Reading orgy

Right before Christmas there was a moment of panic. Except for catching up on nine New Yorkers I had nothing to read. 

 And I did need to get to them to pass them on to Lydia who would pass them on to Rosalie. Rick's annual gift of a subscription to me, is a gift to the three of us.

Although I read in French, I still prefer English. Getting good English (anything that interests me is the definition of good, not necessarily a statement of quality) is not always easy.

My reading is eclectic. Anything from news on-line, history, biographies, mysteries, chic lit, etc.

When I felt thru the Christmas wrapping I thought one gift might be a box set of some DVD. I would have liked that but my joy at discovering three books by an author I just discovered and loved was even greater. It was even a nicer gift that he remembered that I enjoyed the author.

And there were two other books on my Kindle: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and Jody Picoult's latest.

I now have a reading orgy ahead of me. 

YES!!!!

The rock

 Not THE rock, but the same feeling of strength.

About 50 steps from my childhood home down a path flanked with small pines and a couple of oaks was my big rock.


A glacier, probably tired of carrying it, dropped it along with another one nearby.

When I say big rock, on one side it was at least double my height, but at the end of the path it was almost level with the dirt.

There were two stairs, a natural part of the rock. The top of the rock was about the size of a king-sized bed and on a 10° slope.

As a little girl I played around the two rocks. They were the western badlands, Greek temples, castles and anything else my imagination could dream up.

When I was 20 it was my sanity. My mother had insisted I break my engagement and the tension in the house was thicker than pillow stuffing.

I would take a book, my lunch and spend hours on the rock. I also planned my elopement. I couldn't write my future husband, because all my papers were scrutinized. Nor could I leave the house to get a letter to him.

This was the summer my 13-year old brother had his first girl friend, Sherry. Their song was "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," a strange choice but then he was 13. He played it incessantly. His bedroom window was such that the song filtered down to my rock sanctuary.  That I didn't break the record after the 1,000+ time hearing it was a testimony to my control.

There was a tree that shaded the rock, but still in July the surface was warm not just in temperature. It warmed my hopes.

Yes, I did elope.

Years later, when I discovered my childhood home had been torn down and replaced. The new owners showed me how they had filled in land around the two rocks, but leaving part of them exposed as a landscape feature.

As I walked around the surface, memories flushed themselves from where I had buried them. The marriage hadn't worked, but I survived. The rock gave me strength that summer that many decades later I still have.

Beverages

"It's like Republicans vs. Democrats," my husband said.

As I was preparing coffee for my French neighbor, I had commented that as a person raised as an American, I often found myself drinking tea as my Brit friends drank coffee defying the stereotypes. 

Or is it like Pepsi vs. Coke drinkers and nary the twain shall meet?

I thought of my beverage drinking history.

I came from a New England tea drinking family, although my grandmother did have one cup of instant Nescafe each morning. This was long before the time of gourmet teas and coffee.

Sometimes there would be a pot of Lipton tea made to the instructions given by Arthur Godfrey on his TV show.

As a child I was forced to drink milk, gagging it down with as much chocolate Bosco as they would allow me to put in it.

My first husband was a coffee drinker. I loved the smell. The taste...it was okay.

When my daughter was little and I had a roommate we bought International Coffees, thinking ourselves so sophisticated. Once we began to travel to Europe we realized the difference between the corporate product and reality.

My preferred beverage was Coke in place of all other beverages often swallowing one or two liters a day. When I quit I lost 25 pounds within a month...probably a connection, don't you think?

I then have substituted tea: green, black and tisanes (herbal).

My daughter, who never drank either tea or coffee, spent her 17th year of high school in Germany and came back a coffee guzzler. On a recent visit, she introduced me to mocchinos at La Noisette down the street. Yum. Rick and I indulge as we people-watch on marché day.

There is something though...if a coffee drinker wants a cup of coffee nothing else will do. The same can be said for a tea drinker wanting tea. (We won't discuss Coke). 
 
The difference between beverage and political preference is there is no pejorative applied to those that choose another beverage than the one you like. This is a good thing.

Books

The Guardian published an op-ed by a woman whose mother-in-law gave away her books that was storing for her. Read here 

For someone who reads constantly the idea of being bookless is stomach.grabbing anxiety, yet I am no longer a collector.

