Cutting the last tie.

I love American Reality shows.  Not just any crazy wacky concept, but the old-school reality television (has it really been long enough to use the words old-school?) like Survivor and Amazing Race.  Bravo also has excellent reality shows, like Project Runway and Top Chef.  There is something about watching that creative competition that is riveting entertainment for me.

Now, I would never pirate a movie online or even a television sitcom.  But reality television always felt different for me and I never felt bad about following the current issues of Survivor or Top Chef via internet streaming.  Especially given the fact that most U.S. television networks post their own episodes online for a lot of different shows, especially the reality shows.  By the way, anything (like recent episodes) posted on a network television website is blocked to viewers living outside the United States.  

But last year, some sort of computer/internet legislation went into effect that caused a significant disruption in my daily life here.  With this new legislation, there was a "crackdown" on sites that illegally posted studio television/movie content online.  As there should be, that's illegal.  But it carried over into everything.  My reality tv shows completely disappeared.  And now, links for everything like clips of interviews on a news channel, are completely blocked to users outside the U.S.  

That last little window, to my American pop culture has been slammed shut, that last bridge closed off.

After it happened, I went through about a week of withdrawal.  Mid-season Top Chef, and a new Project Runway was about to begin, but it wasn't as bad as it would have been during a sweeps week of Survivor.  I tried watching the french version of Survivor (Koh-Lanta).  But really.  I'm sure there is more appeal in watching your own countrymen battle it out in a social game like that, but for me it was just a big display of all of the french stereotypes.  And seriously, if you are from Paris, just stay in Paris.   There is no need to go battle it out on a deserted island.  In any event, my reality television addiction trickled quietly away and now I don't miss really miss it at all.  

But then, we switched our cable package.  Finding ways to cut expenses, John bundled our cable together with our phone and internet and now we have a new provider.  And this new provider had a genius idea.  Order some of the dutch cable channels.  This is because most dutch television isn't dubbed over, but rather left in english with dutch subtitles.  We have the History channel!  And National Geographic!  

And now, he will be the first to tell you about my new favorite television shows.  Storage Wars and Pawn Stars.  I wonder if Bravo has a dutch counterpart....

   

Elections from Abroad.

This was the second presidential election where we voted via absentee ballot.  The first election, four years ago, I remember being struck by how much everyone wanted to talk to us about it.  Americans don't just walk up to someone they barely know on the street and ask them who they are going to vote for and why.  It's not that we don't talk politics, it's usually just a more personal conversation amongst friends or family, not something you'd walk up and ask a stranger about.

Also, I remember that the biggest topic of conversation was whether or not it would be Hillary or Obama, no one even mentioned a republican candidate or cared.  Then after the primaries were decided, it was all about "when Obama was president" not if.  It was interesting to look at my own country's elections from an outsider's perspective.

Since then, I have talked to other expats who have lived here a lot longer than we have.  One mother told me about what it was like to have her American children at a local school when Bush was president and the Americans were in Iraq.  One word sums it up, "difficult."  Her children were chastised for being Americans and they had to try hard to fit in fast, even going so far as to renounce their own nationality amongst friends to fit in.  I can't imagine what that would be like, and I'm glad that we arrived at a time when our country was not so hated, it was hard enough as it was.

For this election, I was mostly aware how blissfully ignorant we were about the candidates.  And I say this in this way because I did not see a single election ad for a single candidate during the entire campaign.  The only commentary that filtered in was through Facebook friends and various rants or raves about this debate or that.  And that's easy enough to skim past and skip over in my Facebook feed, so I didn't pay any attention to that.

As a side note, I think it's kind of funny when people on Facebook get upset about what others are posting.  Just don't read it.  We can't control what other people are posting, but we can control what we choose to read.  And there are certain Facebook friends that when I see their name, I proceed with caution. Ahem, you know who you are.  But they are entitled to express their opinion and I am entitled to skip past it if I want.

But I digress.  Where was I?  Oh yes.  Blissfully ignorant with election coverage.  It was so bad, in fact, that I sat down to fill out my ballot before John was leaving for a trip to the States with the idea that he could mail it for me.  But when I tried to "quick fill it in," I couldn't.  I had absolutely no idea who to vote for or why and it occurred to me that this was a rare gift.  A rare gift to search out the topics that were important to me and research prospective candidates positions about them.  I used a website (www.ontheissues.org) -- a website dedicated to collecting nonpartisan information about various candidates for almost every possible candidate.

