thanksgiving day

i cleaned the apartment top to bottom.

i have always admired my friend, marie m. who seemed to be the ideal hostess. she would welcome her dinner guests and serve them drinks, chat and then disappear for only a moment before dinner was presented at the table. it seemed so effortless. i have tried to emulate her in preparations but have not yet arrived at her success. nevertheless, i try. i prepared the potatoes yesterday. today i bought a lot of green beans at the thursday morning market, prepped them and pre-sauteed them in batches. all i had to do later was to cook them for another 10 minutes. i made gravy from chicken stock that i had saved in the freezer.

then all i had left to do was to pick up the turkey at 6pm. i went to the metro at 5:45 as i boarded the subway, there was an announcement that there was a short delay because of a “suspicious package” in the stop between me and the turkey. “...and thank you for your patience and understanding in our effort to keep us all safe”. i waited 5 minutes then joined the other rats jumping ship and headed upstairs to get a velib bike. i arrived at the butcher in 10 minutes (mostly along bike paths), and hoped that the metro problem would be resolved for my trip home. i couldn’t imagine trying to fit an 8 pound cooked bird in the front basket of a bike. the butcher put the turkey into a big, deep plastic tray and wrapped it with big saran wrap in several layers and gave me a bottle of a mixture of juices and drippings and oil. the metro was still out of commission and i had guests coming in ½ an hour! so i had to do what i had to do. the platter fit width wise but not lengthwise in the bike basket, so i wedged it in halfway. i laughed all the way home, just imagining the sight of me! got there safely. thanks again to the velib bike system!

luckily jj had gotten home in time to welcome anyone arriving early, and the first guest was already there. he had brought some really nice champagne – tattingers. the rest of his family came and they brought a papaya salad and apple pie. the other family brought delicious stuffing and homemade cranberry sauce. these were the 2 families who now take care of maynard the dog for a few days a week. maynard’s other families. jj exclaimed how our parties used to be made up of her friends and their families and NOW they are maynard’s friends! how true!

the tattinger champagne was very delicious. something really perfect about it – crisp taste, sharp bubbliness, perfect flavor balance. the rotisserie turkey was delicious! moist, tender and crispy skin. everything was delicious. the thanksgiving combination was great. the company was good and in all, a very enjoyable evening.

brigade des stupefiants

went to a lecture sponsored by the school. it was led by a police officer from the brigade des stupefiants. this is the "narcotic squad" but literally translates as the brigade of drugs. i think it should actually be called the “brigade AGAINST drugs”. to me the name sounds like a “stupified brigade”. anyway, it was quite informative. pot is really cheap. dealers hang out at the metro station. a kid can save money from his/her lunch allowance and buy pot really cheap. it’s cheaper than cigarettes. he talked about the new drugs and the various dangers – lack of control of ingredients, as always, being one of them. he talked about alcohol. he said that in france, alcohol is illegal for under 18’s because it is unhealthy for children’s bodies. one parent asked if a child is exposed to alcohol in the safety of the home, wasn’t that ok? he said there should be zero tolerance and by presenting it in the family setting, in celebrations etc, it was just giving it a positive message. he said “if you think that you are teaching your child the different grape varieties and types of wine, you are wrong. kids are incapable of tasting these subtleties”. this being france, i was shocked that he was so definitively against wine. but of course, he HAS to be. he’s a policeman with the brigade des stupefiants.

film biz cafe; last work day; pre-thanksgiving

i had wanted to introduce 2 moms, who were both working on documentaries. i heard of other parents at the school who were involved in the film business, so i decided to organize a coffee. i called it the “anglophone film biz” cafe. it was fabulous – very interesting people. everyone got along great, made connections. film people are fun.

today was also the last day of work. it was supposed to be 3 months and it turned out to be 5 weeks. we finished our part of the short film and the other commercials didn’t come in. they said they hope to have more work in january.

