The Man Formerly Known as Sanford

That Asian-Looking Chick 17 Comments

The other day, I read an article about a news anchor whose photo was mistakenly captioned as “Dana Horsewomen” (in place of “Dana Holgorsen”), either someone’s idea of a joke, or the result of an autocorrect feature on crack. This reminded me of the following:

Sometime during the ‘90’s, a professor at Arizona State University (my alma mater) appeared in the university’s faculty directory under an incorrect name. Due to a typographic error, Dr. Sanford Couch became “Snaford Couch.”

Here’s the remarkable thing: For whatever reason – indifference? amusement? – Dr. Couch kept the new version of his name. Whether he made it legal or not, he’s gone by “Snaford Couch” ever since. Not only does he continue to appear in the directory as “Snaford” year after year, but he took it a step further and has it written that way on his professional web site. I love him for this.

I mean, how many people would think to become the error rather than have it fixed?

Maybe I should have contacted Dr. Couch to get his permission to talk about him in my blog, but I don’t think he’d mind. This is not me making fun of him. This is me writing a little tribute to him, because here I am throwing a fit if someone spells my name with a “Ch” or ends it with a “y.” When someone writes my name, I always say it’s “Kristi with a ‘K’,” like the K is such a big deal. Next time I feel compelled to prevent such an error, I should think of The Man Formerly Known as Sanford.

Snaford Couch is the man.

Greetings from the Last Days of Winter!

That Asian-Looking Chick 2 Comments

Callaghan took these pictures last weekend. It was snowing, and it was unusually silent… you could hear a bat pee in the woods that day.

 

On our way out to go shopping. It's not even that cold. Could be the last snow before spring!

On our way out to go shopping. It’s not even that cold. Could be the last snow before spring!

Callaghan Doesn’t Eat Fish

That Asian-Looking Chick 2 Comments

“I can only eat tuna, and only sometimes, because tuna doesn’t bring that elephant cage quality to it,” he explained.

“What?”

“I used to eat sole, no problem! My grandmother used to make it.”

“No, I mean, what did you say about… I mean, did you say elephant cage?”

“Yeah, we went to the zoo in Vincennes when I was like six. It was a visit of the elephants’ cage. It was horrible.”

“And after that, you went to your grandmother’s house and ate sole?” I thought I was getting to the bottom of his elephant cage/sole association.

“No… I don’t remember why, exactly. All I know was that I went to the elephant cage, and after that, sole became TO BARF FOR.”

While this conversation left me with more questions than answers, it did remind me that I wanted to add Infamous to our “to watch” movie list. Infamous had come to my attention when a friend on Facebook posted a link to WTF Evolution.

The first thing I saw when I went to this page was a picture of a flatfish, which I saved because I thought it was endearing.

 

Flatfish pictured in WTF, Evolution?

Flatfish pictured in WTF, Evolution?

 

The ensuing search engine time-suckage exercise went like this:

WTF Evolution à flatfish. Flatfish à sole. Sole à swordfish. Swordfish à marlin. Marlin (the fish) à Marlin, Texas. Marlin, Texas à Infamous, because it was filmed in Marlin, as stated on the Marlin, Texas Wikipedia page (I had never known that there was a place called “Marlin” in Texas).

Now doesn’t it make perfect sense that the flatfish led me to the movie Infamous? It seems very obvious to me. I honestly don’t know how I knew anything before the internet.

Anyway, back to Callaghan and his gustatory idiosyncrasies. The elephant cage thing will have to remain a mystery while I ask him for the back-story on his distaste for cherries. I’m sure it’ll be a good one!

 

14 Heures sur la Route – des photos

That Asian-Looking Chick 2 Comments

I can be a vainglorious beast when I have a camera in my hand. I mean, I can get overly serious about taking pictures. At least I recognize this distinction: You have your real photographers, both amateur and professional, people equip with raw talent, people who are visionary and intuitive with their cameras, hard-working and trained artists. Then you have people like me, the pointers-and-clickers. But I am quite the pointer-and-clicker, if I do say so!

All of this to say that yesterday we returned from a road trip (14 hours, total) through 7-8 départements to the center of France (to visit a friend), and here are pictures – a little bit of atmosphere from the passenger-in-the-moving-vehicle perspective.

 

Visit to Catherine, February 2013

 

Visit to Catherine, February 2013

 

Visit to Catherine, February 2013

 

Visit to Catherine, February 2013

 

Visit to Catherine, February 2013

 

Visit to Catherine, February 2013

 

Visit to Catherine, February 2013

 

Visit to Catherine, February 2013

 

Visit to Catherine, February 2013

 

Visit to Catherine, February 2013

 

Coffee at McDonald’s. Camenbert burger, anyone?

Valentine’s Day Out!

That Asian-Looking Chick 2 Comments

Scene: It’s mid-morning, and we’re in this café in Romans. There’s a thick layer of snow piled on the roof of our truck and the temperature is cold enough to keep it from melting, but the sky is clear. After our coffee, we’ll wander purposefully through the day until we arrive at the movie theatre in Valence for an afternoon showing of Les Miserables, which we’ve been waiting to see since September. It’ll be our first time going to the movies in Valence.

We leave the café, get in the truck. When we turn right into the first round-about, the pile of snow on the roof breaks and falls dramatically onto the windshield in two loads – rumble thud, thud! – making us laugh as we catch the startle reactions in each other’s faces. Callaghan clicks on the windshield wipers, and we watch the blades push and sweep away the clumps of snow. It hadn’t snowed in Romans, but now the round-about is dusted with the snow we brought down from the mountain. You’re welcome!

It was that kind of day, low-key and full of whimsical surprises. At the end of it, I realized that I’d accidentally put on Callaghan’s jeans; all day long, I couldn’t understand why they were so huge on me. Typical! I fail at getting dressed! Callaghan made me laugh. Anne Hathaway in Les Miserables made me cry.  (Her ability to evoke emotion with the depth of her performance gifts astonishes me. Now I want to see Rachel Getting Married again.)

We had dinner at home. Callaghan put a glass vase of fresh flowers on the counter and cooked dinner for me, and it was fabulous. I am lucky.

her·mit

That Asian-Looking Chick 6 Comments

n.

1. A person who has withdrawn from society and lives a solitary existence; a recluse.

 

Yesterday, we went out. We had to. Our refrigerator contained the following:

Ketchup; mustard (2 kinds); pickles (2 kinds); mayonnaise; jam (2 kinds); butter; Omega-3 buttery spread; lemons (2); taco sauce (the last of my favorite kind, from the States); pure maple syrup (also from the States); soy milk; grapefruit juice; two open cans of cat food (2 kinds); and the requisite open container of baking soda stashed in the back.

As some wise person once said: “Man cannot live on condiments alone. Or on cat food. Or on baking soda.”

Honestly? Had we had a grain of coffee or a crust of bread, we wouldn’t have left the house. It was the lack of coffee and bread that did it. We had no choice.

We had to put on pants.

It might sound like I’m being facetious, but I’m really not. Isolation is a by-product of working from home in the wilderness, and being isolated makes us feel like who cares if we’re dressed or not.

Aside from the occasional appointment, we only emerge into society when we run out of food. It’s an event. We fire up the truck and lumber down through the woods to our gate and out onto the private road, stop to take the wheels off of 4 x 4 drive mode, then rumble by the mailboxes, wind around two pastures, wave as we pass the bee-keeper guy’s place, until we finally come to the clearing where the dumpsters sit clustered to the left with the “CAMPING” area across from them on the right. It’s there that the little road joins perpendicularly with the main road, which is still a nameless, no-sidewalk country road, but at least it appears on a map (I think) and it leads somewhere: small villages and Grenoble to the right, more small villages (including the one that’s our address) and Romans-sur-Isère to the left. We usually go left and do our shopping in Romans.

We make this excursion maybe once every 7-10 days. We load up the truck with our trash so we can drop it in the dumpsters when we get out to the “CAMPING” area at the main road.

When it’s cold, we put off going anywhere as long as we can because the fire doesn’t usually stay alive untended (except at night, when Callaghan banks it), and it’s kind of unpleasant to come home to a dead fire in a cold house.

This is what makes me cringe with shame: Ma Ingalls would absolutely not approve of our current habits. We have no excuse! The Ingalls family got dressed every day, even when they didn’t have plans to go to town. Ma Ingalls always changed into day-time clothes, and she made sure that her girls did, too, regardless of anything. If there was a violent blizzard outside continuously howling during the longest, hardest winter ever known to humankind, there they’d be, the Ingallses, ensconced in the house fully-dressed, functional and ready for unannounced guests. (If there was ever a day Ma said, to hell with it, I’ll hang out in my nightgown, I missed that part, even though I’ve read the entire “Little House” series – which I have in my possession – backwards and forwards like 20 times since I was seven years old.)

So I’ve been thinking that it might be a good idea to take a cue from Ma and start approaching each day as if there was a little civilization right here in our own house. We could behave as if there was a world humming with human life outside our door, instead of just the woods… as if there was a chance someone might come along and drop in for a visit. (When you finally find us and make it onto our land, you can only go so far before you have to stop and walk the rest of the way up to our house, because the wooded path is steep and muddy and rocky, and if your vehicle’s not a 4 x 4, it’s not going to make it.)

Yes! Sounds like a plan, and it’ll serve us well, I think. Because you know things have slipped out of control when you’re suddenly aware that “Do we need to put on pants?” is the operating question every morning. Thanks for the inspiration, Ma! We’ll try to do you proud. And we’ll hope that if someone does come to visit, it’s not Nellie Olsen.

