Saturday

I love this picture I got of Zach the other day. He was about to leave for a fancy dinner (He was sponsored by a company to go to a dinner and meet-and-greet having to do with architecture), and he had to dress up for it.

Our cat isn't all that friendly, so Baylee has to force her love onto him. He really enjoys it, as you can see.

I recently discovered the joy of avocado toast when Drew made it for me. He even included a poached egg. Holy cow, was that good.

And this has nothing to do with anything, but look at this adorable picture I ran across. That's Drew at around 4 years old.

It's almost my birthday! I got a card from my Aunt Karen, who's in her 70's now, and in it she wrote the usual birthday-related stuff, but then she added, "PS: You were the best behaved child ever! Truly!" LOL! Where did that come from? (By the way, when I told Mike about it he said, "What happened?" Tsk.)

This week I had three French classes in a row where I was the only student. Those are wonderful in a way, because I learn a ton and have a chance to have long conversations in French with the teacher, but they're intensely scary for me for the same reasons. I actually started to sweat profusely during one of them. For real, sweat was pouring down my stomach. Oh, and I don't know if it's the trauma or just the sheer amount of talking I've had to do lately, but suddenly I'm dreaming in French.*

One of those times that I was in a class by myself the teacher decided we'd do a listening exercise. She talked all about her mom, dad, and four siblings, telling me their names, ages, and professions, and describing their personalities, and I had to take notes. Then when she was done I had to repeat back to her what she said. You should've seen those notes I took. They were a crazy mixture of English and French. I did get almost everything right, though! I made a mistake about her mom's age (I added 10 years, but you have no idea how easy that is to do in French. It's like they let some drunk guy name their numbers. For instance, 98 is quatre-vingt-dix-huit, which means 4x20+10+8.) and I got a personality trait of one of her sisters wrong. She said her sister was "sensible," but in French that means sensitive, not practical.

Finally, a couple nights ago Baylee was a guest drummer for one of our favorite bands, Cashing in Karma. She did a great job! Here are a couple videos from that.

*On the very bright side, I can see conversational fluency on my horizon, and that's exciting. Conversational fluency is when you can have a fairly painless conversation with someone in the target language, as long as it's about familiar topics like home, work, the weather, travel, hobbies, etc. It's not actual fluency, because it's limited (In other words, you probably won't be discussing philosophical issues in depth or anything like that), but it's still very cool. In fact, many people get to this level and quit learning, because it's all they want.   

Tuesday

I made my first French video! This is me, one month into taking classes with Lingoda, doing a simple introduction of myself. I think I did a pretty good job, but I'm not great with numbers yet, as you'll see. Oh, and please excuse my lack of make-up. I didn't feel like messing with it.

Most importantly, I made English subtitles, so you'll know what I'm saying. In order to see those, just click the CC at the bottom of the YouTube screen.  (PS: I just checked, and for some reason you might have to click on "French," but don't worry, it'll give you the English subtitles that I made myself.)

Sunday

Now that I'm in Lingoda I get all kinds of ads on FB for different language-learning programs. Yesterday I got this one from a place that connects you with native-speaking private tutors. They even show you pictures of the tutors, and they're weirdly beautiful.

Look at all these gorgeous people.

And then you get to the lady who teaches French.

I mean, what??? What the heck is going on? LOL!  Is she wearing a spacesuit?

Speaking of French class, I took this screen shot the other day, because I was proud of myself. The teacher gave us a couple minutes to present someone, anyone we wanted, in writing, and I  chose Mike.

See where it says "From Me to Everyone"? That's mine. I wrote: My husband is named Mike. He speaks English and a little Spanish. He comes from Olalla, in the state of Washington, in the United States, but he lives in Seattle with me. He is forty-seven years old. Today is his birthday.

And you can see that my teacher responded with, "Bon anniversaire! Joyeux anniversaire!" (Happy birthday!) Then she corrected my preposition mistakes.

