French Wedding - Finally!

After a year-long absence, I am back writing. I feel so disappointed that I have left this last year pass by with nary a word - especially considering it was one of the most challenging ever! However, maybe that was why. Simply too focused on keeping my head day-to-day to be interested in the minutiae that I would love to remember.

Two weeks ago, Patrice and I finally had our French wedding. First slated for October 2007, then moved to April 2008 and finally occurring October 3, 2008. As anyone who knows me well can attest to, I can easily find something to complain about in any situation, but I have to say that our wedding was absolutely perfect! It was exactly what we had imagined!

Two days before the wedding, Patrice and I drove to Paris Charles de Gaulle to pick up my mom, my sister-in-law's mother and my old friend, Becky, who lives in Houston and whom I had not seen in 10 years. Living a pretty quiet day-to-day life with my husband (and I say husband, since we were legally married in the U.S. in 2007), I was not prepared for the barrage of talking and questions! It was like being the mother to five-year-old triplets! "What's this? What's that? Can I pay in dollars? What's that crop growing over there? Do the French irrigate their fields? What side dish do we get with lunch? Where is the bathroom? Do French women curl their hair? What is the history of that? What is the history of this?" and so on and so on for the duration of the trip. Wonderful to have people here, but utterly exhausting! It also brought home two big facts for me: How much I actually am able to figure out on my own after almost 20 years of international living and travel and how little I actually know about French history.

One of the highlights of those first couple of days, though, was having the owners of the rental house my friends were renting give us a tour of their chateau which was also on the grounds. It dates originally from the 1100's having been burned and rebuilt but still having some parts of the original construction. It was a real challenge trying to translate that historical commentary from French to English for my visitors, but it worked out. Afterwards, we had champagne and h'or dourves in thier sitting from with a large fire. It was really wonderful (despite two people dropping theirs on the beautiful oriental rug).

The two days before the wedding were a blur of the usual-type appointments - hair, flowers, makeup, picking up wedding dress, etc. Itwas a little more challenging having visitors in tow, but the morning of the ceremony, I woke up refreshed and ready to go. It was really nice having an evening wedding because we had all day to prepare - not having to rush to get things done before noon. My friends Rob & Brent arrived the day before and were invaluable in preparation because they did all the table decoration for us because the caterers were a little late in getting the tables set up.

We were completely blessed with beautiful weather for our ceremony. For weeks before the wedding, I started obsessing over weather reports. Even though our ceremony was indoors, and in the evening, we were hoping for some time before the ceremony to have some outdoor photos taken, to take advantage of the beautiful location. How five different weather reports can give you five different forecasts, I will NEVER know! For God's sake, in this day and age, isn't there one computer or something that can just tell the whole world what it is going to be? I had one saying sun, sun, sun for the 10 days my friends were here, one rain and thundershowers the entire time.

It was a nail-biter up until the actual hour. In the afternoon when I was getting my hair done, it was pouring down rain and even hailing. Then, just an hour before, the sun came out and it was simply beautiful! I haven't seen the final photographs, but I am sure there are some lovely ones of the chateau and the grounds. He even took us down to the lake at the base of the chateau to get some with it in the distance. As much as Patrice questioned the value of this "jet-set" photographer I had travel to us for this occasion, hands-down I think everyone who was there thought he did a great job. Perfect in the sense that you never saw him - he was totally unobtrusive.

The ceremony itself was a bit of a short-but-sweet blur. It was in a room in the chateau, so there was not a long aisle - just the length of a very large room - so even a "short" 1 minute, 40 second wedding march song seemed LOOOOONG.... Having Rob walk me down the aisle was so wonderful. He even knew to pause when the door opened and we walked in. Everyone stood up and started clapping and taking pictures and I felt like a real princess... it makes me sniffle little just typing this. However, despite trying to slow down, we still had a quick walk up and had to stand there for a good 45 seconds (sounds short, but feels long) to finish out the wedding march. Patrice's first words to me were "You came up too quick!".... ah.... this man always knows the right words.

