A motherhood mantra

(***I know I'm not supposed to be blogging right now, as I am in the throes of crazy dissertation-writing, but I've been mulling over this one and had to write it out and so I'll post it anyway.)

Pregnancy is a big grab-bag. There are a million and one pregnancy "symptoms" (i.e., things that make your life uncomfortable and/or awkward and/or a miserable pit of misery), and before you are pregnant, they all sound incredibly awful or especially annoying or downright scary. And then you get pregnant, and the symptoms you were sure you'd have fail to appear, and the symptoms you never heard of show up and make you think you're a weirdo, and the symptoms you never thought to worry about end up being the worst. And you deal with them, and life goes on.

To wit:

Nausea--I was super worried about morning sickness, but only had fleeting upset stomach, which usually went away with a bit of a lay-down and some crackers, and even that only lasted a few weeks. But the gas and intestinal distress had me doubled in pain for weeks.

Oh, and the heartburn at the end? I never once worried about it beforehand but it was the WORST. To the point where I asked for a Zantac when I was in labor because I was worried about the heartburn pain. Hah! I was about to give birth without pain meds but I wanted a ZANTAC! In retrospect, this is very funny but at the time I was really serious about it (they gave it to me but I immediately threw it up...yeah, labor makes you throw up, which is something I also did not know beforehand but am glad I did not know).

I was sure I'd get swollen ankles. Nope. I got swollen armpits (hormones, glands, yadda yadda). I got carpal tunnel syndrome and achy fingers.

I was worried about stretch marks and post-partum hair loss, but instead I got skin tags (which went away) and weird blotchy face spots (which didn't).

I was scared about episiotimies/tearing. It happened, but I barely had any pain and healed super quick. But the hemorrhoids? Worse than childbirth, and I'm not exaggerating.

SO. All of this is to say that maybe? It's not worth worrying. You'll get what you get, and you'll deal with it when you do.

Which I am saying to MYSELF (this is all an exercise in self-therapy), because having a kid is JUST like that.

You'll get what you get, and you'll deal with it when you do.

I was worried about the not-sleeping, and thought I'd never survive. The newborn stage tricked me into thinking the baby was a good sleeper (little babies sleep all the time anyway), but time has proved me wrong. My kid doesn't know how to fall asleep on his own, and still wakes up several times during the night, and man I am SO tired. But we are surviving.

I was worried about having a clingy, crying baby, and guess what? He's barely exhibited separation anxiety once in his thirteen months. He loves hanging with other people, and from day one has practically skipped to the door of his daycare.

I was convinced we'd have a voracious eater, because we are nothing if not good eaters, and besides his cousins all were champs at eating. But for heaven's sake we have a picky eater. I suspect this is because he is still nursing, and I'm trying to roll with it, offering him lots of various foods. He does eat, just doesn't eat a lot, and is very choosy about the things he'll actually chow down on.

I was worried about that whole "nipple confusion" thing so we made sure not to offer him pacifiers or bottles for the first couple months. But when we did offer them he refused and to this day has never used a pacifier or a bottle for self-soothing. Which might be related to the no sleeping thing. It didn't occur to me to worry that he WOULDN'T take the pacifier but now I so wish he did.

I was so nervous about traveling with a baby/toddler, knowing that we'd have to do it so often. You hear horror stories, and sure--there've been blowouts and crying and neverending flights--but you know what? The kid is a champion traveler, so much so that I'm actually going to be flying alone on a transatlantic flight with him. (I must admit, I am a little nervous about that one...)

I could go on. There are a million examples.

The things you think are going to be impossible and/or horrible turn out to be fine, or at least bearable--you just deal. The things you spent so much energy worrying about turn out to be non-issues. And the things that never even crossed your mind turn out to be the things that try your soul when they happen.

I suspect this will be true for the next pregnancy--all the things I worry about now, based on the last one, will turn out to be moot and there will be new and improved and weirder symptoms! I suspect this will continue to be true for the boy as he grows and we face new challenges I never imagined and skip over issues I worried about needlessly. And even when the things I worry about do come true, the ways of facing them are not what I imagined they'd be when I worried.

