Re-entry

Newly cleared dining table

After 19 days of house guests, I am having a hard time re-enterng my life.  This process has been further complicated by the changeover this past Saturday night from Standard to Daylight Savings Time.  I have never spung forward very well, but this year is turning out to be  really difficult.

But like everyone else, I do the best I can.  I have stopped beating myself with the guilt razorstrap,  I sleep so poorly that if I don't wake up until 10:00 now, well, that's when I wake up.  I did manage a bit of an earlier morning this morning and have been moderately productive. I got a load of bed linens and towels washed and dried.  Now I will iron the pillowcases---yes, you heard me, I will IRON the pillowcases, and the napkins, too!   I made a quick trip to Lidl for melons from Maroc, and oh my, fresh flowers!  I got 18 stems of lilac-colored tulips for only 3.99 Euros.  And they had pots of brilliant red geraniums, 2 for 5 Euros.  I couldn't pass them by.  So, half of my total grocery bill this morning was for flowers!  How French.  

Geraniums on the windowsill

It's not just the time change that has my head turned inside out; it's also trying to get back into my old routines and to get back into speaking, reading and thinking in French.  I had a 30 minute conversation with an older woman at the bus stop this morning and that helped.  It's a bit of a setback in French immersion to speak English for such an extended period of time.  I liked that it required zero effort to do so, but to the end of becoming une vraie carcassonnaise, it didn't help.

But my geraniums are on my kitchen windowsill and that is also a step further into French-ness, non?   As I have told countless students in my life, we eat an elephant one bite at a time, and I am learning the French ways one word at a time.  As usual,  comme toujours