Wedding season begins

A few weeks ago, I went to my second cousin's wedding.

This is one of two second cousins that I only realised I had a few years ago when we reunited on my mom's recommendation whilst I was living in France.  I knew my mom still had cousins in the UK (my grandparents are Scottish), but I didn't realise there were any kicking around in my generation.

In the strange turn of events that has reversed the immigration of my family to the US (okay, not my whole family, just me, but it has that "full circle" sentiment), I have bonded with these cousins, and when the younger one decided to get hitched, he invited me along.

I didn't know many people at the wedding.  In fact, other than the half-dozen or so people I am directly related to, I only knew one person.  We created the false appearance of being together by arriving together, and I didn't want to cramp his style.

Weddings are obviously — if I understand movies to be an accurate reflection of life — rife with desperate (probably sexy), single women whose desperation and single status are being thrown in their faces by the ONE THING they want MORE THAN ANYTHING: marriage OR, if you get them drunk enough, any single dude in sight.

Anyway, I wanted to let my non-date get on with the mingling, so I had a lot of time for personal reflection.  Here are some things I learned (or was reminded) about myself:

1.  My camera is shit

Or I am a terrible photographer.  Or both!  My digital camera is definitely old, and when I bought it on sale four years ago before moving to France, I didn't know anything about appealing features, other than low price.

In any case, the only photos that turned out from that day were those taken by other people.

The good news is, I now have lots of fun pictures of me with relatives that I don't get to see very often, including one with a my Gran's sister's sister-in-law (you figure it out) whose name is also Anne!

The bad news is that I have no reasonable photos of the actual bride and groom, or of the ceremony itself.  Maybe I should stop taking my camera out of the house, altogether.

2. I am bad at turning off my hospitality-industry self

REALLY bad.  It is a special combination of social awkwardness and control mongering (sprinkled with a pinch of critical nature) that makes a person want to clear away champagne glasses and serve canapés rather than interact with unfamiliar human adults.

This was the first wedding I had attended in a year at which I was not a member of the service staff, and I found myself either gripping my own thigh to prevent myself from removing empty glasses from outdoor ledges, or engaging in conversations with strangers about what the service staff was doing wrong.  Because it's okay to be a dick about service when you're part  of the service industry.  Right?

3. I like holding babies and playing with children

In fact, I like both of those things way more than trying to make small talk with people I will never, ever see again.  (Refer to above feelings about interacting with unfamiliar human adults.)

I really like babies.  You might call it a 'maternal instinct' or my 'biological clock ticking away', but  I have loved babies since I was about 7 and saw myself fit to look after the 'smaller children' at family gatherings.  I was definitely not old enough to bear them, so there.  I get all warm and fuzzy when I see babies and I like to hold them and coo and cradle them back and forth.  (Also, holding a baby means no free hands to obsessively do the waitstaff's job.)  Sue me.

I also have a survival instinct.  I like to hold babies for a little while, and then I like to give them back.

Playing with children is something I probably enjoy more now than when I was a child.  Okay, that can't be true, but I was kind of an anxious nerd of a kid, and so many games seemed to involve a level of athleticism that I did not possess, so — as not to injure my fragile pride — I spent most recesses in the library.  In fact, I think they made a new rule limiting the number of recesses you could spend in the library per week because of me.

Now, though, I love playing with kids.  They are so much easier to win over than adults.  Instead of talking about the weather — and that painful, 12-minute conversation actually did happen — or explaining what it is you do, you can just be silly and make up games like Put Your Foot On a Rock!  Kids love it when you're silly.  Plus, I have become much more athletic in my 20s than I was as a child, and I can set the bar really low with games like the above-mentioned and by competing against a 4-year old.

4. I am softening on this whole marriage/wedding thing


I used to always say having kids was much more important to me than ever getting married.

I'm sure, if pressed, certain friends would recall me declaring, "I'll never get married!" in a highly impassioned manner.

I've definitely said that if I did get married, I would not have a wedding, "because there are better things to spend money on!"  I still think it's silly to spend what some people do on weddings, but I've been to some really special ones of late (discounting the ones I've worked at), and I guess I can kind of see the point.  Love and celebrating with friends and all that.

That's the end of the list but I just want to say one or two more things.


I had a lot of fun at this wedding.  My list makes it seem like all I did was complain to toddlers about the quality of service, but I only did that for a few minutes before I realised I was at the wrong table.