So. It's NOT WORTH worrying. (I tell this to myself, and to the other beloved worryworts in my life.) You'll get what you get and you'll deal with it when you do.

About face

Here is a question that I do not know how to answer: Should I join Facebook?

On one hand, pretty much everyone I know is there, and I have received many requests to join, and I think it would be a nice way to keep up to date on people's lives, while they keep up on mine. The Mister is on it, and I see the value of maintaining connections with people who otherwise would be lost to my past.

On the other hand. Oh, the other hand. I haven't joined so far because on a practical level, I think it would be just one more time suck on the internet. I also haven't joined because I'm exceedingly wary of managing my online presence under my full name. There's a reason this blog never mentions my last name, the Mister's name is not public, I don't post too many pictures, and many topics are off limits.

I also don't like the jumble of everybody in one's life being thrown under the category "friends" and everyone being privy to the comments and conversations of everyone else. (Which, admittedly, is part of the attraction of Facebook on the voyeuristic end.) I tend to have very distinct and small knots of close friends from the many places I've lived, and I don't think the kinds of relationships I have across the board necessarily "translate" from one group to the other. They're all facets of me, but they're different facets. I can imagine this leading to awkwardness. Maybe I'm too concerned about how people view me, but that's part of being a quiet/private person.

As a simple example, back when we first told our family about the pregnancy, one of my aunts congratulated M. on Facebook--perfectly natural and very thoughtful of her to do so. But he hadn't told any of his work colleagues yet, including those who were doing legwork for potential job placements for him. So he had to delete her comment (awkward) and hope that no one had seen it. I can imagine situations even more awkward than this one.

In addition, having resisted Facebook so far, I'm really indignant about the assumption that *everyone* is on it. I have missed important news from friends and relatives--the "we're moving!" news, the "I'm pregnant!" news, or worse, "the baby is born!" news--because they assume posting it as a Facebook update means that then everyone knows. In other words, I feel like Facebook sometimes cuts into the (dwindling) amount of personal connection we have with our friends and family (even if it's just an email) under the guise of a purported greater connection. Maybe we're mistaking connectivity for connection?

All of that said, I'm still really tempted to join, especially now that we're pregnant. It would be a good way to let friends and family have quick snapshots of our lives and our growing child, especially as it gets more difficult to write more thorough updates, and the blog might be too public a forum for baby pictures and so forth. So I'm open to being convinced. Should I join Facebook?

Drive on

I haven't written in a few days because of good things and bad things. There was my mom's visit, which was fun and relaxed. It rained almost the entire time, which was bad timing, because that's not what it usually does around here, but we still had a good time and ate yummy food and had fun shopping and chatting and just hanging out.

Then last weekend my father-in-law fell off the roof while he was doing some spring cleaning, and it was very scary for everyone while we waited to hear what the doctors have to say. He will be in the hospital for a few weeks, totally immobilized, while the cracked bones in his pelvis heal, and then the recovery at home will be another couple of months. It will be hard for him to be still for so long, and hard for my mother-in-law in terms of juggling her work and his care and so forth. We'll of course help as much as we can; while he's recovering at home I may take my laptop and work from their house so I can be available to lend a hand.

This unexpected turn of events prompted the Mister and I to think about certain Big Picture things, which brought us around to the rather mundane topic of driver's licenses and cars and if we should get one and if so when. Right now I'm perfectly happy--more than happy, really--to be living without a car. Not only are we saving money by not having the expense of car payments, insurance, gas, maintenance, and parking, but we are doing the environment a good turn by relying on public transportation (and taxis in a pinch). I love that we CAN get everywhere we need to go with the metro, a train, or a bus. And we can always rent a car if we want to take a short weekend trip.

The reason this came up in relation to M's dad is that we do, however, tend to rely on him and his car every once in a while for, say, transporting big items like furniture, and he also did a lot of ushering of M's grandmother back and forth from her apartment (around the corner from us) to their house outside of the city. And that's something we can't pick up the slack on, although it would make sense because we ARE around the corner, because we don't have a car. And even if we could use M's dad's now-unused car, there's the pesky detail of neither of us having a license. (!)