As a child, buying a book was a reward for good behavior. I haunted the children's room of the Reading Public Library shown above. Now it is the town hall and the town library has been reopened in the converted Highland Street School.

When I lived in Stuttgart, the 7th Corp. Army base had a really good library.

Living with another couple for years in Boston, all of us were avid readers. We had the habit of going to Harvard Square Friday nights for dinner, chatting about the week's activities past and to come, listening to street musicians and then buying books for the week. It was almost an unbreakable requirement.

As we renovated a Boston town house, one room was floor to ceiling books and our bedrooms were full of books. When I moved,  I had less space so my choice of what books to keep was limited but not my reading amount.

I stopped regularly at the local Parker Hill branch of the Boston Public Library. The staff became friends.

My daughter's first job was at the Brookline Library and when I picked her up after work, I would go early to browse and take out what I wanted to read.

The American library in Geneva feeds my reading habit. The annual membership is quickly amortized in comparison to having books sent from the US or UK. I'm never without a book or many at my fingertips.

In Argelès, however, now that my good friend with an English bookstore has died, the choice of what to read locally is more of a challenge. A Kindle does provide book security even if it lacks the sensual touch and smell of paper.

Not since I left the house with the library have I had the desire to keep most books. Once read, there are too many people who are always looking for something to read in their mother tongue. 

Saying that, there are books I've given away and bought more than once such as Alice Walker's Horses Make the Landscape More Beautiful. I've bought it at least four times. I need to buy it again.

There are books I will never, ever give away such as the Book of Kells bought in Ireland.

However, the thought of someone else giving away my books is horrifying. 

If I still had copies of Beverly Gray mysteries, the Landmark series, Thorton W. Burgess stories or Summer at Buckhorn, I would become homicidal if someone gave them away without my permission.  As for the later, I see there are six copies on Amazon for $295, an amount I cannot justify paying. 
  
There's a New England cookbook used by my grandmother and me today when I want to capture the tastes of the past. I would try and save it in a fire. 

My childhood books were given away by mother without my permission when she moved from a house to an apartment. At the time if she had asked, I would have not been able to take them.

Still I understand the frustration of the writer of the op-ed piece. She was dealing with other mother-in-law and marriage issues. 

As a parent of an adult child and having friends of parents of adult children, I understand the desire not to be a storage shed forever for an offspring's possessions.

On this longest night of the year, I am almost ready to climb under the covers with a mystery that I'm half way thru and hope I can stay awake.It is not a book I will keep once my husband has read it too. But, it will be my decision and that makes the difference.

kids

I'll never be a grandmother.

Although I would have liked to be, to have my daughter produce grandchildren on another continent that I might see every two years, well that's a lot to ask of her.

However, that doesn't stop me from enjoying other peoples' kids and their stories.

Example 1
One little girl, who at five was speaking three languages, has always been adorable. When visiting at three, she grabbed something off the table and her mother, who is a stickler for manners did the "why it is good to share" lecture.

The girl headed toward the stairs. "I'm going to my room and think about sharing."

She was back a half of cup of tea later. "I've thought about sharing," she said. "I don't want to."

Example 2
The same little girl had her mother worried because the child was sticking pins in her dolls. Images of voodoo abounded UNTIL the mother learned the child was practicing acupuncture on her doll.

Example 3
A four-year old, also bilingual, although that has nothing to do with it, is convinced that taking a bath gives him supernatural powers.

Example 4
The same four-year old believes that putting body lotion on keeps the bad dinosaurs away. I suspect the mother of handing out propaganda on this believing dinosaur protection is more interesting than preventing dry sky.

She also has had little trouble to get her kids to eat anything because she fed them grownup food from the start and has them cooking with her. If the kid cooks it, he is more apt to eat it.

Example 5
Two little boys are no longer afraid of monsters under the bed once their mother put up a "No Monsters Allowed" sign on their flat door.

Example 6
Mother: I don't want to hear another word out of you tonight.
Small girl: I love you

Baking

Because there are so many good boulangeries in walking distance,  I seldom bake. They do it as well or better than I do.

