Tuesday

Let's just say, tomorrow promises to be a total zinger of a day. I have a lot on my plate:

I have to catch up with my NaNoWriMo word count which, given that I've done bugger all today, will be way behind. I also have invoices and stuff to do.

I have to go to my "local" tax office (which isn't the one near where I live - a ten minute walk - oh, no, that would be far too practical. My "local" tax office is right on the other side of town, about 45 minutes away by tramway, bearing in mind my nearest tramstation is already a ten minute walk, so in all, we're talking almost 2 hours just for the journey) to pick up a certificate that proves that I have to pay "professional tax". I need this for the mindless paperwork at the university where I teach and if I don't get it, and all the other guff that goes with it (photocopies of my last three tax returns, of my passport, my social security card, my bank details...), handed in before Thursday (which basically means tomorrow because Wednesday is a public holiday and the university will, of course, be closed) I won't get paid in March-April (for classes I teach between September and December) but in August. Crap system? You bet.

I'll probably also have to go to the other university too, which will need basically the same forms. *sigh*

Then, I have to make a quiche (or something similar), tidy the flat (again), change sheets (putting ours on the sofa, clean ones on our bed), bla, bla, go pick up L from her dance class at 6, bring her home, hang out together for half an hour and then drag her to C's circus class to pick her up and take them to the Paillade (where I have to go in the morning - so, 45 minutes away) for some Protestant thing for a South Korean delegation that's visiting. We'll probably arrive too late for the buffet supper (supposedly at 7, we won't be there till nearer 8) but will have time to sit through speeches, a documentary about Korean Protestants and a debate (this will be the BEST FUN with a tired 5 and a half year old and a tired nearly 8 year old) before coming home with D (in the car, thankfully) and one of the Korean delegation who'll be spending the night with us. Just to drive the point home: D and C and L are baptised Protestants. Me, I'm NOT. I'm pretty much agnostic. So this whole evening this sounds like torture to me. I've got nothing against welcoming the Korean guy, but I could do without having to drag the girls all the way across the city at night...

I am not looking forward to tomorrow. Especially as it's nearly 2 am and I still have a few hundred words to write on my "novel".

It's a hard life, it really is...

Progress report

Believe it or not, the sitting room (the front half, anyway) is actually looking pretty good, though I say it myself. There's so much space all of a sudden!

Of course, the rest still looks like crap, but I'm really proud of all that I managed to achieve in such a short amount of time. And that has motivated me to keep going (except of course that I have a shitload of work to do, but I'm not going to let that stop me).

Next stop: the rest of the sitting room. I figure that if I can get our main room looking OK then the rest isn't as important because it's less visible. The trouble with this theory is that doing the rest of the sitting room (the office part) doesn't depend only on me - I need some DIY-type to help me get things done, like putting up wall lights, putting up a shelf, putting together some furniture (that I can do on my own, what I can't do is get the boxes down from the top of our wardrobe where D put them last year). But I'm really going to try and get this room done (and done properly, not just superficial, cosmetic stuff) by the Christmas holidays.

I know reading about my tidying up is utterly dull (especially without photos, but really, I'm too ashamed to put up any "before" pictures), but it helps me get my act together!

Spring cleaning in...errr...November

I'm either really, really behing (probable) or really, really early (unlikely), but today I actually got down to some "spring cleaning".

Don't get too excited, though, as of course I ran out of time (and energy) and have probably only done about 50% of our sitting room (to be fair, if you take into account the disproportions of our flat, that is about 25% of the entire place, but still). But there is definitely an improvement, and the bit that I've done is the first part of the flat you see when you come through the front door, so I'm quite pleased.

The only down side, of course, is that it makes the remaining 50% of the sitting room (the office part, in other words) look infinitely worse. But I'm hopeful that now that I've started I'll actually manage to keep going and do some more.

My aim is to get the whole sitting room-office combo looking pretty hot damn good by the time we go away for Christmas. And, of course, if I can get more than that done, it'll be a bonus (next on the list: the kitchen, then finish the girls' room (nothing more's been done since we painted it, so it really looks unfinished. Which is normal, because it is), do the bathroom, tidy up the walk-in cupboard (that you can't walk into) and end with our room.