CAKE! (Now That I Have Your Attention)…

That Asian-Looking Chick 6 Comments

Happy February! Let us eat cake.

“It’s funny how much bigger Bruce Willis is than Ronnie James,” said Callaghan as he watched our cats play together. “They remind me of the Galette des Rois.”

Galette des Rois. Cats. I’m always intrigued by Callaghan’s mental leaps.

“Galette des Rois” translates to English literally as “Kings’ Cake.” In the States, we usually just call them “King Cakes.” They hit Louisiana bakery shelves on 6 January (the beginning of Epiphany) and roar on up to the Mardi Gras carnival celebration in the middle of February (the culmination of Epiphany, the last three days of which are known as the big Mardi Gras street bash after which hardly any of the carnival-goers remembers what happened because of the epic scale of the debauchery that took place). King Cakes are as heavily associated with the New Orleans Mardi Gras as beer, boobs and beads. They are not, as far as I know, associated with cats. Nor do they resemble cats, even remotely.

For one thing, cats are not ring-shaped twists of yeasty dough, and they are not sweetened with icing and dyed purple, green and yellow.

I guess some of the French patisseries in New Orleans also offer the solid round puff-pastry French version of the King Cake, but the traditional New Orleans garish rings are what come to mind when I think of King Cakes… so much so that when Callaghan first pointed out the Galette des Rois to me here in France, I didn’t even realize I was looking at the same thing.

“Like the ones we saw at Lili Croustille the other day?” Callaghan continued as he spoke of the cats. “I was looking at the Galette des Rois, you know, at the 8- and 6-part ones. Bruce Willis is the 8-part one.” I figured that by “part” he meant “serving.”

We’d actually bought one those cakes, an event I won’t likely forget because I’m human, and humans have a tendency to remember embarrassing moments for all eternity. Because when we got home from Lili Croustille and I went to cut that cake, I couldn’t do it.

I inserted a sharp knife blade into the buttery, flaky crust and hit resistance right away. I pressed harder, but the knife didn’t progress. I started sawing the knife back and forth, quickly checking over my shoulder first to make sure Callaghan didn’t see me struggling to slice the delicate dessert. No luck. Finally, feeling completely ridiculous, I added downward pressure to my sawing action. And then I gave up.

I’m sure Callaghan thought I was hopeless, but he gamely came over and looked down at the cake where it rested all innocent-like on its little round cardboard thing. The cake looked smug. It was grinning up at me. Yes, it was.

“What’s wrong?” Callaghan asked as he studied the cake.

“It doesn’t cut,” I said, accusingly.

I took hold of the knife again and made another attempt with Callaghan standing there, watching. Once again, the knife stopped half-way through. I kept the blade where it was and moved it slightly to the side and saw a small, hard figurine. A figurine! I made the connection. I guess King Cakes all over the world have a figurine or something equally menacing inside, poised to choke a person or foil her slicing attempts.

Callaghan never did elaborate on his thought process.

King Cake, French style (Galette des Rois)

King Cake, French style (Galette des Rois)

King Cake, New Orleans (Mardi Gras) style

King Cake, New Orleans (Mardi Gras) style

Bruce Willis (right) and Ronnie James (left)

Bruce Willis (right) and Ronnie James (left)

See a resemblance?

I’ll Take an “E” for “Excuse”

That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

“This is amazingly good,” said Callaghan at dinner last night. We were eating the thawed and re-heated vegetable curry I’d made and stuck in the freezer a month or so ago.

“Especially since you added the chickpeas,” I said.

“Yes! I added 45!”

“45 what? Chickpeas?”

“Yes.”

“You counted the chickpeas?” I didn’t really believe it, but you just never know with him.

“Yes.” He was very serious.

“YOU DID?

“No.”

I share this with you lest you think I belong to Mensa or something. Callaghan said his lines poker-faced, with not a hint of hesitation or a smile. He’s so good at that. You’d think I’d have learned by now. He messes with me like this all the time. I often fall for it, but even if I don’t, it still looks like I do because I can’t help but verify that I didn’t.

With all due respect and lots of affection for my blond girlfriends, I have to say that I sometimes consider going blond just to justify my “Did you really count the chickpeas?” moments. This is because I have a fair-haired friend who’ll say or do something ditzy and then exclaim, “But I have an excuse! I’m blond!” Well, I want an excuse, too. She’s not even as ditzy as I am, so it’s not fair that she has the excuse.

That aside, I admit that I sometimes wonder how I’d look with blond hair. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d make a radical change for no reason other than to satisfy my curiosity, and I could easily go back to dark brown if I didn’t like it. The only deterrent – and it’s an effective one – is the stress my hair would have to endure under the rigors of the stripping and bleaching process. I have this mental image of my fried hair breaking into pieces and falling out or turning orange or some such disaster. I’d twist L’Oréal’s classic “Because I’m Worth It” slogan into “Because I’m Worth the Humiliation of a Hair Coloring Experiment Gone Horribly Wrong.” I’d be a nightmare of a walking advertisement for L’Oréal, thanks to my own whims and follies (euphemisms for “bad judgment,” if we’re being honest here).

Anyway, I’ll keep my hair dark and healthy, and when I get old, I can use my age as justification when I forget why I entered a room. At least there’s that.

Body Image and the Great Strip-Down

That Asian-Looking Chick 4 Comments

When I sat down to write about body image, I found myself mired in writer’s block before my fingers even touched the keyboard. Where could I begin to talk about this issue? It’s intimidating in its vastness, and thousands of articles on the subject have already been written. So many of us struggle with our self-worth where our bodies are concerned.

What came to mind first was the following incident:

When I was in Arizona, I had a boyfriend whose family lived in a large house in a semi-rural suburb. The lot on which it sat had a modest expanse of lawn and a scattering of shrubbery fringing the perimeter around the front yard. Though it could have used some work, the yard was by no means ill-maintained; still, the neighbors took it upon themselves to show up one day with hedge-trimmers, weed-whackers, gardening shears and the like. They stood on the front porch (I was there to witness it), ready to work. They exuded good intentions with the sort of self-satisfaction that goes with donating precious resources to a charity case.

You see, that yard just had to be brought up to “standards,” and if the occupants of the house weren’t going to do it, then by god, someone else had to. The yard was an eyesore, they figured. It was bringing down the neighborhood. Maybe the appearance of the yard would even decrease the value of their homes. This is all speculation; I don’t know what they were thinking, exactly. People can be persnickety.

My boyfriend’s parents were mortified. They stood on their side of the security screen door at a loss for words. “Thank you,” they murmured… because what else could they think to say at that moment? What do you do with unsolicited volunteerism to correct something of yours that you never knew was wrong?

Good intentions aside, the neighbors came across as critical, maybe even judgmental, and their collective action seemed more insulting and intrusive than akin to a random act of kindness. They actually took time out of their weekends to impose their aesthetics on someone else’s house. “We thought we’d get together and work on your yard,” their spokesperson announced in so many words, full of vim and vigor. I couldn’t believe the nerve. Plus, the yard really wasn’t that bad. In fact, I’d thought I’d seen the same or worse here and there throughout the neighborhood. It wasn’t like this was a shabby yard surrounded by “perfect” ones.

So what about this memory brings to mind the issue of body image? The concept of aesthetic “standards.” Other people’s standards, and the pressure placed on us to meet them.

In this era of obsession with physical perfection, very few of us feel that we look “good enough” to count as worthy. So how to overcome the persistent messages that being attractive (according to other peoples’ definitions) should be a paramount goal in life? How to become impervious to the messages of society-mandated physical perfection plastered all over the media? How to not care?

I thought about it. For me, I found that the answer lies somewhere in this truth: My body is my house, and it’s prime real-estate… because it’s mine to do with as I please. It’s the only thing I truly own, me, by myself. I live here, I want to shout to the tentacles of the media. Get off my lawn!!

The space I inhabit within my body is the same as the space I inhabit within my home, and it’s no one’s business what I do with those spaces. Those spaces are sacred to me. I’m not okay with “good neighbors” on my doorstep telling me what’s wrong on the outside, and I’m absolutely against the idea of intruders coming in to dictate what will happen on the inside.

It seems that we’re fixated on altering our bodies for the gratification of others and to match the innumerable images of what “desirable” looks like. Though men aren’t entirely exempt from the bombardment of these subtle and not-so-subtle directives, women remain the central targets. Focus on women’s bodies far exceeds the focus on men’s bodies. Feelings of physical inadequacy aren’t quite the equal opportunity demons they should be.

My thoughts keep returning to that house and its yard. How the neighbors came with their gardening tools to trim, shape and prune the vegetation until its contours resembled their own ideals of not only acceptability, but desirability. When did it become permissible to judge the exteriors of our homes to the point where others will come to impose their ideals on us? The problem is that when any space we inhabit is regarded with a critical eye, it’s difficult to avoid self-consciousness… and self-consciousness brings us down. It can lead to irrational thinking about how we can “fix” ourselves. It can lead to self-starvation and self-mutilation in our quest to comply with the beauty ideals of our time.

It’s like comparing our living spaces to those of others. We find ourselves examining the walls that surround us, becoming as critical of them as our critics… maybe even more so, since it’s true that we’re often our own worst critics. Suddenly, what we have isn’t good enough. Where we are isn’t good enough.

Then we think about it. We take stock of what we need, compare it to what we have, and then realize how lucky we are. We have a functional structure in which to live.

We have somewhere to lay our heads when we’re tired. Somewhere to bathe our bodies. Somewhere to sit and think and be alone. Somewhere to spend intimate time with others when we don’t want to interact in public. Somewhere to store, keep, admire, use and enjoy the things we have.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could feel this appreciative and secure within the homes that are our bodies?