For many Christmases, my then housemate baked up a storm, filling the house with good smells and our tummies with yummy cookies and brownies. http://viewsfromeverywhere.blogspot.fr/2016/12/the-cookie-jag-or.html

At the moment I'm about 600 Kilometers from said housemate, although I know she's been hard at work in the kitchen.

Thus, today and yesterday I was making chocolate chip, peanut butter, and a pie dough bird cookies (cookie cutter that has been in my family since the early 1900s. 

Today it was raisin/cinnamon bagels. Bagels are hard to come by and if found they are plain.

We have invited friends for breakfast tomorrow. We are tired of the typical dinner entertaining, and Rick makes a mean eggs and bacon.

I also made our own juice (apple, strawberry, kiwi).

That's it. 

Our bûche de noël will come from our local baker. He will do it better than I ever could. And his croissants, various breads, desserts are better to.

But it was fun.

Bring on the rest of the season.

 

Readin', Ritin' and

One of my daily joys is waking in the morning and reading in bed next to my husband as we sip tea until maybe nine give or take. 

No rush to get to work. 

We are gentled into the day.

As writers we share bits of what we read to each other.

Yesterday I read this to him from the Sept. 12 New Yorker by Burkhard Bilger.

"They came to Cologne from every corner of the county, pulling their past  behind them like rattling oxcarts. They came because they couldn't sleep at night and their marriages had foundered. Because they'd lived in the same town all their lives, yet never felt at home. Because they were undone by loud noises and tight spaces, uneasy with intimacy and desperate with solitude. Because they were seventy years old and still waiting for their lives to begin."

What strong, visual writing.

Later he read to me from Anne Hunt's Modus. "Writers lie."  She added they invent.

Sometimes his readings are longer than mine. It depends on how much we get caught up in the words.

As writers we manipulate words, sentences, paragraphs until we express our thoughts in the strongest possible way.

I'm in the process of a final edit of my novel. So far, I've cut over 1,000 words. There's no counting substitutions and rearrangements. 

We do readin' and 'writin' but no 'rithmetic.

Decorating

Tree ornaments are more than ornaments. They carry the memories of all the other trees where they've been hung.

When I was little we had a Christmas ornament, a delicate, glass pink nest in gold wire with a bird. One year we dropped it. The glass shattered, but we still put it on the tree each year.

Fast forward to adulthood when I lived with a couple. The required ornament was a Styrofoam sputnik, made by my friend in 3rd grade. I hear rumors that it is still required for their tree every year. I am not sure if the ornament has hit 50 yet or not but it is. Its ugliness is overruled by its memories

Our memory ornaments were painted by my daughter and I when she was three. She is approaching 50. Her attempts still must be on my tree. I gave her one of them for her own tree. Later on she was able to make more sophisticated ornaments. Those, too, go up.

And there is an ornament made by the daughter of a former colleague when she was nine. That too, is a must have.

Llara embroidered Christmas Stockings for us when she was at Boston Latin High School. The one I was originally to have my Japanese chin, Albert, peed on. Although it washed up nicely, she decided that she would keep the one that never had pee.

And she knew Rick needed his own.

 As a relatively new couple we are trying to start our own holiday traditions. It includes putting on Christmas music, Santa hats and decorating the tree. We will eventually seek our own memory ornaments.

I don't put lights on our tree...no frustration. I don't put on real candles as I did when I lived in Germany. I'm chicken. Some years I put cotton on the branches to look like snow, but that isn't a tradition.

This year, like our first year when we take the tree down, we will sweep up the needles, lovingly thankful for the memories that they brought us. We will carry them to the river and return them to nature.

Jokingly I refer to the tree as a Solstice Shrub. What county, is not the name, but the joy of creating a memory each year.

The darkest night

Many people say that they hate this time of year with the short days and long nights.

I love it.

The dark wraps me in memories, good and bad for the year ending .

2016 started out with chemo and radiation, weakness and frustration.

Then came the summer months with travel, spending time with friends and ever-increasing strength, not unlike a harvest.

Now when I walk the village streets I smell the smoke from fireplaces. Inside people are cooking dinner. Christmas trees line the streets and decorations abound.

The cold nips at my cheeks. When I reenter my home, hot cups of tea, PJs, books, snuggling with my husband, await. An emotional comfort envelops me.