I dedicated the next day to this task and it took me almost all day in front of the computer, reading and researching.  I went right down to the state offices, and it got a little interesting when it got to the positions for "water council board" something or other.  I tried, but couldn't find a darn thing out about any of it other than a random faxed application if even that.  Seriously, if there is no public information out there about a candidate, don't make us vote for it.  (I left those blank.)

I won't say who I voted for, but I will say that the result surprised me.  And what I took away from watching our election, was how lucky we are to have such a thoughtfully planned system of government.  Our founding fathers gave us a system that did not allow any single governing body too much power.  That's ingenious (if only these various arms of the government could actually get along and work together, we'd be in business).  But after watching my adopted country struggle for more than a year without a government in place, or watching some of the crazy violence unfold in countries with political unrest, like Egypt, I feel lucky once again to be an American.      

Our european friends here still want to talk about the election, and the most common question is "are you happy with the result?" To which I answer some variation of "our country has a lot of challenges right now with everything from the economy to immigration to international relations, and no matter who is in office, they have a lot of work to do."  And I would say the same thing no matter which candidate was elected.  

Clonkers.

Autumn is here, with chilly nights and fresh, crisp, sunny days.  (With the occasional rain shower of course, it is Belgium after all.)  We don't get the same vibrant colors on our trees here as they do in Minnesota, but it's still beautiful.

It's also a great big mess.  The other day I was at school, waiting to pick up the children.  I arrived early, so I had a few minutes of silence in the car to collect my thoughts.   It was a blustery day, and as the treetops waved back and forth, leaves and sticks dropped down all around.  Then, there was  a big (and by that I mean giant) gust of wind that rattled the trees.  And this time, my car was attacked by chunks of tree branches and...clonkers.

Have you ever seen a real chestnut?  Before I moved to Europe, chestnuts were only something you sang about "roasting on an open fire" every year at Christmastime.  I'd never actually seen one, and if I had, it wasn't in the full shell as it just came off the tree, it was in the grocery store in some sort of prepackaged something or other.

In the shell right off the tree, these nuts look like an organic instrument of torture -- something Mother Nature must have invented on a day when she was feeling particularly moody.  They are round, and can be anywhere between the size of a golfball and a tennis ball.  They are green, and shooting out from every which way are spikes, the size of sewing needles.  They are also heavy.

That day, several had split open upon hitting the cobblestone street and/or my car.  I don't even want to know if they put dents on the roof - probably they did, it sure sounded like it. (In the midwest I know it's common to make an insurance claim for hail damage, but I doubt I could call my insurance agent here and ask about chestnut damage.)  All around me on the ground were perfect brown nuts, two to a shell.

Over the years we have lived here, I've learned that there are two different types of chestnuts, the ones you can eat and the ones you can't.  I decided to do some research to figure out which was which.  If these things were falling out of the sky clonking me on the head, it would be nice to know if I could at least roast it on an open fire and see what that excitement was all about.

Google is amazing.  Within five minutes, I learned that, first of all, they are aptly nicknamed Clonkers.   The ones you can't eat are called horse chestnuts.  I don't know why, I can't imagine horses actually eat them.  The way to tell which is which is easy:  The horse chestnuts have short spikes that are spaced wide apart.  The ones that you can eat are covered with long needle spikes, and it made a joke about figuring out how to get them open.  Both versions have two nuts inside.  The ones that attacked my car were horse chestnuts.  Bummer.

Later in the week I went for a run.  I was almost back to the house, when there in the road before me, was a round green spikey ball, with needles the size of a sewing needle.  A real chestnut!  I tried to pick it up.  It poked me, drawing blood.  Forget about opening them, how the heck do you even collect them?  I, very carefully this time, picked it up by the stick part that was still attached and walked it home.  I signed into google again, and confirmed by pictures and descriptions (of the shell, needles, leaves and everything) that this in fact, was a non-poisonus chestnut.  That I could roast on an open fire.

The next day, Belle and I walked down the road with a basket.  Very carefully, we filled it with chestnuts and took those spikey little balls home.  The basket sat on the counter for a week, while I worked out a strategy for what to actually do with them next.  The excitement in the house grew.  "We get to roast chestnuts," everyone said.  That week I saw chestnuts in a big pile in the produce section at the grocery store.  With a smug grin I thought to myself, "I don't have to buy those, I collected my own off of my street for free."

Last Saturday morning I was feeling particularly ambitious.  With the BBQ tongs in one hand, and the sharpest knife in my drawer that most closely resembled a saw in the other, I set about opening them.  I discovered these tiny, little wrinkled nuts.   But this far into my task, I wasn't about to give up.   An hour later, I had a tiny bowl full of wrinkled nuts to show for my effort.  The ones at the grocery store looked better.  And much bigger.  I think the sign next to them had said that they were from Italy.

