Comrade Cow

I found this photo from Gogo’s birthday party and had to add it to our first blog entry. I hope it brings some sushine to your cold winter day!

Well hi there my friend Nater!! And, incidentally, Gwummie, Mom and Dad too…

Although I do agree that your lines are far too far and few between, I promise not to breathe even a whisper of complaint when we get a knee-slapper like your latest adventure. Zowie, what an image!!! Tonight I’ll be dreaming of you shaking your paint-covered booty in a neon-melon closet nightclub with your neighbors looking on.

I can’t wait to tell the boys about it… They miss you and talk about you all the time. Course that may just have something to do with the fact that the one of the photo of you on our screensaver is the one of you making that inimitable face with Jabba the Hut or whichever eighties plastic fantastic monster it was that you’d just rescued from MY 409 bath…

Kinda really has a way of staying with you, that photo, especially if you’re a boy under 9.

Speaking of the boyz…. I have been having some adventures of my own lately. Yesterday, all three kids were scheduled for haircuts after school, which turned into a surprisingly complicated and tearful event. It all started when Max, unable to decide what to DO with his hair, began to panic. To save time while Max dithered over his existential hairstyle dilemma, (I’m not kidding. We looked at magazines. Magazines!) I thought I’d have Xavi take his place in the chair, but then Xavi collapsed into tears of frustration when I vetoed his plan to become SuperMullet boy. You haven’t seen him in a while, Nater, but his hair is long and blond and and a little curly at the ends. More Little Lord Fauntleroy than mega cool surfer/ hockey star, right? And to make matters worse, all he wanted to do was cut his bangs shorter and leave it reeeeeeeaaaaly long in back. SuperMullet, I’m telling you.

So now we have Xav, blotchy and whimpering resentfully in one corner of the hair salon and Max drooping tragically over a magazine full of male hair models in the other and I’m thinking thank God for Margaux whose love for the hair salon is only equaled by her obsession with lip gloss. Only Margaux turns out to be Steeeeeeerrrrrrrrrike Three. Turns out that if her boys are going to cry in the hairdresser’s chair, then she is NO WAY going to be outdone for drama.

In the end, we got three darling haircuts and an end to the tears and hairy melodrama despite the fact that the haircuts looked more like what I wanted than what they wanted. (Max had ultimately decided he wanted curls, perhaps trying to outdo Xav’s choice of SuperMullet. Margaux wanted a neon green streak, but finally settled for sparkly hairspray.) And I, desperate for low light and a little peace and quiet (and a stiff drink or three, thank you very much), thought up a new game:

Finally home safe from the hairdresser’s, we pulled the curtains closed against our own Swiss version of this obnoxious drizzly rain and played ‘Power Outage in a Terrible Storm’. We lit every candle in the house and listened to the imaginary wind howling in vicious gales outside, put on the Crepes Party machine and, while the kids stuffed themselves with chocolate crepes, I read Little House in the Big Woods aloud. And then they went to bed. The End. Thank God.

Actually, it was a fabulous night, and I wish you all could have been here with us. Next time, you’ll have to come, and bring the applesauce with you.

…but I’m okay with that. I get a certain twisted joy from giving up to this obnoxious rain. This morning, the rain was definitely slapstick. It saturated everything to the quick, which is entirely frustrating to anyone trying to stay dry for sure. Thanks to a little forethought and American know how I showed up for work a sloppy dog, but changed into my crispy dry clothes I keep in my backpack and my shoes I keep here at work (I wear my clip in shoes with no socks, they can’t slip off the pedals) and start my day like a spring chicken.

I hope yr well guys, thinking of you often but dropping you lines far too few between. I’m doing well, in spite of an increasingly mounting to do list at my house that is strangling me like a python. I wouldn’t have it any other way I suppose. Here’s a little peek into my home renovation: Yesterday I tore my kitchen to shreds. Before it was just a dirty kitchen, with some painting to do here and there. That was, until I started opening up the cupboards and taking out the drawers and saw was was inside. I kept asking my cats, “How do people live in such filth?” Some would suggest that the previous family was poor or only renters, though I disagree. Cleaning your filth transcends social boundaries. Even the most impoverished can go buy a fucking bottle of 409. I will spare you the exact details of what I found in there, though let’s just say that if I came across a human finger I would not have raised an eyebrow. So the I decided to take all the cupboards off for a massive re-painting, and since I was doing that, I might as well take off all the mismatched and broken knobs to be replaced later by those silver handles that I think look really cool (cheap too!), and this would have been easy if all the knobs weren’t rusted beyond hope. So then, removing those (there were 20 of them) involved hammering off the old knob, and twisting the screw back and forth with a pair of pliers until they just snapped off. Then I could Spackle the drawers and prepare them for primer. Because I’m a lousy perfectionist I spent the better half of the day on my hands and knees jamming primer into even the farthest corners of the cupboards, covering every inch, disguising every forgotten nook with a sheer, bright white that says- clean. And since I had the primer out, I decided it was time to take everything out of my closet (everything I put in there just two days earlier) and painting over the violent neon melon color the previous tenants thought would be a good idea. Since this was such a small space I decided to strip down to my boxers, good thing too because I kept running into the walls, and getting paint all over me. I looked like Goldie Hawn circa Laugh-In gut with gibberish instead of flowers and ‘PEACE’. Also, I finally set up my stereo system and some MGMT came on (check ‘em out, they’re the hits!), so I couldn’t help but shake some. So, all these elements came together as I was standing on a stool and rolling the piece of wall over a doorway: covered in paint smears, pouring sweat, nothing but boxers on and shaking my ass like a Polaroid when I noticed two of my neighbors outside my large picture window snickering with their kids. We all had a good laugh about it (thankfully they have a good sense of humor) and it was a good way to meet some the more elusive neighbors as well, since after I put on some jeans and a t-shirt and came out to say hi, others came out and introduced themselves and pretty soon we our very first gossip corner meeting! Wat fun. Love my neighbors so far, they are good people who love applesauce. I have three jars of amazing homemade applesauce in my fridge right now. Mmmm. So, slowly but surely and not without funny incidents like this, I’m checking chores off the to do list and things are coming together. In the end, I will have a house that I refurbished and decorated and I am looking forward to this. Can’t wait to show you after it’s all put together.

