Coming to America: Part Two

My first trip back to the U.S. in more than two years is quickly approaching. More of what I can't wait for and a bit of what I can do without:

Culinary delights

1. Having a classic Southern breakfast in a diner—eggs, bacon, biscuits, grits, orange juice.

2. Sweetened iced tea that’s NOT from a can and NOT carbonated.

3. Einstein’s honey whole wheat bagels with butter and a cup of Neighborhood Blend decaf

4. Auntie Anne’s jalapeno pretzels

5. Idaho baked potatoes. (Belgians are all about frites. Mashed and baked potatoes aren’t served here, and baking potatoes aren’t sold in the stores or markets so I can’t make them at home.)

Little Things Make a Big Difference

1. Being able to read every sign, form, receipt, flyer, and menu

2. Understanding what people are saying

3. Driving with confidence

4. Hearing Southern accents

5. Seven-day-a -week shopping; stores that don’t close at 7 p.m.

6. English language movies and TV

7. Listening to the radio

8. Celebrating Fourth of July

9. Outdoor pools and air conditioning

10. Reading a daily newspaper

Not looking forward to

1. Lack of public transit

2. Loud music, loud talking, loud everything

3. All the driving and time on the road

4. Living out of a suitcase for five weeks

5. Leaving some of my favorite shoes and purses at home.

June 4, 2007

Fast Forward

Last week I received my first fall catalog, and I was thrilled because even though summer isn't officially underway yet, I love fall clothes. Eddie Bauer was offering a sneak preview of their fall collection for middle-age fatsos select customers and offering free shipping and a 20 percent discount on all orders over $75 placed from the catalog by June 4. They didn't even have the new stuff on their Web site. Now don't I feel special gettin that catalog. 

Needless to say, I was all over it with a packet of Post-it notes marking my favorites. While it's true Eddie IS my boyfriend, the real reason I couldn't resist ordering is that I much prefer fall and winter clothes to spring and summer ones.

Wool sweaters. Fleece. Hoodies. Boots. Turtlenecks. Leather.

All things brown, cranberry, and olive green.

I am a Grrrl who is all about cozy--and summer stuff just doesn't get me excited. Part of that is a reflection of my age--I don't have sleek, lightly tanned limbs to expose to the world--but part of it is just that I'm very tactile and I relish the textures of cold weather fashion.

So I pored over the catalog, making a wish list and chopping it down, trying to separate the "must haves" from the "maybes" and figure out what was worth investing in. I sent my order off two days ago.

Now I just have to get through the long, hot days I'll face in Virginia and Florida this summer, and solve the Southern Grrrl's dilemma of trying to stay cool while keeping my whale-belly white fair skin covered.

How about you? Do you like fall/winter clothes or spring/summer clothes better?

June 1, 2007

Portrait of the artist as a middle-aged expat

I’ve got a little more than a year left in Belgium, and I’m constantly looking back on my time here and looking forward to what might lie ahead.

I’ve written about my day-to-day life and our travel and experiences in Europe, but sometimes I think what will stand out in my mind when I revisit my expat years is the way I nurtured my creativity. Being plucked from my busy, busy, busy American life and dropped into a new country without a job, a friend, or a single item on my calendar was unnerving and yet liberating.

I often felt lost in every sense of the word during my first year here, but the up side of all that down time is that it removed every excuse I ever had for not expressing my creativity, for not stretching my skills, for not giving myself permission to try and possibly fail at something new.

When I started my blog, I did so with the idea that going public with my personal writing would force me to spend some time at the keyboard every day, to take an idea and fully explore it, to take rough writing and finish it, and to soldier on with my work whether I felt inspired or bored. In that respect, this blog has been a success. It may not be widely read or well known. but it’s fully my work and my online portfolio. I've written about 500 pages. The process of posting four to five times a week has taken my writing to a new level. I don’t think it’s ever been better, and I look forward to taking what I’ve learned back into the work place next year.

While honing my writing skills was my intention when I started this blog, I gained so much more than I ever expected; I’ve made friends, developed relationships, and learned from others’ experiences. It’s been the ultimate reality show with the most amazing cast of characters.

While here, I’ve also taken baby steps into the world of art and paper crafts and thoroughly enjoyed learning to stamp, watercolor, and make cards and scrapbook pages. With one year left of my “sabbatical from American life,” I’m more determined than ever to advance those fledgling skills and take some chances. I want to take a class in book making and one on painting techniques. I may even sign on for a class in making mosaics.

Suddenly time seems short. I both look forward to and fear going back to the U.S., wondering what shape my life will take when I’m once again planted in the land of the fast and the stressed. I try to focus on the positive, on the opportunities that await us, but part of me is also braced for what will seem like an assault on our low key European life style. In theory, we are going “home,” but home doesn’t exist anymore as a familiar, comforting place. Who knows what life will really be like--where we’ll live, how we’ll balance work and family time, and if we’ll be able to travel?