You see, the Mister, who has lived in public-transport-friendly Europe all his life, has just never gotten his, and when I started investigating how to have my American license converted into a Spanish license I learned some pretty depressing things.

First of all, there's no "conversion" process. I have to get my license again, from scratch, just like when I was seventeen and ran a red light during my driving test. (You might imagine that I have no desire to go through THAT again.)

This would not be a problem if getting a license was like in the States--relatively cheap, easy, and painless--because after thirteen years of driving experience I am now unlikely to run a red light during my exam.

But it is not cheap, easy, and painless. It is expensive, hard, and painful.

Here in Spain, the AVERAGE (and now I'm going to get all-caps squealy because I'm outraged) cost of getting a license is 936 euros. NINE HUNDRED THIRTY SIX. That is ALMOST A THOUSAND EUROS, people. You have to pay ridiculous amounts of money to the "autoescuela" to teach you how to get through the ABSURDLY difficult written exam (which you pay also ridiculous amounts of money to take), which asks HORRIBLE questions DESIGNED to trip you up (I read some samples), and then do practice hours with an instructor in a car with dual gearshifts and brakes and then take the exam in one of those same cars. In other words, your hands are TIED because you have to pay the schools for the use of the stupid double-sided car, but they won't let you use their stupid car for the exam unless you sign up with them for a huge sign-up fee and spend a minimum amount of hours in the classes. Oh, and if you fail either exam within three tries (total, for both exams) you have to pay--surprise!--ridiculous amounts of money to take them again.

It's as if the autoescuelas and the department of motor vehicles are in CAHOOTS because they both earn OODLES of money from the whole setup. Harrumph.

You'd think that at least, with such a rigorous examination system, Spain would have good driving safety record. On the contrary. It is, with Portugal, the EU country with the highest highway mortality rates.

So you can understand why the Mister, with all of his traveling and living abroad, has never gotten his license. And you can understand why I am despairing of getting mine.

After learning all of this depressing information, I looked into getting my license in Belgium, because any EU driver's license is valid in all other EU countries. Belgium has an examination system much more like the US--a provisional driver's permit after the written exam, and then a driving exam in your own car, without requiring classes. They even allow you to "convert" your American license, but only within the first six months of living there. Oops. So I may eventually try to find a way to use someone's car for the test? Or buy a car there, when and if we decide to buy one? But then I may not have a legit Belgian ID anymore? Doing it in French would be extremely daunting, to say the least, but it beats boring hours of classes and the nightmare of getting a Spanish license.

I'm hoping a magic fairy will come and tell me something I failed to discover in my research, such as that there's a Vermont-Spain secret treaty and that Spain will recognize my Vermont license and will just stick a little A-OK stamp on it.

Sigh. At least I had lunch in the sun today, soaking up every little particle of warm oozy light that I could.

O happy day

Last night, well past midnight, saw me swaying onstage with a crowd of all the evening's performers as the credits rolled, singing "O Happy Day."

I thought it was an auspicious beginning to what is surely a great day in history. Today, Barack Obama will become our president.

During Christmas vacation, the Mister was finishing up an article, and our little nephew came up to ask him to play. M. told him that he just had a few more sentences to write, and then he would come down.

The three-year-old stood there for a moment, and then solemnly said, "Barack Obama is our president."

So when I say today that Barack Obama is our president, it is the little guy's innocent voice I hear, and I think this perfectly fitting. His voice is the voice of the country's future.

Another reason today is a happy day is that this is my 300th blog post! I can't think of a better day to write it, a better reason to celebrate.

Piles of pretty clothes

I went to get my hair cut this morning, and when the stylist offered me a fashion magazine to read, I said, "Nah. It just makes me want to buy stuff." And I realized this statement was true only as it was coming out of my mouth.

Because I have a pile of clothes sitting on my dresser right now that I can't fit into my drawers, and I'm embarrassed to want more, to see pretty, nice, soft things and want to own them. When I already have more than I can even properly put away.