Mike and I got a new mattress! Let me tell you something: After sleeping on it for one night my back pain was 90% gone. After two nights it was 98% gone. Isn't that crazy? We got one that's considered "firm," which is another way of saying, "Feels a lot like you're sleeping on a board."

Zach, Mike, and I went out for Thai last night, and I snapped this pic. Isn't he handsome?

The other day Drew was talking about older people who come into Value Village and make a fuss about the senior discount. He said you can't make them happy. Either they're mad that you didn't ask them if they qualify, or they're mad that you did. Apparently one time Drew asked a woman if she'd like to receive the senior discount, and she got really offended and told him, "Young man, it's a good thing you don't work for tips!" Then she gave him her license anyway and, as Drew put it, "She was eligible. Big time."

Saturday

Yesterday I realized something about myself: I can be picky about writing styles. Someone might be really smart and even have good stuff to say, but if they have a style I don't like, I won't read it (or at least I'll mentally make fun of it). There's a blog I follow, and the woman who writes it has this way of constantly speaking backwards. By that I mean she says things like, "They're growing up, these kids of mine," instead of, "My kids are growing up." Here and there it's fine, but she does it every third or fourth sentence, giving her whole blog an aura of trying too hard. Then there's the book I checked out of the library the other day. It probably had a good plot, but the main character had "witty, sarcastic, and capable" laid on her so thick that I gave up within a chapter. Like, I get it already.

This morning Mike woke me up by saying something...I don't remember what...and I responded with a jumble of slightly panicky sounds. I had been right in the middle of a nightmare about visiting the summer camp my friends Dave and Jenny run in Wisconsin. Two things were going wrong in my dream: 1) I didn't fit in and couldn't seem to make friends. 2) I was aware of a murder that had taken place at the camp, and I was told to keep quiet about it. (By the way Dave and Jenny were totally innocent and unaware of the murder.) Some people had killed a woman, but they were trying to hide it by pulling a total Weekend at Bernie's. They propped the woman up, put some sunglasses on her, and carted her around like she was still alive. The last thing I saw them doing was taking her on a dune buggy ride.

And now some miscellaneous pictures...

Drew left his phone on the couch, and I happened to see what he's got as his screen saver. It's a picture of Zoe.

Here are Mike and Baylee working on Economics.

This morning Mike had The Beatles playing through the house while he worked in the kitchen. He made us an omelette and bacon breakfast, then he started preparing a brisket to smoke. It's so great to have a husband who can cook! (See that cookbook? I got that for him for Christmas, so in a way it's like I helped with the meal...right?  Beuller? Beuller??)

And, of course, no post is complete without a picture of the cat. Look at his cute little teeth!

Speaking of the cat, yesterday I sent this IM to my friend Craig. He and his wife, Pam, have a hobby farm with goats and chickens, and I was trying to tell him that we're sort of like farmers, too, with our cat and dog.

Friday

I told you guys that this past weekend Mike and I went to Len and Monique's house, and one of the reasons we went was to celebrate Mike and Len's birthdays. Well, what I didn't say is that, a couple hour before it was time to go over there, Mike and I had this conversation...

Me:  Hey, should we have gotten a birthday present for Len?
Mike:  Nah.
Me:  Yeah, but what if they got something for you?
Mike:  ...
Me:  ...
Mike:  Dang it.

We ended up stopping at Fred Meyer on our way and buying Len an Amazon gift card, on the off chance that they got something for Mike. See, we had a whole plan: If they had a gift, then we'd pull our gift out, too. If they didn't, we wouldn't, because we wouldn't want them to feel bad. Sigh. Sometimes it's hard to be me. I'm cursed with the ability to think through every scenario.

PS: They actually didn't get Mike a gift, so we left the gift card in my purse, and later I used it to buy myself a cute new shirt. *grin* It's coming in the mail today.

I learned something cool this week from the French podcast I listen to. The man was talking about the things that happen in your brain when you become bilingual, and apparently one of those things is that you develop a slightly different personality for every language you speak. He said that when he speaks English, for example, he's more outgoing and warm, because that's how he spoke it with the people he learned from, but when he speaks French (his mother tongue) he's more reserved.

