Andy Smallman

Melinda made me get up at 4am today. Why? To take her to the airport. Why? She flew out this morning to spend the next week with her best childhood friend, Nina and Nina’s family (husband and 3 kids). Where does Nina live? In Wyoming. Where’s Wyoming? That way (pointing east).

So, yes, we kicked Melinda out of the house for a week. With Chloe away at college, that leaves just Ella and me, reminding me of last January when Melinda and Chloe left Ella and me in Nantes. Except then, both Ella and I were sick. This time we’re not. Well, we’re not in France, either. We’re just hanging out. I took some time this afternoon to watch the movie “Everything is Illuminated,” which I absolutely loved. Ella has been listening to music, country music in fact (I bet she’d like Wyoming!).

Melinda and I have been exchanging text messages over the last few minutes and I got her to send me one with a picture, this one of her with Nina fixing dinner. So here it is, a first on the blog: A picture from Wyoming!

Next Saturday Melinda and I need to get dressed up for a special occasion. And since I don’t spend a huge chunk of my time worrying about getting dressed up, Melinda has taken on the challenge for me. And what a challenge it is. Just listen.

Last weekend she had me trying on all of my fancy clothes. That took about 5 minutes, long enough to realize that they are much looser on me than they were before we left for France (see Tracking My Weight). This morning she came back from Brenda’s and Greg’s house with one of Greg’s suits. He’s bigger (read: more muscular) than I am so it didn’t really work, either. Now we’re back to the suit I’m wearing in today’s picture.

It was purchased for me by Melinda’s mother back in 1998 so I’d have something nice to wear as the officiant of Brenda’s & Greg’s wedding (or as I like to say, first I married Melinda, then I married her sister). Melinda dismissed it last weekend as being both too old and too baggy (and something negative about pleats, I think), but it may be winning out now. The other option left is renting one for 100+ dollars. I don’t think so.

Now she’s trying to decide if the purple shirt is a winner or a loser. After that, there’s still the tie to figure out. Apparently, a relevant consideration is whether or not the tie matches her dress. Not owning any ties, I put on the baseball cap and asked, “Does this hat go with your dress?”

That’s just how I am. Challenging.

See this? It’s duck confit and I really, really want some. I can almost taste it. I can almost feel the meat melting in my mouth. I can just about smell it. I can see it falling off the bone. It formed the basis of my favorite meal in France.

Before living in France, I don’t really recall having eaten duck. It’s possible, I suppose, perhaps when I was a kid. But the sense I had of duck was it being a dry, dark meat, nothing like duck confit.

I’ve been looking for it here in the US and found I can order it on Amazon. It’s just ridiculously expensive.

I was told I could special order it at Metropolitan Market. But it’s ridiculously expensive.

See this? It’s duck confit and I really, really want some.

This photo is from March of 2010, just over 3 months BEFORE we left for France. It was taken in San Francisco in front of the French Consulate, where we had to go to get our visas to live in France. Many aspects about this were either challenging or frustrating, the biggest of which was having to travel from Seattle to San Francisco to apply for visas. Another included the challenge of getting appointments. We had to make a specific appointment for each one of the four of us and due to the nature of the scheduling, one appointment was before lunch and three of them were after lunch. Fortunately, once we were there they processed all four of us during the first appointment.

Another, um, interesting thing was being told that we were applying about 5 days early for visas. Technically, no one is eligible for a visa more than 90 days ahead of their arrival date. Not knowing this, we had timed our trip to coincide with the spring break at PSCS, thus making it so Melinda and I wouldn’t miss any work and the girls wouldn’t miss any school. Given that, we could have been turned down and told to return, all four of us, a week later. Fortunately, we weren’t made to do that. But when our visas were granted and our passports returned, the visa expiration date stamped in them was a couple of weeks earlier than we requested. That showed us.

Speaking of this picture, I think it’s pretty awful of me but it’s one of my favorites of Melinda. I think she is absolutely gorgeous, just like in real life.

In one of Ella’s classes she is reading The Grapes of Wrath, which happens to be a book I love. Given this, I offered what I hoped would be, and what has turned out to be, a win-win situation. I asked if she’d let me read the book aloud to her. So on many evenings each week this fall, just like we did with ALL of the Harry Potter books, Ella crawls into bed and I read to her. Not bad when your kid is almost 15 years-old.

