Rasmenia

“Spring is the time of plans and projects.” – Leo Tolstoy

“Blah, blah, blah.” – Iggy Pop

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It’s been a while since I wrote one of those blogs posts that say, “I did this. I’m gonna do some of that. Right now I’m doing blah, blah, blargedy blah.” You know, just a blah, blah blog post.

It’s just hard for me to get into. It’s difficult for me yammer on about the boring little details of our life here in our tiny but perfect little corner of France. I like to keep a lot of things private. You may not think so with my nonsense & chatter on the Internet, but it’s true. Like, a few months ago, when I ate that bad sandwich & almost pooped myself in the Aldi, I didn’t say a word to you about that. Private.

I still clench when I see one of these.

However, it’s sometimes necessary to say, “I did this. I’m gonna do some of that. Right now I’m doing blah, blah, blargedy blah.”

Little bursts of color are popping up all over the place in my yard. The arachnid community in & around my house has started making its presence known again. I can now enjoy the sunlight as early as 8am, or as late as 7pm. The temperatures have steadily climbed from holy-shit-it’s-goddamn-cold & have been hanging around in the sixties.

Speaking strictly Fahrenheit, of course.

It’s spring. Almost. During the time since last spring, we’ve been busy. We’ve been tired & frustrated. We’ve experienced pure joy. So, you, know… we’ve just been living life.

But, it’s been a pretty busy year.

After we returned from Greece last spring, we set to packing & preparing for our move into our new house. Olivier & I were fed up with apartment living. We’d grown tired of cities, smog & screaming humans jumping & stomping above us.

After our searching & a bit of humiliation pertaining to the fact that I have a bladder the size of an acorn, we found the house. We ended up displaced for about a week, but it was summer. The two of us & our little cat, we made the most of it.

We had a lot of picnics in the park.

"Dude. You ate all the salsa."

Before long, we were signing the final papers, unlocking the door of our new house.

Nah. I'm messing with you. This is our tool shed.

Okay. No, seriously. Then we unlocked the door of our new house. For the reallys.

Well, Olivier unlocked it. I just kind of stood there.

We spent the summer settling into our new digs. Unpacking. Cleaning. Getting a few bits of furniture that we needed. I focused on getting my writing space set up, getting Olivier’s home office organized & putting the guest room together all while lacking any storage space in our kitchen & battling for a minimum internet connection.

We’re still not finished with all those things. That’s home ownership: a never-ending project. We still have no land line telephone, but… whatever. It hasn’t been such a big deal because we finally got an Internet connection. At least we got that kitchen problem sorted out & my writing space is good. I’m in it right now. It’s nice.

As it grew darker & colder outside, we huddled around our fireplace with books, wine & bad movies. Thanksgiving came & went. We managed to get through Christmas & New Year’s quietly & without incident.

Only one thing was missing.

It didn't take us long to figure out what it was.

So with the house situation resolved, the writing space put together & the addition of the little doggie we lacked, I should have been productive as hell. I should have written dozens of stories. A novella or two. A novel or a pile of poems.

Not really. I don’t write poetry. But you get my point.

At least, I should have finished another book. Okay, but I haven’t. A few people have asked me about it. My answer was & still is: “It’s coming. I’m working on it.”

Actually, I’m working on three. This is good, but not good. So, I’ve chosen one to focus on & have managed to get a few short stories & bits of flash fiction done. I’ve been sending them out. I’ve been working on a steady stream of rejections.

I don’t archive my published fiction on this site. I do, however, keep a list on the Stories tab up above. If you want to read stuff, you can go click around on there & read some shit. I put it there especially for you.

In the year ahead, until next spring… who knows? I’ll definitely have the next book done. I’ll likely have more things finished around the house & will be able to tell another ridiculous tale of another incident involving my fragile bowels or freakishly tiny bladder.

What’s sure is that we’ll get out of this house & venture out into the world again. There’s a possibility of us landing on American soil for the first time in… what? Almost three years. (I am still American. Really.) We’ll be flying down the highway next month, taking a tour of Italy to geek out on ruins & other groovy historical shit. Also, doing a bit of research. Sort of. For that one writing project I’ve chose to focus on. No, really.

What? I could be doing research. You don’t know.

The best part is, I get really excited when I get to go for a ride in the car.

And when the dust settles again… blah, blah, blargedy blah blog.

“No vacation goes unpunished.” ~Karl Hakkarainen

“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” ~Lin Yutang

“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” ~G.K. Chesterton

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When the guy across the aisle from us began discussing stabbings & which mixture of drugs enabled him to best endure such an incident, I knew that I had had enough of fucking Greyhound.

We arrived at the Greyhound station in Denver after our brief stop in Amarillo.  We had 2 hours to stand in a line in front of the door where the bus would arrive.  Sucking down our mediocre & over-priced nachos, Olivier & I observed that while the bus station in Denver was larger & cleaner than what we’d grown accustomed to, being forced to watch Fox News on the overhead TV screens negated size & cleanliness.

