They don't hate everything American

They pick and choose. Somehow they manage to love Ben & Jerry's. We were in Bruges on Free Cone Day.

In fairness, you hear less anti-Americanism in Belgium than you do in France, and even there it's all among the political pundits. Most ordinary Frenchmen have a pretty positive view of American culture. Of course, it's about as distorted as our view of French culture.

That ol' timey feel

I guess you can say that the porch is now officially finished, since they came and took the lock box off the front door day before yesterday. And this is exactly the reason we wanted it, to give our house that old-fashioned feel of days long gone when we all had time to sit and relax. And surf the web.

An Experiment in "City" Living

During our recent trip to southern France (pictures to be posted soon, we promise!), we stayed in a townhouse just a short walk from the main square in the village of Saint-Chinian. In past week-long vacations to France and Italy we've stayed in nice accommodations outside of town, which meant we had to drive to buy groceries, eat out, or do anything. But this time we decided to try living in town. And we liked it. While "town" was pretty small, there were several restaurants and cafes, three bakeries (although I never saw the third one), and a decent Sunday and Thursday morning market. Best of all, though, was the wine store almost across the street from our house. David and our friend Steve made a habit of visiting almost daily to have the conaisseurs there pick out a wine for our dinner, whether it was roast chicken from the market or asparagus (from the market) rolled in ham (from one of the butchers in town). Since Saint-Chinian has its own appellation (AOC) for wine from the region, there were a lot of wines to choose from, and almost everything we drank was really good, even to this diehard beer drinker!

As for our experiment in city living, we gave the house mixed reviews, but the location was ideal. Of course, the road in front of the house being totally torn up and thus closed to traffic made it quiet, in the front. It was a little noisier from truck traffic at the back of the house, but since that traffic was not immediately behind us, it wasn't all that bad. The house itself was adequate for the four of us but it was a good thing none of us is big or we wouldn't have fit in the showers. Can't beat the price though - we got an off-season rate of 275 euros plus a 60 euro cleaning fee for the four of us for a week.

We look forward to continuing our research into the many vacation accommodation possibilities in southern France (most of which, interestingly, seem to be owned by Brits...).

Babies

We had a visit over the weekend from a long-time family friend who just had her first baby. It's hard to imagine our children were ever that small. This was not a particularly small baby at birth, and the little one is now a month old, so she's grown. Wow. It never ceases to amaze me, though, how wonderful it is to gaze at a baby, to look at her perfect hands and little (or big, as the case may be) feet and little rosebud mouth and think about what a precious gift this little life is.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not yearning for days of yore. I'm perfectly happy with the empty (or almost) nest stage of our lives. It's just something about the innocent and simple perfection of a baby that fills me with awe.

Springtime, Grey Skies, and Windows

What the heck, why not plagiarize myself?

It's been a grey two days. Ok, you already know I don't like grey (and I can't seem to decide if I should spell it gray or grey). As I sit here in my Mom room (not quite a man-cave but it serves the same purpose) gazing out the windows, I'm looking at a grey sky. As I look a little closer I start to wonder: is it really all that grey, or are my windows just that dirty? The answer lies somewhere between the two. But it does remind me that one of the functions of spring is renewal, and renewal - when it comes to houses - involves at least in part that infamous ritual called spring cleaning.

In theory, it's a good idea. I would love to have Belgian-clean windows. (Yes, folks, windows in Belgium are CLEAN. Those ladies are out there every week with a squeegy.) But I'm more in love with the theory than with the practical aspects of how you get clean windows. When I get truly inspired, I can manage to clean all the windows in one room. That leaves only, oh - what, 8 more rooms? not counting the basement, which hasn't seen clean windows since at least 1985, when we moved into the house. Maybe when I retire...

Springtime!

With the time change this past weekend, it's like a dark cloud has been lifted. We had two gorgeous early spring days, the kind where, even though it's still cool, you know winter is on its way out. The grass is still sparse and we have only one lonely crocus up, but that one crocus is the sign that we made it through the winter.

Meditating on spring brought me two realizations:

- This is the our first spring in Maryland in five years, since we moved to Belgium in February 2007. It's been so long, we've forgotten what's planted in our yard. We're waiting - somewhat impatiently - to see which bulb flowers will come up and where.

- As cold as this winter was, I have the impression it wasn't all that bad. We didn't get a lot of snow, especially compared to what this area got in the winter of 2009-2010. But I think it's more than that: it occurs to me that I've been comparing this past season with the three long, dark winters we spent in Belgium, where the only daylight we saw during the week was when we emerged from our cave to go up to the main building for coffee each morning. And more often than not, it was a gray daylight. Gray is the default setting for sky in Belgium. Here, we wake expecting a sunny day, and it's the exception when it's not.

I don't miss gray, but I sure as heck will miss those long summer days!

Animals

A couple weekends ago we went to Portland, Maine to visit my college roommate, whom we hadn't seen since Becky's college days. She and her significant other have two cats and a dog, so we got a good pet fix while we were there. Below you see Annie, who is one of the sweetest dogs I've ever met. She and Ollie need to get together to see who can run the fastest and the furthest.

Then there was Jack and Quinn. Jack is the redhead, Quinn the grey and peach one. I've never seen such a color combination, and I was quite taken with Ms. Quinn. If we hadn't been flying, Quinn might have been taken too.

We do miss having pets - sometimes. On dark, wet, or icey mornings, we don't miss it at all. Most of the time we're glad we can just pick up and leave without having to worry about making arrangements. But still, there's something uniquely comforting about stroking a loving pet. Sigh.