“Enjoy Nice,” Mom said. “You should put it into your blog.” (Insert meaningful motherly silence here.) “The last thing’s from, what–May 5?”
Um…hi there.
So picking up where we left off: the weekend after my last post, we packed Jolie and Jalouse into an absurd little rental car and vowed to see France. And the ensuing chaos was so freaking durable that you haven’t heard from me since, if you follow.
Actually, Jalouse is an absolute treat in the car. After a little early tension, she took to sleeping early and often during each day trip. It was the other three of us that were constantly on edge, disoriented, and occasionally inclined to bark uncontrollably.
That’s right. All three of us.
Anyway, we went to Troyes, which was…kinda dull. Pretty and all, but we were underwhelmed, and didn’t even end up with any champagne to show for it. Nick did pull the car over at one point so that I could hop out and steal one of the ubiquitous and confusing yellow flowers that every farmer in France has apparently decided to plant: one out of every five-to-eight fields was devoted to the stuff. What crop could that possibly be? So I was thinking a nitrogen-bonding plant of some kind, but when I got to the edge of the field, I discovered that the wily farmers of Champagne had seen me coming, and placed sizable ditches between the road and the maddening little flowers.
So, really? Troyes=total bust.
Things picked up in Normandy, though (Calvados-infused caramels!), and we found some really lovely towns north of Paris, and in the end, we all survived, so who could argue?
And since then, we’ve been up to what you would expect. And while there have been, certainly, plenty of highlights and comic frustrations, I think that I will decline to list the whole past month here. Instead, how about we just agree that I’ll keep you posted?
(Oh: except I will mention the live slug that we found in our cauliflower, mere hours after Nick and I argued again about the necessity of washing produce. Once again, the universe is on my side.)