We have brought in the tree, a real one.  We will decorate it before the solstice. In pagan cultures the tree was a symbol of immortality. It doesn't tell me that I am immortal, but that life is immortal. Only a real tree can do that, not plastic.

The winter solstice eventually morphed into a symbol of Christianity, the birth of Christ, the birth of a new year.

I do not share the pagan fear that without a ritual the light will never return. I know too much about astronomy.

I do know the dark is cloaking the old year and carrying it away with my blessing and I await the return of the light bit by bit each day celebrating that I have experienced both.

It is the circle of life which I am celebrating.

Aging

This blog was inspired by three wonderful ladies of a certain age, all who sing the praises of being of the troismème (3rd) stage in life.

I had been wandering by La Noisette, the local tea room, when I spied them. I joined in. The conversation was filled with wisdom and more important laughter.

We've learned so much. Despite different backgrounds and nationalities, much of our emotional experiences were the same.

Here's some thoughts that were triggered by the discussion.

 

Never Trust Anyone over 30

When I was 20 I believed this. Now I'm 30x2.5. I think I've been trustworthy at least some of the time since passing 30.

Stereotypes

When I was young I thought grownup women had to cut their hair short, drive a station wagon and have a white washer and dryer.

My hair is short but because of chemo chic. My washer is white because it came with the flat. I don't have a dryer and I DON'T HAVE A STATION WAGON. Also unlike when I was little if I want to eat ice cream in our car, I can.

I do not wear sensible shoes of my grandmother's generation.

However, as far as dressing one's age in the 50s that has gone by the wayside. Just check out any retirement community.

Act Your Age

So many times I heard that when I was growing. It seemed like I was either too young or too old for whatever I wanted to do.

I always wondered what nine acted like. Now, I wonder how someone in their 70s should act. At one point after seeing a mother and daughter with the mother hobbling along with a cane, I said I wanted one.

"Why?" she asked.

"When I'm on the bus, I will see a handsome young man and I can poke him in his cute little butt."

She's forbidden me canes.  Something about acting my age and not having enough French to get me out of jail should I be arrested.

I won't tell her there's a cane in my closet. At my age it is my choice just as most things are.

Miles to go before I sleep

We never know how long we have to live. Statistics for our age group do tend to suggest another 40 or 50 years is unlikely, but still each day brings new opportunities to live fully with all our senses in some stage of ability.

The last stanza of the Frost poem, "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" sums it up. Life is lovely and dark can be beautiful. Depth is living to the fullest using all our senses. My promise to myself and those I love is to cherish each moment with them, for them.

 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

I have promises yet to keep and hopefully miles before I sleep.

Scents and sounds

 Photo of the church and marché taken earlier in the year.



Waking to church bells and garbage men slamming the containers to the ground.






Rolling wheels of the street cleaner's cart.

The bubble of the tea kettle in the kitchen followed by the water being poured into a mug.

A flush of the toilet and the shower running.

The pop of the toaster.

The merchants setting up the marché.

The smell of roasting chicken for sale.

A whiff of bread from the bakeries.

Pine tree smells from the trees lining the street for the holiday.

Greetings from friends we pass.

Footsteps and chatter of the people walking thru the marché.

The sheer joy of being here is endless.

I am alive.

This was me

This was me 75 years ago. Strange to think I've been in existence that long. When something refers to an antique from the 50s, or the 60s, 70s, or 80s as distance past I kinda think of those times as a couple of days ago.

I've lived thru

• WWII
• Korean War
• Vietnam War
• Too many undeclared wars to mention

Presidents:

• Roosevelt
• Truman
• Eisenhower
• Kennedy
• Nixon
• Ford
• Carter
• Regan
• Clinton
• 2 Bushes
• Obama
• Trump

We had one of the first TVs in town with a microscopic screen and lots of neighbors coming in each night. My mother served popcorn. I could smell it from my bed.

We've gone from party lines to everyone carrying their own phone, paper bank books to paying by computer.

Snail mail to email to sms on phones and internet

Flying across the globe has become no big thing, although very annoying with the airlines these days.

I've lost too many people and added many wonderful people to my life.

As they say I've lived, loved, lost, loved again and celebrate that I have been given the gift of so many years.

Kissinger, a travesty

Today I sent this letter to the CEO and Communications Director on the Nobel Committee.