Do you think my family would notice if I buy the ones at the grocery store and we roast those instead?   Apparently Italy grows better clonkers than we do here in Belgium.  I would hate to see how long the needle spikes are on those things.  But that's the beauty of a grocery store, isn't it?  I'll never have to know.

The Braderie

After the last post, I need to follow-up with something much lighter.

The end of August always brings us a little bit of regret: We loved going to the Minnesota State Fair each and every year, multiple times.  This is our fifth year in a row that we've missed the "Great Minnesota Get Together."  Every year, we look longingly at photos posted by FB friends of the fun we are missing.  The KFAN podcasts of the "Live at the Fair Broadcasts" filter though our iTunes to remind us that we're here, not there.    

For my Belgian friends, State Fairs are time honored traditions.  They began as a showcase for agriculture and livestock, where people from throughout the state would compete to win the title of the best of the best in any number of categories anywhere from pumpkins to pigs.  So today, there are still the agriculture and livestock displays.  But there are also rides, and concerts and markets to shop and lots and lots of food.  There is something for everyone.  When we were younger, we went for the rides and games.  As we got older, it was for the music and beer.  With little ones, it was to wander the streets with the stroller, and start to teach the American tradition to our toddlers.   The Minnesota State Fair is always the last week or so in August, with the last day always falling on the American Labor Day, September 1st.

But La Hulpe does follow-up with something pretty cool.  Each year on the cusp of our disappointment of having to miss the State Fair for another subsequent year, we start to see signs for the annual La Hulpe Braderie.  Here, our "braderie" is a basically like a big town garage sale/street fair.  They close off the main street of La Hulpe, and sell spaces along the street to whomever wants a spot to sell something.   All of the shop owners get a section in front of their store, so they have special sales.  Most of the food shops, like the meat market, the bars or the restaurants, set up tables and chairs and sell food and drinks.  And in between it all are local residents selling garage sale stuff.  They also have rides and games and music.  It is definitely more like Grand Old Day (in St. Paul) or BBQ Days (in Belle Plaine) than the State Fair, but we miss those events too so we will certainly take what we can get and not complain.

And one nice difference about a street fair in europe: they don't make you keep your alcoholic beverages in a beer garden.  You are free to roam about at your leisure with your mohito in hand, which is exactly what we did last night.

 There was one other activity that I'm not sure they have in the states.  A few steps from the front door of our church, there was a giant inflatable swimming pool.  And for a mere five euros, they will put your kid in giant bubble and let them try to move around the pool.  As a mother, it's a little alarming to watch your child get zipped into a giant plastic bag.  But then it's inflated to float on the water and for a good ten minutes or so, you can watch your kid run around like a hamster on a wheel.  I think the whole contraption would just fit into our backyard, maybe we should get one for home?

This year's braderie marked a new milestone for our little family.  We did not need a stroller, and we went at night instead of the daytime.    We saw friends from school, older kids from the neighborhood, people we know from around town all out enjoying themselves on a beautiful September evening.  We watched our kids ride a few rides and sipped a few drinks and ate dinner provided by the street vendors.  We came home and tucked children into bed, tired from the fresh air with bellies full of junk food.  We love our little town.



    

Fifteen minutes.

It just figures that the day I return to my blog, something monumental happens.  I think it was the universe telling me I would need to be able to tell someone about this in order to fully process what just happened.

I just saw a man die.

Well, I don't know exactly when he died, but I was the first to arrive after he did.  It was just another Friday.  We are in our second week of school, the routine has started to settle in.  I picked up the kids from school and we went to our swimming pool for swimming lessons, just like we've done every Friday for years.  Only this time, the lesson was for Miss B and the boys had to get ready for their respective Friday night soccer practices.  We were leaving the small parking lot, we turned down the tiny street towards the intersection that led to the busy street, and there, in front of us was a motorcycle lying in the middle of the road.  Something was obviously very wrong.

By the time we got to the end of the tiny street, we could see a man lying just beyond, and the largest dump truck I have ever seen was parked a little further away.  The man in the road wasn't moving and the driver was pacing in the street yelling into his cell phone.  We were the first car to arrive on the scene.  It had probably happened just a minute or two before.  At first it looked like it was a teenager, but then later I saw his face and it was someone older than that.

I immediately put the car in park, told the kids to stay put and ran into the street.  My mind raced.  What do you do at that moment?  Do you try to help the lifeless body laying in the road?  Talk to the driver?  I was afraid of the body and my french isn't good enough to offer anything to the distraught driver.  By now, the driver was off the phone and he told me that the motorcycle man had turned out right in front of him, he couldn't stop.  I think I asked if the man was dead but I don't remember.