Thanks to the magical social lubricant that is alcohol, I did manage to have ongoing conversations with adults, and I might have even made some witty remarks.  I danced, I mingled, I ate a delicious dinner, and my trusty non-date let me pass out for the entire train journey back to London, ensuring only that I did not carry on sleeping and miss the last tube.

If more of my days were filled with holding babies, drinking pink Prosecco, and sleeping through long public transit journeys, I don't think I'd have much to complain about.

Publishing old posts: Installment One

Have I mentioned that I have a bad habit of abandoning projects?

As evidence of that fact as well as an effort to rectify my wrongs, I am going to start publishing old, forgotten posts, some of them in fledging form.

The first of these dates back to late 2010.  Here goes:

crise /kRiz/ (n. fem. French)
1. crisis
2. attack, e.g. heart attack (une crise cardiaque) /yn kRiz kaRdjak'/
3. fit, e.g. epileptic fit/seizure (une crise d'épilepsie) /yn kRiz depilɛpsi'/


I once read or heard somewhere that the English language contains thousands (maybe even tens of thousands? -- I don't want to exaggerate) more words than than its Germanic and Latin-based counterparts.  This makes sense, etymologically speaking, since English began as a Germanic language, but then -- due to the success of the Norman invasion and the development of an Anglo-Norman tongue -- was heavily influenced by and came to include much of the French language.  I never did take that A. P. European History Exam, but I remember a thing or two from the class. 


My initial attraction to the French language had to do with an accident of pubescent loyalty.  It was 1998, I was 13, and my junior high school was piloting three first-year language courses: French, Spanish, and German.  The latter, with its hackingly harsh consonants and emotional range of expression spanning stern to outraged, never even crossed my radar.


My best friend, Casey, was all about French: wasn't it a beautiful language? The guttural R resonating pleasantly in the throat, the ã and õ vowels exiting through the nose, creating an altogether unfamiliar n sound? 


I, on the other hand, was utterly convinced by the practicality of Spanish.  Why would I study a language as useless as French?  Didn't she know that within fifty years, half the country would speak Spanish as a first language?  Didn't she want a job after college?  It was a no brainer.


We spent the end of 7th grade debating the subject (as was our wont), but when it came time to choose my fall classes, Casey's bff status outweighed the long-term benefits of studying a language that would ultimately give me a leg-up in the 'real world.'  Besides, France seemed like a nice place to visit one day.


The matter was settled, and we spent the summer debating more frivolous things, like whether or not Rocky I through V merited our repeated viewing (I the nay-sayer, in this case).  She introduced me to Alfred Hitchcock, instilling in me a lifelong fear of low-flying birds.  We sneaked romance novels off her step-mom's shelf and read them by flashlight under the covers at sleepovers, prepared at any moment for the approaching footsteps of her father, ready to burst out of the covers and make a convincing show of staring at the wall.  French class just never came up.


Day one of 8th grade arrived, and I found myself in Ms. A's third-period French class, alone.  Not alone, alone -- there were a good 27 or so other students, many of whom I knew -- but distinctively lacking my best friend.  There had been some mistake, I was sure; she had gone to the wrong classroom.  It wasn't until later that day, when I saw her her in Advanced English, that the matter could be cleared up: she hadn't been in French because she had gone to Spanish class.


As it turned out, my powers of persuasion had been as strong as hers: we had convinced each other to take the classes that we were respectively promoting, without ever realizing our success. 


And thus began my love affair with French.  I suppose I could have switched to Spanish after that first class, or Casey could have moved over to French, but we were both too stubborn to change our minds.  Besides, I was sold -- completely taken in by the elementary aspects of this new and exciting language.


It's now 2010, the year that brought me my 25th birthday, and though that enthusiastically smart, but insecure, 13-year old seems like some


the duality of words

And that's where it ends!  An unfinished sentence followed by an undeveloped thought.

I imagine that the former would have ended with something like, "... distant memory, she is still a part of me, if only in that she brought me to where I am today [and am today, in 2012]: living in Europe, ever seeking to improve my comprehension of the French language."

As for the undeveloped idea, I think I would have made a clever and seamless connection back to the beginning of the post.

One of my favourite things about French words is their multiple meanings, due largely to their relatively small numbers.  Because French has so many fewer words than English, many of them necessarily have several definitions.

Vague /vag/ (n. fem.) means both "vague" (as one might expect), and "wave".  I love that.

