomic experience of a lifetime? Non, non non! That France may exist to the happy tourists laughing over a pichet du vin rouge in the cafes, but not chez belle mere, where it's either regime or little easter lambs in a bed of potatoes and grease.
Not only does belle mere hold me fatally responsible for frenchcat's paunch, but she is now waving pictures of a trim and scary looking Diana Ross in my face, "Quelle est mince!" she says holding up Paris Match, as if to remind me that a woman thirty years my senior has a better ligne than me.
Hello, I'm not fat!
Most people when they think of spending two weeks in Aix en Provence, sigh with plaisir. They are the lucky ones. They haven't stayed with belle mere...La plus les choses changent... 2857. Jenerator - 4/5/2005 2:25:30 PM Webfeet!!!!!
Publish your travelogues, your memoirs, ANYTHING!
Like, now. 2858. webfeet - 4/5/2005 3:34:19 PM Thanks, me lady. I've been trying. Bell mere, though actually real, is a villainous character in the novel I have been working on in the last year. In it I've renamed her Odile, as in odious and ordeal. But I should say she's not quite a true, dyed in the wool Cruella Deville genre of villain as she tries to help her daughter in law win back her straying french husband who has fallen for a gorgeous twenty two year old champion de ski.
It's actually like an odyssey into parenting and sleep deprivation, how a marriage falls apart over exhaustion. Like a mommy blog with an international twist. "French kiss" but with two small children.I just made that part up, I mean I havent really packaged it in my head that way, but hey, maybe that might sound good.
and non, my marriage isn't falling apart but it is quite anecdotal and culled, if i may be so pretentious as to use the word culled, from every day life. i have to entertain myself somehow. the ski champion is an actual person i saw frenchcat flirting with last year on the check-in line at Kennedy airport on our way to France and i practically convinced myself that he was in love with her (she worked with him), but there was no affair. when i accused him of having one, (I was staying in france five weeks last year when my son broke his leg --that was how this was hatched) he asked me why I was acting like a character in a SPanish soap opera.
I'll write more about how belle mere sent me to thalasso therapie where I was pummeled with jets of hot water and slathered in mud later. My daughter, a jet lagged monster of sleep deprivation herself, is screaming and hurling herself on the floor.
2859. alistairconnor - 4/5/2005 3:52:55 PM Ungrateful wretch! France doesn't deserve you! (or is that the other way round)
I think you should serialize the novel here... we could provide valuable literary feedback (unless you have an exclusive deal with the New Yorker of course) 2860. thoughtful - 4/5/2005 3:56:40 PM webbie! How nice to hear from you.
I can certainly relate. Visits to my in-laws who lived in Manhattan in the E70s forever tainted the city for me. Instead of looking forward to a jaunt in the big city, they became ponderous trips where we foolishly never spent enough time sightseeing as an excuse to be away from them...especially in their later years. We used to make bets on how soon after we said hello they'd start dragging us into their latest bicker looking for support of the rightness of their side. It was usually under 2 minutes.
2861. thoughtful - 4/5/2005 5:14:57 PM Saw a fox this a.m. on my way to work. Looked very large and very healthy. I think the abundant turkey population is keeping them fat and happy.
.jpg) 2862. webfeet - 4/5/2005 6:17:34 PM
quel beau renard. he reminds me of the elegant stalker in the french children's classic "Poule Rousse."
thoughtful, it is amazing isn't it, how the in-laws become the experience, and not the city itself. you think you can play at being just another tourist taking off on a flight of fancy, but you can't. and it sucks.
dear alistair, more french than the french. well, you know what belle mere is like! there you were, floating in the room in your bucaneer white shirt offering her a beer (after taking like twenty eight minutes to answer the door of your--is it a mas, bastide, or none of the above-- which appeared to be deserted) with belle-mere sizing you up, her eyes as hard and noir as olive pits.