By this time, other cars were stopping, the lady that had pulled out of the parking lot behind me was on her phone, calling the emergency numbers as I'm sure the driver of the truck had already called.  Other witnesses were standing around.   No one knew at this point if he was alive or dead, but it didn't look good.  No one knew what to do and there weren't any sirens to announce the arrival of anyone that would know what to do anytime soon.

The dump truck was parked in the right lane.  The man was lying just behind the truck.  Two men moved the bike out of the road.    Traffic was starting to pile up.  Cars that couldn't see what was happening were honking impatiently for the unexplained stop.  One lane was blocked by the truck and driver but the other was passable, but it was a corner and hard to see.

I couldn't just stand there.  So this American girl threw up her arms and started directing traffic.  I stopped one lane of traffic, just like I've seen police officers do a hundred times.  I waved about ten cars or so through from the opposite lane and then  I stopped the next car and ran fifteen yards or so to the other side and waved about ten cars through from the other direction.  One of them was a nurse and she stopped to try to help the man.  Back and forth, back and forth I ran, telling cars where and when to go. It felt like I did this for an hour.  But really it was probably only for about five or ten minutes.  I tried not to look at the man and his helmet that was cracked in a million places.  I yelled at cars that were going too fast to slow down and tried to stand in front of the man to block everyone from staring, and also, I guess,  to make sure no one ran over him again.  Eventually, we could hear sirens.  Then, the police officers were there.

It didn't matter anymore about directing the traffic, the ambulance parked in the open lane and traffic was blocked in both directions.  I had to move my car so the little street was passable.  But I didn't want to leave in case I needed to tell someone something.  And I really wanted to know if the man was alive...or not.  No one was moving very fast, so I think I already knew the answer.

I asked one of the other early witnesses.  He didn't know for sure either and he switched to english right away.  I told him I was the first one to arrive and he went with me to talk to the officers.  I didn't see the actual accident, they didn't need me to stay.

I asked my question.  "Is he alive?"

The officer shook his head and said "his head..."

I told him I would never let my sons ride motorcycles.  Not that they would want to after seeing this anyway.

Then, the officer smiled at me with a small smile that I will never forget, and he said "thanks for your help with the cars."  I think I just shrugged.  I hadn't realized until that moment that I had even done anything.  It hadn't been intentional, I just reacted to a situation.

I walked back to my patient children and lost it a little then.  When I got back to the car, I was wiping tears from my eyes and AJ said to me "mom, it was pretty cool that you were able to help."  I pulled it together enough to get the boys to practice.  When I looked at the clock I realized that the entire interruption in our routine Friday afternoon only took about fifteen minutes in total.  That fifteen minute interruption is nothing compared to what some nearby family is experiencing tonight in learning about the loss of a loved one.  It's nothing compared to what the poor truck driver must be going through tonight.  My heart goes out to all of them.

I have this need tonight to tell anyone and everyone:  Life is precious and fragile.  Don't take it for granted, each day is a gift.

RIP motocycle man.  I didn't know you, but I will never forget you.

A Much Needed Regroup

This writer needed some time to regroup.

Last spring, I attended Crimefest, a crime writer's convention in the U.K.  I carried something very precious in my hands - my first manuscript.  It was an amazing experience.  I met other aspiring authors like myself, there for the pitch meetings and work-shopping opportunities.  I had precious face-time with agents and editors.  I had drinks and dinners with accomplished authors.  It was surreal to go to the train station on my way out and see their books sitting on the shelves at the train station bookstore.  All of it made me want to succeed in that world more than anything.

But most important and valuable of all, I got some advice.  The advice was to rewrite my manuscript.  Pffffffft.  Can you just hear my bubble burst?

She told me that my concept would be excellent for the young adult audience.  <Sigh.>  How on earth could I take characters that I created to exist in a certain time and space and make them into something completely different?

The first thing I did was get myself copies of the hot young adult fiction that I had never even so much as glanced at before - Twilight and the Hunger Games.  I was immediately hooked, and realized that my writing style was perfectly consistent with theirs.  So maybe I should think about it.  Maybe something new?  The problem was, when I tried to write something new, the old characters came out.  When I tried to invent a new plot, the old one came out.  It made me realize that maybe I should give a rewrite a try.  To my surprise, the rewrite only took about five weeks.  The biggest problem, was that it was summer vacation and with three kids at home and vacations to enjoy, my attention was divided, to say the least.    Sometimes though, we just need to step back, take a minute and regroup so that's what I tried to do.

