Unlikely Diplomat

I am seriously slacking on my Vocab lessons lately. Which is a shame, because I’m totally learning all kinds of funny new words since I started reading Harry Potter en francais. Anyone want to know what a crapaud is? Or a baguette magique? All in good time, folks, all in good time.

Because if I can wait another 2 weeks for this bébé to come out, you can wait until Friday to learn whether or not baguette magique is a dirty word.

In the meantime, I’ll share with you a litany of excuses for why I’ve been blog-slacking. For starters, I’ve got a tiny human pushing on my bladder/spine and sucking out my life force. I also happen to be in some insane nesting phase which inspires me to do nothing more than bake and organize the closet. Then I somehow got a cold and a cough.

Which is why it sounded like a great idea to retrieve my big honkin SUV stroller from the depths of Husband’s office on Friday. So I lugged my lazy, congested self over there, put the thing together, loaded it up with all the other packages I ordered and pushed it home. Uphill. Which took me 40 minutes or so (not counting the stop at the grocery store, where I proceeded to misjudge the width of my giant stroller and take out an aisle of cereal boxes).

And after making it home, sweating and false-contraction-ing, and realizing that my new stroller doesn’t even fit through my front door, I proceeded to pass out on the couch and refused to get up until Saturday afternoon.

That’s when my nesting instincts and I dragged poor Husband to the BHV (otherwise known as the 7 circles of hell–with a hardware store in the basement!) to buy some picture frames. And after fighting the crowds, we both passed out on the couch and didn’t get up until Sunday afternoon.

At which point Husband said we should just sit back and “enjoy the last quiet days of our lives.” And with that apocalyptic sentence ringing in my ears, I decided to bake some blueberry muffins.

So there you have it. But I’m back on the blogging train this week, I promise. No more lame excuses! At least until labor sets in!

 

 

Can you guess what time this picture was taken? I’ll give you a clue: it’s close to the time that I should have been snuggled up in bed next to Husband, trying to seduce him with my whale belly and retainer-wearing ways.

Not helping? Sorry for that visual.

That photo up there of my building’s courtyard and the evening sky was taken at about 10pm. Ten at night. And the sun is just setting. Which is great on the weekends if you want to stay out for a late picnic or sit by the canal and soak up the beauty of Paris.

But many a weeknight I look at Husband all bleary-eyed and delirious and ask in desperation, What the hell time is it? Can we go to sleep yet? I don’t know how Alaskans do it.

And now, a story that will motivate you to make a donation to Imagination Stage on behalf of my nephew, Scotty: 

When I was just a young idealistic college student who still thought anything was possible, I used to periodically volunteer to pick up my sister’s 3 children and take them on an adventure. That usually involved rounding up those monkeys, all under the age of 6, and packing them into the family minivan. At which point 2 hours would have gone by and I would be ready for a cocktail and permanent birth control.

But I always persevered, and we would make the drive into the city, listening to nothing but Paul Simon on repeat. “Mamma Pajama!” they’d shout from the back. I was happy to oblige as long as no one was crying/peeing their pants/pestering the sibling next to them.

Most adventures included a visit to the zoo or maybe a movie, and concluded with Happy Meals at Old Mac Donalds (I was going for coolness points, not health points). And it was on one such occasion, after a particularly long cold day doing something I can’t remember because everyone was screaming/crying/trying to run away the whole time, that we unsurprisingly found ourselves parked in a MacDo booth.

I was trying to get the girls to eat something. Scotty was trying to eat everyone else’s food and getting 95% of the ketchup on his clothes. This made the girls very unhappy. But Scotty? Scotty was in heaven. He could have stayed there all day.

In fact, when it was finally time to leave, Scotty made it clear that he did not want to go. He was intent on finding some more french fries or perhaps a few more cheeseburgers. So as I made a human chain with his two sisters on one hand and instructed them NOT TO MOVE, I attempted to wrestle Scotty from the booth.

He didn’t really make too much noise, but he did proceed to grip on to any grippable surface with a superhuman strength I have yet to ever encounter again in a 4 year old. I had to let go of the girls, telling them DO NOT LET GO OF EACH OTHER and PLEASE DO NOT RUN AWAY, so I could grab Scotty by the legs and drag him through the crowded restaurant.

We made it all the way to the door when he caught hold of the door handle and refused to let go. So there I was, yanking on his stout little legs with all of my might, his entire body outstretched like Super Man as he clung to his last hopes of a second Happy Meal.