I think I probably would have gone on to describe whatever my personal crise of the day would have been.  Late 2010?  Let's see, in 2010, I moved from Ireland (where I had essentially been freeloading -- unemployed and work-permit-less -- with my boyfriend at the time) to New York, where I moved in with my incredibly generous friends Neimah and Audrey.  What was meant to be a couple of weeks in their spare room/office turned into four months as I worked as a dancer/promoter in Times Square, saved money, and awaited my visa to live and work in the U.K.  I then moved from New York to Scotland, where I did find full-time work in a fabric store and settle into a new routine with the same bf.  Full-time work in a new country, however, after months of working my ass off to save enough money in the States to (as it turned out) last me about six weeks in the U.K. meant that all creative ventures were put on hold.  I wonder what my crisis might have been.

I might also have mentioned how I first learned the that crise had more than one meaning.  In my first couple of months in France, I was living with a host family.  One day, ma petite soeur came running to my room to say that Papa had had a crise.  He was okay now, and Maman was looking after him.  I couldn't figure out what kind of crisis required aftercare.  I figured it must be existential.  It turned out he was epileptic. 

So there you have it!  One post uncovered, unfurled, and perhaps undone.  Here's to finishing what I start.

The Bad-Tempered Ladybird

And other English (U.K.) absurdities.

Wandering through a bookstore in town today, I came across this little wonder:


For any of my (numerous) non-American readers, this must not seem odd at all. Why, this is what the classic Eric Carle book was always called, right? Wrong! Here, for everyone's amusement and enlightenment, is the original (U.S.) cover.


Now, I know that lots of things undergo name changes when traveling across the Atlantic (e.g. The Boat That Rocked [U.K.] becomes Pirate Radio [U.S. and far more awesome/to the point]*), but is the word "grouchy" so unfamiliar to U.K. and Irish audiences that it had to be changed? Because, let's be honest, calling him bad-tempered just takes all the fun out of it. He's not bad by nature, he's just upset because there are not enough aphids to eat and no one ever taught him how to share! But he learns his lesson. It was probably just the food rage getting to him, anyway.

I'm not even going to go into the fact that the animal in question is a bug and not a bird.

I suppose in the land of wheelie bins (rolling garbage cans), rubbish (garbage-- why do we have so much disagreement on this topic?), and prams (strollers-- for babies, this time, not trash), I should simply come to expect this kind of mucky logic. But I'm not going down without a fight.

Further to my point:

This Indian-language (not sure which one) version of the book also features the original title. Just sayin'. Majority rules.



*This, however, is not as bad or inexplicable as the French changing the titles of Step Up 1 & 2 to Sexy Dance 1 & 2. It's still English. I guess the French count themselves more familiar with the term sexy...

Facebook: Lifting the Feminine Mystique?

None of my good friends are married and none have kids, but this is the beauty of facebook: people from high school send me friend requests all the time, and I'll usually accept it if, after ten minutes of reflection, I can remember at least one class we had together.  In this way, I have been unwittingly (if not unwillingly) immersed in the new culture of early motherhood: the facebook status update.

I am fascinated by this phenomenon of the moment-to-moment, unabashed blurt from the minds of new mothers.  When one can send mobile updates to one's page at any time of day or night, the realities of parenting are no longer blended together as in a book like What To Expect When You're Expecting*.  It's no longer a general overview.  Motherhood (as the updates are nearly always written by the stay-at-home moms) is neither glossed over as nothing but sunshine and baby burps nor completely written off as drudgery, loneliness and sacrifice; the update provides a window into the ever-vacillating reactions and emotions of the young mom.

I have been following a particular former classmate of mine for the past few days.  She, of course, does not know this (further beauty of facebook) and wouldn't have time to care if she did, as she's taking care of a 2-week old.  Let's call her S.  In one update she writes, "S... loves her little [girl] more with each passing moment.  I may die from cuteness overload!"  This post is beautiful, and perhaps typical, but it comes nearly a week after the baby is born.  Obviously she loves and is in awe of her baby, but the six previous days of updates include exhaustion, pain, breast-feeding, exhaustion, no sleep, diarrhea, love, gratitude, and more sleep deprivation.  

