Happy Five Year Anniversary
“How did he sound?” AdventureMan asked about our son.
I smiled.
“Actually, he sounded fine. He sounded like there is nothing in the world he wants to do more than to stay home with his sick baby.”
Everything was planned. Our son and his wife were on their way out to a special dinner, to celebrate five years of successful marriage. We were signed on to babysit, something we do with gladness. We knew how the evening would go. We arrive, HappyBaby runs shrieking with joy to AdventureMan, running right around me if I get in the way. I fix dinner, feed the HappyBaby, AdventureMan takes him down to play, then bathtime, then bed.
Not this time.
Our son called us about an hour before we were scheduled to arrive.
‘It’s all off” he said. “HappyBaby is sick, fever, lethargic. We’re just going to stay home. You can come by if you just want to hang out.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry!” I said, a little in shock. HappyBaby has been having a long spell of wellness. “I’m making spaghetti for us and HappyBaby,” I replied, “but there’s a lot. Can I bring dinner?”
He said yes. We made a salad, AdventureMan found a really good bottle of wine, we headed down. AdventureMan held HappyBaby – not so happy, very tired and a little fussy – while we dished up; I finished and held him so AdventureMan could eat. HappyBaby was fine with coming to me, his arms went around me, his little head went down on my shoulder, and it was like when he was little little, except he is so big now that I can’t sit down, or I can’t easily get up again. He’s a big boy now.
I always joke that I am the grandmother who can bore her grandson to sleep. We stood outside for a while, watching the cars go by, watching the sun set over the Bayou, and when the cool breeze started blowing I took him inside. He was so sleepy, he didn’t complain. We rocked, and I put him down in his crib, fast asleep.
It wasn’t the evening we expected. It was, for us, even better, having a relaxed time with our son and his wife, getting to put HappyBaby to sleep once again. It turned out to be a very sweet evening.
We’ve signed up to do the babysitting again when HappyBaby is well and our son and his wife can go out for that dinner. Five years of marriage is worth celebrating. We are so proud of them and the way they handle life, it’s joys and disappointments, struggles, challenges and triumphs. They are a good team, and we celebrate that they found one another and work so well together.
Lunch in Paris (A Love Story With Recipes) by Elizabeth Bond
I just finished this book, and I need to review it so that I can pass it along to my daughter-in-law, who sees France, as I do, through eyes of love. Americans either love France or hate it, for some reason France evokes strong emotions one way or the other.
This author is a New Yorker, and her experiences are not my experiences, because her culture is not my culture. New York is a culture all its own. On the other hand, her experiences as an expat are universal, and her insecurity with the language, the culture and the customs are magnified by her commitment to marrying a French man and living in France for the rest of her life.
For the record, I really loved this book.
Can you read a recipe and have a pretty good idea what it is going to look like and how it will taste? In my family, we read cook books for fun. The recipes Elizabeth Bond has included are great recipes, a great start on French cooking the simple and fresh way. Even someone who has never cooked French food can make most of the dishes she creates in this book. In my very favorite chapter, A New Year’s Feast, there are several recipes for North African dishes I have eaten and loved – and oh, I am eager to try these! Chicken Tajine with Two Kinds of Lemon! Tajine with Meatballs and Spiced Apricots! Oh, YUMMMM!
In one part of the book, the author talks about some very basic differences between how Americans approach life and how the French view life:
I watched the couples walking around the lake. “Maybe it’s the New Yorker in me. I’m too used to rushing around. But everyone here is so relaxed, it’s like they’re moving in slow motion.”
“Why should they rush? They’re not going to get anywhere.”
Sometimes I really have no idea what he is taling about.
“You will never understand. You come from a place where everything is possible.” We lay side by side on the grass, our eyes half closed.
“It’s Henry Miller that said, ‘In America, every man is potentially a president. Here, every man is potentially a zero.’ ”
And then he told me a story.
