lack of witty title in a non-ironic way

It’s been about 28 days and this journal won’t write itself no matter how long I wait so here we are. Happy Strike. (not to be confused with the rampant baseball references/visual) Today started one of the big national ones. Sometimes there will just be smaller more focused strikes but this is for all the marbles although I admittedly still don’t know what the marbles are. When the declining mustard companies, education systems, transportation network etc all strike at the same time it’s hard to figure the goal out. It happens one day at a time so it’s France’s equivalent of a snow day. Wake up and listen to the radio, kids. This morning I was supposed to have a class and, in my naivety, showed up. Well, guess I needed the exercise…

(Clever transition) So, very happy that I joined baseball. A way to meet people, take up the time, get some exercise… The
pressure (all self imposed without a doubt) was a little intense when I
started because of the American stereotypes which equaled me
(obviously) being awesome at the sport. If I had been wheeled in as a torso with a US passport strapped to my chest I might have still been told to hit the mound. This past weekend, I was happy to go with them to Lyon to chaperone two younger girls, 11 or 12. They are two among about 6 or 7 boys. They had an indoor tournament and it was so crazy to watch. The age range of these teams was fairly ambiguous so some kids could have sat in their gloves and others could have eaten these young unfortunates for breakfast.

There was this one “big kid” team that all the other teams were terrified of. They were impeccably dressed and looked real hardcore. My expert analysis: This perceived evil empire could have been trounced by any decent American freshman team. I’m not trying to be all judge-y. If I picked up a cricket bat for the first time at 14, I’d probably end up hitting myself in the face or something. The
other highlight was sitting in the hall playing poker with the
coaches/dads making sure all the kiddies stayed in their room. They were nice. But in more important news, I ejected three of them by going “all in”. Hey, if I wasn’t going to drink the beer, I had to prove my worthiness somehow. They
very generously invited me to their Superbowl party which is happening
the Tuesday after the game because it airs live here at midnight and
they have to work the next day. It was officially be my first Superbowl Tuesday. My ticket of entry is a cheesecake. This
could be difficult since I am living in a kitchen equipped with one
measuring utensil and a spoon in a country where cream cheese doesn’t
really exist. I’ll let you know how that works out.

Shortly before that, one certain president elect seems to have been sworn in. I was recruited by the TV channel France 3 to be on a panel of Americans to talk about it. Irony of ironies, I missed the inauguration because I was doing this. Was
a little annoyed about that but France 3 is pretty big kid stuff
(national, big elaborate stage set up, etc etc) so it’s cultural. The C word. Although
I looked completely foolish because I was the first to speak in the
panel of 3 and didn’t realize I had one opportunity to speak. So I said stupid, inconsequential things and then the two remaining talked for 15 minutes on significant subjects. Oops. One of the guys doing it was an older American guy who has been living in France for the past 30 years. This summer, he is holding a France/American festival in Dijon. He
knows all these amazing people (including the White House’s pastry chef
who was entirely over making peanut butter cookies for Bush) so I’m
disappointed to be missing it. Other than that, just bought tickets to go visit the esteeeemed elder sister down in Nice in March! Fun effing times. Cannot wait. Also, the other Clarkies arrived (two) with our director and a Clark French prof. They took us to a super classy French restaurant. It
was the height of finals so it was nice to have a distraction away from
grammar, which had been aggressively over studied at that point. It was bizarre to see a little slice of the Woo (glorious Worcester, MA). I can’t get it through my head that it’s second semester, which makes sense since I still forget I’m in France from time to time, but we graduated from the first semester. We moved onto level 6 – the highest before they say “ok, you learned French. Stop being a wuss and go learn with the big kids.” Unfortunately,
we still have the exact same teachers for the exact same courses in the
exact same classroom with the exact same people. Sorry. Was that overkill? Hey there, Debbie Downer. But
can’t you leave you on that – can’t currently think of any stories that
exemplify my foolishness but that means tomorrow I will obviously fall
in a fountain or something. Maybe some angry mustard man will push me. Hey, buddy, I’m with you. As a ketchup connoisseur, you supply a very important half of my culinary delights. Ketchup with mustard. Can’t beat it.

"It's New Years Eve. They couldn't just find something to blow up?" guest starring my mother

Hello and welcome to your [insert time frame] visit to the recountings of the generally indirectly self inflicted events of my life. This week, we have with us a special guest: my mother, all the way from Maine giving quality time and leaving the precious slopes to visit her youngest offspring.
Dec 26th-27th
Paris: So. effing. Cold. After trying to be clever, it took us an hour and a half to find our way out of the train station. Don’t worry about giving us any benefit of the doubt. There’s one front door. And that’s the one we wanted. A distance away, we proceeded to find our little rented apartment after a mishap which landed us at the absolute end of a bus route on which we had intended to go in the exact opposite direction. Hello, taxi. The driver dropped us off at the “end of the road” that we were looking for. Therefore, it only took us 45 minutes before we actually set foot across the threshold. Think we maybe went out later but, not being unparalleled party animals, didn’t see any time after about 9:00pm.
Woke up the next morning. Coffee! that was made. And the coffee fountain sprung from the kitchen as we pranced and sang and the little American coffee cherubs played their small, gently tinkling instruments. Conclusion: we didn’t have to buy 14 shots/40 euros of French coffee each morning. “Dependent” you say? “I tried to cut down but life just wasn’t a good time” I say.
After I waited for my mother to don every skiing layer that she had thrown in as an afterthought, we went to some big impressive church. This was far from our neighborhood in which we tried not to disturb the calls to prayer and learned that the going rate for a prayer mat is 9-19 euros. Notre Dame gave us our particular calling this morning. Still pretty. But, altogether, “moving on” said the young anti-tourist cynically, thinking of the benefits of learning to speak a Spanish dialect (preferably southern) as the cold slapped her up one side and down the other.

