I am the Radio!*

Or: My Friend Jean! (And one of my sons, rather jealous of the attention, the mask, and the drinks that MFJ was receiving - heh! heh!)

So. I've been trying for ages and by all means possible (including, of course, friendly but unrelenting harrassment) to get My Friend Jean to get herself (and her boys) over here. And then, one fine day not long ago, it all began pulling itself together! (The boys couldn't come this time, but as you may well imagine, we're already working on that for the next time...)

And it was one helluva big, long, too-short, joyful, teary, catch-up, moutarde, sleep-over, sally forth, eat up, drink down, silly willy, tongue twisting time all the way from the first to the last of the hugs and a sad sayonara. The only thing that made her leaving again bearable was knowing that we'd be saying "Hiya!" to her and her boys in just a few days, on the other side of the Big Pond.

Here are a few pics from the five-and-a-half days we all spent together, starting with some from the huge "do" that Jean-Philippe organised at Arte for the end of the "school year". It was a fantastic party, made all the more so by the artistic intervention that (he and) a group of eight artists - otherwise known as Interim - put on during the week that preceded the party, and which culminated on that night. As you can probably tell from the images below, we had a great night. And the artists' work was truly spectacular. So, for that matter, was the musical intervention of our favourite DJ-ing duo. And the food. And the drink. And the... You get the picture.

1) Jean-Philippe being interviewed 2) the hellivator 3) two women in the talking toilets

1) artist-cum-tour-guide 2) way-swank work 3) artist-cum-interventionist

1) I want that little orange television set! 2) the coolest sortie ever 3) My Friend Soapy (don't be fooled: behind all that fur is a heart of gold!)

1) Dirty DJs 2) Dirty Dancing vol. i 3) Dirty Dancing vol. ii 4) Dirty... oops! Sorry.

1) a strange little sign on the door of a strange little craft store in Barr 2) four strangers in the doorway of a dilapidated church 3) three of the four strangers looking at a strange beetle, about equidistant from the strange sign and the dilapidated doorway

1) Tomi's first attempts at self-portraits (and when he was looking through the pics with me later, he saw the belly shot and said, "Oh! Je l'ai raté, cette photo de moi (Oh! I screwed up that photo of me)!" just as I was saying, "Oh! Great shot of dolphins jumping!" He looked at me sideways and smiled, knowingly, but not without a bit of extra pride, anyway... sigh... My little bunny...) 2) a work of art co-authored by Jean and Tomi (who had seen Jean working on the side panels of a paper airplane Leo had made for her, and was so impatient for her to do the side panels on HIS plane, that he hijacked her job of writing the plane's name, before pleading with her to draw a caterpillar (to start with)

1) Phone Tag 2) Name Tag (ah! Serendipity!) 3) À la carte : Canard à la Jean's last meal in Alsace, accompanied by an array of assays and one sure thing: good aulde Alsatian Pinot Noir. Mmmm...

1) snif! 2) What we both saw when we returned home that day (me from dropping Jean off at the train station and Jean when she landed in CR/IC airport and drove through the saturated lands surrounding our home town... yikes).

Just a couple of minutes after dropping Jean off, I walked in the front door to see JPhi and the boys sitting down to breakfast in the kitchen. Tomi asked where Jean was, and I explained. A very-VERY sad look came over both boys, and Leo made a cry of pathetic indignation. Tomi told me that made him very sad, and that that was why he was so sad the night before (when I went in to kiss them good-night, after she'd read to them and they understood that she was leaving in the morning). We talked about this, and about the fact that we were going to see her in a couple of weeks, and the excitement that this idea instilled helped a bit. And then, all day, there were these funny coincidences. For instance: I showed them a few movies from when they were smaller (which even I hadn't seen since they'd been taken), and at the end of one, someone behind the camera yelled "JEA--!" just as the film was cut. The boys both screamed with delight, "JEAN! JEAN!" then looked to see where she was on the screen, and were confused at first that she wasn't there - and then kind of pissed off. We had to have the conversation about seeing Jean in a couple of weeks again... And again...

In other words, and if it weren't already patently obvious:

We all miss Jean.

* Don't you just hate inside jokes?

Bananas & Breadsticks

Mom: Keep going! Can you make it spin, like you were?

Leo: Pour quoi tu fais ça? (Why are you doing that?) Parce qu'il faut faire des *bananas*? (Because we need to do (use) the bananas?)

