Ahhh, its August. Doesn't it FEEL like August? Things are slowing down, everyone's on vacation, at the same time September's out there looming - This usually leads me into a frenzy of trying to get things done for work before its time, but this year I'm trying to use the August time to get the house ready for the baby and other more appropriate things. Also - adn some of you will know what I mean by this - I started to read George R.R.Martin's GAME OF THRONES series, so if you've emailed me and you don't hear from me this week, just know that I'm buried in a 5 book fantasy cycle and can't return any emails until I come up for air.
Seriously, people. I downloaded the first book in the cycle when the HBO series started getting good reviews (me and about everyone else in America; these books are like this summer's DA VINCI CODE, except that they've been around already for 15 years), but I wouldn't let myself read them until the August slowdown, and that turned out to be a good plan. I literally can't put them down. And there's 5 of them, and each one is over 1000pages. Now, some of you know that I am a very fast reader and for my work I'm used to reading two or three normal-sized books a week. These will take a little longer, but I am still trying to pace myself so I don't burn through the series too quickly - you know how it is, like maybe how you felt about the HARRY POTTER series or something? You wanted to read it all the time, but also didn't want it to end? This is tightrope I am walking on. And I cannot WAIT to watch thethe series, which we can't get here in France yet - Peter Dinklage as the dwarf lord Tyrion might be the most awesome casting choice ever. Those of you who've read these books, you know what I'm talking about. Those of you who haven't: yes, I said "dwarf lord". Deal with it.
Other than that, not a ton to report this week - Matt's mom visited us on her way to Prague, where Matt's father is at a conference. She was a HUGE help in getting our apartment ready for the baby, and basically single-handedly scraped & painted our window frames and reglazed our windows, which was a task I was dreading - it needed to get done because our old Parisian windows were rattling around in their frames and flaking paint all over the floor (perfect for a curious baby to shove in her mouth), but I'd never done something like this before - its actually both easier AND more annoying than you think it is - just time consuming more than complicated, but now thanks to Andree everything looks GREAT.
We also took an epic trip to Ikea to get more storage stuff, or "petit rangement" as its called here in France - I'm attaching a picture below of one of the things that makes French Ikea different than American Ikea - the barrels of wine in the cafeteria! Just like in America, the Ikeas in France have a very cheap and decent lunch restaurant that serves Swedish meatballs and whatnot, but also more French things like (not kidding here) mini steak tartare (!) and croque monsieurs. And of course, they have many choices of wine for you to have with your lunch, that you can take from the cask in glasses or pitchers for a reasonable price. After a morning of screaming children and cheap furniture, who doesn't need a pitcher of wine?
We also succeeded in getting our unborn child on the list for possible municipal childcare - "creche" system, which I wrote about previously, full time childcare provided for working parents at a reasonable price by thethe city. This of course also took us three tries - going to our local city hall with a dossier of documents, and being turned away multiple times because we didn't have the right set of docs - for example, Matt needed to find 3 consecutive pay stubs from Pasteur for the last three months; he had a very French experience of bringing several out of order pay stubs, being told it wouldn't work, telling the woman he couldn't find his June paystub, and then having her give him this look like "Quoi?" - as if to say, how could you ever mislay these things? I feel like every child in France must be given a filing cabinet for their fifth birthday or something. I had to get us one for our apartment just to keep track of the important docs I"ve gotten in the last YEAR of being here.
So, now we're signed up to SIGN UP for the creche, if that makes sense. We are registered and we have to go to a meeting at the end of August with the people who run the creche, and then submit a whole bunch more stuff to explain why we need the childcare - and then we go into a kind of lottery system for next January to see if we get chosen. Luckily, the registration is good for two years, so hopefully at some point in that time a spot will open up :) -
Some of you have asked if we have a baby registry, and I'm just putting one together on Amazon France now - I will send you the link once it's all together. We're trying to keep things pretty minimalist because of our tiny apartment, so nobody feel any obligation here, but we're also happy if you want to send something - More to come.
Have a good week everyone!
xoxo Claire
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