i had been thinking of hosting thanksgiving for some american “orphans” over here in paris. was trying to decide whether to do it on thanksgiving day itself , a school night, since we have no days off here, or the friday or the saturday. we then got an invitation to dinner from one of p’s colleagues for the saturday. i was still hemming and hawing when the school-mom-fun group announced a potluck for the friday and it was to take place in an apartment on the exclusive ile st louis (one of the 2 islands in the very center of paris). i couldn’t pass that one up! so we were left with the thursday. the other new american families were already talking about thanksgiving together, so i offered to do it at our apt. a friend told me that the butcher could rotisserie the turkey. sounded perfect and much easier. all i’d have to do then was a few side courses.

there would be 11 people, but only 5 adults eating meat and 5 kids. the web recommended 1 pound of turkey per person. i converted that to kilos and went to order it. i had grown to appreciate the butcher near our old apartment 2 metro stops away. i went there to order the turkey. the lady asked how many people would there be. it was so complicated with the vegetarian and the kids counting more like a half person. i just told her the weight i wanted. her eyes widened. she did not write down the number in the order book. she just wrote “une belle” – meaning “a beauty”. you know how “everything’s bigger in america”. i figured that the french were not used to the american “plenty”. apparently, the size i requested was off the charts and they would get the biggest one they could find. i gave her a deposit and walked out the door and was at the stairs of the metro when i realized that i had made a mistake. instead of using the correct conversion of pounds to kilos, i had used the formula for converting miles to kilometers and ordered way too much turkey. not that it wasn’t a typical size for an american turkey, but it was way too much for us. i ran back in to correct it and she nodded a knowing nod uttering the typical parisian “ bah, oui...”

potluck cocktails with teachers

pot luck cocktail with teachers tonight, hosted by jj’s friend’s mom and dad. they have a gorgeous apartment at trocadero. it was good meeting more parents. these are all parents of students in the international baccalaureate program (as opposed to french bac) so a more international crowd. i enjoyed meeting the teachers too. funny to hear your child’s descriptions and judgements of teachers and then to actually meet them.  her french teacher is a very cute, enthusiastic man who sported a guitar on his back when he was leaving. i guess it's normal that kids complain and you hear just the bad things.  only afterwards when i said, "he seems very nice", would she admit, "oh, yes, he's very nice.  it's just that he's a hard grader."  i also met a biology teacher who’s name sounded familiar. so i told him that i was the mom of jj who had him as a teacher and that she really loved biology. he said “yes, it shows”. then i found out later that i got it wrong, that she didn’t have him for a teacher!  i laughed!  general confusion between teachers and parents.

wine delivery

i had gone to a wine tasting last year, hosted by a mom at the school who is in the business. her family owns a vineyard in bordeaux and she works for a wine merchant. i bought some from her after the wine tasting, and we continue to buy some bordeaux from her. she stopped by this morning to deliver some more. i love the idea of buying wine from a school mom!

more doggy-time-share

met kim o at cosmos cafe and left maynard with her. she and her family will look after him for a few days. they are doggy-time-share-alternate-family2.

invited to dinner

chez lopez for dinner.

armistice day

jj went to a sleepover last night at a friend’s house. she has the day off today for armistice day, it’s a national holiday, but the studio keeps working. the film has a looming deadline, so they just need all the days they can get. it’s fine with me. i want to work. i get paid by the day. jj had a violin lesson. she is becoming more and more independent.

today is 11/11/11.  it just reminds me about 2 years ago, on 09/09/09.  i was with a bunch of realtors driving around looking at houses and i mentioned this date.  someone said, yes, there are only a few more of those type days in the near future.  the realtor who was driving, who was a very, very successful realtor said slowly,  "hmm, yess, i guess there is, (pause), 10/10/10 (pause) and then 11/11/11 (pause) and then 12/12/12."  i giggled to myself about the  slow thought process, but then, i guess not everyone is a geek like me who LIKES numbers...

tax advisor babe

we went to meet with another tax advisor. it was at a very fancy address on the champs elysees above the louis vuitton store. this makes me feel that we will be paying extra for the location... the woman was quite beautiful and exotic. she and her sister own the company and are persian american. they handle taxes both in france and the US. we connected much better with her than with the other tax advisor who was very slow moving. we felt she gave us some very good information.

