Let's get this day STARTED!

GOOD MORNING, YOUGUYS! Saturday, 9 a.m. here, and absolutely nothing new has happened since I've last seen you so who knows WHAT blog-puke is going to come out today.

So we've got this high-up tiny window in our bathroom that is too small for a curtain but too poorly placed to prevent our back neighbors from being able to see in, and this has caused Wolf some consternation. (I forget it's there; also, I'm shameless.) As a result, I ordered some frosted window film that I will attempt to cut and stick on there today. I'm not handy but I am OCD, so this is both the best and worst task I could ever assign myself. It's got all the elements of the perfect storm: cleaning, measuring, cleaning again, straightening edges, lining things up, cleaning again, getting rid of bubbles/that one random hair that came out of nowhere/dust - then stepping back and seeing it's not perfect and tearing it all down and starting the process over again. There may well be a lot of cursing in our bathroom today, and I am excited about it.

Then of course it will be Casserole Prep Time, then Get on Train with Casserole time, then PARTY WITH CASSEROLE TIME! I'm super good at parties because I am really awkward initially and then as soon as I'm comfortable I lose my filter which makes everybody else awkward and then I try to recover the situation by changing the subject and I'm pretty sure it always works.

Time to win the day!

Big hugs and lots of love,
Esss

On stuffed mice, Southwold, and road trips in France

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. - Rilke 

OMGYOUGUYS. So much has happened these past few weeks:

1. I made the world's most terrifying taxidermy mouse. He is my mangy little treasure and clearly the stuff that nightmares are made of:

I love him so much.

Also, I'm supposed to cut the wires now that he's stiffened, but I can't bring myself to do it. I suspect they're the only thing keeping him upright. (He's so jazz.)

2. A weekend in France indicated that spring arrives there sooner than here. We CYCLED. In the SUN. And we didn't die or need a jacket or ANYthing:

If you follow the lane to where it winds around to the right, you'll come to our back garden!* 

3. We also spent a weekend in Southwold! I'd like to say it's because I can't get enough of coastal England, but really it was because I bought an armchair on eBay and didn't notice until it was too late that it was listed as 'collection only.' 

'But think about how much money I saved!' she justifies, as she reserves a room in a seafront b&b. 

Luckily, Southwold has everything an English seaside town should: 

A pier with a retro arcade in which all the machines have been handmade by the town inventor:

Beach huts:

Village confectionary that advertises via vintage bicycle:

Seafood sold out of harbour-front shack:

Again with vintage bicycle. It's like this town was designed by Instagram.

And Lighthouse:

So really, I don't know HOW one could say I messed up here. 

France update! We officially did the Mega Move: we hired a van here in the UK, packed it full of random furniture and miscellany, and drove it the ten hours down to Bergerac. And I think it is safe to say WE WILL NEVER DO IT AGAIN. For one, our sat-nav apparently likes the scenic route, and the van barely fit through tiny village after tiny village. We suspected that nearby there was a highway - there had to have been! - but our garmin refused to guide us there, and our Michelin road map was unfortunately crammed somewhere in a box in the back of the van. Two, an old man in a truck totally took off the van's side mirror when he barreled past us (while we were pulled over, mind), before promptly disappearing into the wind like so many old men going renegade in the French countryside. All we could see was his wild, white, bush-like hair retreating into the distance, his own mirror clattering along. 

It also turns out life in France is a lot like camping. Like how you have to bathe with a garden hose because your builder has gutted your bathroom in the process of installing a new shower. You would think a hose-shower in the cold dawn of early spring would be romantic, except you're also doing it while standing barefoot on what feels like frozen concrete, overlooking the back lane that the neighbors also enjoy. The same neighbors who - after months of being nowhere to be seen - started to appear en masse over the course of the week. (I refuse to believe there is a connection. Also, they are WAY friendlier than stories would have you believe.) Luckily, I've been practicing Not Showering for years, so I handled seven days of filth like a pro.