All I know is that I have one year left—and places to visit and things to do before I’m back in the rat race. Tomorrow this non-artist is going to boldly register for those art classes. It’s something I’d never find time for in the U.S., which is exactly why I need to do it now.  May 20, 2007

A weekend spent making cards

(If you're a stamper, info on the supplies used is in my Photo Album.)

This one is E and Mr. A's favorite

This card embodies the colors and feel of Paris for me.

This one also has French flavor.

I love the colors in this card, which are so light and airy and match the sentiment.

My favorite flowers aren't romantic ones like roses or orchids. I prefer earthy sunflowers and black-eyed susans.

May 6, 2007

Images used in cards copyrighted by the manufacturers. See photo album for more info. Card designs copyright 2007 by V-Grrrl.

Tapestry buying trip to Gent, Belgium

Today I joined a group of American women on a day trip to Gent. It's  a lovely historic city at the confluence of two rivers. It has a long history in shipping, and in the 13th century was one of Europe's major cities with a population of about 65,000. It's not a major tourist attraction in Belgium, being upstaged by Brugges, and yet it offers everything from medieval castles to classic Flemish, Roman, Gothic, and Baroque architecture. It has markets and squares, belfries and churches, watchtowers and guild houses, and lots and lots of unique and interesting shops.

One of the American women has cultivated a relationship with the owner of a tapestry shop.  Belgium is renowned for its tapestries, a reputation it developed during the middle ages. Belgian tapestries hung in castles, palaces, and chateaus across Europe and were commissioned by popes for the Vatican. Today the tapestries are no longer handwoven but are still made in Belgium. The shop in Gent featured tradtional and more modern designs on wall hangings, pillows, handbags, runners and and luggage. The owner of the shop offered our group a special discount and also arranged for a tour guide to acquaint us with the town's historic landmarks.

I'm not particularly into tapestry, but I was eager to get together with some women friends. E has been interested in acquiring a tapestry as a souvenir of Belgium and so I shook him down for euros and combed through the shop. Most of the wall tapestries feature classical images--medieval scenes, castles, ladies in gardens, flowers, maps, etc. While many of them were nice, they just weren't me. I couldn't imagine where I would hang them. I didn't want to have yet another piece of wall art languishing in a box somewhere. I am always buying art, and I don't have many places to hang wall art in our Belgian home.

I was, however, interested in the table runners. I have a few antique pieces that have cheap crocheted lace dresser scarves covering the imperfections on their tops. Over time, the lace has become stretched out and droopy and I've  been plotting to replace it but didn't know what to replace it with. Buying tapestry table runners for these chests and dressers seemed a perfect solution and a practical way to satisfy E's yen to bring a bit of Belgian tapestry into our home. 

There were loads and loads of throw pillows with all sorts of scenes, images, and patterns, ranging from the traditional, to reproductions of famous paintings, to whimsical themes. As much as I liked some of them, I kept resisting because no matter how attractive I might find decorative pillows, I hate having to find a place for them every time I want to sprawl on the sofa or clear off the bed at night.

Still there was one pillow in the shop calling my name.

Yeah, I know it's cutesy and sentimental, but I have three good reasons for buying it.

Reason number one is Petey.

Reason number two is Amy.

And this is just one of six bookcases in the house--reason number three.

Now you know why the pillow belongs in my home (notice, it also matches the sofa!).

April 27, 2007

The joy of Scholastic Books

Yesterday when I picked up E-Grrrl after school, she was toting her black backpack and a white plastic bag straining at the seams. As she climbed into the back of the car she excitedly said to her brother Mr. A: "The book order came in!"

She methodically unloaded the bag while her brother impatiently demanded the book he was waiting for: Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. He'd also requested My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George (which I read when I was a kid) as well as its two sequels.

E-Grrrl had begged for Madonna's latest book, The English Roses: Too Good to be True, and Isabel of the Whales by Hester Velmans. The book she couldn't live without  was Emily Windsnap and the Monster of the Deep by Liz Kessler, the sequel to The Tail of Emily Windsnap, which her teacher had read aloud in school.

Because both kids love animals, I bought them Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul  and Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul  as a surprise.

The car hadn't pulled away from the curb before Mr. A and E-Grrrl were buried in their stories and by bedtime E-Grrrl had read all 220 pages of the Emily Windsnap book and Mr. A had devoured Hatchet.

Upstairs in our house is a bookcase that houses my own collection of Scholastic Books. When I was a kid,  I remember poring over the paper book flyers with such longing. The youngest in a large, working class family, there was never a time when money wasn't tight, but my parents always bought me books.

Back then they cost 25-50 cents each. Today my kids get a thick wad of flyers representing a number of book clubs every two to three weeks. Back then there was only one book club flyer, and it didn't come out that often. Normally I was allowed to get two books. Sometimes I shook down the sofa cushions, car interior and my older sisters' coat pockets looking for change to spend on books.