Mattias.Fyrenius@nobelmedia.se  Maria.vonKonow@nobelmedia.se

The travesty of having this man, who is responsible for so many deaths, speaking about peace was more than I could stand.

*

Dear Sir:

I am asking how you could possibly invite Henry Kissinger to speak on peace. The man should be in the Hague as a war criminal, although the US is not part of the court.

He believed Washington’s D.C.’s “credibility” would be undermined if they did not follow Nixon’s policy of overthrowing governments to kill the “virus” that existed there. Virus referred to independent nationalism.

Kissinger described the first 9/11 “nothing of very great consequence” and also said on June 20th, 1970 when he famously said, “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.”

I suspect that it was of great “consequence” to the thousands that died at the hands of the replacement dictator in Chile.

And his quote on killing in Vietnam/Cambodia to “anything that flies or anything that moves” is like a call for genocide.

In 1973 Kissinger called a high level nuclear alert  to warn Russia not to interfere in the ongoing Israeli-Arab war. There is no need to say how the unconditional support of Israel, not just under Kissinger, has reduced chances of solutions.

And there is this “That Kissinger, along with Nixon, presided over the bombing of Cambodia, and had done so since March of 1969, is now well known. Less so is that the worst of his bombing started in February 1973, a month after Washington, Hanoi, and Saigon signed the Paris Peace accords. In 1972, the U.S. dropped, in total, 53,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia. Between February 8 and August 15, 1973, that number increased nearly five fold and targeted not just enemy “sanctuaries” in the country’s east but the whole country.” Salon

Here are 10 of his quotes:

1. Soviet Jews: “The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”

2. Bombing Cambodia: “[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn't want to hear anything about it. It's an order, to be done. Anything that flies or anything that moves.”
3. Bombing Vietnam: "It's wave after wave of planes. You see, they can't see the B-52 and they dropped a million pounds of bombs ... I bet you we will have had more planes over there in one day than Johnson had in a month ... each plane can carry about 10 times the load of World War II plane could carry." 
4. Khmer Rouge: “How many people did (Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister Ieng Sary) kill? Tens of thousands? You should tell the Cambodians (i.e., Khmer Rouge) that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand in the way. We are prepared to improve relations with them. Tell them the latter part, but don’t tell them what I said before.” (Nov. 26, 1975  meeting with Thai foreign minister)
5. Dan Ellsberg: “Because that son-of-a-bitch—First of all, I would expect—I know him well—I am sure he has some more information---I would bet that he has more information that he’s saving for the trial.  Examples of American war crimes that triggered him into it…It’s the way he’d operate….Because he is a despicable bastard.” (Oval Office tape, July 27, 1971)
6. Robert McNamara: “Boohoo, boohoo … He’s still beating his breast, right? Still feeling guilty. ” (Pretends to cry, rubbing his eyes.)
7. Assassination:  “It is an act of insanity and national humiliation to have a law prohibiting the President from ordering assassination.” (Statement at a National Security Council meeting, 1975)
8. Chile: “I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.” 
9. Illegality-Unconstitutionality: “The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.” (from March 10, 1975 meeting with Turkish foreign minister Melih Esenbel in Ankara, Turkey)
10. On His Own Character: “Americans like the cowboy … who rides all alone into the town, the village, with his horse and nothing else … This amazing, romantic character suits me precisely because to be alone has always been part of my style or, if you like, my technique.” (November 1972 interview with Oriana Fallaci)

And that you would allow this despicable human being on your stage negates the purpose of the peace and places into doubt the work of the Nobel Prize Committee.

Sincerely,

Donna-Lane NELSON

*The dove is from the Argentinian program for the surrender of firearms.  It was not part of the letter.

Delivery?

This is twice now that Amazon delivery services have failed to deliver a package.

The first was when I had Tiddlywinks shipped (don't ask) from the UK. I had repeated notices in my mailbox even though we were sitting a few feet away at the alleged time of delivery. I eventually tried to have it delivered to an alternate address, the tearoom which is like an extension of my own home a few doors down.

They said they would deliver it on a certain day. They never did. I did get a refund.

Now I found a Christmas gift for a friend. The first time it never arrived, so I reordered.

Supposedly they tried to deliver Dec. 1 but there was no notice and I have no more information on line. There was no notice.