“When I was sixteen it was time to decide what kind of studies I would pursue. I was the best in the class in Math and Physics, but also the best in Literature. I went to the school library and the woman behind the desk gave me a book. It was called All the Jobs in the World. I looked through it. I found two things I liked: scientific researcher and film director. I brought the book to the front and showed her my choices. ‘Ah non,’ she said, ‘You forgot to look at the key.’ And she pointed to the top of the page. Next to each job were the dollar signs – three dollar signs if the job paid a lot of money, one dollar sign if it paid very little. Next to the dollar sign was a door. If the door was wide open it was very easy to tet this job, if the door was open just a little bit, it was very hard. ‘Regard,‘ she said, ‘You have picked only jobs with no dollar signs and a closed door. Tu n’y arriveras jamais. You will never get there.”
‘You should become an engineer,’ she said. My parents never met anyone who did these other things. We don’t come from that world. They had no friends they could call to get me a job. They were afraid I would fail and they couldn’t help me. They were afraid I would have no place in the society. And I didn’t have the force to do it myself. I didn’t want to disappoint them. So I became an engineer.”
“It’s just like that here. If you want to do something different, if you head sticks up just a little, they cut it off. It’s been like that since the Revolution. You know the saying, Liberte,’ Egalite,’ Fraternite,’ equality is right in the middle. Everyone has got to be the same.
Of all the stories Gwendal has told me, before or since, this one shocked me the most. Never in my life, not once, had anyone ever told me there was something I couldn’t do, couldn’t be.
Have you ever known an expat wife (a woman who has married a man of another culture and lived in his country)? Expat wives are some of the bravest women I have ever met. No matter how long you have been married to a man of another culture, you can still be surprised.
The expat wives I have known have been smart, gifted people, woman who have been blessed to see the world through the eyes of more than one culture, and it changes everything. Their children are amazing – most will speak – and think – in more than one language. They have a sort of international fluidity, as well as intercultural fluency. It isn’t everyone’s choice, but those who chose it often live lives you and I can only begin to imagine. Elizabeth Bond has opened the door a little, and shared some of those experiences with us.
The book I bought has Reader’s Groups questions in the back, and they are good questions. Read the questions first; it gives you food for thought as you read through her experiences.
Like Cats
I was talking with a friend who had started in a new church about a year ago, around the same time we started at our church. I was telling her about the Service to Others Committee, and how I like everyone working on it, we were all kind of nerds, my favorite kind of people.
She looked a little down, and told me it seemed to be taking some time for her to find her niche in the church, and so I had to share with her my cat theory.
When you bring a new cat into a house where you already have a cat, you have to keep them separated for a while. You put the new cat in a separate room, with separate feeding dishes and litter box. Even so, the original cat is going to be a little wary. He can smell the new cat, it is something new and something strange, and it makes him uneasy.
People, it seems to me, are a little the same way, especially people who are settled. When a new person comes in, it just won’t do to try to be accepted. You just have to come in quietly, don’t intrude, let people get used to you. Little by little, people reach out to you. It can be discouragingly slow. If you have patience, it pays off.
Sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, you meet someone with a widely accepting outlook, and this time, I was lucky, I met a friend at the church who is just so full of life she bubbles with it. She makes things happen. She doesn’t have time for gossip or negative thoughts, and if you are willing to help, that’s good enough for her. She is organized and she is busy, and I feel really lucky to be her friend.
Slowly, people are starting to realize we are not visitors at the church, but here to stay, and are reaching out to greet us. It’s a good feeling.
Tomorrow, we have our first of two sets of house guests arriving. When our first guest leaves, I have 18 hours to get the room and bathroom cleaned, clean sheets on the bed, etc. They are all really good friends, very old friends, and all coming to escape the chill of a seemingly endless winter and enjoy a little sunshine. If you don’t hear much from me, it’s because I’m out playing. 🙂
Alexander McCall Smith and The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party
Just back from a wonderful two day trip to Botswana, visiting my dear and beloved friend Precious Ramotswe, who owns the #1 Ladies Detective Agency. For her, I make an exception to the paperback book rule (buy paperbacks because hard covers can hurt you if you fall asleep and they fall over) and get on the pre-publication order list so that Amazon will send me the book as soon as it comes out.
The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party arrived Wednesday night. My husband was expecting a friend, and when the doorbell rang I thought “oh my, he is really early!” but it was the UPS guy, who had left a book-sized package on my doorstep. I had just finished an easy but fun book (The Map Thief by Heather Terrell) and was at odd ends as to what to read next, and this was an easy answer. As my husband drank Arabic coffee and sweet sweet Arabic tea, and ate delicate Middle Eastern treats downstairs, I got to start The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party.