But now, schedules are back on track and so am I.  I'm happier with it than I've ever been.  I've finished the edits and I'm back to the painful process of sending it out to agent slush piles.  We shall see what happens and I will keep you posted.  

Rats.

And I mean that literally.

I saw a rat once in New York City.  We were standing in Central Park trying to decide what to do next with our day when a big, giant rat ambled out from under a bush, looked at us, blinked and leisurely crossed the path to another bush where he disappeared.  That was the closest I ever wanted to come to a rat.

But then I moved to Europe.  When an American thinks about Europe, images of castles and cobblestones often come to mind.  Romantic lands rich with history have been teasing our imaginations for years and years until one day, maybe we are lucky enough to come see part of it for ourselves.  (Even after more than four years of living here, I still have to stop and pinch myself sometimes at the unbelievable opportunity that meant we actually get to live here.)  But there is good and bad with everything, and one little point in European history was pretty ugly.  The Black Plague.  If rats ever had any chance at all at a positive public image, the Plague sort of sealed the deal otherwise.

When we had the dog and cat, we didn't have to worry much about rodents.  But we've been pet-free for a year now, and over the winter, we started seeing signs.  What's that they say?  Something like, for every one that you see there are hundreds that you don't?  One day, I saw a dead rat in the road.  Once, there was an unexplained rustle in the bushes on the back patio.  A sighting in the neighbor's garden.  Another sighting in the garden on the other side.  But surely, there was a forcefield bubble around OUR garden, right?  That's what we told ourselves.

It wasn't just in our neighborhood.  It appeared to be an epidemic this spring.  There were others on the road in other neighborhoods.  One day, the children at school were looking through the fence at the pasture below, watching one die (its bloated body had clearly been poisoned.)

Then one day, I was serving lunch to some ladies.  As part of my duties as the VP of the American Women's Club, I was required to sit on the board of the ISG (International Study Group).  The ISG ladies are pretty awesome.  An older group of women, they are dedicated to educating themselves by bringing in monthly speakers on a variety of topics.  They also like to have lunch, so our board meetings were at each other's houses, and the hostess is required to serve lunch.  The ladies on the board reminded me of my Grandma Bares.  Classy, and dressed to perfection.  Potentially intimidating and certainly not afraid to demand certain standards, especially of society.  Making them lunch would be nerve-wracking, but at the same time, an exciting culinary challenge.

My lunch was back in February.  (I thought about blogging about this back then, but I was too traumatized - and not because of the ladies.)  It was cold, so I made wild rice soup and pecan pie.  We started the meeting with coffee, had our meeting, finished lunch and I was on my last coffee service when I saw it.  I was seated at the head of the table, with a view of our patio and garden and there it was.  A large brown rat. Taking a  leisurely afternoon stroll across our top patio step from one set of bushes to the other.  It was followed a few minutes later by another one.  They were clearly mocking me.  As if by their actions they were saying "So you thought you would try to serve a proper ladies' lunch?  We'll see about that (cue wicked laughter) Mwaahaahaa...."  

Thankfully, the ladies never noticed and the only thing they have to talk about from lunch at my house was this Minnesota girl's wild rice soup.  A few days later, our neighbor came to the rescue and brought over some rat poison (they hand it out for free at the commune, and he had extra.)  John was out of town and still teases him about bringing his wife rat poison on valentine's day.  I never wanted to consider poison as an alternative, but with thoughts of the black death in the back of my mind, on that particular day it was a present I was happy to have.

The poison got eaten, and the sightings (both dead and alive) stopped.  Early this summer, though, our bushes were invaded by a new resident.  These teeny-tiny little mice.  They were rather cute, with their big giant ears and little tiny bodies, but they were very bold.  One night, we were having dinner on the patio when no less than five of them came out to see what we were serving.  We don't have screens on our doors, so if we wanted to be able to open our doors at all this summer, it was clear we needed to do something before they moved themselves right on into the living room.

About the same time, our neighbor had similar sightings, and his son claimed to have seen another rat.  No way, we all said, just little mice.  But the poison went out, got eaten and we waited.  One morning, Luke and I went outside (I think it was back when he was looking for snails.)  There, right at his feet, was a dead mouse.  I screamed and turned.  But there, just a few feet away in the other direction, was another dead one.  I screamed and turned again, and there, lying in the middle of the backyard, was a large dead rat.  That scream brought my entire family (and probably most of the neighbors) out to the patio.

Our garden had become a land of rodent horror.

The remedy was swift and quick.  Composing myself, I scooped up the dead bodies with an old shovel and dumped them in the compost bag with the grass and that was that.  And hopefully, the message was sent loud and clear to future generations: You'd best be advised to move elsewhere.