A huge task, certainly.

But at least I've started.

It's that time of year again...

Yeah, like I'm not already overwhelmed, I've decided to go ahead and do the NaBloPoMo thing again this year... And I'm not sure I'm going to make it, but I'm sure as hell going to give it a try. Add a little discipline to my life, if you like.

Nothing much to report here, of course. I took the girls to a Hallowe'en party last night (Hallowe'en is virtually non-existent for children here in France, but we have a Franco-American language school just around the corner and they put on a party every year) and was delighted when they both won prizes for their costumes (put together, home-made style, by yours truly): L won third prize for her adorable pumpkin and C also won third prize for her equally adorable cat. I was so pleased!

There were games and dancing and lots of sweets, so of course they both had a great time! I was chilled to the bone by the end of it, but enjoyed it too.

The half-term holidays are coming to a close (the girls go back to school on Wednesday) and it's been quite hard as I've had a shitload of work, but it's been quite good all the same. The fabulous weather certainly helps.

And as for my worries, well, they haven't gone away, but I'm hanging in there and am hoping to climb out of (some) debt by the end of the year. I just have to keep working, working, working...

Oh, and I've bought my Christmas cards and even done quite a bit of Christmas shopping - how's that for organised!

Now, if I could just get this place tidied up by Tuesday lunchtime, when a friend and her kids come to lunch, I might even feel happy...

Starting to feel truly Christmassy...

I actually spent most of this evening (when I was supposed to be translating around 2,000 words of a nasty nuclear energy text I have to finish for the beginning of January) wrapping presents. Oh, how I love wrapping presents! And although I'm no Martha Stewart (should have seen the visual disaster that was the cake I made on Sunday, though it actually tasted fabulous), I have to say I think I wrap presents pretty well...

Didn't even finish, to be honest - I "only" wrapped the girls' presents from us (not the bicycles, obviously, but a bicycle pump for C and a pack of stabilisers for L, as sort of hints as to what might be awaiting in the cellar) and from Father Christmas (he was running short of time and asked me to do some wrapping for him. Elves must have been either drunk or on strike again I guess as the same thing happened last year...). Of course, the fact that I don't actually have anything to wrap for D is only a minor hurdle (last minute shopping tomorrow, I guess). And I haven't wrapped my MIL's presents, either, as she won't be here till the 25th anyway.

Plus D did lots of Christmas food shopping this afternoon, and the girls and I (though mainly I, with some help from C) did a fair amount of tidying. Of course, not enough for it to be visible to anyone but me, but it's a start, and I intend to do more tomorrow (though I'm not sure when - so much to do!).

And, somewhat unbelievably, there will be 10 of us for dinner tomorrow night (yes, here in France the "big" Christmas meal is on Christmas Eve. But the four of us will also be doing a "UK" Christmas lunch, too, on the 25th, after we've opened all the presents), and I HAVE TO ROAST SOME KIND OF BIRD. I've NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE. AM VERY SCARED OF RUINING EVERYTHING. But well. I guess we'll manage. And if the bird (it's a "pintade", which is apparently a guinea fowl) is truly inedible, we've got loads of tuna fish to fall back on...

The only downer in the whole proceedings (apart from the fact that I got no work done today) is the fact that I suspect my poor sweet L may indeed be falling foul (or should that be fowl?) of the chicken pox plague that hit her part of the school last week... She's got a few spots that are itchy, and her poor little forehead feels hot to me, so I fear the worst. Poor baby - chicken pox for Christmas... She's going to be so miserable - I know I was when I had it. But we'll see. Maybe it's just a very enthusiastic mosquito (yes, we've still got mosquitos - I blitzed one gleefully yesterday) or something...

OK. It's now 1 am (so still pretty early by my standards), so I guess I should try and get some work done... Or at least finish making my Christmas cards...

Seriously...

...You wouldn't think it was possible to be this tired and yet to have accomplished so little in a day. It's 10.20 pm and all I've done so far is remove a heap of junk and not-junk off my desk and put it on the floor.

Bearing in mind I stupidly assumed I could actually get stuff done this week (you know, during a week when the girls are on holiday from school but I'm not officially "on holiday" till Wednesday night), the reality of what I've actually managed (the from-desk-to-floor heap) seems pathetically pathetic even to me.