Now that current economic realities have somewhat stifled the “keep up with the Joneses” mindset that influenced our sense of self-worth in the extravagant ’80’s, why can’t we nudge ourselves out of that same mentality where our bodies are concerned? Why continue trying to “keep up with” anybody in terms of how we look?

There’s just no point in comparing ourselves to others.

So I ask myself this question: If make a list of things I need in order to feel good about myself, what would it look like?

I came up with this: Lasting harmony, growth and passion with my life partner. Mental, spiritual, physical and emotional health. Contentment and joy. Accomplishment and satisfaction. Triumph and progress. Acceptance and dignity.

The list isn’t without its “oh my god impossible” factor, but it’s invigorating nonetheless. I feel motivated for the right reasons. It’s time to separate my body from my self-worth, and I can start by trying to shrug off the bullshit messages of our body-centric society. In doing so, I’m freeing myself to nurture and enrich other areas of my being and my life. I’m happy with my aspirations to focus on interiors, rather than exteriors.

For one thing, I know that when I look in the mirror, there are more terrible things I could see than my physical “imperfections.”

I wouldn’t want to look in the mirror and see money I don’t have, and feel poor. I wouldn’t want to see what’s gone from my life, and feel a desperate vacancy. I wouldn’t want to see what’s been taken away, and find ghosts where my reflection should be. I wouldn’t want to see the pride I can’t swallow or the temper I can’t control. I certainly wouldn’t want to look in the mirror and find a guilty conscience in the aversion of my gaze, because above all, I have to be able to look into my own eyes. That is where I should see beauty. And that’s where others should see it, too.

What feels healthy and good on the inside diminishes the importance of what people see on the outside, and that renders them impotent. My self-worth becomes immutable.

So this is the strip-down, the way I see it. I’ll make a point of baring myself to the elements every once in a while, just as a reminder of the value of what’s really there. I could stand in my entryway completely naked while I’m at it. Come and tell me what needs to be fixed. I might hold a mirror up to your face before I quietly close the door.

Monsters under the Bed

That Asian-Looking Chick 2 Comments

I woke up this morning all motivated to jump onto Monster.com to search for on-line writing jobs.

Callaghan was quick to inform me of its short-comings:

“Monster.com isn’t what it used to be. For one thing, like everything else, they ditched the fucking monster.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, remember they used to have a little monster mascot?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

But in actuality, I didn’t remember, because I’d never been to Monster.com. Thanks to Callaghan, I’m now prepared to confront a sadly monster-less site, which might shake my faith in its accuracy and ability to provide up-to-date job opening information. Isn’t it false advertising to call your site “Monster” without a monster anywhere in the picture? I don’t see how a job-search site with false advertising can be trusted. It makes me wonder what else could be missing.

I’m sure that all they need is a monster make-over. Maybe they could create different monsters to represent a variety of career fields? I have some ideas:

-Serial Killer career: Hand-cuffed monster

-Underwater Basket-Weaving career: Brain-dead monster

-Sperm-Donating career: Tired monster

-Bullshit Artist career: Tap-dancing monster

-Vampire career: Sparkly monster

-Werewolf career: Blurry monster

Callaghan read my list and made some weird faces, like he couldn’t decide whether to say anything. Whatever!

I still haven’t visited Monster.com. I might get around to it later today, but I’ve lost my motivation. Maybe I’ll go outside and play in the snow instead. I could make a monster snowman and name him “.com.”

Upside-Down in the Jungle

That Asian-Looking Chick 3 Comments

I spent yesterday sitting in my long-awaited Session d’Information Sur La Vie En France (“Life in France” course), Module 1. I did not learn how to do a champagne toast. Instead, the instructor covered different administrative sectors of the French government, both at the national and state levels.

The theme ran ruthlessly through every sub-topic: France is broke. There are cavernous deficits in all administrative areas. Consequently, people are getting less of everything while paying more and more into the system. Allocations are meager at every level. Unemployment is astronomical, which compounds the other problems. There also seems to be a massive epidemic of bureaucratic disorganization that, from what I could discern in class, is responsible for the slowing down of procedural undertakings for everyone – French and foreigners alike – by way of plain old interference. Processing of all administrative actions is slow. Very, very slow.

This brings to mind my favorite Callaghan quote to date:

“My sloth will not be like their sloth. My sloth will be a different sloth.”

Ezma the Sloth - created and drawn by Callaghan

Ezma the Sloth – created and drawn by Callaghan

Callaghan did not utter these words in the context of the French administration. The subject came up in a recent conversation about how the sloth he’d draw would be nothing like the other cartoon sloths out there… and the sloth he drew after that discussion was indeed his own. Another Callaghan original! We named her “Ezma,” after Bella’s daughter, Renesmee, in The Twilight Saga:  Breaking Dawn – Part 2, which we had the misfortune of seeing the other day.

Now that France’s painfully slow processes and extortion of money from French citizens have been officially noted in the classroom, Callaghan and I have elected Ezma as the face of the administration.

After all, as was also explained yesterday, the French enjoy freedom of expression as long as it’s not “slanderous or injurious”… and we don’t believe that using a sloth to represent the administration violates either of those stipulations, though I doubt President Hollande would appreciate a Zazzle shop carrying t-shirts imprinted with a Sloth replacing the noble Gallic Rooster as the French national emblem. It’s just as well, because I don’t think “Paresseux Gaulois” has the same ring to it as “Coq Gaulois,” even though “Coq Gaulois” sounds, to me, less like an emblem and more like a hearty poultry dish to be paired with a bold red wine.

But where the French administration is concerned, Callaghan has been outraged since the dinosaurs inhabited the earth, so Ezma the Sloth seems like an appropriate representative for it. This is a democracy, right? The people choose. Callaghan stormed to his desk and started on the new Ezma drawing immediately after reading my class notes. Cabernet Sauvignon, anyone?

You’re American. You Must Be Obese.

That Asian-Looking Chick 7 Comments

We got back from our latest trip to Nice last night. While we were there, we took the time to visit the maison de carnaval (“house of carnival”), the place where the majestic floats for Nice’s annual February carnival are made. We wanted to get a sneak peek at the construction progress because, like last year, several of Callaghan’s drawings were selected to appear as floats.

I have something to get off my chest, so I’m going to go ahead and dump it here.

(By the way: This is not about Callaghan!)

Let’s say you’re an artist. You decide to participate in a contest to come up with a series of original drawings on the theme of “The Five Continents,” depicting your visual interpretation of the corners of the world. (This refers to the non-American version of the world’s continents, hence five rather than seven.)

The competition is intimidating. You know that your drawings have to be absolutely inventive in order for the committee to select one or more of them; a prestigious carnival’s enormous, sophisticated floats will be based on the winning drawings.

So here you are, ready to go! The continent of North America lies before you, challenging you. There are many options, many things about this continent you can take and develop into creative ideas. You sit and think and soon find yourself rolling along an exhilarating wave of inspiration, creative idea after creative idea blooming up from the depths of your imagination. Your mind hums with anticipation; you can already feel the satisfaction of releasing the creative mojo from your brain, taking the images from your mind’s eye and transferring them to paper.

You unsheathe your drawing pencils. You’re inspired. You’re proud of yourself. For North America, you’ve decided, you’re going to focus on the United States. You’ll incorporate various elements into your drawing – elements that will represent America. One of these will be an American woman: She’ll be obese. She’ll be blond. She’ll be naked except for blue star pasties on her nipples and a tiny red and white striped bikini bottom. She’ll wear a gold crown. You’ll put her up on the back of a pink Cadillac. In her upraised hand, you’ll draw in a diet soda. She is a parody of the Statue of Liberty.

At the carnival’s home offices, the selection committee reviews the hundreds of entries submitted by talented artists. Next thing you know, you receive a letter of congratulations. Your drawing was selected! Your idea was so original, it beat out all the others. At the end of February, a pink Cadillac float representing America, complete with the ridiculous half-naked obese woman brandishing her diet soda, will drift along in the parade for all to admire. You’ll receive an award for your clever design at the end of the carnival’s run. Congratulations.

Here are the rhetorical questions this scenario begs in my mind: Is the world really so conditioned to viewing America this way that it can’t see the juvenile cruelty of ridiculing obese Americans? Can there be an acknowledgement of the difference between a successful satire and outright hostile social criticism hiding behind the guise of satire?

Dear Selection Committee: I don’t get it. I don’t get why you would taint the illustrious tradition of your annual carnival by selecting a drawing such as this. Shouldn’t you be setting high standards for carnival parades, rather than lowering them by perpetuating mean stereotypes through the pedantic representation of them in your floats?

Why reduce a country’s identity to a stereotype, anyway? America. Geographical wonders such as redwood forests, the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, the Great Lakes and Niagara falls. Specific, world-wide-recognized characters such as Elvis, Mickey Mouse, the Statue of Liberty and Uncle Sam. Places such as Hollywood and New York City. All of these emblems could be used as the basis of satire. Also worth considering is the tremendous cultural diversity among the American population.

America is nothing if not multi-cultural. The country grew up as a coming-together of people from all over the world, and those people brought their traditions that have both held pure and mixed together with others. It can be said that to be American is to be of mixed ethnicity; most Americans are “mutts.” I’ve known very few Americans who are 100% anything. It’s not like Europe, where it’s more predictable that people in Germany are of German ethnicity, people in France are of French ethnicity, people in Italy are of Italian ethnicity, etc. There is no such thing as an “American” ethnicity. America is unique in that it’s a country in which almost all of its citizens (the exception being Native Americans) can trace their ethnic roots back to their places of origin. “American” is a nationality, not an ethnicity. America is a collection of the world’s people.

