Homemaker Training

My days in the French public schools are numbered.  As summer is quickly approaching, I need to spend my free time honing my wife skills.  As it is now, sometimes I feel rushed and terribly unmotivated to do simple things (like laundry more than twice a month).  But truth be told, I love laundry.  I love folding and putting away clean things.  It only brings me down when at the end of folding a load or two I find a lone sock with no companion.  It happens nearly once a month that we sacrifice our knit footwear to the monster machines in the basement.  Oh, to own my own washer and dryer...

Thankfully a few elements have come into play to jump start the progress.  Since Kyle has transitioned from students to full-time employee, his time is occupied at work.  Thus I am no longer the busier spouse and get to do fun things like make him sandwiches for work.  I used to do it every night before bedtime when we lived in the U.S., and I loved to make him something super tasty.  He always made himself the most meager and unappealing sandwiches~ I may not no my way around a stove or how to properly separate the white of an egg from its yolk, but I make a mean sandwich.  I'm glad to employ those skills once again.  Additionally, Kyle is keen on inviting friends over for meals more now that he is free of homework.  This renders nearly all of our plates, utensils, pots, cups, and so on completely filthy at the end of a night.  Thus there has been a tremendous demand for me to be industrious scrubbing and soaking.  It's also a chore I thoroughly enjoy and I love having company over~ I need to get used to visiting my place in front of the sink more frequently.

The things I loathe doing include grocery shopping and sweeping.  I usually opt out of both and we get by.  Kyle loves food and cooking so much that I rarely am coaxed into darkening the doorstep of our local grocer.  Meanwhile the floor becomes more and more coated with infinite amounts of crumbs, hair, and dirt.  I'm what the french call "les incompetents".  I'm going to change my ways, though.  Sweeping just hurts my back, but I'll get over it to have nice floors when I'm spending whole days alone chez moi.

The grocery store is a whole other kind of beast.  It gives me terrible anxiety to go to the store for one major reason.  It's always busy, and our fellow shoppers are aggressive.  Never before have I seen "every man for himself" at play in such a grand spectacle.  Whereas in every other setting, the French of our town are delightful and kind and are easy to warm up to, I believe I'll never make one friend at the grocery store.  This is just contrary to everything in my upbringing.  We didn't go to Kroger without my mom making one friend.  To this day, I know that Miss Annie who works the cash register is one of my mom's dear friends.  Here I am walked into, my toes are rolled over, and everybody seems so angry.  The grocery store doesn't bring Kyle down, but I'm afraid when he takes me with him he feels bad that the people drive me so crazy.

On a brief side story, I just try to keep a low profile at the store.  Especially when I'm agitated, I just try to find a product in the aisle that no one is likely to buy so that I don't have any ugly encounters~ my standards are hot dogs, canned beans, and rotisserie chicken (plus it's warm by that rotation thing).  One day, by the chicken, I was not overlooked.  I had survived the produce section but just barely when I was approached by a smiling woman.  An American woman had spotted me, I suppose, looking out of it.  So she offered her assistance; she has lived in Metz for 17 years and knew her way around the grocery store.  As shopping for victuals brings out the worst in me, I told her that I had lived here for (at the time) 7 months and thus had a general understanding of our grocer's layout.  I immediately felt full of shame for rejecting the help of a perfect stranger just because I was grumpy.  Kyle thankfully intervened and began to talk with the woman; we introduced ourselves and she asked what we were up to in this northeastern French city.  I think the damage was already done as she concisely finished the conversation and walked away without having given us her name.  In all likelihood we'll never see her again; we don't run into too many Americans that aren't part of the students or teaching assistants groups we already know.  However, I still feel grief when I think about what meanness came out of me towards a totally unsuspecting victim.

I have a secret weapon for grocery trips.  Since I'm an organization freak, Kyle lets me order our goods in the cart and then after check out, I get to meticulously arrange our purchases in our bags.  The best is blowing off some steam walking home loaded down with milk, sugar, and potatoes.  It's good for me, and I'm going to try to focus on the things that keep me calm when I'll be venturing to the store solo this summer while Kyle is bringing home the bacon.  Confessing all this makes me feel sort of nuts, but I am sure I never had such an aversion to grocery stores in the U.S.~it's got to just be a French thing.

To put the icing on my homemaking cake, I have been commissioned to bake a birthday cake for our friend Nyanza.  It's her birthday this weekend, and we are going to celebrate with her and all her friends in Strasbourg for a couple of days.  As Kyle read me an email Nyanza wrote, I burst out laughing when she asked if I could make the cake.  Then in disbelief, I asked Kyle at least 5 times if he was serious.  I'm no chef, and everyone knows Kyle's the one that keeps us alive.  Left to my own devices, I'd live off canned peaches, yogurt, and instant oatmeal for a week before I gave into whole bags of chips and 2 liter Coke bottles for major meals.  I shorn't fret baking a cake though, but rather view it as a good challenge.  I can learn how to do this; I'm sure cake baking is an intrinsic part of motherhood and thus a necessary life skill, so I might as well practice while there's plenty of time.  Thank goodness too that my friend Lauren is a pastry chef and only lives a staircase away.  I breathed a sweet sigh of relief when she said I could turn to her knowledge and experience in my potential time of need.  She also recommended the recipe for Hershey's chocolate cake.  Never had it, but those who know me ought not be surprised.  I think I'm going to attempt it~I'll document the process and share with you soon.

All in all I'm looking forward to being a housewife if even for only a few months.  I may change my LinkedIn status to being employed by God to spoil Kyle.  It'll certainly give me time to read my new stash of books and maybe dabble more with my watercolors.  Until then, you can trust there will still be stories here about my students and (hopefully) plenty of artwork to display.  For today, I leave you with this delightful sight Kyle captured in digital form for me.  Our swans on Lake Symphony have been expecting for what seems like forever.  We finally got to see the whole family out for a swim yesterday evening.

Hopefully you can spot all 4 little ones with their big parents.