This overflow has a lot to do with Christmas presents, and post-Christmas sales both in Vermont and Barcelona, and also with the facts that winter clothes are bulky and that I don't have an actual closet.

Still. I'm sure it used to be that one had, for example, some winter pajamas and some summer pajamas. They were mended as necessary and replaced only when truly worn out. But now, I have the flannel pajamas that I wear when it's really cold, the new stripey Christmas pajamas, the broken-in pajama pants from college, the sort of sexy pajamas, the lightweight men's style pajamas, not to mention the yoga pants and t-shirts I often sleep in...and so on and so forth. And that's just the winter pjs.

I could make a similar list for sweaters, or pants. When buying, I justify purchases: "But that one's different from that other one! Those black pants are slightly more dressy than these! This gray sweater is much thicker than that gray sweater!"

I have to think: do I really need all of these clothes? No. Do I wear all of these clothes? Mostly. Could I function happily with fewer clothes? Yes. I know I don't own a lot compared to many others in the well-off western world, but I also know that I DO own a lot--embarrassingly too much--compared to many many others.

Anyway, I'm not a compulsive shopper or a fashionista (by any means!), and most of the year goes by without excessive purchases, and I usually wear my clothes until they're practically falling apart. I guess the point is that if I stay out of the stores (especially during the sales! which appeal to my frugal side!), I don't start convincing myself that I really need something. And keeping my nose out of magazines--even on the rare occasion that I might look through them--is one more step towards not longing for things.

L'americana

Last night was my first "real" concert with the new choir. We sang "Cançó d'amor i de guerra" (Song of Love and War), a rollicking zarzuela, full of triumphalist full-throated choruses that end with happy emphatic crashes of cymbals. Which fit my mood rather well after the election.

In fact, the best part of arriving at the auditorium dressing room last night was that one by one, many of my fellow singers (many of whom I still don't know) came up to me and solemnly, admiringly, shook my hand or kissed me on the cheek. There was a deep contentedness in those sturdy handshakes. It caught me by surprise at first, but of course: I was likely the only American they had seen that day. I felt like a celebrity, just by virtue of being l'americana, and believe me, this is the first time while in Europe I have ever felt so... admired for being American. I told them all I was so proud of my country.

Take a look at these reactions from around the world. It captures a bit of that good feeling.

And now for a couple of tangents, one a gush and one a dash of realism:

Isn't Michelle Obama just fabulous? I have a feeling that she is going to rock as first lady.

Also, Obama's election is a huge huge huge step for a country whose legacy is one of systemic racial hatred, violence, and discrimination. It really is an American dream come true. But some commentators are acting as though all of the sudden racism has been defeated for good. Sadly, that's not the case. I'm worried that having a black president could serve as an excuse for the more naive segments of society to say, "See? No racism here. Obama's in the White House. Case closed." And then shut their eyes to their own behavior or injustices around them. Obama might be kind of like the Cliff Huxtable of today, the friendly black guy who makes white people think they're "totally fine" with black people and that his success story is proof that racism doesn't exist.

(Yet: I am thankful things are changing.)

Yes

I tried to stay awake long enough to see some conclusive election results. I baked and did laundry until 2 am to keep myself occupied while the Catalan television speculated and the CNN election map slowly filled in with bright red and blue. I made it until 4 am, but although things were looking good, nothing was really certain. I fell asleep curled around my laptop.

So when I woke up all I had to do was hit refresh, and I saw the news. And then watched Obama's acceptance speech, and was moved to tears. The man is a brilliant orator, and I hope that the feeling I get when I listen to him, the feeling that here is a leader who I can trust and is telling the truth, will be borne out by his actions in office. I know that no one is perfect, and that an Obama presidency in and of itself does not solve the nation's--much less the world's--problems, but I hope that he will follow through on the good words of his speech.