Two days after the "cuteness overload" update she writes, "fussy baby, 4 hours sleep, no one around to take her. *Sigh*," then the next three days are all sleep-status updates.  On Tuesday she wrote, "[Baby] had a rough night and I have to [be] at work at noon.  Ugh."  Her friend (also a mother) responds, "I can't believe u have to work.  Well what am I saying I want to go back I am sick of being home alone."

And this is the thing: all of her friends seem to be moms.  Or maybe all of her other friends simply have nothing to say on the topic of "baby explod[ing] out both ends."  Nearly everyone who has written on her wall in the past two weeks is either a relative, an in-law or a fellow new mom.  The page is overrun with profile pictures of babies, mommies and babies, and the rarer family portrait.  One young woman has a baby and suddenly her facebook page becomes a forum for any young mothers she knows or may have met once and added as a friend.

The remark about being "sick of being home alone" really stuck with me.  Of course, these women aren't home alone; they're home with an un-intellectual, undeveloped being that demands all of their time and energy, but that being is still someone and the expectation is that to the mother, the baby should be everything and time spent with the baby should be enough.  This, of course, is not the case, and I've seen it expressed elsewhere on facebook.  Another former classmate of mine wrote a really interesting blog during her pregnancy following her preparations for motherhood that went as far as a detailed description of a fight with her doctor over the question of episiotomy; she didn't want one.  Since having her baby, she has been very open about the ups and downs of early motherhood.  I have seen her write, on more than one occasion, "I love this baby, but..."

I admit that I found this attitude to be shocking, at first.  I am not a mother, and the idea of being one (some day in the far and distant future) excites and terrifies me, partly because I'm afraid it will drive me nuts to be at home (alone) with a little blob of life all day.  Since the birth of her child, the pregnancy blogger has blatantly expressed her desires to get out of the house, spend time with "real" people, and recently, go back to work.  The whole phenomenon of mommy updates puts me in mind of Betty Friedan, of the isolated, lonely housewife, and how little "housewife syndrome" has changed since The Feminine Mystique was first published.  What is incredible and completely different, however, is that a: women feel free to air their grievances about motherhood as well as their joys, and b: that facebook has become a forum through which young women can reach out to each other and commiserate and celebrate being moms together.

But is facebook simply the new drug of choice?  Is it just another way to end the monotony of being "home alone"?  Where there was once a steady flow of sedatives and anti-anxiety pills a woman can now find a constant stream of information: photos, updates, moment-to-moment windows into the lives of others.  She can share pieces of her own life, she can seek pity and congratulations from her cyber-network of friends and perhaps gain a sense of fulfillment and community that she cannot find at home.  

I know that I have spent hours of my own life quelling boredom by spying on people I have not seen in years and secretly taking pleasure in the failures of people I didn't like in the 10th grade.  I was uncomfortable and even a bit aggravated when I saw the first wedding album of someone I knew on facebook.  If you're getting married, isn't it time to be a grown-up?  I thought.  Isn't it time to delete your page and be a wife or career-woman or mom or whatever?  I had a similar response to the first baby photos.  Get that child out of your profile picture! But motherhood seems to be the great unifier on facebook, and I am not on that page.

And what of these children who are growing up in an online community?  Long before they can give consent, their images are all over their parents' walls, their first steps are documented for any friends, family members or stalkers from sophomore-year biology (ahem) to see.  Kids just ten years younger than me are spilling their guts on youtube to anyone who will listen.  When I was their age, the blog was the great, new act of exhibition: a journal of your deepest thoughts, fears and desires that anyone is cyberspace can read!  Kids ten years before that didn't have the internet.  What will these featured facebook babies being doing in ten years' time?

*I've never actually read this.

Ew, gross

Some things are delicious, but should not be made available in canned form. Like this*:

Mushrooms. Blech.

This reminds me of when I used to go to Kindercare† and they made us eat all our peas before we were allowed to go play, only they were peas from a can and I seriously had to suppress my gag reflex every day forever that I ate lunch there. Canned peas are not the right color and I'm pretty sure stored in some kind of preservative syrup to make them not only last longer but be swallowed more easily by babies and the elderly. Gross. Mush. Gross.


*From my roommate's shelf in the food cupboard. Silly Germans.

†We switched to Kindercare after the assholes at La Petite did mean things like not let my sister give me a hug when I got there after school. And then yelled at her when she cried. This event seriously influenced me when I worked with kindergarteners last year. I always let them hug their siblings in the hall or the cafeteria, and tellingly, this was not an uncommon request. This has been a long side note.