There’s been a lot, you know.
For one thing, I woke up at 7am one morning when Juliette was losing her mind needing to go out, and I get downstairs and there’s a homeless guy asleep in our foyer. So the dogs are barking, growling, snapping, and mysteriously doing all that while hiding behind me, right? And I’m the lunatic who opens the dividing doors and shouts, “Monsieur?” three times, until it becomes completely clear that he’s not moving. At which point I bring the dogs out to the back courtyard, where they’re technically not allowed to go, and get them to “go,” because I’m clearly the most law-abiding person in France, so if I’ve been pushed too far, you know that no one would do it better.
It may sound silly, but it’s just upsetting. I made Nick take them out in the morning for days after that, although there’s been no sign of a repeat performance since then, and it’s really nothing, but…I got upstairs that morning and was just thinking, what if he had responded? Once I opened the door he could have kept it open by standing, or even sitting up (Jolie can activate the sensor, and she’s thisbig). I was assuming the best, but if he had been crazy or dangerous or what have you, a beagle who’s so freaked out that she drags her way out of her collar trying to back away is hardly a good line of defense.
And, speaking of being pushed too far, my physical state is just getting embarrassing. In addition to the obscenely bad allergies that I never in my life had until I moved to a continent with all-new flora, I screwed up when I got all enthused about Nick’s downloaded 5K training program. Turns out I could do four, six miles without really hurting; I had no idea I could do that.
Can’t.
For the second time in my life, total, I seem to have developed shinsplints. I’m icing, wrapping, waving to Nick and the dogs as they go trouping out of the house without me; it’s pathetic. I had all of a week as Girl Training for A Race before I turned into the coughing, sneezing, limping gym-class liability that I am today. I simply have no words.
And then there was the insurance: pursuant to our flood a couple of months back, Wheelchair Woman (that’s our first-floor royalty) has finally begun to notice discolored paint in her hallway. Now, before this she was ordering the paperwork, had lost the paperwork, was waiting on the paperwork…but then she sees yellowing paint and I get a phone call and a note at our door within three hours of each other. So I go, with the papers I filled out a month and a half ago, and we get our stories straight while she advises me about the pesticidal practices of every single merchant at our bi-weekly market. She knows them all by name, and she’s lived all over the world, so she knows the value of a local with good addresses in her arsenal…and she likes to give them out.
I feel bad; she imagined me and Nick coming and having a glass of champagne, and instead she just got me in a bit of a hurry while Nick stirred dinner (rotisserie saffron chicken with beets-’n'-bacon, plus a lovely salad). We should really spend more actual time with her.
And then, speaking of the ex-pat life, I’ve met this fabulous cookbook author, who found her niche her after discovering that American pastries in France tend to be…horrible. I mean, I’ve got my Friday baker’s cookies, which really are like cookies, but they’re still super-buttery and just somehow not quite right. So I’ve spent months building my arsenal: baking soda, baking powder, chocolate chips, vanilla extract, powdered sugar, cane sugar…anything I might need, and then this woman appears who knows 1) which number of flour to use, and 2) how to change the butter/flour ratio to account for the obscene richness of French dairy, and 3) that that’s all I need to do.
So I made chocolate-chip cookies two days ago, and now they’re nearly all gone.
They weren’t quite right: the cane sugar is drier than American brown sugar, and has much larger crystals, which I suspect messed up the texture a little. But more troubling is this: the cookies tasted almost exactly like everything else’s, and not at all like my mother’s.
My mother’s cookies always drove me a little nuts. I know that she claims to use the same Nestle Toll House recipe that half the world uses, but my friends’ moms used the same one, and the results were totally different. And I know that Mom always nearly doubles the vanilla in any given recipe, but I did that. And as a last-ditch effort she blames it on “using real butter,” but, hello, France. Somehow hers always come out flat and almost caramelized, but my attempted recreation was the same cakey, rising cookie that housewives all over the U.S. are too embarrassed to bring to bake sales without jazzing them up with, you know, butterscotch, or candied pecans, or whatever.
“They’re good!” Nick insisted, slathering ice cream on his third improvised chipwich, and I will say this: they taste homemade. And they really are nearly gone; I just caught Nick munching another one while I typed this just now. They have that floury, salty undercurrent that makes them undeniably Authentic Chocolate-Chip Cookies, and I am proud of that, but I still can’t help but wonder just what, exactly, it is that my mother is apparently unaware that she does.