Dec 28th-29th
Dijon. We arrive. Conditions: still cold but we're good. Took a walking tour (read: Sunday. No bus for 45 minutes) back to my abode. Mom met Mireille and I proceeded to try to facilitate a very semi bilingual discussion. I think it’s time to go now. We headed to the Dijon Museum of Fine Art. A little embarrassed to say it was basically my first time. (I had done the self guided ADHD tour some months ago.) It was fine and artistic.
We returned to the flat for a meal that Mireille had prepared for us and some friends of hers who spoke English. It was good. They were nice. She only mentioned twice that I sit in my room and am not part of the Franco/English Club. Memo: meeting Anglophones has not been a problem. Whatever. Over it.
The next day was a very biased tour of Dijon. Highlights. The Chouette carved into the side of Notre Dame which is supposed to be rubbed for good luck. It’s supposed to be rubbed with a certain hand but I think I told my mom the wrong hand. Sorry. There were only 3 days left in the year anyway. Then off to The Unicorn for the best crepes in town. Having suddenly become an avid Nutella fan, my mother began a quest for a container. And by quest I mean we went to Monoprix, your all basic needs semi department store. Also stocked up on some “regional products.” There are now multiple jars of cassis (red syrupy stuff of a berry whose name I can never remember which is very famous here) in my mother’s luggage. If any of them break, there is no way she’s going to make it across the border save handcuffed to a seat. Hope she rubbed that chouette with the correct hand.

Dec 29th-31st
We headed back to Paris. Ended up in the apartment where we played a rowdy game of Phase 10 Dice and then passed out. Vacation is awesome. (serious)
Woke up. Drank coffee. Went to the Louvre which was closed that day of the week. Moved on to something else I forget. At some point we did the Place de la Concorde up the Champs de l’Elysees and then the Arc de Triumphe and then over to the Eiffel Tower. It was raining, harder at some times than others. Life became considerably less pleasant so we headed over to this shopping place to hunt down some French requests for those on the homeland. Couldn’t find anything and my really trendy canvas shoes were soaked and my improvised babushka head wrap was soggy. Yeah, we were about over that day. Headed home. More fun and games and tea.
The next morning, we woke up early to beat the crowds (HAHAHA) to the Louvre. Good try though. We saw, from 50 paces, the Mona Lisa while standing next to another American girl whose direct quote was “it’s small and ugly. Can we go?” While I’ve heard more eloquent things in my life, the girl had a point. I wonder what purpose plays the piece on the opposite wall of the gallery. It’s about 50 feet wide and 30 tall and has the most unbelievable range of people, color and action. Interesting choice of contrast.

Later when we got sick of the 18 Jesus galleries, we ran through a little Egyptian and then to the bookstore just for kicks. If you’re asked, the going rate for a life size reproduction of Venus by Michelangelo is 6,500 euros.
It was mercifully warm so we headed up to Montmartre and Sacre Coeur and did some walk about, 5/6 of which was stairs up to the church. Sadly, they’ve shut off the Amelie bits but you can still see them. We walked around Montmartre for a little and bought my sister an awesomely tacky French shopping bag. (You’ll use it and you’ll love it!).
We went back to the apartment to gather our spirits and our wits to mentally prepare for what we thought was going to be an epic ringing in of the New Years in Paris, France. Frankly, I think that we were misled by the cops on the streets. They were already dressed in full riot gear and had clearly gotten the inspiration of their armor from the larger of the shelled dinosaurs. We ate dinner and then headed onto more walk from the Louvre up the Champs de l’Elysees to the Arc de Triumphe to the Eiffel Tour.

When we got there, there were throngs of those preparing, we took far too many pictures of the Eiffel Tower, and then we decided to escape from that mass to the next. To make an already long story a little longer, we walked about 5 more miles before midnight, we requested the usage of the bathroom in a café at the Louvre in which we were promptly sneered at. Just because they couldn’t see their reflection in my gritty chucks and the enormous yarn pom pom on my hat didn’t match their gold gilded upholstery…Ok, but really, who thought that was a good idea? Our final resting place for the unfolding of events was Place de la Concorde.

Hate to make it terribly anticlimactic but at one point around midnight the Eiffel Tower starting sparkling. So does that mean it’s almost midnight? Or exactly? Or the new year? You can’t muster up one or two state supported, legal fireworks to specify such news? So I guess that makes me jaded, cynical and/or just a huge snob but congratulations, Auburn, Maine, your fireworks currently stand ahead of the Parisian New Years fireworks display (which I guess technically doesn’t exist but it should so we’re going throw it in the competition.) Forgot to make a resolution but had already lit a candle for world peace and rubbed the chouette so, whatevs.
January 1st, 2009.
Got up. Drank coffee. Found that our baggage was now significantly fuller. Bid a kind and gentle adieu to our fine little apartment. And then a kind adieu to each other and proceeded to arrive back into the arms of my beloved Dijon. (have no idea with what sentiments that phrase is typed. Ask me again in May).
It was fun, Mom. Glad that you came.
(And she said explicitly that I mut tell any of my home friends that they must go visit her if they are in town. If you see her in the streets after not heeding this advice - you've been warned.
Hope you had a good New Years. Thanks for reading.