You know the books. They aren’t difficult to read, but while you are reading, you are transported to another world. Precious Ramotswe’s Botswana is not a world without problems, but the solutions to the problems are often found in softer gentler ways, ways that would seem counter-intuitive in our culture, but make total sense when you are raised in Botswana. There is a value placed on peaceable interaction, and maintaining relationships, on forgiveness, and going to extra mile. It’s a sweet world, and a great escape.
As usual, there are several intertwining plot lines with ingenious and unexpected solutions. I suspect that is what keeps me glued to this series – I cannot anticipate the solutions. That, and the gentleness of her outlook, the sweetness of life in Botswana, and the dignity and integrity of McCall’s primary characters.
I don’t know how McCall manages to keep the series fresh, but he avoids the formulaic and I find each book a treat. My favorite part of this book is how Mma Potokwane manages to wangle and invitation to Mma Makutsi’s wedding:
Mma Potokwane noticed the other woman’s uncertainty. “Yes,” she continued. “There’s that problem. And then there’s another problem. Problems come in threes, I find, Mma. So the next one – Problem number two, so to speak – is the cooking of food. You know what I find, Mma, it is this: the people doing the cooking never have enough pots. They say they do, but they do not. And right at the last moment they discover that there are not enough pots, or, more likely, the pots they have are too small. A pot may be big enough to cook your meat and pap at home, just for a family, but do not imagine that it will be big enough to cook for a couple of hundred people. You need big, catering-size pots for that.”
She was now warming to her theme. “And the third problem is the food itself. You may think that you have enough for the feast, and you may be right when it comes to the meat. People usually have enough meat – often rather too much, in fact. But they forget that after their guests have eaten a lot of meat, they need something sweet, and often they have made no arrangements for that. A wedding cake? Yes, but there will only be one small piece of that for each guest – usually not enough. So people find themselves wishing that they had had the foresight to get a supply of ordinary cake for the guests to eat with their tea. And where is this cake? Not there, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe glanced at Mma Makutsi; this was not the way to speak to a nervous bride, she thought. “I’m sure that everything will work out well,” she said reassuringly. “And if there are any problems, they will surely just be small ones – nothing to worry about.”
Mma Potokwane looked doubtful. “I hope so,” she said. “But in my experience, it never works out like that. I think it’s better to be realistic about these things.”
Mma Makutsi picked up her pencil to add something to her list. “You said something about pots, Mma. Where would I be able to get these big, catering-size pots?”
Mma Potokwane examined her fingernails. “Well, we have them at the orphan farm. Each of the house mothers has a very large pot. I’m sure that we could do something . . . ”
Run to your bookstore and buy The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party!
“You Seem Happy Here – Are You?”
The landscape designer and I met last year as she toured our garden and helped us identify the plants we have in our garden. She had great ideas, and gave us a lot of help caring for a mature garden. She suggested we live with our yard for a year, and then decide how we want to move forward.
It was the best advice. What looked like a wreck of a garden after last year’s very cold winter came back back with a vengeance. We had fabulous plants, plants the birds and bees and butterflies and hummingbirds all loved to visit. We had a chance to visit other gardens and to see what we like. This year, we have more of a plan, and this lovely lady who has been gardening in Pensacola all her life, helps us fine tune our plans.
We’ve been going around the yard, figuring out where to put a pomegranate tree, a lime tree, a couple hydrangea bushes.
“You seem happy here,” she starts, “Are you?”
“You sound surprised!” I laughed, thinking how many moves I’ve made, and how I really like living near our son, his wife and son. We’ve been here a year now. I make friends slowly, but I actually have a few now.
“I wasn’t sure you would be able to handle the heat,” she confided.
I laughed. “I can’t. There is this wonderful thing called air conditioning. When it gets too hot, I don’t spent much time outside. I’m doing fine.”
It’s been almost a year since we bought the house here. It seems like so much longer, so much has happened. Last night, AdventureMan made a fabulous Bermuda Fish Chowder. Our son’s wife and little Baby Q came by for dinner while our son waited in line at Best Buy for a new iPad2, wooo hooo. He came by as soon as finished the purchase. Life is sweet, and yes, I think I am happy.