On the other hand, I can see a corner of my desk (hey! It's blue! Who knew?) that I probably haven't seen since the last time I cleared my desk.

On the third hand (who's counting?), still on that blue corner of my desk, I have found some deeply unappealing things (hmm, anyone for a fingernail?), a LOT of dust (possibly composed almost 100% of crumbs of some kind or another) and a few things I thought (assumed) were lost forever.

And finally, my passport saga continues: despite the 1.60-Euro-a-minute-5-minute-minimum UK consulate passport helpline's "no, go right ahead, just write one cheque (for 190 Euros - gah)for both the passport fees and postage costs" and then further confirmation "yeah, go ahead and make the cheque payable to the British consulate in Paris", I got a message on my answering machine saying that the consulate hasn't accepted personal cheques in over a year, could I phone back and give my credit card details please.

So, I phoned back, at 11.50 am, and eventually got a snotty French switchboard cow telling me that what I'm requesting is impossible (though that in itself is supposedly impossible if you go by a saying the French are mighty fond of: "impossible n'est pas français"*), that I should phone the get-a-bank-loan-first helpline, bla, bla, bla, that the place is closed for lunch and that I should phone back after 2.30 pm. I duly phoned back at 4.30 pm, and eventually got the same snarky cow telling me the offices were closed for the day. I snapped back that Ms Consulate Lady's message said 5.30 was closing time... So Ms Snotty Switchboard grudgingly tried to put me through. I sat through more bars of Vivaldi's "Spring" than I care to remember and eventually got to speak to Ms Consulate Lady. I informed her of my gripes ("I just spent about 20 Euros last week on your crappy helpline only to be given information that isn't even goddamn true, and now your own Ms Snotty Switchboard is telling lies about opening hours too") and she was very nice and said she would DEAL WITH THE PROBLEM.

She took my credit card details, told me I'd probably get my passport (complete with hideous photo) around 7 January and then informed me that, with the pound Sterling plummeting against the Euro, the fees (originally in pounds, then converted to Euros) have gone DOWN and that I won't be debited 190 Euros after all, just a trifling 170 Euro or so.

So, despite a pretty snarky day all round, with not enough sleep, not nearly enough chocolate, two pretty grizzly girls all day, not getting anything done, having yet more work to contend with and having to deal with Ms Snotty Switchboard not once but twice, I duly give thanks to the wonder that is the British economy (what's left of it) and its plummeting currency.

May the Christmas spirit move you all in at least one of its mysterious ways.

* = Impossible is not French (attributed to Napoleon. A totally ridiculous saying, if you ask me, and even more totally unsuited to the French)

Cravings

Spent this afternoon with some relatively new friends (we probably met them about a year ago at IKEA (of course) where our respective daughters started playing together and we then ended up chatting. And their daughters are at the girls' school, too).

The girls had a great time, and I enjoyed it too, but the visit made me crave... certain things. Not a baby (although their not-quite-one-month-old daughter is very cute), but a nice home. OK, the guy's an architect, which obviously helps, but their flat is just amazing - it's immaculately tidy in the "adult" parts and messy in the kids' parts, which makes it feel like a home (if it were immaculate everywhere I'd be suspicious ;-))), plus it's stylish and beautiful and modern and... just how I'd like our place to be, even though I know it never will.

And, their flat is in fact two flats - their original one, which was about the size of ours, plus a smaller one they bought (on the same landing). They've knocked doors through and made it into one huge flat.

So yes, I guess it's not just cravings, it could in fact be full-blown jealousy... Except that they're both so nice that you couldn't possibly not like them.

But oh, how I wish we could get our place sorted out. In my mind, I can see how it should (could) look, but we just never get there. D doesn't seem particularly bothered about certain aspects of the mess, and the girls have a very haphazard approach to tidying up, so everything ends up in a heap in a corner, at best. And I'm not without fault - my desk is a nightmare, as is all the floor "space" around it. But there's never time, and so much is part of a chain of events in which the first event never seems to get done...

I'm feeling a little down in the dumps, to be honest. And totally discouraged.