Also, I think Alan tried to kill me in the act of gardening. There was a thorny little tree climbing up the side of the house (and more importantly, scratching heck out of the top of the rental van) and finally, in a fit of agitation, I decided it needed to come down. We had intended to trim this tree 'eventually, down the road' - but after two days of it attacking us every time we approached, I had enough. I grabbed the hedge-trimming shears, and with a strength known only to enraged hulks, WENT TO TOWN ON IT. It didn't stand a chance. Branches are flying everywhere. And as I was nearly done, Alan grabs the tree and gives it the final yank that will pull it from the wall. And DIRECTLY ONTO MY HEAD. MY HEAD YOU GUYS. A THORNY TREE ON MY HEAD. And as my face and bare arms are being scratched to pieces by this barren twiggy tree completely enveloping my person, I'm pretty sure Alan just stood there, possibly smoking a cigarette. He claimed later that he reacted immediately, but I think we can all agree I was encompassed for about an hour. By the time I emerged, it looked like I had been attacked by a pack of wild cats.

Thank God I could at least clean my scratches under a bone-chilling hose shower.

But it's coming together. Trials and tribulations aside, with each visit down, it starts to look less like a skip and more like a dusty, dirty, box-filled home. We haven't been able to unpack anything yet - our contractor has dust-clothes and plastic draped over every surface - but soon. Soon our stuff will be laid out to collect dust the good-old fashioned way.

I can't wait.

Big hugs and lots of love,

Essss

*I didn't say we cycled FAR. I'm still ME.

Survival of the Fittest

YOUGUYS. We did it. We survived IKEA. We did not, however, build that bed at 9p.m. when we finally got home. We threw the mattress on the floor, covered it with the wrong-sized sheets (I was blind by the time we got to IKEA's linen section, heavens knows WHAT I got, also did you know all French pillows - and therefore pillowcases - are square, and flat sheets don't exist?), and crashed out with boxes of pizza on our stomachs and Gilmore Girls playing on the laptop. It was a day and a HALF.

Saturday was also a success*: much closer to home than Bordeaux's IKEA, Bergerac has an area that can best be described as Mueble Mile - furniture warehouse followed by appliance warehouse followed by cheesy home decor shop, over and over again. It was beautifully functional except EVERYTHING CLOSES IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY. If you want to buy anything from 12:30 to 2:30, you are out of luck. So that was nice.  But before that closure, the kettle, toaster, and coffee grinder were won. THE STUFF OF SURVIVAL.

So we are getting there! Breakfast stools are in place, so now dining can occur at the kitchen island rather than the floor. A couch is had, thanks to Mueble Mile. Two lamps. That blasted built-at-last guest bed that I don't trust, because WHY ARE THERE EIGHT EXTRA SCREWS. By the time I noticed those - lounging around in their little plastic bag, looking all innocent - it was midnight and my hands were full of splinters and my back was screaming profanities, so EFF FIGURING THAT ONE OUT. THEY CANNOT BE IMPORTANT.**

That moment you hit a store's home office section, find the nearest chair on castors and have a spin session. Because you are on the brink of madness and this is the only answer.

Now I'm officially back in London-town, blogging from a laptop propped on my now-Thai-food-laden stomach, and already planning for the next adventure. Right after I finish burning these assembly instructions.

Big hugs and lots of love,
Essss

* I define these things loosely.
**You're welcome to the guest room whenever you like! 

Happy IKEA Day!

By the time you are reading this, we have landed in Bordeaux, picked up a van, and headed to IKEA for The Mega Shop of the Century. We have to get plates and pots and pans and sheets and light bulbs and lamps to put them in; a bed frame for the guest room - or at the very least a mattress (forget the master bedroom, that is going to take ages) - and while I think this is going to be the most fun a person can have on the whole entire of planet Earth, I know by the end Alan will have retreated into a dark and silent place. A place where the language consists of only three phrases: 'Fine,' 'Just Get It,' and 'I Can't Tell the Difference,' these muttered while slumped over the edge of the cart, the posture of a depleted and broken man, who won't be revived until a hot dog is placed in his listless hands.

And THEN comes the joy of assembly. Because nothing follows a day of OOH! OOH! I NEEEED IT! like opening that orange plastic toolkit at nine p.m. knowing that if you want to sleep, you have to build a bed, and they've given you an allen wrench to do it.

Wish us luck! Hopefully by the end of this weekend, we'll be one step closer to an inhabitable home and all its delights.

The Swiss Alps, from July. This is like the opposite of our weekend.