How can anyone miss the greatness of this? When you really think about it, isn’t it a stunning concept? Isn’t it great, I mean truly great that a country such as America even exists?

What I’m trying to point out is that it’s kind of gratuitous to draw an obese white person and stick it on a float called “America” to represent its people. Clearly, the intent here is not to satirize. The intent is only to turn the subject into a laughing-stock for the amusement of the parade audience, most of which is not American.

Stereotypes can be negative or positive. Obesity is a negative American stereotype that suggests disapproval of not just a body condition, but a psychological one as well. Often, obesity is perceived as an attitude-oriented issue – one that can easily be changed if the person “really wants to.” It’s a complex stereotype, and it’s hostile: the obese are viewed negatively on different levels. This is why I’m feeling this drawing stretch beyond satire, and I have to wonder what the artist was thinking. Did he choose to portray obesity because it would be the easiest of the negative American stereotypes to draw? Or because it’s perceived to be the funniest? Or because it was just the first thing that occurred to him when he thought about America, so he went with it without bothering to search his mind for alternatives?

I saw this drawing, obviously. In my opinion, it’s not even that good. (I think I’m at least slightly qualified to make this judgment, since I live with Callaghan and I see the results of his considerable talent every day.) Regardless, if the decision to draw an obese person was made in bad taste, the decision to select the drawing out of hundreds was even worse.

I believe it would be possible to come up with ways to visually satirize America with the finesse required to also celebrate it – not just mock it. Intelligent, creative satire. I’m all for it.

We’re aware that obesity is an accelerating medical problem in America. But who is anyone to indict us, as a nation, for being “greedy” or “lazy” or “self-indulgent” (or whatever the perception may be) because of it?

Who is uglier – the obese American, or the person ridiculing him or her?

Beauty is on the Inside

That Asian-Looking Chick 4 Comments

Yesterday was the day “GYN” was written in my agenda. It would be my first Well-Woman exam in France. Callaghan and I got there on time, and the doctor called us in immediately. Shocking! This was a good sign. I was brimming with curiosity. How would this particular exam differ from those I’ve had in the States? All the medical exams I’ve had here so far have been different. We followed the doctor down the hall to his office. I was about to find out!

For starters, he couldn’t find my vagina.

Kidding! What really happened at first was that he couldn’t figure out why I was there, since I’d had everything removed except my vagina. Ovaries, tubes, uterus and cervix – the whole SHE-bang, gone. He had a good point. There’s nothing to find in a pelvic exam on a woman who’d evicted all of her reproductive organs from her pelvis. He asked a few questions for clarification purposes.

“My GYN in the States said I should still get a yearly check,” I explained.

The doctor gesticulated with his hands as he meandered through a long reply, but even with the sign language, I wasn’t sure I understood him.

“He says there’s nothing to do,” said Callaghan, cutting the response down to six words.

But the doctor got up and showed me to the examination area, anyway, while Callaghan remained seated in his plush green velvet 18th-century replica chair at the desk. The exam area was concealed behind an ornate Oriental screen. The doctor told me to undress completely, but he did not give me a paper gown. This omission flashed in my mind. What’s a pelvic exam without the crinkly, slippery paper gown? (Not that I missed it. I didn’t.) As I reposed on my back with my feet in the stirrups, I gazed above and bit my lip to keep from laughing as I recalled how a former GYN had tacked a poster of Tom Cruise on the ceiling above the exam table. It was supposed to help patients relax. I’m not making this up.

After the exam, I got dressed and joined Callaghan at the desk, wondering what the doctor would find to say about my non-existent girly parts.

“C’est bien,” he said. “Votre vagin est parfait.”

“Your vagina is perfect,” said Callaghan.

“That’s what I thought he said.”

“Well I already knew that your vagina was perfect.” He sounded like his intelligence had been insulted.

We burst out laughing. The doctor ignored us. He grabbed a large coffee-table book, set it down, spun it around, and opened it to display pictures of all kinds of vaginas, interior close-ups beautifully captured in gleaming full color. He enthusiastically used his pen to point out the different parts of vaginal anatomy. As he flipped through the vagina photographs, I suppressed the urge to ask him which one resembled mine. If mine is “perfect,” then why couldn’t it also be featured in a vagina photography book? There are models for all kinds of body parts (hand models, leg models, feet and teeth models). From what I understand, body-part modeling is lucrative, and the models take out insurance policies on said parts… celebrities too, sometimes, if they have a part that’s especially famous. Didn’t I read somewhere that Jennifer Lopez has an insurance policy out on her ass?

In any case, I have to say that this doctor was more thorough than any American one I’ve had, and the exam was only 34 euro (that’s without insurance). Girls, remember this if you ever visit France! You could squeeze in a Well-Woman appointment during your stay. It’ll probably be cheaper than going to the top of the Eiffel Tower, too.

Here’s Your Root Canal. Cream and Sugar?

That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

This hen thing provides as much excitement as you can get living in the middle of nowhere, but I know it’s only exciting to me, so you have my promise that I won’t barrage you with hen updates – no one needs a blow-by-blow account of what I stick in the hen. This reassurance is brought to you by the fact that we went grocery shopping yesterday, and I can now report that there’s 155.00 euro in the hen. Okay, I’m done bragging about it. I just think it’s a good idea to stash things away. I never used to be like this. It probably began out of paranoia when I moved here and a bunch of things vanished in the shipping.

The other day, Callaghan and I were upstairs in la bergerie (a building for the shelter of sheep. We have the building, but not the sheep), looking for the long screws we’d bought specifically for the shower fixture in the house. We diligently searched the entire place until our fingers turned blue with cold. It’s colder in la bergerie than it is outside… I mean, meat freezer cold! Just before giving up, it occurred to us to peek inside the beat-up old antique metal dentist cabinet that Callaghan accidentally got from a dentist office in Antibes. (Yes, by accident. It’s long story.)

Dentist Cabinet

Dentist Cabinet

I’d always thought there was something creepy about this dentist cabinet. The cabinet’s wide, shallow drawers had come filled with all sorts of little instruments and drills – dentistry’s accoutrements of bygone times – that Callaghan had removed for use on various projects. It could be, we thought, that the missing screws had made their way into those empty drawers at some point.  Ghostly, pain-inflicting screws, I couldn’t help but think. I peered over Callaghan’s shoulder with a bit of trepidation; it wouldn’t have surprised me if the dentist cabinet turned out to hold supernatural properties, transforming everyday objects into tiny medieval torture instruments. Contents of its drawers were not to be trusted.

Callaghan pulled open the top rusty drawer and found… six boxes of Nespresso capsules, cold and forgotten.

Nespresso

Nespresso

For Callaghan, it was like one of those cheesy fantasy movie scenes where someone opens the treasure chest or caldron or whatever and soft golden streams of light emerge to illuminate his face with the warm glow of unexpected wealth and knowledge. Here we’d been out of Nespresso for a month, and a haunted, cold dentist cabinet yawns open to reveal this stash. It was marvelous. For a person who lives and dies by coffee, Nespresso is crack. It had been heart-breaking to see Callaghan standing in the kitchen looking mournfully at the Nespresso machine as it started to collect dust from disuse.

So the next time we’re in need of something that can only be obtained via mail order because there’s no specialized boutique in Rhône-Alpes, we’ll look in la bergerie. That dentist cabinet seems to be a larger version of the hen, except I always know exactly what the hen holds. I guess this is why the dentist cabinet is more compelling. It’s one thing to stash things away for future use, but another thing entirely to stash it away, forget about it, and find it again, completely by accident and just when you need it the most.

I think I’ll let Callaghan make those discoveries himself, though. I’ll watch the pretty hen. He can watch the creepy dentist cabinet. Sounds like a fair deal to me.

How Do You Say: “I was all, like, whatever! They were, like, totally making out!” in French?

That Asian-Looking Chick 4 Comments

Last night, my computer warned me that I had 11% battery power remaining. “I’m running out of juice,” I said to Callaghan, who was lying next to me reading a Jack Reacher novel.

“Are you getting tired, Baby?”

“No, well maybe a little, but I mean my computer needs to be charged.”

“Oh I thought it was YOUR juice that was running low!”

“HAHAHA….”

“No! No! I didn’t mean it like that. I meant it in a way, like, your juice, you know?”

“Even more….” I couldn’t stop giggling. You had to be there.

“You’re crazy.”

Fair enough. But that’s beside the point.

The point – I mean, the thing this calls to mind – is that verbal exchanges like this exemplify why I don’t want to speak just French with him. It would be boring, and “boring” is not allowed. The “B” word goes against our marriage contract.

Callaghan lived in the States for a decade spanning his 20’s to 30’s; he thinks like an American, and he enjoys speaking American English. Since the nuances, tones, innuendos and linguistic flavors (along with expressions and slang) are what endow a language with its personality, and since the personality of our relationship is American, the character of our verbal communication would change if we were to speak only French with each other. The components of the French language’s personality don’t translate to American English, and vice versa. Even though Callaghan and I often have a good laugh over his English mistakes, our relationship wouldn’t really be us in French, no matter how fluent I get. That’s where the threat of boring would come in.

To put it simply: It would be tiresome trying to keep the joy of our conversations afloat without the American English dips and waves and tides that define our rapport.

While we see nothing wrong with conducting our relationship in English, it slows my progress in improving my French, which I, of course, should do. After all, I live here in France. The last thing I need is border patrol running after my ass to throw me out because I want to “press 2 for English” on the phone.

The crux of the matter is that we live in the wilderness in virtual isolation.

For Callaghan, living with me in isolation is like living in the States again.

For me, living with him in isolation makes me forget that I’m in France.