Another thing that makes this experience not just fun but even more intergenerational is the fact that the copy of the book we are using belonged to my mom [pause for effect] from before she was married. Inside the front cover in my mother’s recognizable handwriting is her maiden name. I think that’s pretty special. As you may have guessed, today’s photo is a picture of that copy.

So, yes, The Grapes of Wrath, the story of the Joad family. I think Ella’s favorite character is either Jim Casy or Ma Joad. Wait a second, those might be my favorite characters.

Rumor has it that the next book may be The Odyssey. Really? Am I going to try to read that aloud??

This may very well be the first picture I took in France. Yes, I doctored it up tonight with some serious contrast to make it kind of fun and different for tonight’s entry. But I still think it’s the first picture I took.

It was July 6, the day after we arrived, and Romain had come to meet us at his aunt’s apartment where we were staying for our first couple of weeks. A short walk from the apartment was Ella’s soon-to-be school so he walked us over to take a look. I snapped a handful of pictures, this one first and then, seconds later, the one I used for my blog post on July 7, 2010.

I mentioned recently that at times I get nostalgic. Tonight was one of those times. I get to looking at pictures or reading past entries and get all fuzzy inside. The whole sabbatical thing really happened, right?. Sitting in our Seattle house tonight, the darkness coming early and it being cold and damp, I was ready to return to our first week in Nantes and those 90 degree sunny, sunny days.

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I admit the photo has nothing to do with spam. Truth be told, it’s a year old and I’m enjoying the aroma of my mom’s homemade apple pie, the one she made when my parents visited Nantes last November. Somehow, it seemed like the right balance for a post about spam.

This morning Melinda said to me, “Let’s get an early start on our errands and get them done quickly.” A great plan. Too bad it didn’t go as we wanted.

First, we had to wait to get started until after we picked up Ella from her overnight birthday party. That was 10:30. Then, errand number one, closing our safe deposit box, took much longer than what we thought it would. It was already past noon when we moved on to errand number two, which involved trying to buy me a vintage suit. We first tried the Goodwill in downtown Seattle. No go. Not even close. Then we tried the Value Village on Capital Hill. No go. And upon returning to the car we discovered we had been given a ticket. Our license tabs had expired and we had totally forgotten to renew them. That’s $47.

That’s $47 and a new errand to run, I mean, renewing the license. We arrived at the nearest licensing station 5 minutes after it closed, so set off across town to Ballard to another that is open much later. Because of construction, it took an eternity to get there. And once we arrived, we learned the car needs an emission test before we can renew the license. Thank goodness the kind clerk allowed us to reverse the order. But arriving at the emission station, we found it was closed.

What was left? Get some Mexican food at the taco truck in today’s photo and come home to write today’s post.

There is this unique organic, gluten-free, vegetarian restaurant in our neighborhood called Thrive. Melinda and I thoroughly enjoy it; in fact, in our perfect world we have a personal chef who makes us the kind of meals, snacks, beverages and desserts that you can order at Thrive.

After a busy Friday late afternoon/early evening that involved getting Ella to her dance class and then quickly to a friend’s birthday party (and pick up a present for her), Melinda and I decided to stop at Thrive for a quick dinner. It was a good decision. If this kind of food interests you, click on their menu and find the Nori Rolls and the Awaken Warm Grain Bowl. Those Nori Rolls, man, I could just keep eating them. There they are in today’s photo.

Sitting there tonight we started talking about next summer when we hope Frédérique and Laurent will be visiting us. We keep noting places we want to take them.

Thrive is on the list.

Here’s another picture from last weekend’s trip to Target. While this one didn’t strike me as being quite as funny as “men swear,” the idea of placing a sign saying “Better For You” above the Cheese Whiz and snack crackers in the food department still gave me a chuckle.

What do you think is on the “Worse For You” aisle??

I don’t recall seeing anything in France that resembled spraying a cheese-like product from an aerosol can. I feel fairly confident that such a concept is uniquely American. And, boy, does that make me feel proud, kind of like when I think of “Freedom Fries.”

Looking at the photos the last two days leads me to consider the concept of something being “blog-worthy.” I referenced this before but feel it’s time to refresh your memories. So, raise your hand if you’re a Seinfeld fan. Keep your hand in the air if you remember the episode in which Elaine evaluates potential suitors from the standpoint of whether or not they are “sponge-worthy.”

Men Swear. Cheese Whiz. Blog-worthy.