As I grunted and pulled and started to sweat, and the girls began to whimper, and Scotty just hung on to that door handle for dear life, an elderly woman breezed by and said to me, “God bless you child. It will get easier.”

And you know what? It did! Because very shortly thereafter I managed to pry Scotty’s hands off the door and get everyone into the car. And then pushed them out onto the front lawn as I sped past their house.

I kid! I kid! I totally slowed down before I pushed them out.

The point is, Scotty has always had a flair for serving up dramatic scenes and entertaining the masses. Even at fast food restaurants. I’m just happy he’s now redirecting all that energy to Imagination Stage and not his dear old Aunt J.

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Imagination Stage Fundraising Update:

Off to a good start, still a long way to go. So get clicking people!

(That button up there? It lets you donate securely through PayPal. No PayPal account? That’s ok! Click through and look at the bottom left corner for instructions on how to make a secure credit card donation. Merci!)

Meet my oldest nephew Scotty. He’s pretty awesome. And this week we’re going to take some time to get to know him better.

Now I love all my nieces and nephews with the equal fervor of an angry momma bear. But none of them can quite match Scotty’s prowess on the dance floor or passion for very loud iPod sing-alongs.

Every time I see him we have to do our special high-five hand shake (he likes to blow it up at the end). We took surfing lessons in Nantucket together. He listens when I ask him to do things. Usually.

But his awesomity recently reached new levels when he started taking acting classes at the Imagination Stage in Bethesda, MD. To put it mildly, he rocks it on stage. I mean, I know I’m biased because he’s my flesh and blood and all, but Al Pacino ain’t got nothin on this scenery chewing performance:

It might be the hormones, but watching that clip makes me swell up with pride and get all weepy and say embarrassing things out loud like “Oh my god I used to change his diapers! And look at him now!”

Imagination Stage has truly been such an amazing place for Scotty and kids just like him to learn and grow. Their doors are open to anyone who wants to perform. Which means even if you have Down Syndrome or hearing aids or ADD or no money to pay for classes or just a plain old streak of nerdiness, the minute you step on stage there you become simply an Actor. And that, my friends, is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

That’s why I’m asking for your help this week. Imagination Stage serves up the magic of theater to more than 100,000 children and families ever year, and they rely on donations to keep all the amazing programming, classes and summer camps available to as many kids as possible.

So see that little yellow donate button below?

Click it to help me reach my $3000 fundraising goal!

It’s all safe and secure through PayPal. Even the tiniest donation will assure you a life showered with good karma and golden pain au raisins. And buckets and buckets of champagne. I swear. How else do you think I ended up in Paris?

Look at that sandwich up there. Just look at it. Doesn’t it look magnificent? And never mind the real New York bagel involved. I’m talking about that luscious French tomato!

Yes, I said tomato. I feel very strongly about tomatoes, which may seem silly to most people. I mean, they’re just around to add a little color to your salad or make you feel less guilty about your hamburger, right?

Wrong.

Tomatoes are the absolute highlight of summer. They are a glorious miracle from the garden, meant to be savored and celebrated during the year’s warmest months. You should not feel guilty spending a little bit more on the lovely misshapen, often oddly colored specimens that appear at farmer’s markets. They are superior. And definitely worth the price when you consider the tasteless, listless, perfectly round red orbs that usually dominate the supermarket aisles.

Do these beliefs make me a total weirdo? Husband thinks so. He usually tolerates my tomato idolatry with lots of eye rolling and grumbling about the euros I spend on produce.

But I can’t help it. I’m a vegetable snob. I blame the long, hot afternoons I spent in high school working at the roadside produce stand in my town. There I rang up sweet corn and peaches and squash for the locals, under the tutelage of one of the wackiest, most loveable produce nazis I’ve ever met. He would chase out customers who dared to leave half shucked corn behind (dries it out and ruins it!) or be so bold as to squeeze a tomato too hard (bruises! gah!).

I think he may have actually lectured a woman all the way to her car about the cost of a good peach. But he did it because he cared. And I have carried a little bit of that crazy devotion to good taste with me ever since.

So good people of the blogosphere, take a minute this summer to find yourself a real tomato. Slice it extra thick, sprinkle it gently with sea salt and fresh pepper. If you’re feeling extra saucy, add a dab of mayo or a piece of bacon or both on a hunk of crusty bread. Or just do what we used to do at the market, and take a bite out of it like a ripe, juicy apple. I promise you won’t be disappointed.