We were almost there.  Just another 45 minutes on the bus from Denver to Ft. Collins & the shitty bus ride would be over… & we’d only be arriving 1 day late.  Yes, we spent an extra 24 hours bent over while Greyhound stuck it to us.

Finally, we boarded the bus to Ft. Collins – an hour late, no reason given.  An enormous man from Tennessee sat across the aisle & just in front of us.  He seemed to only speak gibberish that was indecipherable.  Olivier & I watched in helpless horror as he removed his shirt, sitting in his seat topless.

“Ok,” I said.  “That’s a clear indication that it’s time to get off the fucking bus.”

“Oh my Gawd,” Olivier said.  “That’s so fucked up, I don’t even wanna think about it.  We have to go before he takes something else off.”

Luckily, we arrived in Ft. Collins moments later, where a friend was waiting to pick us up, in spite of the fact that it was 1:00 in the goddamn morning.

Now the next week until our flight home to France would be easy.  Well… easier than a cross-country trip on Greyhound.

Sure, we had shopping to do.  We had precious American products to buy – important things like Pop-Tarts, Levi’s & Ranch Dressing.

We had very important places to go to…

I hadn’t been home for 2 years, so I had dozens of people to see.  That meant a hell of a lot of socializing.  Let me just say this about socializing: I don’t like it.  I’m not sociable & regardless of how much I may like someone, I’m not one to call & chat on the phone, or make big plans to get together with them.

Yeah… & party planning… not real big on that, either.

But, I managed to plan a couple of parties – by “parties”, I mean set a date & time for a bunch of people to go to a bar, where I would be drinking.

For the most part, this worked pretty well.  Most people have no problem being told to go to a bar.  If they’re free, they go.  If they’re busy, they don’t.  Simple.

Again, I’ve expected too much from the humans.

New Year’s Day found us at a bar in the town where I grew up, a town that I despise & become slightly nauseous upon entering the city limits: Longmont, CO.

Welcome back to the worst years of your life.

But, I admit… swilling Guinness with people that I haven’t seen in 2, 10 or even 20 years was all right… as far as socializing goes.

It didn’t suck, is what I’m saying.

However, I had planned a 2nd gathering with a different group of friends for the following night.  It should have been easy.  Go to a bar… or do not go to a bar.  Instead, I had to stop checking my email due to the slew of messages that I was receiving.

“Um… yeah.  I don’t wanna do that.  Maybe you could make time just for me.”

“Well, I don’t want to go to THAT bar.  Maybe we can go somewhere else.”

“I’m not going if THEY’RE going.”

“I’m not going unless (insert name here) is going.”

I began to feel as though I was planning a birthday party for a group of spoiled Jr. High kids.  In the end, I gave up, I stopped checking my emails & messages.  With the Peril in Pennsylvania, the Voyage through the Various Circles of Hell & a full itinerary of things to do in Colorado, I just couldn’t find the time to cater to any last-minute whining, or appease any complaints.

Then again, I’ve never been much of a people-pleaser.

"They want me to do WHAT?"

In the end, the quibbling & moaning was ignored, beer was drunk, food was eaten, laughs were had & butter knives were wielded… for some reason.

A week later, Olivier & I found ourselves in an airport in Salt Lake City.  We’d caught an earlier flight out of Denver to be sure we wouldn’t get fucked out of our flight to Paris.  Yes, it’s a little out of the way when traveling from Denver to Paris, but by this time, we were immune to such things.  Our home in France was in our sights for the first time in 3 weeks, we would soon be reunited with our fuzzy feline & we would be a whole family unit once again.

Olivier laughed in the seat next to me.  “You do realize that the plane we’re about to board is the only mode of transportation that is on time & that we were actually supposed to be on?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “But we shouldn’t talk to much about it.  Something could still go wrong.”

Luckily, nothing did.  Other than the fact that we had shitty movies… but, isn’t that a typical & expected problem on an international flight?

We arrived at Charles De Gaulle airport on time.  We found a taxi right away to take us back home.  It was snowing, we were cold, exhausted & longing for home… & a real espresso.

Dragging our luggage through the door, we were greeted by the yowling & mewling that we’d been missing for the past few weeks.

Mind telling me where you two have been?

Our bags laying on the floor around us in a scattered mess, I scooped up our cat & squeezed her as hard as I could without smooshing her completely.

“I get it,” I said.

“What do you mean?”  Olivier’s voice was muffled in our tiny group hug.

“Remember at the very end of Return of the King, after Samwise puts his buddies on the boat, then comes home, scoops up his kid & says that he’s back?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “It’s kind of like that.  Know what else?”

“No,” I said.  “What?”

“You’re a total geek.”

He was right.  It was geeky, but it was true.  Indeed, when I entered our home that afternoon, I felt as though I had just been to Mt. fucking Doom & back.  We had fun, we had some complete fucking misery… people had disappointed me beyond belief, while others had pleasantly surprised me beyond my expectations.

It’s all quite blurry now, but what I remember of it all is full of various landscapes, faces & suitcases.  There was eating, drinking, merriment &… mucous.

