Postcards from the Mothership

What I remember most about Nice? Rain. Very cool olive trees, and rain.

Wow, is it really the 17th of August already? The summer is almost over!

Made a slight error in judgement this morning. When I checked into this hotel, I told her I’d only be staying the one night, figuring to spend the next night (tonight) at a cheaper and “funner” sounding place I saw in the guidebook. Much to my chagrin, the cheaper/funner hotel ended up being non-existent (the first time Let’s Go has let me down). So I hustled my butt back here, but my bed had already been taken. She did, however, offer me a cot in the TV room, an open room off the reception with a TV and access to the showers and kitchen. Not exactly the lap of luxury, but it’s a place to stay for the night. It’s kind of funny, actually.

So that got my day off to a good start. It was pretty cloudy, and there are a couple of good museums in town, so I packed my bathing suit into my day pack (you never know…) and set off to do some museum wandering.

The first place I went was the Musée des Beaux Arts de Nice. I was a little disappointed because I expected it to be much larger. It was a good collection, though, and I found a new artist I like called Marie Bashkirtseff from the Ukraine.

I was done there by noon, so I decided to take the train to nearby Cagnes-Sur-Mer to the residence/museum of Auguste Renoir, about a 20 minute train ride. I still had about an hour to kill before the museum opened when I got into Cagnes-Sur-Mer so I called Mom and (Beloved) and had an expensive but good lunch (I tried the famous salade niciose with black olives, anchovies, boiled egg, tomato, greens and tuna). The entire time I was on the phone and having lunch, it was pouring rain – thunder, lightening, torrents of rain. I had hoped that it would let up, but it just poured and poured.

So, in the rain, I set off for the museum with only the vaguest idea of where I was going. I found the museum at the top of a winding boulevard and the grounds were spectacular, even in the pouring rain. Aside from the lovely view of Cagnes-Sur-Mer and the sea, the grounds are dotted with ancient (i.e. 1000 year old) olive trees. The olives must come into season in the next few weeks, because they’re on the trees but don’t look ripe yet. The trees are very knarled and twisted, quite different from the stately maples back home.
The museum itself was a bit of a disappointment in that it didn’t have much of Renoir’s better-known works on display. There were a lot of lithographs, and many pieces by friends and associates of Renoir who had stayed at Cagnes-Sur-Mer. The lithographs were, of course, beautiful – it amazes me that such a severe and stern-looking man painted such gentle, compassionate paintings – but they didn’t have any of my ‘favourites.’

The really cool part was Renoir’s workshop, supposedly restored as it was during his final years, including his old-fashioned wheelchair. Seeing the many black-and-white photographs of him late in his life is very sad when you can see how badly knarled his hands are from rheumatism. Looking at how painful his hands must have been seems almost on the same level of tradgedy as Beethoven’s deafness.

Categories: Europe95

These were probably the best few days of my entire trip. The romantic in me wishes that by some fluke of chance, my travel buddies from Scotland and Seattle somehow come across this post and recognize themselves and remember me. I’d love to hear from them. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Another city, another temporary home. This one not as nice as most of my temporary homes, but only one week of travel left. I’m feeling quite homesick for the first time in a long time, but a week is nothing!

I met the most interesting array of people in Antibes – the most interesting so far, for varying reasons.

There were two evil French girls living for the summer at the hostel in Antibes, and being such long-term guests (or maybe being French) has given them quite an attitude. They were impolite to the point of rude and quite inconsiderate (radios loud at 3 am, for example).

But I also met the most wonderful two guys. Niall is from Scotland and Terry is from Seattle. They’re friends traveling through Italy and France together, and they are just the sweetest, nicest guys! Yesterday morning we started talking at breakfast and found out we were all considering going to the Picasso museum in Antibes, so we walked into town together. Unfortunately, the museum was closed for Assumption Day, but the walk into town was great. We talked and talked. Niall is also a fine arts student, and Terry is quite interested in art, so we talked about arts in general and especially impressionism and surrealism. They had just come from Paris and had all sorts of recommendations for me. Terry in particular loved Versailles – he went on and on about it. They also emphasized the Musée d’Orsay, which I was already excited about.