Tomi: No-o-on, on va pas faire des *bananas*, on va faire *breadstick(s)*. (No-o-o, we're not doing bananas, we're going to make breadsticks.)

It made me laugh to hear that when Tomi uses the word "breadsticks" in a French sentence, he doesn't pronounce the "s" at the end (though they both do with the word "bananas").

Just fyi, we had talked about the possibility of making banana bread, too, and if you knew where we keep the fruit basket, you could see Leo looking briefly over to be sure the bananas are still there.

p.s. Sorry about the quality. It's my first time reducing the size of a home movie for You Tube...

All's... well?

So, they insert a tube in your arm and a sponge in your nose, and you have exactly enough time to think, "I should be asleep in no time," before... You're waking up, all warm and snug on your operating table. They give you a nice breakfast and hand you a piece of paper with a diagram of your insides and room for commentary and say, "These are your results. The doctor wll be in shortly to discuss them with you." You look at the paper. Your face must be as blank as the paper, because the receptionist repeats, kindly, "The doctor will be in shortly..." You sit down and examine the paper, and are no closer to an end of confusion when the doctor whisks brightly around the corner and says, "Great news! There's nothing in there at all!" And although the witticism is not entirely lost on you, you are nonetheless not entirely reassured, because... Well, because the pain! Where is this pain coming from, if not your intestines?! And when your gastro-intestinal, your gynecological and your endocrinological doctors were all so certain that the answer had to be found there, to boot? (My gynecologist had murmured something while she was examining the X-rays ten days ago, and all I caught was, "...Crohn's disease...?")

So. All's well on the one hand. But on the other... Well, there is hope, in that there is a possibility that if I take "the pill" again, all will be well for real. But that's another story, and a bit complicated (and no, it doesn't, strictly speaking, have to do with PMS), so I'll just tell you if and when it works, and spare you the technical blinkety-blonk for now. Especially since it might not work, anyhow. Ve shall see...

And many, many thanks ( !! ) to all of you lovelies out there, near and far, for your words of encouragement. Kind words certainly help to put fear in its place...

I'm going in for a bit of general anesthetic and groping around my insides tomorrow morning, and it has me feeling slightly freaked out. Felt like crying this morning. Ugh. It occured to me, though, that although it was frightening to think of what I / they would lose, in the event of a calamity or even of a poor prognosis, it has also made me realise once again how very much I have, and how lucky I've been to have had it all.

Just FYI: this operation-thingey is the technical part of why I've been such a ridiculously bad blogger and correspondent over the past couple of months. So if I owe you one (or more), please be patient. But to recfify in part one of said ill-managed correspondences (the other party of which will know who they are) please forgive this rather oblique, but SO heartfelt shout of:

"CONGRATULATIONS!"

and its attendant and many-times-plural "YAY!"-s

So many things have happened over the past number of weeks, but for now, I offer you a diptych entitled They Give Me Strawberries, I Give Them Peppers. Have I ever mentioned how magic these guys are?


The pepper picture is one of Tomi's photographic œuvres. He and Leo are fantastic budding wee artists, to be sure. More about that later, though I will offer a Happy Clown / Sad Clown teaser for now...


Tomi got kind of shafted on this occasion, unfortunately, because he'd heard me scold Leo for drawing on his face (but as you can probably imagine, he'd also heard when I accidentally laughed, despite myself, and he saw when I took the picture). So he was double scolded when he followed the leader. Still, his soft, sad tears and my realising a bit too late why he'd done it, anyway, meant that he got his picture taken and a huggy apology for my mistaken part to play, and we had a good conversation about listening, to boot. Not that he gave 100% to the listening part of that conversation, but, well... As you parents out there know, sometimes it takes alot of pennies before that one finally drops.


And one last diptych before I get back to my drawing board, and then to my operation prep (ugh): a happy one of the previously sad little clown (I can't emphasise it enough: they are such hilarious, such touching little creatures), with his mom in the background, who thought she'd moved out of the picture path; and Jean-Philippe's corner of our "back garden", which has got much closer to what we always imagined this year. So lush! And so much loved by all four of us. But this corner took a long time in coming, and each day, as he looked out to see if things had progressed, Jean-Philippe reminded me (to my great glee, of course) exactly of Toad in The Garden, one of the stories from Frog and Toad Together, by Arnold Lobel.