And for both of us, excursions out serve as reminders that I need to be more immersed in society (in order for French to come more naturally to me).

Thus, I’m happy to have the opportunity to take a French course, which the government will provide for free. Yes! Eight hours a day, three days a week, for three months, I’ll sit in a classroom with other foreigners, learning French with a teacher whose mission in life is to bring French-as-a-second-language people up to speed so we can get jobs. (Callaghan says this is a part of the government’s “secret plot to turn us into slaves like the rest of the French population.” But that’s neither here nor there.)

The more I think about it, the more pleased I am… I’m actually ecstatic and impatiently waiting for the letter that will tell me where and when to go.

Meanwhile, I’ll attend my Orientation to Life in France, where I’m assuming they’ll teach me the proper way to do a champagne toast. Can you believe it? I’ve been in this country for over a year, and they’re just now setting me up with French and champagne toasting lessons! Hey – maybe they’ll also teach me skills such as entering a French roundabout without getting killed!  Gee Willikers, Batman!

Oh My Darling Clementine!

That Asian-Looking Chick 4 Comments

We celebrated New Year’s Eve glazed over the Champs-Elysées celebrations on T.V. (and some impressive performances on the France 3 channel, Can-Can dancers and all), and I enjoyed a fresh clementine. Callaghan is not a fan of citrus fruit, so I talked a little bit about the clementine as he watched me peel it.

“See how this clementine’s skin is thin, and it’s tightly wrapped around the fruit?” I asked. He was watching me with keen interest.

“The next time you eat a clementine, give it to me. I will prepare it for you,” he said gravely.

“Okay. You’re so wonderful!”

“Because I want to do something to your clementine.”

I couldn’t resist snatching up my laptop so I could tap out what he’d said. My memory is a joke, plus I was laughing, so there was a good chance I might have forgotten it.

So we had a great New Year’s celebration.

Happy New Year, Everyone! Bonne Année 2013!

 

EDITED TO ADD: Callaghan just peeled a clementine for me, carefully, with a knife – and he made a matching set of clementine candles for me. So that was what he meant!

 

 

A Tale of Two Clowns

That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

It’s the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and with my birthday in between, we don’t differentiate between the celebrations. What’s the point? So we celebrate our way up to January 2nd. Social conditioning is a funny thing, though: Last night, Callaghan announced excitedly, “Tomorrow’s the weekend!” As if we haven’t been lying around doing nothing and going nowhere for five days straight.

The fun began on the 23rd, when we drove down to Nice.

We were on the highway, and I spent the whole time absorbed in Deep Thoughts. The lady in the back seat reminded me of the puppet clown in Saw. She didn’t exactly look like him, but the shape of her face with the position of her round and very pronounced cheekbones gave her enough of a resemblance that I couldn’t resist mentioning it to Callaghan. “Remember the clown in that Rob Zombie movie?” he asked, continuing on the theme, talking about the new generation of clowns. “Completely different from the traditional clowns that were made to look scary.” Our low-toned English couldn’t be heard over the highway noise. The lady and the guy next to her (19-20 years old, long dark hair, goatee) were talking, anyway, totally not paying attention to us. A few minutes later, Callaghan broke into their conversation to ask if they’d ever seen that movie, and lo! The guy unzipped his jacket to reveal a t-shirt featuring that very same obscure Rob Zombie clown! What are the odds? Of all the clowns in the world, I tell you.

France’s organized hitch-hiking system is awesome. You get online and announce where you’re going, and people can set themselves up to catch a ride with you. It’s profitable and fun, and you can end up with the Saw clown and the Rob Zombie clown sitting next to each other in the back seat of your rental car.

 

Saw clown

Saw clown

Rob Zombie clown

Rob Zombie clown

My Birthday!

That Asian-Looking Chick 9 Comments

I don’t feel 44 today… maybe because I haven’t hit my proverbial mid-life crisis yet. How does it work? Do I have to wait until I turn 45? That would mean I have a whole year left to plan, which is good because there’s a lot of stuff I can do, and I’ll probably change my mind numerous times. My list will need revisions. On the other hand, I’m kind of impatient; you spend your whole life inching toward this unique opportunity to do things you can get away with because you have this ready-made excuse.

Here’s my mid-life crisis list so far:

-smoke clove cigarettes and contemplate the philosophical ironies of my existence.

-set myself up as a psychic in a small old house. Live upstairs. Work downstairs.

-Adopt an ocelot.

-Make a sex tape with Callaghan.

-Listen to Def Leppard at night in the glow of a blue light bulb.

-Use my martial arts background as a springboard to a venture in mud-wrestling.

-Go the traditional route and buy a fancy sports car, leave my wife for a younger woman and make my kids call her “Mom.”

-Marry a French artist and move to his country, giving up half of what I own and leaving behind everything familiar to me. Start a career as a blogger. Oh, wait….

Joyeux Noël

That Asian-Looking Chick 4 Comments

Merry Christmas, everyone! We spent the holidays visiting with family and friends scattered around the French Riviera. The weather was gorgeous. We enjoyed two days of great times and merriment and family drama. (What are holidays without family drama? Incomplete!) Everyone is in good health and doing well, and that’s the most important thing. I hope you can say the same thing about your loved ones.

Here’s some traditional French Christmas cake for you:

christmas cake 1

Christmas cake 3

Christmas cake 2

And some flowers:

Christmas flowers 1

Christmas flowers 3

Christmas flowers 2

Enjoy!

A Fan’s Perspective: Will the Real Jack Reacher Please Stand Up?

That Asian-Looking Chick 116 Comments

Bad Guy: *touches his gun*

Reacher: Hang on a second while I get a chair so that I may stand up on it and head-butt you.

If this scene exists in any of Lee Child’s 17 Jack Reacher novels, then congratulations, Jack Reacher film team… you’ve done well to cast Tom Cruise as Reacher.

The movie Jack Reacher opens today. I’m in France, where it won’t open for another week or so, but that’s irrelevant because I’m not going to go see it.

Before you dismiss me as a whiner harping on the height issue, let me just say that I know it’s hard for you movie-goers uninitiated to the Jack Reacher novels to comprehend the far-ranging negative reaction to this casting. I mean, with all of this brou-ha-ha over the casting, there must be something more to it, wouldn’t you think? So, I’m going to ask you this question to make it easier to understand (or at least to appreciate) the disbelief:

If you were looking forward to the making of a movie about the Vikings, the legendary drifting explorers and warriors of the north seas, would you want to see Tom Cruise cast in the lead Viking role?

Think about it. I mean, try to envision it. If you don’t know enough about the Vikings to form a mental image of Cruise as a Viking, then do some reading. Familiarize yourself. Get to know the subject matter. Get to know the Vikings.

Now tell me what you think.

Is Tom Cruise Viking material?

No? Okay, what if he was 6’ 5” tall and weighed 250 lbs – would he be Viking material then?

Still no? Why not? I thought the concern was his size, since that’s the obvious issue, but okay, let’s go further and imagine growing out and bleaching Tom Cruise’s perfectly styled, clean-cut, dark brown hair into a haphazard, dirty-blond un-style. Also, we’ll fit him with colored contacts to give him the icy blue eyes of the typical Viking.

Does that do it? Alright, then how about this: We’ll drag Tom Cruise face-down on a gravel path so his skin roughens up appropriately (I know what you were thinking… he’s “too pretty” to be convincing as a weather-worn, battle-scarred Viking who was never good-looking to begin with), and we’ll also give him a voice box transplant to replace his higher-pitched, bookish and slightly nasally voice with the deeper, quiet menace of the Viking’s voice – or at least what you’d imagine a Viking’s voice would sound like. Potentially thunderous, when needed, but not often needed. No need to talk much when you walk into a room and people instantly react to you because you’re, well, a Viking.

There!

What? After all that modification, you’re still saying “Tom Cruise is not a Viking?” That makes no sense at all, people. This is TOM CRUISE. He’s a great actor with years of experience making mega-millions at the box-office, guaranteed to deliver a cinematic hit! Oh, ye of no faith. Tom Cruise may be small, but he has massive star power. He may not be Mr. Universe, but he can carry this movie and the whole franchise, to boot. Give Cruise and the movie a chance. You might be surprised. Do I need to remind you that he’s not just any movie star, but an action movie star? TOM CRUISE IS A VIKING.

Right?

Now, replace “Viking” with “Reacher” in all of the above, and this is exactly where you arrive. At best, you’re still going to be scratching your head, thinking about it. No amount of “Give him a chance… size isn’t everything” is going to change the fact that Tom Cruise is not Jack Reacher, because even if we do forget about his size, there’s still a lot wrong with Cruise in this role.

Here’s an example of a well-known Reacherism: Mobility. Reacher walks a lot. Walking is his favorite mode of transportation. He walks almost as much as he drinks coffee, and that’s a lot. Second on his list, he takes the bus. Third, he hitch-hikes. And fourth, he takes the train.

Although Reacher can and does appropriate and drive whatever vehicle suits his needs at any given moment, it’s been firmly established that Reacher is not a driver. He dislikes driving, and he’s never had a civilian driver’s license. This is why Reacher fans know immediately that something is off when the first sound in the movie trailer is the gunning of a V-8 engine with the supposition that Reacher is behind the wheel. From that second on, the Reacher fan is thinking, “Wait! I thought this was a movie about Jack Reacher….?” Jack Reacher is not a driver.

So why do we have a movie called “Jack Reacher” with Tom Cruise agilely maneuvering a sports car around using every flashy show-off trick in his action-flick auto repertoire? Looks like Tom Cruise being Tom Cruise the Action Hero under the name of Jack Reacher. OH SHIT – Jack Reacher has been hijacked!!