The ceremony was entirely in French, and it was the French legal wording, like "Article 9.1 - You must love and obey".... funny! We each read poems to each other in French, and to me that was the most romantic part. I chose "I carry your heart (in my heart)" by e.e. cummings and he chose "L'autre Jour (The Other Day)" by Pierre de Ronsard, which was unintentionally fitting, as it was written in the 1500's, the same time period of the chateau. After the ceremony, we had photos out front, then the cocktail hour next to the reception hall. Again, for me, just a blur of people taking photos - I don't even remember having a drink, but wonderful nonetheless.

The only glitch in the whole day was our DJ! Apparently, it was in his contract (that I didn't read....) that we were to provide him with food. Initially when we sat down to dinner, there was not even any music. He and his sidekick were M.I.A., but showed up and all seemed to go well. However, as the food was into service, the assistant came up and said we needed to feed them. I apologized and had the kitchen put something together. But apparently it was not enough! We kept finding the DJ seemingly taking a snooze on the sofa in the other room while music was playing but at some, well the beef course was served, there was a real problem that he wasn't getting meat as well! He put on a "Satanta's Greatest Hits Live" CD or something like that (NOT relaxing dinner music) and then loud reggae music and stormed into the other room, taking a whole bottle of our wine with him! The caterers came to tell us that he said unless he was served beef (like us) he would not work any longer! Patrice was furious and threatened to kick him out right then (about midnight) and not pay the bill. Of course, the caterers put together something to appease him, but it made for a really unpleasant time. (See photo above for Patrice and his best man's defiant "DJ Incident" stance.) I told Patrice that kicking the guy out now would just ruin things and that we would just have to kiss ass to get the evening to go the way we wanted.

The dinner itself was fabulous! Five courses including fois gras, rabbit pate, scallops, salmon, steak cheese, salad and cake - most of us couldn't even eat it all, but we tried our dangdest! Even though I started obsessing about 'left food' - I still feel it's better to have too much than too little. The only additional odd point was the choice of music during our cake cutting, which was announced by the DJ sidekick lady (who bore a striking resemblance to Heaven's Gate cult leader Marshall Applewhite). They chose the theme from "2001: A Space Odyssey" ! What?? Anyhoo...

Long story short, it all worked out and we had a WONDERFUL evening of food and dancing until three o'clock in the morning! the whole evening was a joy - seeing my "old life" and my "new life" come together to celebrate my marriage with Patrice, dancing with my friends to music we love and just having a wonderful, wonderful time. (I need another adjective!). You see and read so many Bridezilla horror stories of things that unintentionally go wrong or days ruined by overplanning brides and their mothers, I just couldn't have had a more beautiful day!

Having this wedding celebration 1 1/2 years after our legal marriage really was affirming to both of us because it really was a renewal of the love and commitment we have worked so hard have. When we married in 2007, it was so whirlwhind that our love and our life was just different, in those beginning phases because we didn't know each other as well. But now, after almost two years of "love and laughter and trial and tribulation" - it just feels amazing!

Bonjour, y'all!

Who would have thought a move to France would bring out my inner redneck, but I have found that many French seem to love all things country and/or western and I am beginning to discover this whole new aspect to life here. Last weekend Patrice and I attended an American Country Western Festival in Chartres (about 45 minutes from here and famous for its cathedral). I happened to stumble across this when I was looking for line dancing lessons in our area because - don't ask me why - I have had this huge desire to line dance since I've arrived here and we thought it would be a fun couples activity.

We arrived for the first day of the American festival a couple of hours after the scheduled opening (note the keyword here is "scheduled") only to find not much going on and the vendors and expositions were still setting up. As someone who is usually 10 minutes late for everything I have ever done since I was probably 12, I do love the fact that schedules here seem to rarely exist and/or be adhered to, but there are times when you wish things would generally start moving along within, oh, one to two hours of their scheduled start. (On the flip side, we had some friends over for dinner a couple of weeks ago and not only were they and hour EARLY, they brought their dog and two extra people we weren't expecting, so I guess it can go both ways!)

One of the biggest things I was looking forward to about this weekend was speaking with other Americans. When I have attended French or German events in Portland, for example, I seemed to recall actual French or Germans attending or participating. Speaking French 24/7 gets a little tiresome and I was really looking forward to parlez-vous-ing a little anglais, but in this case, I really think I was the only American there, which was disappointing. However, once things got going, we had a great time! It was really cool to see French people taking this aspect of American culture so seriously and really enjoying themselves. There was country and rockabilly music, all sung in nearly accent-free English and there were times I looked around at the crowds and thought I was back home (well, not Portland or course but at least at the Canby country fair).