I can see how that's probably true, because my French teachers sometimes correct me for doing American-ish things. Like the other day one of my teachers told me that I need to be more formal in the classroom. Specifically, he said to stop saying "ouais" (yeah), and to always use "oui" (yes) instead.

This has nothing to do with anything, but look at this nice mocha that Drew made me the other day!

Both Baylee and I are ready to be done with this school year...and homeschooling altogether. She's so busy now with work and band rehearsals that she's been finding it difficult to make school part of her normal routine. The way she's handling that is to not do school for a few days at a time, then, on a day when she doesn't have anything else going on, grind through several lessons at once. Like right now one of the things she's doing is cramming Silas Marner for her British Lit class. It's working for her, so I'm allowing it.

Tuesday

My issue with the payment to Lingoda was resolved at about 10pm last night, which was during the business day in Germany. As soon as it was all worked out I sat down at the dining room table and plotted out my next month's worth of classes. And guess what! By this time next month I'll be just shy of half done with level A1!

I had a class this morning with a focus on reading in French. I like those; they're usually pretty fun. A lot of times they're set up as little skits, and each student is given a part to read. Then we all have to answer questions about the characters. Anyway, I went into the classroom today expecting the usual, but realized almost immediately that I was going to be the only student for the entire hour. That meant all the focus was going to be on me. Not gonna lie, it was nervous-wracking at first, but it turned out to be the best, most fun class I've had yet. The teacher and I went through the lesson, but we went into a lot more depth than usual. For instance, he explained accents, and now I feel like I have a much better handle on them. Oh, and he made me do a lot of dictation to work on my writing. I enjoyed that.

If you have Netflix, I highly recommend a documentary called Losing Sight of Shore. It's about four women who rowed across the Pacific, from California to Australia, in a canoe-type thing. The women showed amazing perseverance and broke several world records, and it was cool to watch.

Oh, here, I found a trailer.

Baylee has been so busy lately. She works a lot of morning shifts now, which are the best because they're the busiest and the baristas make the best tips, but they start at 5:30am. Then the past couple days she's also had band practice until late in the evening in Tacoma. Yesterday the practice was for TMA, and today it's for Cashing In Karma. Baylee's playing a show with them this month, because they needed a fill-in drummer. All that to say: Our girl is tired.

Monday

I've had a really fun weekend, but now I feel exactly like this:

My ability to people has been wrung dry. Let's see...

On Saturday morning Danny came over unexpectedly, because he was in our neck of the woods, buying a used leaf blower.  We all sat around the table and ate bagels, drank coffee, and chatted for a couple hours, and it was really nice. I love Danny. There's something about him that draws me, maybe because we're a lot alike. We're both type A personalities, but with a sense of humor.

Zach showed Danny some of the stuff he's doing in school this quarter.

Then in the afternoon Drew asked if Zoe could come over for dinner. Of course, we said yes, because we hadn't met her yet and really wanted to. That meant cleaning the house and coming up with something good to eat. I told you in my last post that I was nervous, but our time with Zoe turned out to be great. She's polite, kind, smart, and she loves to laugh. Oh, and she looks like a super model! Honestly, she's breathtaking. (PS: We found out later that she likes us, too. Whew!)

Finally, yesterday Mike and I went to Len and Monique's house to celebrate St. Patrick's Day and Mike and Len's birthdays. We had corned beef (It was my first time with that, and I thought it was delicious.), cabbage, carrots, and mashed potatoes.  Apparently Len and Monique are mustard connoisseurs, because we legit had about eight different kinds of mustard to choose from for our meat.

Our big thing we do when we're at Len and Monique's house is board games, because Len loves them. In fact, they have more board games than anybody I've ever met. Yesterday they taught us a new one called Reef.

