and breathe!

This weekend feels like I have just crawled out of a huge wave. Like I have been spun and rinsed by a Cape Saint Francis dumpster. My ears have only just reached equilibrium and I am standing.  An almost perfect analogy, except that the ocean brain rinsing freshness is missing. That wonderful ozone cool that surviving a big salty leaves you with. Basically I just feel dumped. 

For a moment a couple of weeks ago I thought “jeeze-if-this-is-the-pace-of-my-new-full-time-working-mother-life-I-think-I-better-get-off-this-bronco-pronto-cause-I-just-can’t-keep-the-fuck-up…… !”  It was a treadmill. It was brutal. E and I passed each other over a bowl of something hot in the evening and coffee in the mornings.

But is was year-end and a million projects were being pushed to close to get the numbers on the books and I was going on holiday and we had a temp coming in to cover and I needed to hand over a clean patch for one week and no day is entirely predictable and the phone doesn’t stop and  I gotta walk  out that door at exactly 5:00pm to do my school run and it is a damn fast walk, then the tube, then a walk and then my heart pumps as I walk around the corner and I hear my daughters voice say “mama” in that singing lilt and I smile and we walk home playing games that are so far removed from my day job and sometimes she is tired and I have to carry her some and sometimes she skips all the way home telling me nothing about how she spent her day but asking to pick the violet blue flowers of the weeds that force their way through the cracks in the pavement.  Last week in the eaves of the church we could hear the cheeping of tiny chicks as they waited for their mother to return to the nest. 

My holiday timing wasn’t fantastic. I skipped a busy week at work to go to Umbria.  The dates were non-negotiable. We were celebrating E’s parents 30 years of married life. The entire reconstituted family was there and it was brilliant. 

Totally photographic. E’s sister got engaged. There was no major family fight. (tipsy tears by some after a couple of bottles of wine but those don’t count!).  I don’t drink wine but I did get cosy with a bottle of lemoncello. Discovered the next day that it goes even better with prosecco but I haven’t tried that yet. The lemoncello is in the freezer though.

We had planned to mission out every day to Florence, Rome, or Sienna but after the first day of driving we decided to slow the pace down and apart from seeking gelatti every day in the middle of siesta (when most places are shut), we did not stray too far from the lawn in front of the house. We ate, and sat, and played with the Chi, and I ploughed through the Book Thief by Markus Zusak, which was engaging, in a ‘Terry Pratchet meets Ann Frank’ kind of way. Holes, by Louis Sachar is more surprising. Sweeter.

It has taken me over a week to catch up with myself since and in that time summer finally crossed the channel.  It is still raining but life has returned to a manageable fast walk. I may even get round to calling some friends tomorrow rather than just skimming through facebook to check their status updates every evening.  I will read the backlog posts my favourites have blogged.  I will mow the lawn.  Stir the compost heap in the eager anticipation of a noticeable breakdown of the peels I threw in last week.  I will sit down to write about how my Chi changes almost daily so that a part of me waits eagerly each day to see how she will engage with me. What she will tell me. Ask me.

Yesterday I think we had a moment. We were walking to meet E at Waggas for Friday night dinner cause it is summer and the days are long and I wanted to feel part of the city for a little bit longer and she asked me if she was big.  Told me that some of the girls in her class say she is the smallest and she is a baby.  I had to crouch down to respond. Had to tell her that she was a big girl. That some girls are tall and some are short and that everyone is a little different.  My heart was in my throat.  My daughter might be feeling rejected.   I hate that thought, and I can’t protect her from it.

Today I snuck in an extra yoga class for the week. The most goddamn brilliant class I have done in months. Years even. I splashed out on a class at one of those uber trendy studios that have cropped up all over the place but damn this class had soul. The energy was entirely female and light and enlivened and I had one of those stretch beyond the limits of your knowledge and sweat it out there classes that leave you feeling loose and limber and alive.

And tonight we watched Juno and if you haven’t seen it yet go get it from blockbuster right now!  Quirky.

I guess I am going through a teenage phase in terms of literature and movies. Weird!

As for Zim the news remains constant.  Things are getting worse. There is less of everything and increasing fear.   We all wait and pray, watching from the sidelines helpless to change anything cause you just can’t negotiate with insanity. 

Day 166 2006, the weekend has landed.

Yesterday evening I kissed E goodbye and the Chi and I returned to London while he went off to a conference in some chateau outside Paris. 

London almost feels like some slightly shabby provincial town after spending four days in the centre of Paris - such am impressive city to explore, and the further from the touristy touristy bits we strayed the more impressive it was.

We stayed here (highly recommended) in the Bastille district - hip and trendy and wasted on us as we were in our hotel room by 7.30 on the nights we were not visiting my aunts.  

We liked our hotel.

We. walked. everywhere!

We stopped in interesting cafes for coffee a couple of times a day. (Always rich, smooth, black and unlike anything you can get from a random walk-in coffee place in London - why is that?)

We waved at most of the big attractions from a distance - except the Eiffel tower, where we got to stand under one of the legs after traipsing around the suburbs for an hour to find it.  

It was 32^o every day - no clouds, blue skies - too good for museums and galleries decided to save those for a winter visit!

We did not bother to shop although I  did do a walk through Channel on Rue Cambon (just for fun) and was completely uninspired by the clothes and the atmosphere - staid, black and boring - quite like my jeans I've decided.

We brought bread from a boulangerie, cheese from a fromagerie, pate de fois gras from a specialist pate store and a bottle of Ruinart from Nicolas for a picnic dinner in our hotel room.  We finished the bottle and had to keep the window open to get rid of the fungal smell of the cheese.

We spent lots of time in parks playing with the Chi.  

When we wanted to eat we would walk three blocks away from whatever road we were on, take the first road to the right and choose the third restaurant on the left  - ending up at three very different but equally enjoyable places - my favourite being this tiny place called Bouchard right opposite the Department of Geology at the University of Sorbonne. 

I visited both aunts and caught up on family gossip - my three way translation skills got rather stretched and I started making up words in Greek, English and French - somehow we got by. 

Best bits -  Ile St Louis, the coffee, the residential area around the Eiffel Tower, achy thighs at the end of the day, Jardin de Luxenborg, la Promenade plante, the tramp sleeping in the lavender in a private garden.

Worst bits - trying to feed the Chi on restaurant food, not getting to cemiterie du Pere Lachaise to pay homage to Jim Morrison, not having time for Centre du George Pomideu, not buying any shoes, lhaving to leave!