The Dressmaker by Posie Graeme-Evans
When I wrote up this book for another site, I could not even remember the main character’s name. (Ellen Gowan) I found the book annoying, and most of the time, when a book annoys me, I don’t even tell you about it, I just don’t bother reviewing it at all.
I find the plot thin. I find the characters unmotivated. I find many of the choices of the characters unbelievable. We haven’t been given enough back-story to make the characters truly live.
Ellen has a real streak of bad luck. On her 13th birthday, a well-born young man gets fresh with her and in rural Victorian England, it becomes her problem – her reputation is damaged by a callow young man from a wealthy family. On the same day, an earthquake strikes her village, killing her father, and she and her mother subsequently lose their home.
They take up residence with Ellen’s aunt, her mother’s sister, and it is a happy time, all except for her aunt’s husband, a cruel man who isolates and beats his wife, who can do nothing about it. A wife is property. Her marriage was arranged; she has no where to go if she were to leave. She works hard at keeping her husband happy, so he won’t beat her or take it out on anyone she loves.
When you are dealing with an abusive manipulator, however, there is no pleasing, right? Ellen and her mother are thrown out, but also thrown a lifeline, and take up residence with a dressmaker, where Ellen hones and develops a talent for costume design (meaning evening dress, calling clothes, mourning clothes – wealthy Victorian women had huge wardrobes of ever-changing fashionable clothes.)
Ellen makes some really bad choices – in my opinion. I’m not going to tell you what those choices are, because I don’t want to give you too much of the story, in case you want to read it yourself.
Long story short, she ends up a very successful fashion designer/producer in London, only to face ruinous blackmail because of her past.
OK, here is what I really liked about the book. While I found the characters, descriptions, plotlines and dialogues pretty awful, I loved reading about the fashions, and I found reading about the social status of women – not all that long ago – where women in England had few choices and fewer opportunities – fascinating. I have friends in Kuwait and Qatar who face some of the same limitations. How soon we forget; it wasn’t that long ago that we faced the same challenges, the same limitations.
The freedom to live on our own. The freedom to earn and manage our own money. The rights to our children. All these issues are fresh in The Dressmaker, and too easily taken for granted in our own.
Oral Sex Linked to Rise in Throat Cancers
You can read this report on NPR News/Health
Virus Passed During Oral Sex Tops Tobacco As Throat Cancer Cause
by PEGGY GIRSHMAN
If you’re keeping score, here’s even more evidence that HPV causes oral, head and neck cancers and that vaccines may be able to prevent it.
Researchers studying the human papillomavirus say that in the United States HPV causes 64 percent of oropharynxl cancers. In the rest of the world, tobacco remains the leading cause of oral cancer, Dr. Maura Gillison of Ohio State University told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science this past weekend.
And the more oral sex someone has had — and the more partners they’ve had — the greater their risk of getting these cancers, which grow in the middle part of the throat. “An individual who has six or more lifetime partners — on whom they’ve performed oral sex – has an eightfold increase in risk compared to someone who has never performed oral sex,” she said.
The recent rise in oropharnx cancer is predominantly among young, white men, she noted, though she says no one has figured out why yet. About 37,000 people in the United States were diagnosed with oral cancer in 2010, according to the Oral Cancer Foundation.
People with HPV-related throat cancer are more likely to survive their cancer than those who were heavy smokers or drinkers, the other big risk factors.
The message may be more critical for teens according to Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. She has studied 600 adolescents over 10 years and found that oral sex is much more common than vaginal sex and that “teens don’t consider oral sex to be sex,” that they think “it’s not that big a deal.” She adds: “Parents and health educators are not talking to teens about oral sex. Period.”
Worldwide, HPV-related cancers seem to be increasing. Gillison said that Swedish researchers looking back over 30 years found that 23 percent of oral cancer tumors in 1970 were positive for HPV, but in 2005, that number had risen to 93 percent.
The British newspaper The Guardian noted that Gillison said that “every birth cohort appears to be at greater risk from HPV and oral cancers than the group born before them.”
Over the past five years, health officials have been urging parents to make sure their daughters are vaccinated against HPV to help prevent cervical cancer. But these new results suggest that young men could also benefit from vaccination, though the costs would be substantial.
While none of the researchers could say definitively that the vaccines against HPV, Gardasil and Cervarix, would prevent throat cancer, they thought it could was reasonable to think the vaccine could reduce risks as well.
