Hidden In France

Vermont, Nadia, my book and I

I said I had so much to tell you, then told you nothing because I was writing. Always a good thing, to be writing rather than blogging.  Blogging impairs productivity in much the same way crack does.

I wanted to tell you that my son (he's only 18) has been backpacking through Europe with 3 childhood friends. In the last 20 days they saw Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Frankfurt, Vienna, Venice, now they're in the South of France, next Barcelona.  And here is the extraordinary thing:  I'm sleeping perfectly soundly. I thought I would experience fear, but instead all I'm experiencing is vague envy.  What do you know...!

I wanted to tell you that I visited my sister and that her baby daughter is a dream, the most beautiful little girl you will ever see. I miss my sister and her children now that she moved near Boston, and this is not something I will get over. I deep void I cannot fill.

I wanted to tell you that my mother stayed with us for a week and that we were both on our best behavior. I had fretted so much in fear of her visit after two difficult years when we barely communicated. But things were fine. 

I wanted to tell you that I met Nadia of La Porte Rouge in her new house, which used to be our house. 

When you only know a person through her writing and photography and have never met her, there is a point when you wonder if you have not invented this person, like a fictional character in one of your novels.  There is a moment of adjustment, then huge relief.  Yes, you can do this, speak to her, and she is real, and good news, you are real too.  You do not want to disappoint: Am I too old, too stooopid, too fat, too uninteresting... Then you hear that the person was worried about disappointing too and you think that's really silly.  Now you are facing this person and all throughout you know you’re supposed to take her off the pedestal where you have placed her without her consent, but then you find yourself unable to, because she is that cool. 

The pictures are of the house where Nadia lives.  Nadia wrote a post about meeting me, with a pretty nice picture of me seen throgh Nadia's lense. And then Aran, of Canelle et Vanille wrote a post about meeting Nadia and now I feel practically like a celebrity by osmosis.  I tell myself that the house you are seeing is connecting the three of us. If six degrees of separation can include a house.

Here are Huevos Rancheros Nadia made and that were super scrumptious and dazzling to look at.  I just wish I knew how to take pictures of food, pictures that aren't fuzzy and where you can actually recognize the ingredients.

Voila.  I also wanted to tell you about my 5 days in New York and eating, eating, eating and more than ever wanting to move to Manhattan and never look back. 

When I have a chance, I want to tell you all the good things happening to my novel Hidden in Paris, the great reviews, the great emails, the guest posts and interviews, and how it is slowly going up, up, up the Amazon ranking and gaining a lot of traction as a fun summer read thanks to all of you who are spreading the word, and especially thanks to a few incredibly kind bloggers I really want to honor in a post just about them.

gorgeous citrus cake

Hmmm beautiful summer day in Los Angeles.  It's is warm enough to be live in a bathing suit, but not so warm that we have to lock ourselves up with the air con full blast.  Instead all the windows are open to let the breeze move thorough the house, the pool is at lagoon temperature, and there is nothing to do and nowhere to go since the freeway is temporarily off limit.  

I'm loving Carmageddon. One, it allows me not to feel like a loser for not doing something glamourous over the week end. Two it is quiet, the air is clean and everyone is rediscovering their own neighborhoods. Yesterday we walked to the farmers market and stocked up on fantastic organic peaches and cherries.  Today we're washing the car and doing some light gardening.  I think there should be carmageddons once a month, at least.

I was going to make a clafouti but I found this amazing cake in Coco and Kelly (who happened to be blogging about their wonderful trip to Italy just to make me envious), and it's so beautiful -- the cake-- it seems to embody summer. Here are the picture but for the story and recipe, hop on to Apollina's blog. 

The cake was inspired by a Stella McCartney dress or print (I don't know which one)  I love this!

Visitors

I have SO MUCH to tell you... But since we all need to start somewhere, how about I start with the grossest stuff?  

We were gone for ten days. We closed our bedroom door so that the pets, who have a tendency to get temperamental when they miss us, and have on occasion puked on our bed accidentally on purpose (the cat) or had diarea on the carpet (the dog) would not be able to trash the place. 

But what we didn't know is what was left behind those closed doors.  It was something puny, something laughable and insignificant. Something no larger than a flea.  

A flea, in fact.

When we opened the doors to the bedrooms ten days later, home sweet home, she, the flea, had become THEM.  It wasn't immediately obvious, but by the time I had sat five minutes at my computer, I knew something was terribly wrong. I looked down at my itchy ankles and saw a good twenty fleas feasting on me.

I. Freaked. Out.  The scream must have been heard within a 15 miles radius. A flea infestation in my home sweet home!

Now what my husband and I did next was in turn, horrible, pathetic, ridiculous, ingenuous, cruel and all around disgusting.

The fleas were starving, attracted to our body heat like a magnet, and were all over us (horrible). Pants would not do: too loose, so we donned our longest socks --in 93 degree weather (ridiculous) to protect ourselves as we figured out what to do next. I have mentioned before that my husband will not EVER use chemicals to kill bugs, so we had to come up with a solution, and burning the house down wasn't one of them, although tempting let me tell you. We began to vacuum the room while wearing our long socks (pathetic) We also needed to quickly kill the fleas that climbed up our legs, but couldn't because they jumped immediately off to another part of the body (horrible, pathetic) So we used saran wrap to capture them (ingenious, ridiculous) before popping them between our nails (gross!)

Now we were vacuuming in our socks in 90 degree heat, covered in cling wrap, pecking at each other like two flea-infested baboons and realizing in despair that considering the prodigiously rapid life cycle of the flea this would take us the rest of our lives.  

So we had an idea.  SPCA people please close your ears.  What we did was release the dog into the room (cruel! ingenious!) In instants the dog was covered in fleas, probably a hundred fleas, maybe two hundred.  Then my husband and I took the dog outside and spent the next three hours combing the fleas out of her and dipping the fleas into soapy water to kill them, then returning the dog to the room for a refill, and back at it again with the flea combs, all the while congratulating each other for being complete geniuses. 

The dog, however, isn't speaking to us.

(by popular demand I have added a picture of what I look like at the moment)