Now the weekend is over and I feel like I've gotten no real rest. lol It doesn't help, either, that this has been a bit of a rough Monday so far:

• I got up really early to help Drew translate a paper he wrote into French for his French class. That wasn't nearly as easy or as fun as I thought it was going to be.  
• Then I took a shower, and it was cold. The pilot light on the water heater was out.
• Worst of all, I had a terrible time trying to figure out how to make a payment to Lingoda, my language school, which is based in Germany. My bank declined them, you see, because they're foreign and the amount they wanted to withdraw (during an automatic payment) was fairly large.  Sigh. I appreciate our bank trying to keep us safe from possible fraud, but in this case it's made things complicated. Actually, I still don't have it worked out, because it's nighttime in Germany. 

Oh well. Onward and upward.

Saturday

Tonight we're meeting Drew's girlfriend, Zoe, for the first time. It's funny, because I remember meeting Mike's parents for the first time and being really nervous about it*, and now I'm on the other side of the equation, and I'm still nervous. lol I hope she likes us. By the way, Drew is meeting Zoe's mom for first time today, too. He's going out for lunch with them.

Speaking of Drew and Zoe, I overheard Drew consoling her on the phone, because she didn't do well at a track meet. He said, "Aww, it's okay. Just by gracing them with your presence you did good." 

Last night we celebrated Mike's birthday by going out for dinner, and I got this nice picture at the restaurant.

The other day in my French class one of the students didn't understand a phrase that was used in the lesson, so the teacher asked me to explain it to her. I knew exactly what the phrase meant. It meant "one doesn't belong," or "one of these things is not like the others," but I couldn't think how to say it in French. Finally I asked if I could just tell her in English. The teacher said no and went on to explain it herself. (Cringe.) Hours and hours later it suddenly came to me what I should've said: "Trouver le mot qui est different." (Find the word that is different.) Sigh. Oh well.


*It was when I was in college, and Mike and I had been dating for quite awhile. He had already spent a lot of time with my family, so we decided it was about time for me to meet his. I ended up flying out to WA on Christmas day and spending the next few days at his house with his family. That was scary, but they were really gracious and welcoming, and we stayed busy doing fun things. In fact, I think that's when I learned how to play Mille Bornes, a card game I still enjoy. Patty and I would play against Mike and Danny.

Wednesday

Guess what! This past weekend Mike and I got our tandem! On Friday we went into the shop for a fitting...

Mike getting fitted

That was the first time I've had biking shoes on since my 100-mile ride in August.

...then on Saturday Dan, the owner of the shop and our friend, dropped the bike off at our house and gave us a lesson on riding it. They don't normally give door-to-door service like that, but they do give all new tandem riders a lesson. They want everyone's experience to be as positive as possible, and there's more to riding than most people think.

First Dan made Mike do some riding in the back seat, so that Mike will know what it's like to follow the lead of the front seat. Then he had him learn the front seat stuff.

After that it was my turn to work with Dan, and that went really well. Finally Mike and I got on the bike together and practiced everything we learned. It was really cold out that day, so we didn't last long, but we had a good time. I'm excited to go out for real!

Anyway, the bike is officially ours. It stood in the living room for a day until we figured out where to store it, but now we've got it all squared away.

Here's what I've learned so far:

• The front seat is the "captain" position, and that'll be Mike. His job is to steer, change gears, and brake.
• The back seat is the "stoker" position, and that'll be me. My job is to give power to the bike.
• When we come to a stop (like at an intersection), it's Mike's responsibility to put his feet on the ground and hold the bike up, while I keep my feet clipped in the pedals and stay seated. It's my responsibility to make sure the pedals are then reset so that, when Mike gets back on the bike, he can push down with his right foot and get us started again.
• When we first start out on a ride he gets on the bike first, then I touch his left shoulder to indicate that I'm getting on. This is to give him fair warning to clear his heels out of the way of the pedals, so he doesn't get hurt.
• When we're done riding I get off the bike first, then step away and say, "Clear." Then he knows he can get off.
• It's my job to do hand signals for left and right turns, and to let him know about anything behind us.
• It's his job to let me know if we're going to hit a major bump. This is because I won't always be able to see what's ahead, and it'll give me a chance to brace for it. (If you look at the above picture, you'll see that my seat has a special shock absorber. That helps, too.)