Fucking holiday travel.  It’s always a lot of planning & stress, but we had a plan – a simple plan.  We believed that there was no way that it could fail.  We were mistaken – the entire plan failed, everything went wrong.

So, we’ll probably be staying home here in France for a while.  That is, until we can come up with some new & exciting way to torture ourselves… of course, this adventure will be hard to top.

"The brochure says we can try the Thumbscrews, the Breast Ripper AND the Rack."

“I think writers need windows on a view to remind them that a whole world is out there, not the minutiae with which they might be dealing on a close scale.” – Anne McCaffrey

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It just occurred to me that it has been a little while since I’ve posted anything here.

Of course, that isn’t because I’ve run out of things to say – I’ve actually got a list of topics sitting next to me that I’ll be bitching about in the future, but the thing is… I just don’t feel like it right now.

I don’t read many other blogs.  The reason being, I can’t stand to read about the minutiae of other people’s lives.  I admit, I just don’t fucking care.  Blogs written by new mothers about each time their brand new larvae shits, blogs supposedly written by someone’s fucking cat or anything written by someone who has absolutely nothing to say, but just needs attention from strangers on the internet… yeah, I can’t handle this.

It can be difficult to find the interesting, funny, well-written & informative stuff.

That being said, let me just bore the fuck out of you for a few minutes with the minutiae of my life.

Ok… well, maybe I can omit some of the painfully banal details & just summarize what’s been happening.  Don’t worry – it’ll be a while before I’ll do this again.

– We planted a garden.  We did this last year, but it was small & under control.  This year, we decided to jump in head first.  We got a bit overzealous with the seeds, dumping entire packages into the soil.  Within days, we had plants bursting out of control, spewing forth soil & making demands.  Then the magpies came… big ones, with bad attitudes looking for a fight.  Oh, I suppose that I should mention that we don’t have a yard… we have a balcony, since we live in an apartment.

So, trying to keep the carnivorous plants at bay while engaging in hand-to-hand combat with a tiding of maniacal magpies has been occupying much of our time lately.

– Vacations in France don’t work the same way that they do back in the states.  The most profound difference being that they are much longer; it’s common to have around 8 weeks of vacation as opposed to only two.  Olivier’s vacation just started & he has a month off from his job.  He has expressed some worry, seeing as how he will be around me for an entire month, which is something that has a very low survival rate.  I suspect that this worry is related to him constantly feeding me drinks & candy.

– Of course, we’re actually going somewhere for vacation.  We’ll be heading out of here in a few days to start our road trip.  For Olivier, this involves something that he refers to as ” a plan”.  He’s been typing things into something called a “spreadsheet”.  Apparently, this is very essential to the “plan”.

All I know, is that we’ll be going to Lille to see some friends & we’ll be going to Bruges.  Um… that’s in Belgium.  While we’re there, I plan on drinking plenty of delicious Belgian beer & doing a crappy impression of a surly Colin Farrell.

There are also some plans to visit other places: Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Austria & Holland.  In some places, we’ll be staying in various bed & breakfasts… in others, we’ll be camping.

I’m sure that somewhere around Holland, the trip will take a turn toward debauchery.

– After 2 weeks of that, we’ll stop by home to pick up the cat before we had down to La Grande Motte to do absolutely fucking nothing for a few days.  Well, I’m sure that we’ll have plenty of wine, sand & sun.  Possibly even another bouillabaisse binge.

– Ok… so, um… I started using Twitter.  To be more accurate, I’ve started using with almost no regularity the Twitter account that I started about a year ago.  I have learned that Twitter is basically fucking pointless.

– Olivier & I went back to Créteil this past week to deal with the annual ritual of renewing my carte de séjour.  We had been pretty excited about it, being under the impression that this next one would be good for 10 years, rather than only one.  Well, it turns out that instead of 10 years, we got this other thing that most people refer to as “the shaft”.  I’ll get it eventually.

– I know I’ve been neglecting my blog a bit.  Whatever.  I’m sure that the 4 (ok, maybe 5… I can’t be fucked to keep count) people who read this have been getting along just fine.  There are several reasons for this – a few of them I’ve just mentioned.  Another is simply because while I have been spending a great deal of time & energy on writing lately, I haven’t been blogging.  Sorry… I know many people consider those two things to be the same, but I don’t.  Deal.

– Last bit of mundane merde: maybe you’ve already noticed that the tag line for this site has been changed.  Also, the “about” page has been destroyed & a new page has been created.  If you haven’t figured out what all of these varying topics & posts have to do with one another, then The Rasmenian Nation should clear it up. Or maybe it won’t.

Right then… the next time that I post something, I’ll think about making an effort to be interesting.

Eh… or maybe I wont.

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Technocrati Tags: Audrey II, Little Shop of Horrors, magpies, carniverous, plants, gardening, home, humor, ridiculous, Fear & Loathing, vacation, travel, road trip, Holland, France, Lille, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, La Grande Motte, Créteil, carte de séjour, Colin Farrel, In Bruges, minutiae, bogs, Twitter, writing

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