So, it’s getting busy at work now and I’ll leave you now. Again, hope your well and busy with all the good stuff!
Much love, your friend, Nater

Am absolutely mortified at all the lovely things you’ve posted about me for the ENTIRE world to see… But, just in case anyone who isn’t a) our mom, b) doesn’t know us and c) isn’t being paid to read our, what was it, uninformed political rantings and parenting expertise, happens upon this blog by sheer coincidence, I’d like all three of you to know that my sister is totally biased and overly prone to exaggeration and flattery. At the same time, you should also know that most of what she says is the Gods’ honest truth!

I do so wish, for the sake of our three dear readers, and not solely for that elusive cool-factor that every thirty-something mom living in a remote swiss village so desperately needs, that I could tell a more palpitating tale about my recent election. Sadly, there were no smear campaigns, no hateful ethnocentric slogans spray-painted on the side of the barn, no cow-pats left threateningly on my doorstep, no indiscreet skeletons inopportunely dragged out of my closets. (Just for the record, the skeletons are there, but for the moment they’re staying put.)

I did have a toothless older man up at one of the mountain refuges who took on the role of campaign manager and who, I’m sure, did wonders for my reputation with the locals by making all kinds of dramatic promises for change and progress and reliability on my behalf. I do fervently hope that I am worthy of his support, and fully intend to thank him as soon as I figure out which of the Perrin families he belongs to. I think he’s a Perrin. Or maybe a Gex-hyphenated something or other, although they generally come from the town down the road. I’m pretty sure he’s not an Avanthey or an Avanthay. Oh well, we still have a week before the cable-car closes; it’s probably just simpler to hop on Petra’s bike and go see him in person. Letters are so much simpler than body armor though; I’m still a bit of a novice on a mountain bike. Impressively, even Yaya’s reclusive father, the most stalwart and unbending in a family of known political atheists, actually voted for me too. He didn’t go so far as to actually come down off HIS mountain to do so, but the very fact that he actually voted is really quite a big deal.

No, I have to say that running for political office here is in many ways much gentler and simpler, and yet so much more fraught than I ever thought running for office could ever be. Faced with tricky questions about forestry management or revamping the expensive and archaic electricity supply to town, my running-mates simply advised me to say I don’t know anything about it but I’m confident that I’ll deal with it capably whatever it happens to be. I gather people here will generally put their faith in you or they won’t, mostly based on how friendly and well-liked you are in general, how friendly and well-liked the past 5 generations of your family happened to be and whether or not you dump your trash on Sundays.

I have to say, I am really rather proud of myself, given that being an American in Europe generally puts you at the ‘let’s invite her if the Klingon couple can’t come’ level of popularity, and given the fact that I’m an upstart newcomer that’s only been here 14 years and still can’t tell her Perrins from her Berras, and given the fact that I married into a family where the patriarch is Dutch but sports a Portugese last name and is often a little ‘proud’ for the locals liking, and given the fact that I’m always getting caught doing something inappropriate on a Sunday and, most of all, because I really don’t have the first clue about forestry management.

Anyway, I do apologize for not answering your last blog much sooner. I was going to sit down at the computer and take the time to write, but the kids were freaking out over their Bionicles (an entire, ranting, blog-entry possibility unto itself, entitled ‘The World’s Most Horrible Toy’) so I decided to whisk us off to go see the Gorges de Durnand. This turned out to be a spectacular series of 14 waterfalls rushing in a raging torrent through precipitous hundred-feet high granite cliffs, which one views by climbing hundreds of slippery wooden steps fixed, shockingly, right onto the sheer rock face. When I got myself and the three year old safely up the stairs and discovered, much to my relief, that the 6 and 8 year olds had also made it safely to the top, I decided that another 40 minute drive to Chamonix for huge bowls of hot chocolate with massive floating islands of whipped cream on the top was absolutely not a luxury, it was a necessity.

Thanks for all your love and support; I could never have done it without you. Oh – and if you wanted to throw me a ticker-tape parade, I’m thinking that might be a nice American tradition to introduce here….

The Gorges de Durnand

Chamonix