I'll let you guys know when we go on our maiden voyage!

Tuesday

A couple weekends ago Baylee had 3 pretty major things involving the band happen:

• TMA's lastest EP was released.
• Their episode of Band in Seattle was aired on TV.
• They had a big show at The Crocodile in Seattle.

Here are some pics from the Band in Seattle episode.

And here's a link to the full episode on YouTube.

Their show at The Crocodile was fun, and Baylee had a lot of friends show up for it. Here's a pic of the band before they played. (The extra woman is a sax player that joined them just for that performance.)

By the way, I ran across this older shot of the band from when Jonny was still with them. I love it.

I've passed some sort of mental threshold, and now hearing the French language is no big deal. Remember how, right at first, I freaked out about the teachers speaking only French? Well, I have no stress about that anymore, because I get everything they're saying. Also, I've been listening to French even more outside of class. I watched two seasons of an anime (dubbed into French) on Netflix, then I found a cool podcast aimed at intermediate learners, and I listen to an episode of that every day. The author of the podcast talks about weird, fascinating stuff that I'd even listen to in my own language. For instance, he did one on a new type of robot that can respond to people's emotions, and another on conspiracy theories.  Basically, the guy reports on things that interest him, figuring they might interest others as well.

In some ways, though, the French classes are getting harder. The teachers are really starting to expect people to respond only in French, and sometimes that can be a bit paralyzing. One time a teacher asked me what Mike does for a living, and not only could I not think of the word for "factory" in French, but in that moment I couldn't think of it in English, either. LOL It was a total deer-in-the-headlights thing. Oh well, I guess. A little humility is good for the soul.

You know what might be fun? If I make a short video of myself speaking French every couple months or so, in order to show progression. Maybe I'll even subtitle it, if I can figure out how. Then I'll show you guys!

Here's the thing that nobody tells you about white cats with longish hair: Their backsides get really dirty from sitting outside, and also...I hate to say it...from dingleberries. The other day I suggested to Mike that we use his beard trimmer to cut the hair around the cat's butt to solve the problem, but for whatever reason he didn't think that was a good idea. (PS: There are no dingleberries in the following pictures.)

Speaking of hair, I got mine cut and colored, and I'm so much happier. Here's a "before" pic. My hair was way too long and took too much time fix.

And here's what it looked like after my friend Bethany cut, colored, and styled it. She made me look good! It's like I'm ready to go work on Wall Street.

In the spirit of full transparency, here's what I look like when I style it myself. This look says, "Hi, I'm Ramona Quimby! I'm all grown up now, but I still have the same hair style." Whatever, though. I love how easy it is. Five minutes and done, my friends.

Finally, check out this catchy French song.

Sunday

The end is nigh, I think, with this blog. There are three things going on:

• This has always been a blog about my life as a mom. For a time it was a homeschooling blog, then it broadened a bit and became about family in general, but no matter what it was always from my viewpoint as a parent. Now my last child, my baby, is months away from being a high school graduate and an adult, and I've started the process of mentally moving on. I'm thinking more about myself and my future with Mike than I am about raising kids.
• I'm legit busier than I have been in awhile. This language school takes time and energy, both in the classroom and out. Soon I'll be getting a job, too. 
• I don't have the same drive to write here that I once did. 

I don't know what it all means yet. It's hard to let go of this place. In fact, I can't make myself pull the plug yet. It's like being unwilling to say goodbye to a beloved but dying pet.* Argh. We'll see what happens, I guess. In the meantime, I'm sorry about the lack of content.

*I'm like one of those people who can't just bury their dead pet and move on. Instead they have it stuffed, mounted, and displayed in their living room in a lifelike pose. (That's a real thing. Mike and I knew a lady, our boss at David's House, who loved her dog so much she actually considered having that done.)