That was the first part of my multi-tiered reaction to the movie trailer.

I found the trailer by accident. It was a thrilling little moment of discovery: YES! There’s a Jack Reacher movie!! I eagerly clicked to open the trailer, and I was instantly confused. I couldn’t find Reacher. All I saw was Tom Cruise. Once I understood that Cruise was supposed to be Reacher, I couldn’t believe it and kept looking around for the real Jack Reacher. (“Will the real Jack Reacher please stand up?” HA.) I remember thinking, “Okay, uhh… I see Tom Cruise acting tough and trying to sound threatening with his little round voice and looking sharp with his perfect hair and preppy outfit, but where is Reacher? OH… SHIT TOM CRUISE IS SUPPOSED TO BE JACK REACHER??” The trailer wound down to an end, and the final assault materialized before my eyes: the movie title “JACK REACHER” glowing in blue letters on the screen. Not only does Tom Cruise play Jack Reacher, but the film itself is called Jack Reacher. I went on Facebook and dashed out something that ended with *headdesk.* It felt like my fingers were throwing up.

Jack Reacher has a certain combat style, the central criteria being a massive physical form. In his case, size is not mere window-dressing, decorative and changeable according to whim. If it was, then sure, festoon Tom Cruise with a bunch of ribbons and bows and call it a day. In book after book, Jack Reacher the Pain Inflictor (if I may call him that – I like the way it rhymes, it’s corny and it sums him up) incapacitates and destroys his opponents using moves that would be physically impossible for a shorter-than-average man to perform.

In the first Jack Reacher book I ever read, Reacher “snaps forward from the waist” and head-butts two guys, one after the other, laying them out flat. The guys are described as “each about six-two and around two hundred or two hundred and ten pounds. They had long knotted arms and big hands. Work boots on their feet.” (The Affair) Hours later, after they regained consciousness, “Both of them had noses like spoiled eggplants. Both of them had two black eyes. Both of them had crusted blood on their lips.”

Sorry, Tom Cruise. You are not going to convince anyone that you can damage two big goons in this manner. Even with elevator risers in your shoes, you are not going to stand there and head-butt two guys who are 7-8 inches taller than you. That arrogant smirk on your face isn’t going to add to your credibility, either. The Tom Cruise smirk doesn’t call to mind the expression of quizzical bemusement that’s another Reacherism. It’s not ominous. There’s no gravity behind it. It’s just… the Tom Cruise smirk.

In the end, this casting is simply unfair. It’s asking too much of a Reacher fan to try to reconcile the profile of Jack Reacher with Tom Cruise. We’re not a tough crowd to please. We’re not looking for the “perfect” Jack Reacher actor, because we know that there’s no such thing. It’s just that as loyal fans, we would feel respected if an honest attempt had been made to cast an actor who could be more believable as Reacher, an actor who could better embody the essence of and maybe even slightly resemble the Reacher that has been constructed for us on the written page. I think there’s something to be said for a good effort to preserve the integrity of an artistic creation.

Unfortunately, no honest attempt at an appropriate casting took place here. After years of expressed interest in Jack Reacher, Tom Cruise bought the rights to the book (One Shot) and went ahead and produced it and starred in it. Author Lee Child, who at one point said that Tom Cruise was “way too short to play Reacher,” has since tap-danced all over the table justifying (yes, he does have to justify it – he owes it to his baffled million+ fan base, without whom he would have nothing) his approval with flimsy assertions like “No one else could do it” (really?) and “Reacher is a metaphor” (simultaneously evading the issue and elevating his work to a higher level of prose than the pulp fiction that it actually is, excellent though it may be).

Of course we Reacher fans are feeling ripped off getting Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher. (Or, shall I say, Tom Cruise instead of Jack Reacher.) How great would it have been to be able to anticipate this film, as so many fiction fans do when their favorite books are being adapted to film? Harry Potter fans got an amazing cast for their literary obsession. Hunger Games fans’ heroine Katniss was done justice by the brilliant Jennifer Lawrence. Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean works, I think; in his elaborate stage make-up, he is Jack Sparrow when you look at him, not Johnny Depp. But Jack Reacher? All anyone will see when they look there is Tom Cruise. No attempt was made to adapt his appearance to fit that of Reacher. It’s Mr. Clean-Cut Risky Business-As-Usual Cruise showing up to play the part of a hulking, Viking-like character. It’s a colossal disappointment for Reacher fans. An actor who would actually make sense in the role could’ve taken it and run with it all the way through the franchise. Jack Reacher would have his own face – not Tom Cruise’s.

So that’s why I’m not going to buy a ticket when Jack Reacher gets to France. I have no desire to watch Tom Cruise play himself in another Tom Cruise action movie, when what I want is to watch an actor playing Reacher in a Jack Reacher movie.

If I want to see Tom Cruise, I’ll rent Tropic Thunder again, or Jerry Maguire. See? I’m not a Tom Cruise hater. I’m just a person who loves Jack Reacher.

Wilson Rawls, Your Grave, Sir

That Asian-Looking Chick 4 Comments

“So where the red fur grows is where the fairies pee?” asked Callaghan suddenly while he was doing the dishes. I waited for the follow-up giggle. Silence. He was serious.

See? It’s a good thing he doesn’t mind my writing about him, because damn, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried, as the cliché goes. I like to write about things I can’t make up. I have more fun writing about things I can’t make up than things I can make up. (This is why I prefer to write creative non-fiction rather than fiction.)

“What did you want to know… where the red fur grows is where the fairies pee?” I asked, thinking maybe I’d misheard.

“That’s what YOU told me!”

“I did not tell you that.”

“Yes! You said where the red fur grows is –

“OH! You mean “where the red fern grows!”

“Yeah well that’s what you told me. There’s something that happens and then the red fern grows. I don’t remember what, but I thought the fairies peeing would be a good alternative.”

Oh my god. One thing I will never be in my marriage is bored.

“I’m not telling you,” I said. “You have to read the book.”

Pirates vs Vikings

That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

I recently went to another amusement/attraction/theme park trade convention with Callaghan, whose work places him in the midst of this collective recreational industry. All I have to say is this: The Pirate obsession has to end at some point. It has to. I’m not just saying this because Pirates are annoyingly ubiquitous. It’s that and the fact that they’ve dominated our popular culture for so ridiculously long now, and I don’t like them, anyway. When did the first Pirates of the Caribbean come out… 10, 11 years ago? I wouldn’t know, since I haven’t seen it, or any of them. Pirates (and Johnny Depp, for that matter) do nothing for me.

If I want to watch some sea-faring bad-assery happening on a big screen, give me Vikings. Seriously, why is it always Pirates? Pirates are assholes. Vikings can be assholes, too, but they’re not assholes by definition, like Pirates are. The Vikings didn’t go running around on the high seas stealing other kids’ lunch money, like the Pirates did. Vikings had more important things to do. And I’m not impressed that Pirates were more colorful than Vikings, because all that means is that the Pirates plundered ships containing textiles from exotic, colorful places, and they exchanged their dirty clothes for clean ones in the plundering process. Pirates should not be given credit for their fashion sense. They stole it. Vikings, on the other hand, wore clothes in drab colors because that was just what they had at home, and they didn’t waste time attacking other ships in non-territorial waters like all cowardly criminals do (Pirates). The Vikings saved their attacks for coastal areas on land.

So let’s take a look.

Pirates: sea-faring criminals

Vikings: sea-faring explorers and warriors

Pirates: Skull and Crossbones

Vikings: The Hammer of Thor

Pirates: Schooners

Vikings: Longships

Pirates: Jolly Roger flag on ship

Vikings: Dragon Head mast on ship

Pirates: sword and gun

Vikings: battle-axe and spear

Pirates: head scarves, billowy linen blouses

Vikings: iron helmets, chain-mail shirts

Pirates: rarely bathed

Vikings: bathed every Saturday

And finally:

Pirates: Disney

Vikings: American National Football League

YOU DECIDE.

Support Your Local Free Radicals!

That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

Last night, Callaghan looked over my shoulder to see where I was in the June 2012 Allure magazine a friend sent to me from the States. Always interested in the latest skin-care science research, I was absorbed in a “Skin-Care Special” article titled “The Antioxidant Question,” by Patrick Rogers.

Callaghan read with me for a few minutes.

“A long time ago, I thought that ‘free radicals’ was a political party,” he reflected.

“A political party!” I was suddenly rolling on the bed laughing.

“And L’Oreal was always in a fight with them. There was the ‘formule anti-radicaux libre’.” (Anti-free radical formula.)”

We were still laughing when we returned to the article. One paragraph stated: “Green tea: Extracted from green tea leaves, this potent antioxidant fights free radicals and quells inflammation.”

“What is a ‘quells inflammation’?” asked Callaghan.

I lost it.

Now, in my defense, I didn’t spontaneously laugh at his English. I, of all people, know better than that. It was just that we were both already laughing about the free radical thing, so I never had a chance to catch my breath and recover before he asked about the “quells inflammation” – it was one funny thing immediately following another, like a multiple orgasm. Except that a multiple orgasm isn’t funny. Not necessarily. I guess it depends on how you look at it. Anyway.

We turned the page. “‘A free radical is like a loose hand grenade,’ Bank (the quoted scientist) explains.”

Cracking up all over again, we decided to stop reading and just find the phrases about free radicals:

“…compounds that can neutralize free radicals.” “Once unleashed in the body, free radicals roam around like stalkers…” “…free radical busters….”

By the time we were done with the article, I was wiping tears from my eyes, and I had to blow my nose. One thing is for sure: A political party called “Free Radicals” would be easy to defeat. All we would need would be a few tons of antioxidants.