Note: Some of Gillison’s research is funded by Merck, the pharmaceutical company that makes Gardasil.
Me and McGregor
So, ‘McGregor’, what has you longing to ‘read’ from me? What part of my profile appealed to you? The part where it clearly states I am MARRIED? You being a good Christian, that must have a lot of appeal.
Oh, GRRRRRRRR.
I just hate these scammers, these predators, these LIARS. Be careful out there on those social networking sites, my friends. . .
Oh wait! That ‘one thing you long to find?’ My checkbook?
Like Magic
I woke up this morning, astounded at how easy the transition has been in this direction. Yes, there are some moments in late afternoon when I can’t keep my eyes open, but . . . well, that can happen even when I am NOT jet lagging, LOL! AdventureMan and I are both doing well. We got up at our normal time this morning, well rested. Thanks be to God!
Yesterday I finished a quilt I have been working on for a Pensacola Quilt Guild challenge; it actually went to Kuwait with me, but I did not put in a single stitch while I was gone. I had great light, too, just not the time or interest in working on it. It’s finished now, hanging, so I can inspect for stray threads, etc. that I might have missed . . .
We emptied our day of activities yesterday, no water aerobics, no bible study, we just took it easy on ourselves, gave ourselves a day to transition to Pensacola mode. I did three loads of laundry, we both unpacked, and AdventureMan is now immersed in tax documents. Maybe this year we will actually submit our taxes on time, although the mere thought is enough to make me laugh, it is so unthinkable. We are lucky if we get them in by June in a normal year, but ‘normal’ is different now, living back in the United States, and we are trying to get on track with being residents again.
No photos; we are doing things we have done before and told you about. Breakfast at the Shiny Diner. AdventureMan was dying for lunch at Sonny’s Bar-B-Q; AdventureMan laughed, I hadn’t eaten there since he left, but it’s always good, always reliable, and I especially love their smoked turkeys. Dinner was the delicious chili EnviroGirl left in our refrigerator, how can anything that delicious be good for you?
On. On. Today I think I will finally buy my iPhone. 🙂
Travel Mercies
Before I left, my bible study group promised to pray for me, for safe travel, and for travel mercies.
What are travel mercies? Travel mercies are blessings you don’t even know you need, small interventions that make a big difference. So many times on this trip to Kuwait, I smiled, thinking “I know my friends are praying for me,” I could feel the travel mercies.
The trip down to the Mubarakiyya for dinner – a serious travel mercy. It wasn’t a life or death thing, and I didn’t even dare to bring it up, AdventureMan was so busy. And yet, we got there, we had a wonderful dinner with friends, we got to see the lights of the Seif Palace. Oh Wow, and thank you, Lord, for these blessings, these unexpected mercies.
Our trip home was flawless. Flights on time, and although we were on a flight I don’t usually like, it was fine. Sometimes on this late-night flight you’ll get a blow-hard or two, guys that want to drink and share all their insights and knowledge in a loud voice, long into the flight, when everyone else wants to sleep. Not this time. 🙂 This flight was quiet, even the babies were quiet. Everyone slept. And slept. And slept. Perfect travel mercy.
Schlepping through immigration and customs was about as painless as it can be, given that it is a pain-in-the-neck. More travel mercies, the kind you can fail to even notice – unless these little things go wrong, so terribly wrong.
“Welcome home,” our immigrations guy said cheerfully. We grinned. It is good to be back.
We got into Pensacola with enough time to run out to We Tuck ‘Em Inn to pick up the Qatteri Cat, who let us know how annoyed he was to be left behind. We knew – from experience – that dealing with his annoyance was waaaaayyyy better than dealing with a traumatized cat at the end of those brutal flights. He is in great condition, maybe a little bored, but happy, and his fur is clean. Mercy. Merci.
Home again, home again. Our son and his wife had left AdventureMan’s car at the airport for us, and had left a delicious chile, vegetables and dip, and apples in our refrigerator for us, such a loving welcome home. We were able to drop by and hug the Happy Baby before he shut down for the night. All is well. Infinite mercies.
By the Grace of God, and in his mercy. I thank God for my believer-sisters, whatever their faiths, that keep me wealthy in travel mercies.
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