When we discovered the museum was closed (after a 45 minute walk) we ended up going our separate ways. I went into Cannes and did my para-sailing thing. VERY cool! A gorgeous view, kind of like being suspended on a swing above the sea. Too short, though! The guys driving the boat would slow it down to the point that my feet were almost in the water, then they’d speed up and I’d go flying upwards. It was amazing! I spent the rest of the day doing nothing except lying about on the beach. It was rough!

After dinner, I met up with Niall and Terry again, and we had a good laugh at the bad-mannered American girl from LA who is staying in my room. She got in at around six, going her loud LA way about how she wants to party all night. She pulls high heels and two cocktail dresses out of her backback, begging us to approve one or the other (I had just finished washing my underwear in the sink) and asking if any of us had perfume to share. She seemed to be from a different planet than the rest of the travelers. She was saying the stupidest things about how nice Americans are and easy to talk to and how she hates the French. She was so outrageous it seemed she must be joking, trying to satirize the ugly American tourist, but I don’t think she was that smart. She was entirely sincere.

Anyway, Niall, Terry and I had a good laugh about her and vowed to be extra careful with our own behaviour. We ended up, the three of us plus two young girls from Australia (Marissa) and New Zealand (Gabriella) out on the rocks by the water until midnight’s curfew, sharing a few bottles of red wine and admiring the most spectacular moonrise I have ever seen. It rose right out of the sea – unbearably beautiful, made more so in finally having someone to share it with. It was like we were old friends – instant camaraderie.

This morning, we had breakfast together (the five of us) and were priviledged enough to watch the LA Princess throw a bona fide hissy fit with absolutely no provocation whatsoever, telling the French-speaking kitchen staff that she would never treat them in such a manner if they were visiting the US. She was mad because she had to wait two minutes (literally) for bread. She was so completely rude that I was aghast.

After the breakfast entertainment, Niall, Terry and I decided to try again with the Picasso museum. Since we had all spent our last night in the hostel in Antibes, we all had our packs with us and decided to take the bus into town. The museum was open today, and I really enjoyed it. It had a lot of paintings and ceramics by Picasso, and a few sculptures. There were also original pieces by Miro, Khee, Dubuffet (a favourite of Terry’s, I learned) and quite a few others. The museum itself used to be a workshop/residence for Picasso in the early 1930s. I had been to a minor Picasso exhibition in Venice, and done the requisite background reading before I left, but now I feel like I’m actually beginning to understand and appreciate Picasso, if not surrealism in general.

So, after poking about the museum for a bit, and then sitting in the shade and enjoying the sea breezes, it was time for us to go our separate ways. Holy separation anxiety! I’d only known them for a day and a half, but that’s the longest I’d hooked up with anybody, and the closest I’ve been to anyone while traveling. So we took the obligatory pictures and exchanged addresses – the whole bit. It was so silly, we stood on a street corner saying good-bye forever, like we’d known each other all our lives. I really miss them! I think having made some friends and then lost them has made my homesickness more acute, compounded by being so close and yet so far from the end of the trip.

For the rest of the day, I wandered around Nice, basically killing time. I think tomorrow I’ll go either to the Matisse or Renoir museums nearby, or maybe the Musée des beaux arts here in Nice. I may get in some more beach time, too, although the beaches here are stones, not sand. The next day, into Paris (!!) and then home a week from today. Looking back, this has been the most interesting, educational, enlightening, enjoyable, FUN vacation. But I think it’s pretty much time to go home.

Categories: Europe95

I think maybe it’s time we take a break from the potty talk. Don’t worry, we’ll get back to that soon. Instead, I want to tell you about this fabulous book I got for my birthday from Beloved and the boys called What Canadians Think … About Almost Everything. It’s a book of collected public opinion research on Canadian opinions on everything from politics to parenting, sex to stress, work life to death. It’s fascinating!

I love reference books. I was in Chapters the other day, and they had all the dictionaries and thesauri (thesauruses?) and atlases displayed prominently for the back-to-school crowd, and I began to salivate with desire. Heck, even the phone book is an interesting read if you just stop to think about what’s behind each entry, how there’s an entire life just like yours hidden behind that seven-digit entry, and rows and rows and rows of them on every single page. But I digress…

This book, What Canadians Think, has just the right mix of prose and statistics, with a healthy sense of humour running through. The authors, senior execs with the public opinion research firm Ipsos-Reid, make interesting the most humble minutia from daily life. I could go on forever pulling strangely compelling stats out to show you — did you know 6% of Canadian women don’t read washing instruction labels at all? Or that the average age at which birth control is first used is 16.4 years old? Or that firefighters, pharmacists and nurses are seen as the three most trustworthy occupations, while local politicians, used car salesmen and national politicians are the least trusted occupations? I love this stuff!

