AliThinks

A Love Affair

I'm having one. With Paris.

This will be very short, because I don't have time to craft a proper post.

I. Love. Paris.

This trip was quick and dirty, with one intention only: to pick up my kids. (And to see a couple of other bloggers along the way, bonus!) There are people I didn't get to see this time, faute de temps.

I hope to rectify that in the not-too-distant future. I'd love to spend a week or more in the City of Light; je veux flâner dans les rues avec Allan. Monuments are lovely, but I want to feel the vibe of Paris.

And I want to see the friends I didn't have the time to this past week.

Sigh. That about sums it up.

(The kids and I are back in Lexington, and I'm looking forward to this month with them. Blogging will most likely be light.)

Meh.

So tonight I mentioned elsewhere on the web that I was pretty much over this blogging thing, that 4+ years was enough, and that I was thinking of hanging it up.

Within minutes, three other bloggers essentially said "Noooo! Don't go!" Or maybe they said "Stay. Have some champagne."

Either way, it made me sit up. I think I go in blogging cycles, and this is a low point. Comments are down, and I haven't bothered to check my stats, because hello, DEPRESSING. I feel incapable of turning every day events into amusing stories, as I used to do. There's stuff happening that I don't feel much like talking about. Like, hey! I'm getting married again, and certain people who read this blog have no need to know anything about that!

And then there are the things I feel strongly about; my last two posts have been very short, but they deal with a matter that is close to my heart: downtown Lexington. The central block of our downtown is slated for demolition so that a hotel complex can be built. The design does look quite like male genitals, but if you look at it the right way, it could also be perceived as a middle finger, as if the developers were waving theirs at the citizens of Lexington. Edit: My friend Joe, aka Media Czech, just posted this blog entry about yesterday's council meeting about the fate of the block. While some of his references are clearly local (the "Heavy Hitter" is a cheesy ambulance-chaser of a lawyer; Don Jacobs is a car dealer), you can get a sense of how the meeting went down. Yes, Joe's a blogger, which means he injects a lot of his personal views into what he writes. But in this case, I agree with him. Lexington is losing a bit of its soul.

On the other hand, right now there's just banal stuff going on. Washing the cat hair off the kids' bedding in anticipation of their arrival for their month here. Taking delivery of a new bed for my son, since he and his sister jumped a little too hard on the old one at Christmastime. Planning a few outings with the kids, and a few 'innings' too. Arranging to meet a fellow blogger or two in Paris while I am there next week.

And then there's The Thing Hanging Over My Head: the review of Petite Anglaise that I must write. I got a free book. I read it. I liked it. Now I have to translate that into a coherent review. I've got part of it written in my head, but I must sit down and hammer it out. And revise. And revise again.

So there you go. I don't really feel like blogging. I've got a ton of photos to process and post to Flickr, and I don't feel like doing that, either. Meh.

Dear Blogosphere,

I'm taking the day off. See you tomorrow.

Of Course, I Can't Be THAT Old.

Because we just got in from seeing Blind Melon at The Dame.

The band still rocks, and the singer they chose to replace Shannon Hoon (RIP) is really a perfect match. I'm impressed.

I. Am Old.

We have Sirius satellite radio in the car, and mostly listen to the first five presets we programmed: Classic Vinyl, Classic Rewind, The Vault, The Spectrum, and First Wave. Having come of age in the 80s, I'm partial to First Wave, but after that, Classic Vinyl is my favorite channel.

Today I had to drive somewhere (gasp!). Imagine my surprise while listening to REM's "The One I Love" to find out I was listening to Classic Vinyl.

REM. Classic Rock. Does. Not. Compute.

Then I wrapped my brain around it, and suddenly felt very, very old.

One Reason I Love France

Stinky cheese for breakfast*. Mmmmmm.

St. Félicien, if you're curious. It's actually not that stinky. And the French don't typically eat cheese for breakfast.

And Then My Head Fell Off

Because I am going to France today, I woke up thinking about passports. Not mine, mine are valid and I know where they are. My kids' American passports, however, are either expired or about to expire.

This is something I've been procrastinating about because renewing the children's passports will require collaboration and cooperation with my ex-husband, which basically means that I must inform him that he's going to have to take both kids to the nearest consulate. I know he's not going to like that.

Poppy Fields' post about renewing her girls' passports brought the issue back to the "urgent" part of my brain.

If you want to know what a nightmare this is going to be, read on.

More Seriously...

Le dernier poilu est mort.

Here's a story in English.

Foodstuffs

Michael Ruhlman has written a great blog post about real food. Go read it. Here's one of the more significant paragraphs:

The sad fact is that fresh food that is good for you is significantly more expensive than the processed crap that truly is bad for our diet, not to mention our food production system.  And the people who most need food to be healthy are the ones who can least afford it.  The millions of Americans on a restricted food budget will see little choice other than to buy the cheap calories provided by agribusiness corn.

Amen.

Snow Day

School's canceled here today. For this Pennsylvania girl, it seems pretty redonkulous to close the schools for an inch or two of snow, but that's the way it is here. I guess the country roads outside Lexington can get pretty treacherous. Better safe than sorry.

The snow is lovely in the sunlight, sunlight we haven't seen in about a week. In a few minutes I'll pull on my yoga clothes and head to my thirteenth class.

This morning I'm wishing more than usual that the kids lived here. Snow is a real treat for them, and I know they'd be outside already. Okay maybe not already, as it's not even 9:00. But I know they'd be out playing in the snow at some point. I know they'd come in to warm up. I know I'd bark "Get in or get out!" — yet I'd be smiling on the inside. I'd make real hot chocolate.

I can see their red cheeks and smell the cold in their hair. And when they asked me to go outside with them, I'd do it.