And my MIL will be here (with all her usual snarky comments and crappy advice) in 4 days, God help me.

All over bar the shouting

The Christmas market at school is now officially over... Estimated profits are in the 600-650 Euro mark, which strikes me as pretty awesome. Yes, if was bloody freezing standing out there for an hour or two selling the stuff, but earning that much money - which will all be used to buy things for the school - is cool. Really cool. And I think the girls enjoyed the fact that I was part of it, participating in a school event in a way that my own mother never did.

I'm proud of myself.

Not quite so proud of my Christmas preparations, though: yes, my father's presents are all accounted for (except the school-photo calendar that I ordered in October and that I don't have yet, so it'll not arrive in time for Christmas, even if I get it on Monday), I've done all it takes for Carla's best not-from-school friend, T, plus my goddaughter and her brother, I've done most of the shopping for C and L (just need their bikes, really, plus a small toy each), except C's birthday, and I've done some of my MIL's presents. Still don't know if she's coming here or not, which is a pain.

But what I haven't done is buy anything for D, send any Christmas cards (and I've received 7 already), do anything constructive about C's birthday party, do any tidying, do any sorting... The place is still a mess, and Christmas is in less than 2 weeks...

But school is all but over (one week to go), I only have one more day of teaching (though still have a mountain of exams to mark), and I have a shitload of work to do but am NOT stressing about it (not yet, anyway).

Oh, and I ate homemade organic cookies (and they were deeply unsatisfying, as only pure organic foodstuffs can be) all evening till I felt sick.

L does her circus school "end-of-term-show" tomorrow, which is cool, and then we're seeing one of her friends from her old school in the afternoon, which is cool too.

Sorry this is so disjointed - my brain feels like macaroni and cheese tonight and I just can't concentrate.

So I'm going to go to bed!

Thanks

I know the (non obligatory) theme for this month's NaBloPoMo is "Thanks", but I really don't have much to give thanks about today.

It wasn't exactly a bad day, I mean nothing really bad happened, but oh, I'll still be pretty glad when it's over.

I'm still only half way through making my 50 truffles. The recipe says "quick and easy". Well, it is reasonably easy, I suppose (though finding suitably-sized-and-heatproof recipients for the bain marie took a certain amount of inventiveness), but it certainly wasn't (hasn't been) quick...

I still have a shitload of crap to do, and realised last night that my passport - my only legally accepted identification - will no longer be valid as of Christmas Eve. And, according to the website of the British Embassy in Paris, new passports take "4 to 6 weeks" to be issued. Fuck only knows what I'm supposed to do for identification purposes during that time... Plus, I'll have to get my photo taken and I HATE that - I always look older and uglier than even I could imagine. *sigh*

D has been in some kind of snit all day, mainly with me, and I don't know why, so that's put ME in a snit, too.

The girls have been kind of difficult today, too. Everything takes so long to do, requires so much shouting (on my part) and sulking (on theirs), it's totally exhausting. 25 minutes just to get their teeth brushed tonight!

I'm exhausted by my crap lifestyle (in bed at 4 yet again last night, still addicted to eating mindless crap all the time) but feel totally powerless to change. Too weak, too undisciplined, too much of a failure.

And I got my first Christmas card today - which made me realise I still haven't sent any. Gah!

But there is one thing I can most definitely give thanks for: the happy conclusion (at least for the baby and his parents) of this heartaching tale from Orthez (in south west France). I'm sorry, but the article's in French. Basically, yesterday afternoon, while his mother was having a shower, a 2-day-old newborn was snatched from the maternity hospital in Orthez. A "kidnap alert" was broadcast and made it possible to identify the woman who took him. The police found the baby, in good health and well cared for, and have returned him to his (obviously severely freaked out) parents. The woman has been taken in for questioning. A happy ending, then, for the baby. Thank God. There are too many horrible stories as it is.

Conspiracy theories

This morning, D finally put together this really cute little shoe cupboard thing I bought from a catalogue back in August (though it wasn't actually delivered till early September). It's brilliant white and has a little glass shelf thing on the top and looks totally wonderful.

But (you knew there was going to be a "but", didn't you?).

