Futility Now

Living in Silverton reminds me of these dioramas I saw in a carefully curated if wee bit dusty museum run by an adorable (but, um, wee bit dusty) husband and wife in the mountains in France.

It was the day Kate, Sylvia, & I went out without Joaquin, who had to telecommute (totally unfair). I know it was near Lamalou-les-Bains, but in an even smaller town. Olargues, maybe?

Anyways, what I want to be clear about is that I mean this as a compliment. It is seriously cute in Silverton. The people are seriously friendly here. And almost everyone is extremely well groomed (which is actually more than I can say for some of the citizens of le tinytown francais, right?).

I still feel like an outsider as a resident, maybe because I’m still doing all of my grocery shopping in Portland on the weekends, and spend all my weeknights making project samples while streaming Battlestar Galactica. So whose fault is that. As a teacher, however, I feel very welcomed and appreciated, and since I’ve already sung my swan song for Molalla, I feel at liberty to say this was absolutely the right move for me to make professionally. (Whew.)

How the other move, the Steelhammer Rd part, fits in to everything is still tricky and weird. Maybe I should try to find a way to quantify things.

This week:

moonlight and deer foraging in the yard, +1 Silverton
two separate death matches with hornets in the living room, -1 Silverton

I guess that’s even steven for now.

More graveyard photos:

(Those cookies were SO terrible.)

Here are some dudes in old-timey diving suits attending a crypt:

Here’s some stuff around Belleville:

Here is some delicious food that we ate:

Here are some pictures from out second trip to the Marche au Puce:

Here’s me looking maudlin:

And all you can hear is a radio somewhere, playing a pig of a song:

Here are some photos presented in a less verbose context.

Hazel and I took a day trip to Arles, which is a pretty cool town. Here is a picture of a cat who hangs out at a cafe in Arles.

Here is a forlorn-looking infants shoe stuck on a tree in the square of Saint Chinian.

Here are some prawns we ate on our last night in Saint Chinian

Here are Hazel and Zia in Beziers, where Hazel and I caught the train back to Paris.

Here is a rather handsome metal door in Beziers.

Last Beziers photo: For various reasons that we don’t really need to go into detail about, Hazel and I were sort of exhausted by the time my mom drove on with Zia. Rather than wait in the train station, we went to a rawther rustic bar and drank Ricard.

Then we went back to Paris, where we belong. Here is the sky from our hotel window.

Here is Hazel drinking wine by the Canal Saint-Martin while we wait for pizza from Pink Flamingo.

Here are the pizzas for which we waited. The one on the left is called L’Obama, and it’s ham and pineapple chutney. Verdict: amazing!

Here is some rubble we saw after eating pizza and before we got on the metro for further adventures.

Last stop in Toulouse? Coffee drinks with Nutella!

We met up with Kate and Zia in Beziers and headed to St. Chinian in a gigantic fancy midnight blue Citroen. Kate is an. . . exciting driver. Whew!

We could see why Kate felt guilty with just the two of them at the house initially.  It is four stories tall.

J and I stayed on the fourth floor, where everything was butter yellows and smooth terrazzo tiles and gigantic bathtub. Ooh la la.

I haven’t done nearly as much traveling as J, and I’m sure it’s come up somewhere already that this is my first time abroad. What I will say is that the few times I have traveled have been longer trips that have allowed me to do things like grocery shop and cook and get a general sense of what daily life is like. It was great fun, then, to go to the supermarche and pick up some cured meats and pasta and veg, and then (over a gas stove, le sigh) throw something together with the sound of cicadas and the long sharp shadows of early evening in the background.

Rather unfairly, the next morning J had to report to work; Kate and Zia and I went off into the mountains, more specifically to St. Pons and Fraisse-sur-Agout.

It was very pretty, and hot. We wandered down to the source of the Jaur, under a rocky outcropping. The air was positively chilling, it was so strange compared to the direct environs. I find nature totally bewildering, in this case it was in a nice way.

As you know, Luc Besson is a talentless hack. He did, however, make one really fun movie, and it looks like he might be putting out a second.

Take note, film makers, any movie whose trailer kicks off with a Tintin reference is pretty much guaranteed to take in some of my hard-earned Yankee dollars.