The Hen is Mightier Than the Sword

That Asian-Looking Chick 9 Comments

“I’m listening to this show, and the music is Harry Potter,” Callaghan just announced, ever diligent in reporting critical documentary details. He tells me these things absent-mindedly over his shoulder while he’s working and I’m sitting at my desk doing whatever. Since there’s no door between the main room (his desk) and the bedroom (my desk), we’re always in sight of each other. In fact, there are barely a few steps between us. That’s how small our house is. Very convenient for talking to each other. And for strangling each other, as the situation demands.

But I digress. My porcelain hen is sitting here next to me, and I wanted to tell you about it.

I noticed the hen (which turned out to be a bank) one night while walking with Callaghan down a small street in Nice; it was sitting in a shop window. I had no prior interest in hens, so I was maybe as surprised as he was when I went back the next day and bought it and unveiled it before his very eyes. For one thing, he couldn’t believe I’d found the shop again “against all odds,” since it was already dark when we strolled past it, and I didn’t even know where we were. (I couldn’t believe I’d found the shop again, either, since I’m directionally challenged and have been known to get lost on grounds I’ve stomped for 20 years. How I managed to navigate myself out of the woods with only a compass when I was in the Army remains a mystery.)

But I found the shop, and the hen was there, black with red flowers, and I couldn’t resist. This is what happens when you have too much time on your hands in Nice.

Hen

Hen

Since then, I’ve graciously taken it upon myself to be the hen’s guardian. To tell you the truth, I’m kind of obsessed. Every time I pay with cash, Callaghan looks over and says something along the lines of, “Hmm… you’re using paper money so you’ll get coins back. For the hen.” Or we’ll be at la boulangerie getting sandwiches and I’ll take out a 10 and he’ll be like, “Why are you paying with that when you have the exact amount in coins? Oh. Yeah.” It’s almost a joke between us, but it’s actually thrilling to me, coming from the States where real money doesn’t exist in coin form. Here in Europe, there are one and two-euro coins, so if you stick them in a piggy (hen) bank, they add up quickly. We come home from the store and I rush to the hen to deposit my high-value coins, and after four months, there’s already 124 euro in the hen! This cannot happen as easily with dollars in the States. It’s almost as fun as watching an hourglass.

Callaghan doesn’t seem to share my glee, but he will. It’s one of those he’ll thank me later things.

“So your idea of managing household finances is the hen,” he says to me one day.

“Yes. It’s for emergencies.”

“Okay, then let’s use the hen to stock up on water, in case the pipes freeze like they did last winter.”

“No… the hen is for real emergencies.”

“What kind of emergency are you talking about?”

“Laundry.”

“Laundry.”

“If the pipes do freeze again, we’ll need to use the hen to do our laundry at la laverie. We’ll need coins.”

“By then we’d be dead of thirst.”

“Parking, too.”

“Parking? How do you figure that’s an emergency?”

“We might need to pay for parking when we go to la laverie to do our emergency laundry.”

“Uhh….”

“I’m not kidding.”

“What is it about you and lau… oh, never mind.”

Okay. Maybe he has a point. But isn’t it true, in fact, that we used the hen for laundry once already? Last month, when we’d finally spilled enough coffee in bed and we wanted to wash our two large comforters before the coffee stains merged into one huge brown splotch and we needed super industrial-capacity washing machines to do the job? “See?” I’d said to Callaghan. I was trying not to gloat. “If it wasn’t for the hen, we wouldn’t be able to wash these comforters. We wouldn’t be able to park at la laverie, either.”

He couldn’t really argue with that. All he said was, “You’re right. The hen is powerful because it can do the laundry.”

SIKA BOOM-E Mousse Expansive

That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

This morning, I was in the bathroom when Callaghan came in with a can of liquid Styrofoam, a product I never knew existed. The label on the can read: “SIKA BOOM-E Mousse Expansive.”

He started shaking it. He shook it vigorously for a long time using all of his upper-body strength, or so it seemed. “Let me guess… that needs to be shaken,” I said, observant as usual. He laughed. Why is he always laughing at me? This was the third time he’d laughed at me today. I can’t figure it out.

Anyway, then he began his task of spraying the Styrofoam along the wide crack that runs the length of the wall (where the tile floor meets the tile wall), and some vertically in the corner, too, where the walls meet perpendicularly. (There was an equally awesome crack that rose from the floor halfway up to the ceiling.) He explained that after about thirty minutes, the Styrofoam would expand and dry, filling the crack and blocking out the cold air that had been blasting in. I was fascinated.

“What happens if you accidentally swallow some – would the Styrofoam expand and kill you, or would your saliva and acids in your stomach prevent that from happening?”

“Uhh… ben…” (pronounced “bahhh”)

“…I mean, would it expand and blow up your stomach?”

“Yeah, you’d die. You don’t want to swallow it!”

Of course I wouldn’t swallow it. I already had this ghastly mental image of someone’s stomach exploding with a growing blob of Styrofoam, kind of like how a baby grows in the uterus, except that the uterus is specially designed to stretch with the growth of a baby, or, I guess, an expanding uterus-shaped blob of Styrofoam. Also, an expanded baby can exit the mom’s body by way of the vaginal canal, so the mom wouldn’t explode, anyway, whereas there’s no such escape route for a blob of Styrofoam lodged in the stomach.  You couldn’t even throw up the Styrofoam if you wanted to, for obvious reasons.

“Does the label warn against swallowing it?” I asked, very concerned. Callaghan examined the label. “No, it does not say ‘Do Not Eat’,” he answered.

Now it was my turn to laugh at him. I also laugh when he pronounces “focus” like “fuckus,” only he doesn’t say that word often enough for me to enjoy the hilarity of it.

Lullaby Fail

That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

“So I’m listening to this documentary about Charles Manson? They’re at Roman Polanski’s house, you know, where it happened, and the music they’re playing is Rosemary’s Baby, haha!”

Hmm. It seems that my husband can no longer resist telling me about his documentaries, and I’m glad. I learn so much from them! I’m not being sarcastic, either. Before today, I’d been unfamiliar with the Rosemary’s Baby music, so when Callaghan mentioned it, I went online. Because this was research I had to do. Having never seen the movie, all I knew about Rosemary’s Baby was that there’s this woman named Rosemary, and she has a baby, and the baby turns out to be evil. And now, I also know that the music from this movie is haunting enough to have been used as the music in a documentary about Charles Manson, who I do know about. See how this comes around in a circle? Isn’t it great?

The music was easily found on YouTube. I closed out after 1.30, because by then, the theme was clear: “la la la la ” set against tinkly music. I assume this was meant to be a lullaby composed for an evil baby. I also assume that the lullaby didn’t work… the baby probably never slept, as it was allegedly busy killing and eating everybody. This gets me thinking about the impact of music on babies. If the la la la la tinkly music lullaby didn’t work on Rosemary’s Baby, then maybe Black Sabbath or Iron Maiden would have done the trick? Baby reverse psychology?

Of course, I’ll never get to test my theory, since I’ll never have a baby. I had a radical hysterectomy (aka “bilateral salpingo oophorectomy and hysterectomy”), which I’m pretty sure prevents me from getting pregnant. But hey! What I can do is test the theory on a goat. We’d simply hire a male pygmy goat to impregnate Sharpie, our female pygmy goat, and voilà! We wait for the birth, play Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden (might as well use both), and stand back to see whether the baby goes on a killing spree or settles down to be as sweet and demure as its mother. If it turns out to be the mass murderer that Rosemary’s Baby allegedly was, then we can deduce that my theory was incorrect. Genius, if I do say so myself!

And since we’re responsible neighbors, we’ll first warn Michel down the way that a baby goat might come along to kill and eat him, his wife and menagerie.

I can’t wait for Callaghan to quit work for the day so I can tell him my plan!

The Elisabeth Shue Stage of Sleep

That Asian-Looking Chick 2 Comments

A few days ago, Callaghan listened to a documentary and then informed me that sleep scientists have made a discovery: dreams we have during the R.E.M. stage of sleep tend to be negative or unhappy, and when we frequently dream during this stage, we are more likely to be depressed.

It was like setting my mind down where the path branches off every which way. I immediately barraged Callaghan with questions. (Being married to me, he gets to put up with my questions. He’s doing a pretty good job so far. Meaning, he’s still here.)

“I thought we only dream during R.E.M. – ?”

“Well, I don’t know, the scientists said that we dream at different stages.”

“What stages?”

“I’m not sure, but that was a part of the discovery… that there are different dream stages.”

“What if the dream isn’t good or bad, but just weird? Did the scientists say if there’s a weird-dream stage?”

“I don’t remember. I was working as I was listening, so my attention wasn’t all there during some of it.”

“…what about those dreams where they’re good, but when you wake up and realize it was just a dream, you get depressed? How do those fit into the theory? Are all ‘good’ dreams really good if they make you feel terrible afterward? How can we know what’s really a good dream? Did they say?”

Poor Callaghan.

I had this suspicion that the scientists purposefully side-stepped the weird-dream issue because they didn’t want to end up with an awkward obligation to admit that some dreams are just neutral, dreams that can’t be quantified by absolutes like “good” and “bad.” “Weird” opens up a whole new sub-category of the theory that wouldn’t fit into the 90-minute time restraint of the documentary.

