They power me about

They shuttle me to and fro

They see a hill, steep or stout,

Then ENGAGE and up we go.

Churning up hills

Dominating bicycle pedals

Stable cushion to sit anywhere -

Floor, chair, railing. N’importe où.

Sometimes, while walking, I…race innocent passersby

And I always win.

My stride is short, and my feet are small

But my glutes SURPASS THEM ALL!

DELF (Diplôme d’Études en Langue Française) B2
A B2 user has a degree of independence that allows her to construct arguments to defend her opinion, explain her viewpoint and negotiate. At this level, the candidate has a degree of fluency and spontaneity in regular interactions and is capable of correcting her own mistakes.

In order to earn this, I fought this battle today:

Total duration of all tests: 2 h 30
* Total mark out of 100.
* Overall pass mark: 50/100
* Pass mark per test: 5/25

J’ai réussi. I passed. I got an 80/100. My lowest sore was 18.5/25. I am all that is woman.

This exam was supposed to be well beyond my level, and I am notorious for being a bad test taker. But oh, HAI! Look! Ecce! LOOK AT WHAT I DID! I took this exam and NAILED it to the wall like it was some innocent piece of felt waiting for me, owner of nail gun, to secure it to un mur. So I am happy to replace this with the identities of “bad test taker” and “non-risk taker” and “monolingual.”

I feel amazing. I am so proud of myself. This is a real TANGIBLE accomplishment. It always feels good to take a risk, work hard for something, and succeed. We need reminders that this formula works. Donc alors voilà – IT WORKED.

This risk-taking, test-taking magician BILINGUIST has a big month ahead of her. Stay tuned. It’s off to a formidable start.

I am finding that getting my thoughts literally out of my head and into my mouth (or my fingers as the case may be) works wonders for perspective. You know how it always seems so much easier to solve everyone else’s problems than our own? Maybe that’s not an illusion. What if there is a mechanism that makes problems encountered externally (like when someone tells you something, or when you read something) easier to process and solve than those internally guarded? It would explain why hearing my own problems voiced (even by my own voice) makes them suddenly less daunting, familiar, manageable.

Yesterday’s walk featured a podcast where a woman told a story about her mother’s voice. On her deathbed, the mother told her daughter where her journals were hidden, and to find them but please not until after her passing. This woman, eager to learn more about her very private mom, obeyed this final wish and found the journals exactly as described, a whole shelf of them, each wrapped in different cloth. They were all empty.

It made me think about voice, and how we use (or don’t use) our own. How maybe we don’t always appreciate what luxuries a voice affords us. We have this tool to speak (or write, or however express) our thoughts and how often do we use it to do justice to such power?

Sometimes those little voices expose a flash of wisdom that cannot be uncovered until it is exposed to air. So be nice to the next lonely person you see talking to themselves.

• A whole turkey: There are at least seven million poulets entières for every French citizen, and a variety of whole rabbits (fur on or off, your choice!) for sale like hamburger, but one is lucky to find a measly turkey cutlet.
• Canned pumpkin
• Chicken broth (low sodium)
• Prepared pie crusts, already in their baking tin
• A basic meat thermometer (in the 4 department stores I tried, there were at least 9 different types of “decorative” hanging thermometers in the kitchen section. Only one had a meat thermometer, and it was one of those surgical looking things that cost 20 euros. I’m not saying they want me to suffer from food poisoning, but I’m not saying they don’t, either.)
• Ovens with fahrenheit and measuring spoons and cups not in metric.

So. After you’re tucked into your table but before you’ve dug into your dinde, take a moment to be grateful for these items, for they make your feast simpler than you may realize.

I have countless much to be thankful for this year, and getting to spend a Thanksgiving in France is pretty high up on the list, cooking inconveniences included. I am delighted to be cooking for 6, 4 of whom have never given thanks the American way before. Should be exciting with a side of delicious.

Happy Thanksgiving! Bonne…Mercidonnant! (?!?! Just go with it.) Bon courage et bon chance! And of course, bon appétit!

Well anyway I know my pattern well and the past 48 hours have illustrated it to a tee. The cycle goes something like this:

A question needs to be answered or a problem needs to be solved. On its own, c’est pas grave, but it’s usually the end of a thread that pulls to many more, larger unanswered questions that really I ought to address before even attempting to look at the problem at hand andthen BOOM I am suffocated under an avalanche of combinations of variables and permutations of options. Paralyzed beyond the dry sobs that tend to convulse the rib cage and turn the whole body into a question mark.