What I really wanted to share with you, though, was the polling data on our cousins to the south. I’ve always been interested in comparisons between Americans and Canadians, and I know that despite my rabid Canadianism (there’s an oxymoron for you), most of you are American. It’s one of our oldest debates – how different are we? Here’s what they found:

Percentage of Americans who claim that “my religious fath is very important to me in my daily life: 82
Percentage of Canadians who do: 64
Rate by which an American is more likely than a Canadian to “very much” agree that faith is important in day to day life: 100%
Percentage of Americans who believe same-sex marriage is “wrong and it should never be lawful”: 47
Percentage of Canadians who do: 27
Percentage of Americans who support the death penalty: 71
Percentage of Canadians who do: 42
Percentage of Americans who believe their children are getting a good education: 59
Percentage of Canadians who do: 84
Percentage of Americans who think decriminalizing marajuana is a “sound idea”: 36
Percentage of Canadians who do: 51
Percentage of Canadians who thought Chretien did the right thing by not supporting the US in its war against Saddam Hussein: 74

Percentage of Americans who think Canada is just another state: 30
Percentage of Americans who think they have a king: 13
Percentage of Canadians who can name Canada’s largest trading partner (the US): 82
Percentage of Americans who can name the US’s largest trading partner (Canada): 14

Before this begins to look like gratuitous American-bashing, I must admit that not all the stats looked favourable to Canadians. While 63% of Americans could score five out of ten correct responses on a quiz of their own history and civics, only 39% of Canadians could pass a similar quiz about Canada. And while 79% of Americans could identify the first line of their own national anthem, only 37% of Canadians could identify the first line of our national anthem. Which begins, by the way, with the words “O Canada.”

Aside from that last stat about the national anthem, I seem to be a fairly typical Canadian. What about you?

Categories: Canadianisms Books

Despite the other, more pressing business the Internet may be in the process of conducting this week, I officially declare this week (cuts ribbon) Potty Week, where I regale you with the excruciating minutia of the eliminatory habits of my three year old, and you shower us with praise, support and clever suggestions. Some day, Tristan will disown me for this.

Day one was not bad over all. He stayed dry most of the day. We made it through a 45 minute ride in the car including a nap, and even scored two potty bowel movements. He had one P accident, which I think an issue of forgetfulness more than anything. (Digression to our topic last week – can I add to my list of lamentations about the challenges of particularly large children the fact that they have a bladder capacity of much larger mammals? When that boy goes, he goes and goes and goes. My poor, ugly carpet.) Much to my astonishment, he had the other kind of accident after bathtime while I was getting his brother’s diaper and jammies on and he was enjoying his usual pre-bed nekkid romp. I can’t remember the last time Tristan had any kind of accident at that time of day, so he might have been holding it from earlier. He told me what he was doing, so I chased him off to finish his business in the potty (which he did, to his credit) and I went off in search of carpet cleaner. Note to self: buy econo-sized bottle of Pro-Solve and jumbo pack of paper towels on way home from work.

This morning, he came downstairs just as I was leaving for work, and I tried to get him hyped about the potty again, but he was pretty blasé about the whole thing. Now that the novelty has worn off, he’s beginning to lose interest in the project. (He’s so much like his mother, my Tristan.) When I asked him if he was ready to go to the potty and get started earning even more stickers for metal Thomas and Annie and Claribel, he replied with a sleep-bleary, “No thanks.” But when I took down the shoebox with his stickers and showed him how many stars he earned yesterday, and how close he was to earning his trains, he perked up a little bit and headed for the bathroom.

The soother thing went this way for us as well, as did CIO. Full of the courage of my convictions, we leap into whatever it is with enthusiasm. But lacking the novelty of day one, day two dawns as a bit of a drudge. “Oh, we’re still doing that? I thought we did that yesterday.”

So, bloggy friends, aren’t you excited about potty week? Now that we’ve arrived, what other sagacious advice do you have for us? How do we keep the dream alive?