Two nights later, I dreamed about Elisabeth Shue, an actress I hadn’t recently seen, heard of, or thought about. She’s not a celebrity who turns up in Who Wore It Best or photographed going to Starbucks or rumored to be hiding a baby bump or anything like that. She’s not a chased-by-the-Paparazzi celebrity. I’ve never held a particular admiration of her. I have no opinion of her as being especially beautiful or talented. I just fell asleep, and there she was:

Elisabeth Shue

Elisabeth Shue

Elisabeth Shue was presenting at a major awards ceremony, wearing a sleek, dark gown. Her hair was lifted into an upsweep. She looked elegant, and she exuded delight… not in presenting awards, but in anticipation of something that was about to happen. Next thing, she was hang-gliding over a vast canyon. The night was inky black, and she was lit up like a comet on her hang-glider, leaving a trail of light as she went smoothly back and forth, high and low, occasionally looping upside down. The form of Elisabeth Shue was lost; I could only see that sleek, bright light. But I knew it was her, and I knew that hang-gliding had been the main part of her agenda all along.

“What do you think the scientists would say about that?” I asked Callaghan as we drank our coffee in bed. The dream had been neither good nor bad. The only thing I felt was Elisabeth Shue’s emotion, not mine. “Would this land in the weird-dream stage of sleep that the scientists didn’t address, if such a stage even exists? Maybe there’s a black hole stage of sleep where we dream in-between dreams.”

Since then, Callaghan hasn’t told me about any documentaries he’s listened to. I can’t imagine why not….

Revenge of the French Zombie Spiders?

That Asian-Looking Chick 4 Comments

Today, I unwittingly set the stage for a zombie attack unlike any that has ever been seen in movie theatres.

Let me explain.

I was raised Buddhist, and I’ve been a practicing Buddhist throughout most of my adult life. All of that came to an end when I moved to France. This is because Buddhists are not supposed to Kill Any Living Thing, and I’ve been killing all kinds of living things since I moved here.

We have rodents of various sorts in our house. And we have flies and other winged bugs. We also have ants and spiders.  This might make it sound like I suck, but believe me, I keep a clean house. It’s just that we live in the wilderness, so it’s hard to prevent the critter invasion. It’s just a part of life here.

Of these, the spiders are the worst. They’re large and active and there are a lot of them. I mean, there are hoards of them. For some reason, they’re all up on the ceiling; they build highways for themselves that you can admire when you look up. And I do look up. I look up because I know the spiders are there, and I need to keep an eye on their activities at all times.

Getting rid of them has been an adventure in itself. You can’t escort spiders out when they’re on the ceiling. I mean, you can’t get up on a ladder with a piece of thin cardboard and a cup and slide the cardboard carefully under the spider with the cup on top and cover him and carry him outside to set him free. Okay, so you can… but you can’t. When there are 15 spiders on the ceiling and there’s one ladder and one you with your one measly set of upper body muscles with no upper body muscle reserve to take over when the first set of muscles start to burn from doing stuff repetitively over your head and your neck starts to ache, it just doesn’t work. So I had to think of a different way of getting rid of the spiders. Killing them was the only answer.

My killing instrument of choice is the vacuum cleaner. It’s the easiest. I’m sure there’s a special place in hell for me (Buddhists do believe in a kind of hell, in a complicated, philosophical way). I must have murdered hundreds of spiders by now, and I hate to think about the last moments of their little spidery lives, violently pulled into a pitch-black canister where they frantically try to escape and eventually suffocate to death.

Today, though, something happened that exponentially increased the horror. Today’s batch of spiders got cremated alive inside the vacuum cleaner bag.

It was an accident. It’s December, and we live in the Alpes, where it’s very cold. Like most people around here, we rely on a wood stove to heat up our little house. The fire requires maintenance throughout the day, which Callaghan the Husband provides. Nothing much has ever happened until this morning when Callaghan took the vacuum hose from me to suck up the ash and cinder that had just fallen out of the stove when he opened it up. You see? It was the overlapping circumstance of him tending to the fire at the same time that I was vacuuming spiders. You can probably guess where this is going… he accidentally vacuumed up some hot ember and set the vacuum cleaner on fire, and we didn’t even realize it until we smelled something burning and looked over to see smoke pouring out of the canister.

Callaghan hastily took the vacuum cleaner outside (meaning, he took two long strides to the door – that’s how small our house is) and opened the canister out on the terrace. He placed the bag on the freezing wet terrace floor, poured water on it and came in. Half an hour later, the bag was still smoking, so he broke the ice that covered the top of a full pail of water and submerged the vacuum bag.

Now, we have a bag of spider ashes frozen into a block of ice after the bodies had burned for 30 minutes. I’m saddened by the idea that the spiders met their end in this horrific way, sucked up and burned alive. Their only crime was that they were in the wrong place.

I would say that on the bright side, we know for sure that these particular spiders aren’t coming back, but the possibility exists that the ashes will gather themselves into zombie spiders and break free from their icy prison to get revenge, because they will certainly be angry with us for torching them. And who knows how an angry (and hungry, since zombies are hungry by definition) hoard of zombie spiders will launch its attack? Hell, who knows how French zombie spiders will behave? Is my French even good enough for me to reason with them?

I don’t want to find out. I guess we’ll continue adding to our emergency supply of water, since stocking up on water pretty much covers your ass in any sort of situation. Beyond that, I don’t know.

Happy Hour at the Office of Le Docteur

That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

I’ve studied many interesting specimens of humanity while sitting in doctors’ waiting rooms, but this one lady from Thursday’s appointment wins the prize for Best Walking Free Entertainment in a Medical Waiting Room.

These are the events as they transpired:

-The woman stumbled in on a boozy waft of cold air. She was older, maybe in her 60’s. It was 10:30 in the morning. “Bonjour,” she said to the whole room. (In France, it’s standard to greet a room when you walk in, probably even if no one’s there.)

-She weaved around the small coffee table to maneuver herself between it and me on her way to her final destination, which was the seat next to mine.

-As she went past, I looked up at her, made eye contact and smiled. This is the American equivalent of the verbal French room-greeting. (The French aren’t that familiar with the whole smiling at each other thing. I know this for a fact after conducting numerous experiments on random French people. It doesn’t stop me from smiling at them, though. I’m hard-wired that way.)

-My smile was met with a terrible scowl of doom. This woman was clearly in a bad mood.

-She sat down in the chair to my left. On the other side of me, Callaghan leaned in to whisper, “I can smell her from here.” He got away with this because he said it quietly and in English, plus the lady was plastered, so she probably wouldn’t have noticed, anyway.

-I resumed my activity of reading out loud from L’Express magazine and stopping at the end of each sentence to pester Callaghan for explanations of the bits I couldn’t figure out. (By the way, did you know that there’s a long line of women behind the famous Laurent-Perrier House of Champagne?)  

-Not ten minutes later, there was movement to my left. It was the drunk lady rising out of her seat like a large gray gull to loom over the table and swoop up a magazine.

-Before she sat back down, she opened her mouth in the direction of the woman sitting by the window and loudly complained about le docteur being late, jerking her elbows upward for emphasis. In her grating gull voice, this came out as WAWK WAWK WAWK

-Our end of the room clouded up with a fresh gust of alcohol breath. It didn’t smell like cough syrup, either.

-Callaghan and I looked at each other. Our eyes said, Can you believe it? It’s 10:30 in the morning and she comes in drunk, complaining about the doctor being late!

-She gave us two, maybe three more performances before we were called in. At least she changed it up slightly each time so there was some variation in the details.

Perhaps I should be kinder. I mean, it’s possible that she’s seeing the doctor because of alcoholism, which is an authentic disease. She made for an amusing wait, though! Still, I would have preferred to read about the Laurent-Perrier champagne sisters without the soundtrack.

Le Docteur

That Asian-Looking Chick 3 Comments

This morning, my husband and I went to the doctor, or, should I say, le docteur. So I’m in le docteur’s office trying to do three things at once: 1). Listen attentively as he talks to my husband so as to understand as much of what he’s saying as possible, and 2). Keep my mind from wandering, and 3). Listen attentively, and 4). Try to understand as much of what he’s saying as possible, and 5). Try to understand as much of what my husband’s saying as possible, and 6). Try to not get lost, and 7). Start the whole process again after I get lost, and 8). Try not to get frustrated as I find myself 10 sentences behind by the time I start trying to understand again because I got lost, and 9). Try to keep my mind from wandering as I think of how frustrating it is to try to understand everyone, and 10). Wait – that’s eight things. Or is it nine? I only meant to list three. Did you follow all of that? Neither did I.

This is my struggle as a non-fluent-French-speaker in France. Trying to follow a conversation in French is like trying to follow a mental tennis match, only it’s faster than tennis, so it’s more like ping-pong. The ball blurrs with speed, and the blurrier it gets, the harder it is to keep track, especially if I start seeing double and it looks like two balls. It flies around so quickly that by the time I find it, it’s already somewhere else. Next thing I know, the match is over, and I have no idea what I’d just seen. At that point, the only thing more mind-tangling is when one of the players turns to me with a question about the game. And since I do know something about it, there’s this idea that I’d successfully followed the ball. But the game is complicated. There are serves and pauses and front hands and back hands and double-vision balls bouncing off the net and getting caught off the edge and etcetera. Angles are involved. Angles! I’m going to start calling them “slangles.” My mind trips on the slangles every time. Most of the time, anyway.

Thankfully, I usually understand my husband’s questions, and I can even answer in ping-pong-ese. Other times – a lot of the time, actually – I get it, but I can only answer in English. And sometimes, I don’t get it at all. Then I feel like I let everyone down, especially after it had been noted that my understanding had improved so much.

This is just the normal docteur. This isn’t the shrink-docteur where I go once a month to have an actual conversation without my husband being there. It’s like trying to play ping-pong with myself, blindfolded. And I’m not even going to try to explain what that’s like.