Although D followed the instructions to the letter, when you put your shoes (any kinds of shoes - we've tried trainers, sandals, pumps, flip-flops, "ordinary" shoes) on the shelf thing inside, they just won't stay in place. Either they completely fall down inside the cupboard as soon as you close the door, or they slip down so that they get stuck.

I am SO disappointed.

And, as it's taken us (*cough* D *cough*) so long to put it together, there's no returns policy now, so we're stuck with it. Yes, it looks great, but the idea was to keep all the shoes out of sight. If they won't stay on the shelves, there's no point using it.

Grrrrrrrr.

And of course there's still a shitload of OTHER bits of furniture to be put together/put up: a shelf over my desk, another in the kitchen, wall light fittings in the office, kitchen cupboard doors and a worktop (which we don't even have), a CD shelf, the drawer that fits under C's bed, two storage "cubes" for my desk area... And curtain rails, which we've had for almost 3 years.

Can you tell that D is really, really not Mr DIY?

And yes, I'm equally crap at doing my share of the tidying up, but oh, sometimes, it just feels like there's some kind of conspiracy theory at work preventing me from ever, ever having a home I feel I can invite people into...

And C's birthday party is supposed to be held here on 27 December. Unimaginable at present, totally unimaginable.

And work keeps coming in at such a rate (yes, I AM grateful for all the work I get, but there does come a time when a girl needs a break for you know, SLEEPING and stuff) that I really, really don't have time to do anything.

Grumble, grumble, moan, moan.

Just get up off your fat arse, girl and GO TIDY for Chrissakes!

Just one more

One more to go. Just one more shitty up-at-6.30 Monday morning... You see, I teach at two of Montpellier's 3 universities (I know, it's crazy, but that's how they do things here), but I don't teach many hours, and I only teach in the first semester (not my choice, by the way, I would have liked to have spread things out a little), and since mid-November (when my Thursday class finished) I only teach on Mondays: 8-10 at the Economics faculty, then 1.5-3.15 in the annex to the Arts faculty.

For a night-owl like me, you cannot imagine what torture it is to have to get up at 6.30 and GO OUTSIDE while it's still DARK for Chrissakes.

But now, I only have one more week of teaching. And then my Mondays will be all mine once again. I can hardly wait!

Plus, the advantage to all my teaching being in the first semester is that I will get paid "early" (the status I have, "vacataire" - which means the job is not my main job (my main job is freelance translating) - is about as crappy as you can imagine, each semester being paid in one go, early March for the first semester, early August for the second), as in March. Woohoo!

The other advantage to all my teaching being in the first semester and all on the same day is that I have a gap - between 10 and 1.15 - which is too short to make it worth my while to go home (wouldn't have time to do anything), but long enough to get Christmas shopping done and have lunch in town. Oh, the bliss!

My Christmas shopping is coming on a treat, by the way. Well. Sort of. The homemade Christmas cards are... imperfect, shall we say. And certainly haven't been posted. But my father's presents are more or less done, the girls' presents too (except C's birthday present), and I've even got some of my MIL's present. Feeling quite smug, actually. Though that's no doubt a recipe for disaster. Nothing for D yet (he's wavering about the exercise bike - he thinks it's too pricey, which is true), but I'm working on it. Also have to find a way to tactfully leave hints about what I'd like (assuming we don't buy the bike).

Now all I have to do (bearing in mind it's 1.20 am) is make another 10 Christmas tree decorations for the school Christmas market and then once again drag myself out of bed to take the girls (and the decorations) to school tomorrow morning...

And then. If all goes well. If no one phones or sends me work via e-mail. I might actually have time to get down to some tidying up.

Tis indeed the season of miracles. Sort of.

Down in the dumps. Literally.

Today went OK, I don't really have anything to complain about: I've no idea what time the girls got up (though I suspect it wasn't very early) as they very sweetly got themselves breakfast and did some colouring till I emerged at 10.30...

There were some tussles about doing things, and doing things when I ask, but basically it was OK. They didn't help at all (I did laundry, dishes, cooking, putting clothes away, laying the table, clearing the table...) but we made it out by 2.45 this afternoon, and I consider that alone a victory.