I am sure Amazon get the package to the expediter, and that's where it goes wrong. It doesn't matter. I don't have what I want.

I will reorder this one more time because I think my friend would enjoy it. If it doesn't work, I will never order from Amazon again.

Mistaken identity

 Sometimes an English word triggers a French one and vice versa.

Two men were putting out a warning sign which at a glance I misread as menstruation. Men don't menstruate, nor do warning signs go up about it, although a man living in a house with several pre-menstrual women might see the merit.. 

I laughed at my error and took a picture.

"It isn't about measuring clothes" one of the men said. "It means surveying. But it is also what a tailor does."

I explained that I had quickly mistaken it for menstruation, regles. We chatted a few minutes before my bus arrived.

Then later on the bus I half glanced at the sign.

I was transported back to university when I was reading Ulysses or rather not reading Ulysses. I hated that book. Very seldom did I resort to Cliff Notes in place of reading the assignment, but there are limits.

I bought Cliff notes and half a century later I still haven't read Ulysses. If I live another half century, I doubt that I will read the book.

Now I wonder if Cliff Notes has produced a book called Beware of Pickpockets.

then and now

Until I was 15 all my dental work was done by a dentist who did not believe in Novocaine.  I bore it bravely because my mother would let me buy a book if I were good.

They were part of the Landmark Series which wrote about the Tudors, WWII, and all sorts of interesting subjects. With that as a reward I wouldn't have uttered a baby moan no matter how much it hurt.

However, when I told her I was uncomfortable with the dentist because when he dried his hands he did it on the napkin over my breasts.

He must have been desperate because breasts were almost nonexistent.We changed dentists. As much of a protective mother that she was, she never approached the dentist. Agony was over. I was allowed to buy a book.

With one exception all my dental work has been pain free.

One in Switzerland made me go thru 12 appointments for a root canal. I was new in the country and stupidly assumed that the treatment methods were different. When I finally sought out another dentist I learned that the one who thought a root canal procedure should be eternal was known in the community for being a bad dentist.

Then there was the wonderful Scottish dentist who saved my wobbly teeth. For all the appointments we had from then until his retirement, he told jokes as he worked on me, pain-free. He would always say how surprised he was that his treatment to save my teeth worked. He had warned me at the time, he wasn't sure, but it was worth the effort.

He also did it one miserable sitting (he told me I would hate him, but I didn't, don't, won't). Because I need antibiotics because of rheumatic fever as a child, the dentist thought repeated doses would not be as good as one mega one.

In Switzerland I seek out North American trained hygienists. Cleaning is a relatively new procedure and for years foreign dental hygienists were almost guaranteed work. The newly trained Swiss ones are okay but not as good.

My new dentist who took over from the Scot, is young bilingual, and caring. I had a small cavity.

What a surprise when I looked at his ceiling. It was a screen with whales, seals, penguins and birds playing in the sea.

"It helps with my troublesome kids," he told me.

It helped me. I was almost sorry when he finished. 

I'm ashamed

I'm ashamed.

I've been complaining that we can't get back to our second home in Argelès-sur-mer, France fast enough, even if it is my commitments in Geneva keeping us here.

We live in a beautiful studio in Geneva near good friends and family of choice. We have more than we need for comfort:

• Washer/dryer
• Dishwasher
• Wifi
• TV
• Electric tea kettle
• Toaster
• Microwave
• Iron

When we go outside into the landscaped garden we can see the Jura. Go beyond the gate, we can see the Alps. In five minutes by foot we are at the lake. 

The Aga Khan and a Saudi Prince or two are in the neighborhood, although we've never met them. 

Add in excellent health insurance and a car that runs well even if it were a cat or dog it would have died long ago of old age. It is a pretty green. 

This is NOT suffering.

In ASM, we have all the appliances above except for the dryer. Our two-bedroom apartment is in a 400-year old building on what is considered the most beautiful street in the village. 

I am 75 steps from the movie theatre and can walk to everything I need. 

Our art work has been lovingly chosen. 

We can walk to the beach in 20 minutes.

The French mountains have a different beauty from the Swiss, but a beauty. My husband is in love with Canigou.

My friends are artists and writers and good people of multi nationalities. They have learned the secret of living well on many different levels.