Big hugs and lots of love,
Esss

Writing about thinking about books does not make a good blog post

"For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business." - T.S. Eliot

It's dark right now, at 2 in the afternoon, the skies about to open as they do daily and have done for weeks. Every day the clouds blacken and roll, then crack and dazzle with sunlight, then pitch to black again. This cool summertime June is hardly a summertime at all, and the longest day has passed.

I just got The Wasp Factory for The Increasingly Morbid Book Club. Over the spring we* read The Killer Inside Me and The Collector (taking a break in June for Enduring Love! What??) because apparently one can never dive too deeply or too often into the mind of a psychopath. I clearly need to go in with a Sweet Valley High recommendation soon. But until then, has anyone read The Wasp Factory? Thoughts? I can't resist good black comedy, but I'm a wuss when it comes to the truly macabre.

Ego romp! Romp romp!: The other day I was thinking about posting every single book I read for, I don't know, the next year or so. Not in the sense of giving a review or anything, but more with the intent to see what full disclosure would do to my reading habits. Would my choices embarrass me if they were visible to everyone? (Yes, hi, young adult dystopian fantasy.) Would they embarrass me several consecutive times in a row? (There are six in the series!) And what would they say about me? (I have the attention span of a ten year old and I'm a total poser.) But (maybe) most importantly, would knowing that I had to tell what I was reading change the books I read? Would my vanity drive me to tackle those literary greats just so I can casually list 'War and Peace' in place of 'The Hunger Games'**, all no-words-needed, what's the big deal, Russian lit is how I roll for a good time, I don't even know who Scott Westerfeld IS. That I'd change my usual reading material for vanity is an appalling thought, but one that I must confront nonetheless. And while I'm 99.9% sure I won't actually start this List O' Embarrassment, still...it's personally challenging. If you'd be interested in trying this with me, though, let me know! We can give our experiment a clever name and create a blog badge*** to legitimize it and then we'll pretend like we're part of a literary movement because we're so cutting edge with our transparent lifestyles in today's exhibitionist culture.

On a completely unrelated note, I took this picture in Paris of two girls clearly having a great time together, and it reminds me of me and my sister:

We traded off on the torment fun times once I outgrew her.

Random, but...I'm having a poetry craving. I KNOW. I don't know what happened. It's probably because of this bleak London weather, you know how clouds make a person all moody. And I don't even know where to begin. I just looked in my shelves and all I have is one book by Neruda and Ginsberg's Howl. I also found (how often do I actually go through my stacks?) three copies of Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters, two copies of Nine Stories, and one copy of Franny and Zooey. This ratio makes sense: the inverse correlation reflects the order in which I give them away. (Godspeed, Franny. Go! Fulfill!) But anyway. I don't know what to do about this strange and persistent need to find and eat some poetry. Do I indulge it? And if so, with what? Or should I banish the whim altogether with a good zombie romance? Clearly that seems safer.

So I don't know. I need to think on that. In the meantime:

If you're a Vonnegut fan. 

If you were a voracious reader as a child and you were as lucky as I was to have a mother who took you to the library every week and let you read anything you could get your hands on and this literary freedom made you who you are today. Also, if you love Sherman Alexie.

It must be book day. I should go find mine. (The Wise Man's Fear, Patrick Rothfuss)

Hugs and love,
Essss

*And by 'we' I mean 'they.'
**Which, by the way, is fantastic. 
***I don't actually know how to do this. And of course you wouldn't need a blog to play. There's also Facebook, or Twitter, or Tumblr, or the Pioneer Woman Cooks.

A handful of Paris pictures and some hyperlinks you don't want to follow

I don't have that many words today, and goodness knows I gave you enough yesterday--many apologies, I tried not to waxy wordy when I can help it--so I will do a post of pictures! Paris, to be exact; a sampler.

From top left, clockwise:
1. Aya-bee, being typically fabulous.
2. The Pompidou, tricky tranny hot mess fierce.
3. A picnic on the canal, not ours, but next to ours.
4. Musee de l'Orangerie--the perfect size, and you feel so smart.
5. Tea time at Laduree--breaking the heat of the day with pistachios and orange blossoms and strawberries and little golden napkins.

Much love and hugs,
Essss

p.s. I just went to Laduree's website for the first time so that I could get that link, and I kid you not, it's TERRIFYING. I felt like I was about to get attacked by fairies. Whatever you do, don't click on it if you want to sleep tonight.