And please, for the love of all things decent, can someone recommend a good all-purpose spot remover?

Cannes did not let me down. Cannes is the embodiment of what the Riviera should be: great beach, expensive shops with seedy shops around the corner; haute coiture and haute cuisine and hot dog stands on the beach. Cannes was cool!

Again I found myself near the beach, as I had been during my morning walk in Antibes, but not ready to allow myself to indulge in the long-awaited pleasure of the beach of all beaches. Then, I noticed them. In the air, being pulled by waterski boats. As soon as I saw them, I knew I had to — parasail!! So I walked down to the pier they seemed to be originating from for details. No experience required, no need for upper body strength (memories of being dragged face-first around the Niagara River in waterski gear) and the completely outrageous cost of 300 francs. I’m not even going to convert that figure. But regardless of cost, I knew I had to do it. It was either that or scuba diving, and I think the view would be better from above!

I decided to wait until tomorrow because tomorrow is a national holiday of some sort, and a lot of other things will be closed. I’m going to the Picasso museum in the morning and this should be enough of an event for the afternoon. Of course, I’m on the Riviera, who needs events to fill the day? Sun, sun, sun!

On with the day’s events – are you bored to tears yet? I got back into Antibes around 3 pm and finally allowed myself the pleasure of the beach. I bought myself one of those funky woven mats everyone has and headed for the sand. Unlike what I saw in Venice, the nicest beaches here seem to be the public ones. So I found myself a tiny stretch of sand (an accomplishment in itself) and claimed my territory. And yes, they are topless beaches, and yes I did! Not everyone was topless; maybe 1/3 to 1/4 of the females were. So with a liberal application of sunscreen, I stretched out to soak up the sun. After I had baked myself for a bit, the water looked especially appealling. After a moment’s consideration, I put my bikini top back on (there’s a limit to my bravado) and headed for the surf. To my surprise, it was cool and salty. For some reason, I thought the Mediterranean was freshwater. I didn’t stop to think out what exactly would be filtering out all the ocean salt – just never really thought about it at all.

Anyway, I had a nice splash-about, went back to the beach and baked for a bit, back to the water again – nirvana! I was being really brave in the open water by Dani-standards, even swimming out to depths over my head. I could see bottom, so I was quite content. Then, as I waded back into shore with a careful eye open for land sharks, I saw a jellyfish floating in front of me. I immediately levitated to a height of two feet above the water and zoomed into shore, or so it seemed. I was pretty psyched out by it, but these kids came up with a net and scooped it up and dropped it into a garbage can on the beach. I saw it happen a few more times during the afternoon. So now I wade in to the water carefully, with eagle eyes, only as far as necessary to cool off. I guess they can’t be too poisonous or people would be more freaked out about them, but considering my personal intolerance for such minor afflications as mosquito bites, I don’t think I want to be dealing with jellyfish stings. And no, I don’t have a sunburn in any unmentionable areas.

I realize looking back that I’ve only had my passport stamped twice – once on arrival in Schipol in Amsterdam, and once in Italy coming from Austria. I had to present my passport at the station in Austria coming from Germany, but no stamp. No one even going into Germany from Holland or France from Italy. I guess the whole EC thing has really loosened the borders. It hasn’t done much to merge the cultures, though.

The Dutch and the Austrians were the nicest people, and the Dutch the most likely to speak English. The Germans seem the most uptight, and there are police everywhere in Italy. The Germans bring their dogs everywhere, and most have tiny frou-frou dogs like Yorkshire Terriers or bichon frieze that they carry in bags (stores, restaurants, ferries, everywhere.) Amsterdam, Venice and Rome were filled with cats – maybe the dogs have a problem with canals?

In Rome, I had tried to get to see a museum with a bunch of Bernini sculptures, including a David I had read about, but after walking for 20 minutes to get to the museum I found it closed an hour before it was supposed to be with no explanation. Disappointed and dragging my feet on the 45 minute walk home, I noticed a fountain in a park. Some of the fountains in Rome you can drink from, so I went in for a closer look. I noticed two or three cats near the fountain and made that “here kitty” psssss-wssss sound. Before I knew it, cats were coming out of the woodwork! Maybe 15 or 20 cats altogether of varying breeds and ages. Most were not too tame, but some were brave and friendly. I have no idea where they all came from (and they kept coming!) but it was a bizaare experience. I felt like the pied piper of cats.