There certainly was a "we're French and not American" aspect to some of the getups - e.g. Gucci sunglasses, men with baguettes under their arms and jauntily-tied scarves around their neck as well as some of the most frightening ensembles of cowhide print couture I'd ever seen. I was obsessed with this trio of women I saw both days - one of whom I dubbed 'RoboCowboy' because she had a silver cowboy hat and wraparound sunglasses and her 'mutton dressed as lamb' friend had an indescribable combination of looks going on; I was simply hypnotized. My stealth-without-being-a-stalker photo skills were definitely put to the test. The music was great (the BBQ, on the other hand, not so much), we enjoyed the dancing and the people were fun to talk to. I really liked seeing the American cars as well (including the ubiquitous Dodge Ram pickup). We did get information for country dance lessons near our home and we have our first lesson this Thursday! I am super excited but Patrice is nervous because he thinks it's going to be too hard and he'll be impatient, which it will be and he will be, but he'll get it. Most men don't have 20 years of aerobics classes under their belts to prepare them for the wonderful world of group choreography.

I had the really good luck of meeting a Dutch woman here on the "other" side of St. Jean - which I didn't know existed - who runs a B&B for mainly Dutch people and offers English and French lessons. My friend Denise and I saw her flyer offering English lessons to children, so we though we had another 'rosbif' living in the village, but despite not being English, her English was very good and now I have another opportunity to NOT speak French. She hired me for one week to give English lessons to a 17-year-old boy who was visiting with his family and it really great because I enjoy doing it and it showed me how much I miss working in a 'normal' capacity, e.g. actually leaving your house and talking with other human beings.

I am really looking forward to getting my carte de sejour so I can look for a job. As I alluded to in the title of my last email, life here is VERY, VERY expensive. Not like the "go to California and spend ten cents more for a gallon of gas" expensive, but literally $8 a gallon for gas, $70 for a gallon of paint and the aforementioned $15 volleyball-sized watermelon at our local market. I went to buy a carton of cigarettes for my neighbor to the tune of $81. Suck on that for a moment - 81 bucks! (Yes, I am vehemently opposed to smoking but I figure if you're 80 years old and are still putting down a carton of unfiltered Gitanes each week, God bless you, you deserve each and every one.) On the plus side, bottled water is cheap, cheap, cheap (fortunately since, due to our hard water, I wash my hair in it) and the bastion of my teenage leisuredom - the glossy tabloid - is only about $1.50.

I still keep finding my little tastes of home that make life even nicer for me. One of the things I have missed the most is ordering a gigantic mocha at my local coffee shop and poring over the Sunday paper all morning. Despite having lots of little cafes, it is definitely not the same coffee culture as in the U.S. Paris is different - there are 25 Starbucks there - but to recreate my Sunday ritual, it would cost me close to $60: $40 for the train and métro ticket , $11 for a large frappuccino at Starbucks and $7 for the Sunday London Times. Sadly, that not being in the budget very often, I have had my local news agent order me the London Times and I go out for a thimble-sized café au lait in Vendôme or Orléans - a city conquered by Julius Caesar in the year 52 (!!) and place where Joan of Arc overthrew the English in 1429. I still continue to be in complete awe of the history that I am living smack dab in the middle of.

Orléans is also the place where I did my final rounds of appointments for my carte de sejour last week. I had health tests (TB: negative. Blood sugar: normal. Blood pressure: 120/80. Weight: down 17 pounds since my arrival, which was a pleasant surprise) as well as a stealth French proficiency exam (written and oral) which I didn't even know I was being given. All of our conversations with the staff were in French and I was asked to write personal information when filling out forms. Hilariously (and inexplicably) the information given to the group about lessons available to those who *don't* speak French was in French, so I am wondering how that worked out for everyone. At the end of the morning, I was told that these conversations were my exam as I passed, which I was not expecting. When I signed my name to the form, I saw that others in the room were having 300-500 hours of instruction recommended to them, so I felt really proud of myself that in just under a year after speaking my first word of French with Patrice and only five or six formal lessons, I was able to pass this test. However, I am going to take advantage of the free lessons that the government offers, well "free" in the sense that I paid a whopping $400 for my residency permit! I can take three or four lessons a week in nearby Blois starting in October.