I went through phases with my selections. I liked animal books for a while and was entranced by titles like How to be an Animal Detective. I remember adoring mysteries for quite some time, enjoying the way they scared me in the middle but always turned out fine in the end. I think the spooky aspect of the mysteries is what drove me to buy lots of ghost stories. I had a fling with magic books when I was in second and third grade, and there are a number of them on my shelves.

I also liked Peanuts comic books and any kind of arts and craft project book. I often succumbed to Disney books that were based on movies. I almost never got to go the movies as a kid, so the books were my connection to the films my friends were talking about: The Shaggy Dog, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, 101 Dalmations, The World's Greatest Athlete, The Boatniks, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

The Scholastic Book Club also introduced me to classic kids books, such as Mary Poppins, Stuart Little,  Harriet the Spy, and the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary. Later I sunk my teeth into young adult titles like The Witch of Blackbird Pond and Jacob Have I Loved. E-Grrrl likes to explore my old books and read some of them herself. Mr. A hasn't had much interest in them.

I still remember carrying my book order to school in a white envelope bulging with change to pay for my selections. Nowadays when I write a check to the Scholastic Book Club, it's likely to be in the vicinity of $50. Once it was well over a hundred dollars. I consider it money well spent. For the most part we read the books and then donate them to charity, only hanging onto absolute favorites which get read over and over again.

Just as the musty titles on the hall bookshelf take me back to the happy afternoons when the school secretary delivered a cardboard box to the teacher and I just KNEW I was going to have a great day, I hope Emily Windsnap and Hatchet will one day remind my kids of the happy evenings they spent sprawled on their beds in Belgium, lost in a story.

April 25, 2007

Wildflowers in the forest

The woods are loaded with wildflowers in the spring. First the pink and white ones dot the forest floor, and then later in April the dreamy purple bluebells will create a fairy-tale landscape.

April 6, 2007

Why we're friends....

In an e-mail discussion on Julie Cameron's latest book of creative exercises:

"Like you, I've shied away from Julie's work because I'm not so good at the daily exercise thing ... replace the word 'book' with 'gym' and I'm the same:  A serial free spirit who is overweight, unfit and undisciplined ... oh, and unashamed :)"

Oh yes, Di, I recognize the similarities. I couldn't have said it better myself. Thanks for the big smile this morning.

There's more than one way to send an electronic card

Today's post is dedicated to Neil Kramer at Citizen of the Month!

Neil's blog is like the big orange sofa in the coffee shop on "Friends." I can't get through the day without stopping by and settling in  with a steaming cup in my hand to catch up on life with my favorite New Yorker (who happens to live in LA).  The only thing better than his original, funny, and thought-provoking posts is the community of commenters he attracts. These are the "friends" who share the sofa and deliver the lines that would make Chandler Bing proud. Neil has built an online neighborhood we all love being a part of.

So today I raise my mug to Neil who has brightened the blogosphere with his wit, charm, and his fabulous cast of supporting characters:

Wishing you a year of good times, good work, good posts, and even better comments!

Happy Birthday to My Blog Crush!

March 7, 2007

Life is Good!

Can I just say that one of the best things about living in King George County, Virginia, was the friends I made there? It all started with Michelle, who I met in the hospital when my son was born. He arrived seven weeks early, and her son was also born prematurely. We discovered not only did we share the challenges of being parents of preemies, but that we lived within a mile of each other in the same neighborhood! We were destined to be friends and so were our boys.

Michelle's warm personality and her love of entertaining drew her into an ever-widening circle of moms. Lucky me, I got to come along for the ride as she and some other enterprising women organized a playgroup and social network in our neighborhood. When the children were small, we took turns hosting weekly gatherings in our homes.

As our kids matured and headed off to school, the focus shifted from entertaining preschoolers to building closer ties among the moms, who began getting together once a month or so for a Girls Night Out in different people's homes. The group stuck together as members moved away and others joined, stay-at-home moms returned to work, and schedules got hectic as our kids embraced sports and extracurriculars. Often the ONLY time we'd see each other was at our Girls Nights Out.

One of the hardest aspects of moving to Belgium was leaving those relationships behind. Happily, my Home Grrrls have not forgotten me. For the second year in a row, they got together to celebrate my birthday. Heather hosted the first V-Grrrl fete last year with a Better-than-Sex theme. This year Michelle gathered the gang at her place for a tea party because I'm an avid tea drinker (and because she had an itch to break out her Grandma's china). :D

The Grrrls all bought gifts for me, packed them into an ENORMOUS wicker hamper, and shipped them to Belgium. E staggered up the stairs with this huge box last night, and I had the fun of digging into it as we received our first snow of the season here. There were gourmet teas, coffees, chocolates, cookies, and treats and lotions and books galore--everything a Grrrl needs to get through the gray days of February.

E-Grrrl, watching me as I unloaded the box said, "All I can say, Mom, is your friends TOTALLY spoil you!"

And they do.

Love y'all.

I'm one Lucky Grrrl.

February 7, 2007