Categories: Europe95

We are on hour five of big boy undies. I’m so proud! Surprised, not quite sure how we got here, but proud nonetheless. (Yes, it’s rare for me to blog on a Sunday, but this parenting thing turned out to be a 24/7 kind of job.) Once again, pardon the euphemisms, but the google traffic on bodily functions creeps me out.

When he woke up this morning, Tristan remembered yesterday’s conversation about metal Thomas and Annie and Claribel. He had p’d overnight in his diaper, but told me he needed to P in the potty about an hour after he got up. Thinking, “in for a penny, in for a pound” I told him after he went that I had a surprise for him, and hauled out the Bob the Builder undies I had bought in a fit of unwarranted optimism maybe six or eight months ago. Despite the healthy coating of dust, Tristan was suitably impressed, and has been running about the house ever since in his Scoop skivvies.

I went for a run to WalMart and picked up some star stickers and some back-up undies. I like ÃœberGeek’s suggestion a few weeks ago of buying the cheapest undies you can find (can anyone explain to me why I can buy 3 pairs for $5.41 or 6 pairs for $6.58?) and just tossing them rather than dealing with cleaning a poopy accident. While I was gone, Tristan had asked to poop in the potty, and has since p’d again as well.

We instituted a star sticker system, where he gets two stickers for a P and three for a poop. When he runs out of stickers, we’ll take the page in and trade it for a metal Thomas and Annie and Claribel.

So far so good. But alas, I’ve become jaded in my old age. Things are never this easy. Aren’t you thrilled to be living this vicariously with us?

We were in the car, on the way home from dinner at Boston Pizza with my folks.

We were just pulling into the driveway and Tristan was talking, as he often does, about which trains he would like to get next. “I’d like to get metal Thomas and Annie and Claribel.”

I’m only half paying attention, because we have this conversation about three times a week, but instead of my usual, “Well, then, you’ll have to be a good boy and maybe Santa will bring them for you,” I say apropos of nothing, “Well, maybe when you go in the potty all the time, you can get metal Thomas and Annie and Claribel.”

Tristan is instantly and irretrievably fixated on this idea. By now Beloved has liberated him from his car seat, and Tristan runs to the front door, positively babbling about no more diapers and pee-ing in the potty and metal Thomas and Annie and Claribel, and I try my best to backpedal and rein him in just a bit by saying things like “If you p ALL the time in the potty, and no more diapers. No diapers, EVER. And you have to P in the POTTY!” I say, trying to head him off at the pass, knowing this will come back to bite me in the ass, but I know he’s not listening. I’m in trouble.

He rushes into the house and up the stairs, and by the time we make it upstairs he is half undressed for his bath, begging us to take off his diaper so he can P in the potty, and of course he does, for the first time in a month or more, and he hops off with glee and cries, “NOW I can have metal Thomas and Annie and Claribel!!” He’s now more willing to negotiate some of the details, and has at least entertained the possibility of pee-ing in the potty from now on, inasmuch as to his three year old brain “from now on” means for the next 11 seconds.

I have my doubts that this whole scam will work. The train bribe thing worked with giving up the soother, but that was a direct swap, soother for Gordon. This whole potty thing is a little less concrete.

I’m thinking madly tonight, trying to come up with a plan before morning when we’ll have to make some sort of decision on this. I can’t help but feel we’re on the precipice on this one, and if I step wrong, we’re in for another three years of diapers. I know how his little brain works, and am willing to bet that if we set a finite time that he has to use the potty to earn those trains, on the day we come home from WalMart with trains in hand he will walk through the front door and ask for his diapers back. I don’t want to pressure him with a “sticker for every dry day, 10 stickers equals new trains” scam either. On the other hand, my potty training strategy to date isn’t winning the Nobel prize either.

Crap, this parenting stuff isn’t as easy as it looks!

This is one of my favourite travel stories.

Stuck in the train station, unable to convert my lire into francs because it’s Sunday again. Well, hopefully I’ll be able to find an ATM and a taxi when I get into Antibes…

Categories: Europe95

I’m not entirely sure why my boys are so big. Beloved is a perfectly average and accessible 5’10”, and while I’m tall for a girl at 5’8″, I’m hardly statuesque. My brother is a bit oversized at 6’4″, so I guess it is in our genes somewhere.