This morning I woke under my comfy duvet. I flipped on the TV to a documentary of the homeless in the US by accident.

One in four was a veteran, the narrator said. They thought they were serving a country that cared. 

Many of the families had been caught in a jobless trap. As one man said, he lost his job, his wife lost both of hers and they tried and tried but weren't able to find anything. 

So many had done everything right. They weren't mentally ill or addicts.

Their problems are not when they can get to their second home. They worry about:

• Washing clothes
• Taking showers
• Eating
• Illness
• Physical safety
• Finding work (hard without a fixed address)
• Not freezing to death in the winter 
• Where to sleep

I felt ashamed of my almost sulkiness. And even if I still want to go south, start decorating for Christmas, I know that I could as easily be any of those homeless people if I hadn't had the luck to be in the right places at the right times. 

So today I will go to the dentist, pay some bills at the multimat (Switzerland did away with checks decades ago) grateful that I have the money to do those things.

I will eat half a chocolate out of our Advent calendar, leaving half for my husband who will be home tomorrow.

I've already had my nice long hot shower. 

I will write on my computer. 

I am not smug at my situation, I am grateful that I was one of the luckier ones. I feel ashamed that I didn't appreciate what I have more and that besides donations I can't change an uncaring society.

Dinner mystery

What fun!

A mystery performed in the middle of dinner. It was all centered around the death of Marilyn Monroe with the actors chatting to the dinners, always staying in character as someone Marilyn really knew. Great improv...when a man at our table sniffed the actor's drink, the actor sniffed the dinner's.

Each table had part to play as they ate their starters and beef dinner. One man was even tapped to be Frank Sinatra as the audience sang "New York New York" with help from a distributed word sheet. And each table had information to read about Marilyn's death. 

But the murder came at the end and we had to vote. Those who voted correctly were in a drawer for a prize.

The troop was from Quebec and mingled with the crowd as themselves during coffee.

The program was run by Carpe Diem (a great philosophy for living), a village group that sponsors activities. Can't wait until the next.

News

I've been a news junkie for years.

However, I've just unfriended a number of news and faux news sites on Facebook.

I can't take the vitriol on either side, the immediate labeling cutting off all chances of a solution.

After the election fiasco, I trust none of them.

This doesn't mean I won't read news or listen to news.

My preferred sites are:

• rt.com
• Al Jazeeera
• France 24
• BBC
• The Guardian
• Le Monde
• Washington Post less now after the Amazon guy took over
• Tribune de Genève

And I will go into other nationality sites in Israel, Palestine, India, China, Japan, etc. depending on the issue. I just need them in French or English, and if desperate I will fight with the German.

I think I need cute kitten and puppy articles for a while. Maybe I'll be able to reduce my blood pressure medicine.

adventure

J and I tried for four "adventures" a year. We've done some great ones and some silly ones including:

• Nine days in Iceland where we tasted an iceberg
• A night in a château with only the servants
• A trip to concentration camp

But life intervened and this past weekend we took our first in over a year. This was to Freiburg, Germany.

Our adventures always start with breakfast at the local bakery.

We pay for our  adventures from the pouch. We throw money in it when we decide not to go to lunch or out for coffee for example. When we can't decide who owes what it goes into the pouch...

The objective was the Christmas market. The architecture, the buzz of things like a giant bubble blower were all part of the enjoyment.

Our BnB was on the Strassenbahn line and a day pass and ten minutes travel into the city center eliminated all parking place problems.

As always I lit a candle for my beloved stepmom in the Cathedral. Then I set down and while I watched the flickering I felt such a sense of peace. The next day we went back for the organ concert.

Good food and wine served in the typical green-stemmed glasses were a must along with the obligatory afternoon Coffee and Kuchen. Ours was a Himbeere Crumble.

I don't know we accidentally crossed the border back into Switzerland but a hotel hunt turned into another adventure within our adventure and we ended up at a great.

The next day our goal was an antique fair at the Paul Klee Museum in Bern.

Both of us were amused to find a bronze baby shoe and explain to the dealer that in the 40s and 50s in the US it was normal to bronze your baby's first shoes. Usually it was the first baby. I no longer have mine.

And then it was home to Geneva along the lake with oh and ah views of the Alps.

Now for the next adventure we will. . .