jj sleep deprived

jj had been on october break and school started again today. she made up her sleep yesterday, as she did not get up until 1:00. just as feared, her work was not finished and she ended up staying up until 2am. she went to bed but said she could not sleep until 5:30 (because of remnant images of the horror film). so this morning, after 2.5 hours of sleep, she had a meltdown. she couldn’t imagine surviving on so little sleep. she wanted to call in sick. she was very upset, but we told her she had to go in. she had to “buck up” and be brave and just get on with it. stop being such a wuss. drink some coca cola. she only had one class, though double period, before she had a 2.5 hour break. she was going to come home and take a nap but ended up doing the rest of her work. once she got over the “IDEA” of not having enough sleep, she was fine.

i have to say she reminds me a bit of me in attitude. when i was in high school, my mother told me that i spent more time worrying about what i had to do, than actually doing it. jj could not stop complaining about the fact that she had school work to do over vacation. she has an attitude that the world is against her and that she won’t be able to do the work.

she needs to change her attitude to be more positive, to believe that she can do it.

went to a wine tasting event sponsored by my college club. it was held in a woman’s apartment which is one of the old “artist studios”. cool old complex of studios. apparently picasso had rented this studio, but decided he didn’t like it and left after a month. the tasting was interesting, led by an alum who found out that she was good at “tasting things”, so this is her career – leading wine tastings. she introduced us to some interesting reds which were a good price. i wasn’t as excited about the whites she brought.

paris halloween - not

halloween is not a french thing. it has become more popular, so one can see costumed people on the metro on the evening of halloween, but still not too many are people into it. i was sick so didn’t go into the studio for work. was wondering what kind of things would happen there. animation studios in america are fun places to be on halloween. went in today and asked. nothing happened. nobody got dressed up. oh well. no fun.

i was still a little sick, so when people came to greet me with a bisou i stuck my hand up and would say “malade...”(“sick”). i’m sure that i make them all feel awkward, because they don’t know if they should bisou or not. funny. all the extra effort it takes to figure out how to greet christine.

halloween is jj’s 2nd favorite holiday. christmas is first and her birthday doesn’t count as a holiday. she went to her friend’s house for a sleepover party. they went to the american library with her friend’s little sister who said there was a halloween party there. i had heard that there would be a “haunted library tour” and one should make reservations to make sure to have a spot, but i figured it would be too young for 15 year old jj. they all got dressed up, jj wearing red dress, high heels and devil horns. i wasn’t too happy to imagine jj walking around paris like that, but then she informed me that they got driven over by the mom. ok. they walked in and there were only a few people there, mostly very small kids and she and her friends were “way over dressed”. they were so embarrassed. they had a reservation was for 7:50 but it was only 6:00, so they just turned around with devil tails between their legs... and went home. but next on the agenda was the horror films. jj is extremely sensitive to any intense films and has never watched a horror film. she saw the opening titles to “lost” which graphically shows a plane crash (so i hear) and was afraid to fly for a year. her friend dared her to watch the film “tormented” and jj wants to get over her fears so agreed. p and i read the synopsis of the film and thought, “hoo boy, she’s probably going to have problems with this. in the end, not only did she watch “tormented” but she also watched 2 other horror films. she was totally freaked out. she did not sleep very much. then she came home exhausted, took a brief a nap.

she had had the idea of getting the friends to go to “parc asterix”, a theme park out of town, that afternooon. she has gotten much more independent, but not yet there in really being on top of things. she assumed they could take the metro. we told her the metro doesn’t go that far. so she asked the friends to ask their parents if someone could take them. a mom volunteered. but jj still had not done any research. she figured she could just show up and it would cost a few euros. it is actually a theme park like disneyland and costs 40 euros. it takes an hour to get there by car. i could imagine her showing up without enough money. plus it was the last day of a long weekend and the traffic returning would be crazy. i was glad that the idea fizzled. i’m a bit uncomfortable with her having so much freedom and independence lately. it wasn’t a “can we go?” it was a “we are going”.