My boys are huge. Gigantic, almost. Both of them are 90th to 95th percentile for height. At not quite three and a half, Tristan is 43″ (about 1.1m) tall, taller than your average five year old. So far, Simon has been larger than his brother at almost every milestone. While we’ve joked about the upcoming difficulties we’ll face in keeping two towering teenage boys stocked with groceries some day, we’ve recently started discovering that there are other issues with big boys.

On the more banal side of the equation, I’ve lamented previously that unless we get on the potty training bandwagon soon I’ll be contacting Omar the Tentmaker to requisition some larger diapers. Pampers really should think of expanding beyond size 6 in the same way that women’s clothing manufacturers are finally waking up to the fact that a ceiling of size 14 is just not sufficient for a lot of the dress-buying public.

And having a three year old brain with a five year old body is a bad combination. They’re not at all aware of their own strength. I’m just grateful that they’re both large, so while they may barrel right over the other kids at play (I’m cringing thinking ahead to our days of organized sports), at least they’re well matched for each other. Wish I could say the same for my living room furniture. It may be ugly, but it doesn’t deserve the punishment meted out by 40 lbs of bouncing preschooler (times two!)

There is a Chinese buffet restaurant near us that allows kids under six to eat for free, and they’ve started to take long looks at Tristan when it comes time for the bill. (Not that he’s done any damage to their business. I think the one chicken nugget, three pickles and two bowls of ice cream are pretty reasonable. In truth, it’s Simon the bottomless pit they need to keep their eye on.) I see a day not far in the future when I’m going to have to carry identification for him, because nobody believes he’s only three.

Last week, we brought the family to Mont Cascades water park, and for the first time I started thinking about height restrictions at amusement parks, fairs and the like. Many kiddie rides and amusements are restricted to kids under 48″ tall. Since Tristan grew three inches in six months, it’s not inconceivable that I’ll have a four or five year old too big to play on the kiddie slides or ride on the kiddie rides. That’s just wrong, considering he’s just barely of an age where he can start to enjoy them.

But there are social issues as well. My caregiver has an eight year old who is by far the tallest boy in his class, and she and I have discussed this issue at length. Because he is so tall, people assume Tristan is older than he is and expect him to behave accordingly. The behaviour you’d expect from a three year old is a whole lot different than what you’d expect from a five year old. I’ve seen this on the playground already, where Tristan was a bit petulant (okay, threw a tantrum) about sharing something with another (obviously older) kid and the other kid’s mother’s gave me the hairy eyeball. When I shrugged my shoulders and said, “He’s three, you know how it is” she was obviously taken aback. But I won’t always be there to explain, and I while I don’t want to make excuses for him, I do feel bad that Tristan will constantly be (ironically) short of people’s superficial expectations because of his height.

This isn’t a complaint. I’d rather be dealing with too big than too little, to be honest. When my boys were born at 9 lbs (Tristan) and 10 lbs (Simon) and I struggled with nursing, I knew we had some wiggle room. And it’s probably much easier to be a large man in today’s society than a small one (or a large woman, for that matter). But it’s my job to worry over them. I’m good at it!

What do you think? Does size matter?

Today’s entry is only half an entry. My pen ran out and in the intervening ten years, I never got around to finishing it.

Surely I will melt into nothing but a pile of cotton clothing and tour brochures in this unending, incessant, infernal heat. The air itself doesn’t even seem particularly hot, but I sweat and sweat and become more and more impatient with the heat. No wonder all the shops and services close from 12 or 1 pm to 3 or 4 in the afternoon, or sometimes as late as 5 or 6. No one wants to be out in the mid-day Roman sun.

In 15 minutes, I’ll be joining an archeological tour of the Colosseum, then I’m off to explore the ruins of the Roman Forum. Yesterday, with 80,000 of my closest friends, I toured the Vatican – St Peter’s Basillica, the Vatican Museums and of course, the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel was even more breathtaking than I expected it to be. The fresco with the hand of God reaching…

(ed. note: that’s where I ran out of ink. But I remember that I liked the fresco, so for the sake of closure, let’s end that sentence with “was nice.”)

Categories: Europe95