Hidden In France

a laf!

Thank you Isabelle (vie her friend Ludo) for making me laugh this morning:

Here is how it goes:

"The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. 

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English". 

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c".. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f".. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter. 

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. 

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. 

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away. 

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". 

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl. 

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi TU understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru. 

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas. 

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl."

A painted bedroom

Is life speeding up, or is it just me who can't follow?  And, what?  Rain now?  In L.A? In October?  I truly will have seen it all.

Also looking into colleges for my son, trying to pry college essays out of him. After 6 straight hours of homework (preceeded by 8 hours of school) it never seems like quite the time to broach the subject. And time is a-ticking...

Also I got sucked into this school thing. Usually, school volunteering is not my thing. I resent women who are carrying their volunteering like a badge of sainthood, I mean allright, you're doing a good thing, I get that, but what's with the competition for victimhood?  I mean ladies, you chose to do this, so what's with the frowny face and the sighs?

But on the other hand, can you see my frown?  Can you feel my sighs...? Yep.  I'm just like them.

I just love those images found on Purple Area, and they bring Spring right back into my life (and hopefully the spring back to my feet).

 

 

 

We can stay there, apparently, it's a 'maison d'hôte' in Belgium. I'll meet you there!

Real Wives of lala land

Did anyone watch the new show Real Wives of Beverly Hills?  The word 'real' was never used more loosely. The Barbie clothes, the botox, the plastic houses, the boobies, the incredible spending and earning, oh my! I could not peel my eyes off the screen (hint, by the end of the show I still could not tell some of the women apart).

Real Wives of New York was my guilty pleasure because I eat up everything Bethenny Frankel says ( i wish she were my real life girlfriend) but now I think i will have to expand my crap-watching time to yet another show. 

Gundrun color

Thank you to beloved blog Keltainen Tallo Rannalla for the update on Gudrun home line.  I wrote a post a while back about their line of fabric.

This is so much fun, all that color!

 

I don't like to post images of fashion or clothes so much, nor do i wear anything near fashionable, ever. But these I really, really like, also from Gudrun.   I don't dare wearing stuff that is noticeable because I feel uncomfortable calling attention to myself (...says the girl who tells you every details of her life in her blog.. oh well...) 

Realistically, do you picture anyone pushing a cart at Trader Joe's wearing this?

 

Growing pains

"It's a good thing your son is questioning everything right now, it's actually remarkable.  Some people never get to this point until late adulthood and then wonder where their life went. Some kids go to Yale and Harvard before asking themselves those questions and end up jumping out a window."     Told by my son's International Baccalaureate supervisor during conference about his level of stress yesterday.

Jee weez... thanks for the visual, dude.

I want this lamp!

Don't tell, but while my husband is out of town, I want to make luscious love to that lamp:

Photographed by Frances Janish, styled by Sweet Paul.

By the way, I'm thrilled that Sweet Paul has a magazine.  So much talent and love in one man, and so much guts. I wish him great success.

halloween and death

It must be that halloween feeling, but I was entertaining some morbid thoughts today. I finally called the Salvation Army, to once and for all put an end to the epic saga of the purple couch.  And since they were sending a truck and muscled men for the sofa I went around the house and gathered three huge bags of stuff to give away.  I went a little crazy and will probably regret parting with the content of those bags.

But see, I was thinking about death and what we live behind when we die.  When I think about my death (which is often, and usually not too unpleasant, as long as I'm the one dying and no one else) I end up fixating on the physical crap I would leave behind for my kids to deal with. 

The other day my sister was back in France where she burned all remnants of her past life, all her journal writing from a darker time, and pictures of herself that represented that time.  It made sense to me: she wanted to move on from that phase of her life and she did not want to leave behind that kind of trail.

My son noted that all the writing she did during that time was probably some of her best stuff. 

But I'm like her.  I feel I should absolutely throw away all the writing done when I was depressed, and all the agonizing years of infertility and treatment, or relationship issues with my friends, and all the venting about my husband.  I mean, Anais Nin aside, journals are not to be shared, and especially not shared with your children. The words in a journal are like excrement: they need to come out and it is a relief when they're out BUT it's ain't the kind of stuff that should be framed and put on the mantle.  Journals are testimonials of our basest instincts, our pettiest moments.  Are those the words I want to be remembered by?

And there is the burden, which I shudder just thinking about, of giving my children no choice but to make decisions about the junk I was too weak or lazy to deal with in my lifetime.  Another aspect of this is what to do with the good stuff: my favorite objects, my paintings, my photographs, and, for crying out loud, my unpublished manuscripts.  I don't want to burden my children with the guilt of throwing those away, or worse: the responsibility to let the world becoming aware of my Oeuvre!   

This is actually something that has been bothering me for a very long time.  I want, I must, get rid of everything in my life time.  But I assume that I will be given time to prepare for death.  No one can guarantee that. I need to have a plan and show courage. Contemplating one's death isn't pleasant, but one must first think of those we leave behind.

For the record, the muscled men of Salvation Army came and notified me that furniture pick up was at their discretion, and they don't want to have anything to do with the purple couch!!!! This damn purple couch is to furniture what an colon obstruction is to the intestinal system.  See the irony?  What I wanted to let go of stayed, and what i did not want to let go of went. 

So here you have it, a post about death and poop.  Blogging doesn't get any better than that.  Oh.. and by the way... what happens to your blog when you die?  Does it go up in the sky with you?

 

Gratitude

I'd like today to be a great big day of thank you to my blogger friends.  First to Best of the Web for mentioning my blog, and to all of you whose blogs and blog names I discover daily as they sprout on my stats pages.  You guys are sending me an ever increasing number of readers and you do this gratuitously and just because.

You have to spread the love that you receive, so this morning I went back into today's stats and added all I could find to my blog roll so that my readers can find you.  

But my starts go only as far as yesterday and there are so many of you.  If you read me and link to me and you're not on my blogroll, please go to your website and click on the link of my blog (if it's there) that way I will find you and add you.  Am i making any sense? 

I felt bad not to spend as much time commenting on blogs but the whole readership has taken a life of its own.  I'm excited and humbled.  A great big sloppy kiss to all of you!

The hearts I found on this page.