Herding Cats

Well, the joy of having indoor/outdoor cats in the bucolic French countryside has come to an unfortunate end. Humphrey returned home one afternoon, after a leisurely stroll around the quartier with a note attached to his collar which translated loosely to : Your cat is very sweet but he is disturbing our dogs so could you please keep him inside". Needless to say, we were enjoying the ability to let the cats come and go as they please - probably akin to Scandinavian parents discovering it's perfectly legal to leave their baby in the stroller outside a restaurant while they enjoy their meal. We could leave the doors open for fresh air, there were no kung-fu cat-blocking leg motions required every time we left the house and they both were enjoying the outdoors - getting to be real "hunter" cats. (See photos of Humphrey with his first bird and one of Franklin's two million mice brought inside with varying degrees of life still in them)



We also had a more unsettling discovery regarding Franklin. He had been displaying some bizarre behavior in the litter box. He was appearing to have problems urinating - sitting in the box but doing nothing and/or going outside of the box in strange places - like the blanket on our couch - which is really unusual for cats. They are so persnickety about hygiene that any variation is a cause for concern. When he seemed unable to sit down, and was crying, we took him to a vet in Châteaudun and discovered he had blood in his urine and bladder stones. The vet indicated that the blood was indicative of poison and we have heard from our neighbor that they lost four cats in the last year due to poisoning - either a disgruntled feline-hating neighbors (cats are somewhat person non grata here, or perhaps eating a mouse that had been poisoned. Either way, with the combination of Humphrey's mystery note and Frankie's health problems (including, gulp, $45 a bag food!) we knew they had to stay inside.

We really had only a couple of options: keeping them completely inside or letting them go outside with something to keep them in the yard. We went to a pet store and inquired about an 'invisible fence' - I had read about these in the U.S. and was happy to see a version here. You run an underground wire around the perimeter of your yard and your pets wear collars that give them an increasing level of beeps and shocks as they get closer to the perimeter. The cost is close to $500 for the system, about $200 more than in the U.S.

The other (and much more affordable) option is using a harness, leashes and a long rope to keep them tethered to the house. For the moment, this seemed like the best option because we simply didn't have an extra $500 laying around. I had the clerk help me pick out harnesses, trying to explain the ginormous dimensions of my nearest and dearest, Humphrey. To the first harness I picked out, his response was, "Oh no, that is for a dog!", to which I replied, "Trust me, Monsieur, you haven't seen this cat!" Eighty dollars in cat harnesses later, we were out the door thinking our cat worries would be over - the cats could roam but not too far and we'd saved ourselves about 400 bucks.

Needless to say, the "training" did not go as expected. (Does anything, really?) Getting them (calmly) into the harness was not easy - it took practice on our part to not freak them out so they wouldn't associate being manhandled with this new form of restraint. We had the ingenious (not) idea as well to attach them to opposite ends of the same rope so that they would be push to the other's pull and when the reached the end, they would just stop. Mind you, this is a rope that can easily reach from the back of the house to the front. Seemed foolproof enough. What I wasn't expecting was that I was dealing with two little Houdinis. Ten semi-supervised minutes into the first outing, we two discovered expensive harnesses devoid of two wily cats. They had disappeared with nary a trace or signs of struggle (or even photo of them holding up an edition of today's newspaper). Our "set it and forget it" method of cat training had not worked.

As time has gone on, we have been able to get Humphrey to hang out resistance-free on the harness, but Frankie has been a lost cause. We have slowly allowed him to reclaim his role of the petit chasseur - the little hunter - (to wit: he has brought in three mice - two dead and one squeakingly alive - in the course of writing this entry) but we keep on eye on him and go look for him after he has been out awhile. Patrice is also completely pleased with himself and his (legend in his own mind) cat training because, ala Dr. Doolittle, he tells Frankie to be back in 20 minutes and sure enough, 20 minutes later there is Franklin. "Dressage, mon coeur, dressage," he tells me, "Je suis un professionnel". "Training, my darling, training. I am a professional." Hopefully as time goes on we can find that nice inside/outside mix of safe, but happy, cats.