Yes, it is totally self-destructive to render myself incapacitated just at the time I am called to make what is (at least on the surface) a simple decision.

Mais, donc alors voilà! We do not choose our neuroses! And so I must work within (actually more like outside of) the parameters of my own.

So yesterday I felt overwhelmed and blue about the month of December, and then about 2012, then about the rest of my life, then about all things great and small. Life is hard, I’m drowning in waves of emotions, I cannot bear the weight of my pitiful existence, etc. These are the times I lean on writing the most, and I lean hard. I hope my life is never judged by the content of my journals because they would paint a pretty miserable picture; after all, when I am happy and life is easy, I do not spend page after page dithering, whining, or ruminating.  My journals comprise angst-ridden pages overflowing with melodrama, judgments and reactions completely out of proportion to my life as seen through an objective lens. I realize this, and so I spill the junk into private pages rather than ears. Yesterday’s brief post was an indulgence of my angst, and those words were few compared to what I wrote with a pen.

Anyway, le sommeil (and some exercise) donne le bon conseil and this morning the storm had passed, the fog had lifted. Isolating problems and putting out the biggest fires first was suddenly manageable, and difficult tasks were methodically executed. This happy burst of productivity predictably led to feelings of Competence, Capability and Confidence. And so more problems were solved. Once again I saw that nothing is impossible.

Doubt begets fear begets misery begets crying into my journal. The doors turn inward.

Action begets action begets progress begets growth. The doors open outward.

I have illustrated to myself (for the nth time) that I am the biggest obstacle I face. But what to do next time? Is it possible to bootstrap myself out of the mope when I am in it? How can my prefrontal cortex untangle itself without its consent? One strategy to acknowledge and respect the low and ride it out, knowing I will pull it together soon. But that seems like a real luxury, because life doesn’t always wait for the weepies to finish having their way with one.

Lucky for me, it appears this time it did, and I hope I have wrested the right lesson. If not, guess I’ll just listen to this bad boy on repeat and wait for the message to sink in.

Head in sand.

World, please just pass on by, fluff my tailfeathers hello as you go.

Just cannot face the decisions demanding my attention. They are hard. They are the kind without a good outcome, only compromise. I turn away from one only to be confronted with another. And again, and again. And so I’ve decided to just stick my head in the sand. I don’t see the problems and so I can, for a little while at least, pretend they’ve disappeared…

I recently finished my first book in French, and I feel quite proud of myself. It really was a “book in French” rather than a “French book” though, as it was a translation from an English author’s original work, trouvable in the “Young Adults” section at any bookstore. But still! 482 pages all in French, partially fantasy and alternate universes and I read and UNDERSTOOD it, all en français!

Like Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s I mean Philosopher’s Stone, this book was retitled The Golden Compass from the original The Northern Lights for the American market. Why? Both books are the first in their series, so getting their marketing appeal correct hopefully cascaded readers into the next releases. Snowballs and critical mass, don’t you know.

Who decides that Young American Adults will reject a novel – nay, an entire series based on the word “philosopher’s”? Or will embrace one because it has the word “golden” in it? And why does “compass,” what with its propensity for negative connotations from geometry class and camp orienteering, outdo “northern lights”? I think they should have retitled it with the French word for compass, which according to my translation is aléthiomètre, which sounds exotic.

I wonder what that publisher-author conversation sounds like. “Ms. Rowling, we have a mandate to reassert English intellectual superiority and convince Americans that they prefer magic to reasoned discourse. Plus, they like it better if they don’t think something is good for them. Pretending your little book here isn’t based on legend seems like a great start, you know, makes it a little more fun and palatable for them, like putting frosting on bran.”

After the success of the first book (and we only know about the success stories), the author has enough clout to silence such silly suggestions for future titles. I imagine both publisher and author point to the success of the first book as proof the retitling strategy is effective or unnecessary. Who can really say?

The real impact of this decision is felt when people cross-pollinate and discover maybe they both love Philip Pullman and the hood is lifted from their eyes and their whole universe is shaken when the possibility that the Aurora Borealis was actually a more central theme than the golden compass. What was originally common ground becomes yet new trenches of difference.

All this to say I think my next French book will be by a French author, originally written in French. So I can get my prose straight from the source. No title relooking, thank you very much.