Nice enough afternoon. Went to a Christmas Market-type thing near the Préfecture, where there were old-fashioned wooden games, a few stalls and a make-up tent. C got made up as the Wind Fairy and L as a Princess-Fairy type thing. They looked so beautiful!

Had pancakes for tea, came home and managed to get through most of the evening without too much trauma.

And now, I'm about to go and sit on the floor, surrounded by all the mess, so I can start to get to grips with it. This place is a total dump (of our own making) and here I am, sititng right in it.

Motivation (bis)

I feel absolutely no motivation vibes coming my way so, guess what, I did nothing of any consequence all day!

OK, I slept all morning (though I was up in time to get the girls ready for school, only to go back to bed an hour later), which is a fantastic achievement (FEEEEEEEL the irony).

And this afternoon, well, I did a couple of invoices, read stuff on the internet (could do that for hours...), did some laundry and that was about it.

Picked up L from school (D took C to her swim class) and we started making Mamie's birthday present - might even be quite nice!

And I worked this evening.

But no tidying, no DIY, no sorting, no furniture-moving. N.O.T.H.I.N.G.

What a loser.

Motivate me!

I feel like I'm stuck in a total rut. My days (as in "24-hour periods" rather than "day time") are so out of synch with "normal" life that I feel like a freak, I work a lot (but at the wrong time) and am utterly sick of it, I have a mountain of stuff to do (did I mention that our flat is a total tip? And that we have random bits of furniture in unlikely places? And that we still have unpacked boxes from when we moved in in February 2006? Have you noticed that Christmas (and so C's 7th birthday, too) are just around the corner?) and no time to do any of it, my health is definitely suffering in ways I can perceive but not explain (let's just forget about the fugly muffin top and packed of bacon TUC crackers, shall we?) and oh, I just get the impression that I'm not in control, no way, not even close.

It's not that I'm unhappy. No, that's not it. I "enjoy" my job (as in, I don't hate it), I love my family, I adore my daughters, I have a (potentially) lovely home in a beautiful city in the south of France, I have a fabulous cat, my health is - as far as I know - OK, my father's in good shape, and I even have money in the bank for once.

But I just hate my lack of discipline, my inability to stick to schedules, cross things off lists, get things done.

I so badly want to tidy this place up, decorate the girls' room, make it all presentable so we can invite people round. As it is, I'm waaaay too embarrassed to let anyone see the way we live.

D will be going away for the weekend in a couple of weeks, so perhaps I can try and get some stuff done then.

Then all I'll have to do is convince him to put up curtain rails (bought in 2006), kitchen unit doors (bought in 2007), shelves in the kitchen and over my desk (bought in early 2008) and light fixtures (yet to be bought, so I'm not hopeful about this one, given our track record for home improvements), and then help me get C and L's bedroom looking nice at last.

The real problem is knowing where to start; it's all so daunting...

Despite my "new me" gig (which doesn't actually seem to be going very well, it must be said), I feel very much like some kind of fat, ugly blimp right now.
And when I feel like that, all I want to do is eat crap.
I managed to eat my way through a shitload of sweets this afternoon, but have been moderately reasonable this evening (though only because I don't have any more crap to eat).
And, to further complete my wallowing, I've been listening to "my" music - the stuff D mainly thinks of as garbage (though I don't necessarily think much of all his music tastes either). I've played my Neil Diamond Greatest Hits CD, my Cyndi Lauper Greatest Hits CD and would have played Shirley Bassey too if D and the girls hadn't come home...
Don't really know what's brought all this on... Sure, my hair is APPALLING: I truly look like either a witch (hair down) or one of the backing singers from Robert Palmer's famous video (though redhead, not black, and without the fab figure too, of course). I'm muffin-topping like crazy (all that chocolate, natch), I haven't done my legs in weeks, my nails are a mess, my teeth are as hideous as ever...
But the girls were generally well-behaved today, and mostly pretty cute... Not that I did any tidying up to speak of, of course, but the plans are there, oh, yes, the plans... I know exactly what I plan to do!
I guess I should just stop moaning, go and eat the bowl of chocolate cereal I've been fantasising about and get my fat arse to bed!
Tomorrow is another day, as they say, and I'm hoping to get some tidying done!