If I remember, belle mere avait tres soif and accepted la biere like a sailor drinking at the bar. After determining that you were not a psycopath or a rapist or serial killer, I seem to remember she went on her way leaving her belle fille and grandchild in your care. And it was during that famous trip home, cursing to herself while driving uphill out of a trench, that she christened Marcenod "cet trou perdu."
well, i'd be happy to share a chapter here and there. And it's not because the New Yorker has hired me in exclusivio much as I'd like that to be the case. it's really too long right now and it would risk being just another narcisstic mommy blog floating out into space. what i'll do is post chapter 3 Scenes From a Marriage--simply because it's kind of fun and in one chapter gives you the essence of the novel in a nutshell. 2863. Magoseph - 4/5/2005 8:27:01 PM I'm looking forward to read your chapters, Web--I'm glad too that you're back home. This line O que je suis contente de quitter la France! really resonates with me.
2864. alistairConnor - 4/5/2005 11:26:27 PM after taking like twenty eight minutes to answer the door
Well yeah, that is a common problem. Stostosto gave up and went away. I'll never know how many people turn away, disappointed -- that's probably the main reason Catherine Zeta-Jones didn't jump me the other weekend. 2865. Macnas - 4/6/2005 8:25:59 AM What's this with Catherine Zeta-Jones? 2866. alistairconnor - 4/6/2005 9:33:20 AM Well, somebody said the other week that they didn't win the lottery, and I mentioned that lovely Zeta didn't do me. Just as a commentary on unlikely events. I mean, she's not likely to be hanging around my particular trou perdu anyway. You said you've got to play the odds : answering the door promptly is a way of improving them. I mean just imagine. She's hiking through my lovely neck of the woods, stops to ask for a glass of water, and I don't answer the door.
Just a convoluted metaphor (I never metaphor I didn't like)
Oddly enough, I've got a perfectly good doorbell. I'm not sure why so few people use it.
I think I need to put up a sign in several languages :
"Plese cnoke if an anser is not reqird".
As to why KZJ in particular : I dunno. I think her slightly comical name adds to her charm. 2867. Macnas - 4/6/2005 9:40:16 AM My door bell hasn't worked in years.
Who knows the amount of buxum Welsh women that have left without cnoking. 2868. alistairconnor - 4/6/2005 10:40:34 AM I just realised what that tune is, that's trotting through my head.
Donna Summer.
You can ring my bell... 2869. Macnas - 4/6/2005 11:22:57 AM You bastard. 2870. webfeet - 4/6/2005 4:54:05 PM Oh, yes. The fault must lie with the guests.
No, instead of a sign, I've got a better idea.
Why don't you enlist one of the village dogs, a la Rin Tin Tin to come hurtling over the hillsides to bark a warning hello to you and your guests. That way, if Zeta Jones is in town, parched and half naked, you will surely not miss her. 2871. alistairconnor - 4/6/2005 5:04:01 PM Nah, I've got something better now... a doorman with a dog.
My tenant. He calls himself a musician. As everyone knows, that means he sits around at home looking after his baby daughter and smoking various things, never doing anything remotely resembling a stroke of work, while his wife works at a pharmacy in town to pay the (modest) rent.
If you happen to read this, David... this is actually a short story. Any resemblance to any persons etc... 2872. webfeet - 4/6/2005 5:04:33 PM Jenerator -- I forgot to ask you about your bambino? How is he? And marshame? Send her a petite bonjour and my best regards.
Mags- a lot of french expats i've talked to express frustration with the educational system in france and are happier with the flexibility you have in the states in that your academic record at age eleven should not be used to determine your entire future vis a vis admittance to the grandes ecoles or even in deciding your metier. And certainly in starting your own business, as you have done, there must be a lot less red tape. or is that just a cliche?
And I'm not joining the chorus of critics in that direction either, but it just seems to be a synthesis of what i've bee told over the years.
thoughtful -- how is Denny the Dendrobrium? Please tell me he is still alive. Each time I enter this thread, for some peculiar reason, I am always brought back to the very first post instead of the most recent. And that post is a photo of Denny. 2873. thoughtful - 4/6/2005 5:39:35 PM Denny is resting comfortably after a nice blooming spell. Phil has one last blossom hanging on after throwing a couple of bunches. Phoebe is resting. I'm hoping with the increased light of summer, she'll get her act in gear.
Thanks for asking about my 'babies' too! 2874. ronski - 4/6/2005 6:38:16 PM A Cymbidium I have had for a few years, which bloomed again. This is as it was when it first opened. Almost a month later, it doesn't look any different.
 2875. alistairConnor - 4/6/2005 6:40:41 PM Splendid!
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