DELVING BETWEEN THE TOES OF LIFE....I AM TOEJAM


2005-08-06 - 11:30 a.m.

It is becoming increasingly apparent to me that I will need to get rich...or at least get back to work.

We want an apartment in Paris, we want a house in Northern Michigan, we want a house to live in, and I want a farm and Eric probably wants an apartment in a city in the U.S., because he is a city boy...I am a country girl. One would think that our house now is a perfect compromise...there isn't much here and yet it is conveniently close to Barcelona and other smaller cities. However...it isn't close enough, I don't think, for Eric's liking, to the city (if we had a train station here in our village or even in the town that within walking distance I think he might feel better about it) and this house is just too close to everything for my tastes. So I've been thinking that the only real compromise we could make is half a year spent in the city and half the year spent in the country with our apartments in Paris and other US city ready for vacations. So I would live in my country house from about March until September, you know, in time to get gardens planted and to harvest things and can them and make delicious jams and sauces to haul back to the city with me for the winter.

But that life would require a lot of money. And we are just normal folk here and I am not even working right now and won't be, unless I somehow come up with a creative way to work from here, for another few years.

But man...that would be so nice. The best would be if I could talk that husband of mine into liking the country and then I could just live on my farm forever and ever and have cows and chickens and learn to make my own cheese and then I would never have to go to the store again except for salt, pepper, toilet paper, shampoo and lotion. Oh, and coffee. And fuck...sugar. And flour. Oh for gods sake.

Eric ordered me a Happy Bunny shirt...you could add your own saying on it...so he got me a shirt with my own famous saying..."why don't you fuck right off!" on it. I adore it. Also, a sign for my bathroom door that says, "trespassers butchered".

Last night I made baked bananas with homemade caramel sauce. Oh, it was yummy. And so easy. You just throw a couple bananas in the oven, peel and all, for about ten minutes until they get soft and the peel is black and during that time you make the caramel (brown sugar and butter cooked until carmelized)and when the bananas are black you take them out, make a gash down the length of the banana and pour the caramel in and then eat it by just scooping out the fruit with a spoon. It was really, really good. Try it. Unfortunately I can't tell you amounts or temperatures because I rarely cook with recipes. So you'll have to figure it out.

Eric is home now until the 20something of August. The whole plant closes here and so he can't work even if he wanted to. Which kind of pisses me off (not because he is on vacation) because it is a FORCED vacation and I would be really, really mad if someone told me when I was taking vacation. Anyway...I have that boy to myself for the next couple weeks and that will be amazing. We have never had that much time together before where one of us wasn't working.

And...I am in total shock about this whole vacation thing here. Talk about fucking robots. When we drove to Paris last Saturday it was apparently what is called, "Black Saturday," here in Europe. EVERYONE goes on vacation in August here. EVERYONE. You wouldn't have believed the scene on the highway that day, the beginning of vacation. It was INSANE. All the gas stations and rest stops were packed, as in, there wasn't even a bare patch of ground to park on in most of them. And there was a traffic jam, at the border to Spain, for at least 100 kilometers. Just a dead stand still. And it happens every year. What a way to start your vacation.

So I must go now because we have guests coming tomorrow. For four days. I think it will be okay though...it is a family so they can keep eachother occupied and I won't feel so much that I have to play hostess. And it is a family with whom I stayed last week so they aren't strangers. And it is Eric's boss/friend and his wife and children and I adore Eric's boss/friend and am actually excited to show him where we live. It is, after all, mostly his doing that we are here in the first place. So...I must go...I have beds to make, lists to compile, floors to sweep, cats to prepare.

Oh...and my cat Bubba...he is really something else. It's so weird because of all my cats he is the least lovable. I mean, he doesn't require constant attention and in fact shuns constant attention where the lot of my cats are basically attention sluts. But man, you have visitors here and that cat, Bubba, hams it right up. The other night some friends of Eric's were here having a drink and picking Eric up for a night out. They were all sitting on the couch, there were four of them, and Bubba jumped onto the back of the couch and started licking their necks, down the row. He's so weird. And always, when there are people here, Bubba has to be right in the center of all of it. The other cats hide under the bed...but not Bubba. He will stay up as late as all of us. He will stay awake so long that he will actually start nodding off while sitting there and then he will jerk awake. He is so strange. And he is also terrified of the swimming pool and at least once a day I will look out the window and he will be standing about five feet away from the pool, totally stopped in his tracks still, the hair on his back raised, and he will just stare at the pool in terror. The funniest, though mean, thing to do when he is in that state is to make a noise. He will jump STRAIGHT into the air.

I adore my cats.

|


Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries

previous - next

Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries

about me - read my profile! read other Diar
yLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get
 your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!
www.flickr.com