Because what I heard is this:

I will always be honest with you

I will listen to you

it cannot happen without you

a new spirit

of service and responsibility

looking after not only ourselves, but each other

a measure of humility

to promote the cause of peace

America can change

while we breathe, we hope

yes we can

(today I am thankful for the promise of America)

Historic

Every election is an "historic election," in the sense that history is made whenever a new president moves into the White House. However, this time around the outcome will be especially noteworthy, and the issues at stake seem especially crucial, what with the ugly economic panorama, interminable war-waging, the dire state of the world's ecosystems, good health care out of reach for millions, and a lingering legacy of racism, poverty, and social injustice. I turned to the Mister the other day, when news of the financial crisis was starting to hit, and wondered aloud if we would look back on the whole of our pre-2008 lives as a kind of golden age.

And yet: whatever happens, I feel energized and excited just by the fact of being alive on this memorable day, and proud of the changes that already seem to be taking place.

Some reasons the election is especially historic:

* Barack Obama would be the nation's first African American president.

* John McCain would be the oldest person to be sworn in as a new president.

* Sarah Palin would be the nation's first female vice president.

* This is the first time in history that the two main candidates for president are both sitting senators.

* This is the first time in more than 50 years that neither the sitting president nor the sitting vice president is a candidate on his party's ticket in the new presidential election.

* This has been the most expensive election campaign in history.

* This has been the longest election campaign in history.

* This is the largest-ever age gap between the two presidential candidates.

* Obama's campaign has raised a record-setting amount of money from small contributions.

* New voter registration and early voting have broken records, and voter turnout may do the same.

* For the first time in history, both candidates were born outside of the continental US.

* The two candidates are the first from their home states, Arizona and Hawaii.

* The candidates have made unprecedented use of new technology like Facebook, text messaging, YouTube, and online advertising.

(Most of this I pulled from my buzzing head after nonstop election reading, but this article covers all of these assertions, I think.)

Vote

On the eve of...

Unless you are living under a rock, you know that tomorrow is the Big Day. The rest of the globe is voting for Obama. What will America vote? Everyone here is holding their breath, and there is extensive US election coverage in the news. Every day I have conversations with people who are puzzled as to why McCain even has a fighting chance, and I find myself (inadequately) trying to explain the whole American political panorama. It ends up being about the ideals of individualism and freedom, and competing definitions of those ideals when applied to various social needs. Isn't every political system (with further shadings among parties) just a different balance of what and how an individual gets to decide vs. what and how the government gets to decide? Meanwhile, I am getting nibble-on-fingers nervous.

As Obama's half-sister, who lives in Kenya, said of him, "He can be trusted to be in dialogue with the world." Boy, do we need a president who will rely on dialogue. And a president who is trustworthy.

The quote comes from an editorial I enjoyed because it suggests that literature and politics have a whole lot in common: they're both all about narrative. Stories matter, because stories are how we understand ourselves and where we come from, and how we understand our leaders and where they come from.

Anyway, the important thing is: vote!

(Scroll down a bit to see my election-themed Etsy sidebar...)

Superfat Tuesday

Yesterday was an adjective-enhanced Tuesday if there ever was one. Because the day fell on Fat Tuesday of carnival fame, and Super Tuesday of political fame, it was bound to be exciting. Super exciting, if you will.

The Mister and I tried to squeeze as much excitement out of it as possible here in Belgium, which is both geographically distant from the Mardi Gras ideal of tropical Brazilian parades, and temporally distant from American political reporting (most results didn't start to come in until 2 am, well after our bedtime).

For the "fat" portion of Superfat Tuesday, we went to Binche (pronounce Baansh, light on the "n"), a small town south of Brussels that is known for its centuries-old carnival celebrations. The Binche carnival itself is, in fact, a UNESCO "masterpiece of the oral and intangible patrimony of humanity." Despite the buffeting winds and rain, the parade we saw was indeed pretty darn cool. It features hundreds of men and boys (no women, harrumph) dressed up in the traditional "Gille" costume, which is... kind of hard to explain. The costume involves wooden shoes and towering feathered headdresses, belts of bells (they all clonk shoes and jingle the bells in a shuffling kind of dance to the drums and horns that follow them), elaborate lacy cuffs and collars, white skullcaps and ear-bandages and a sort of puffed-up back and front panel that makes them all look like their too-small heads are perching on hugely inflated shoulders. Earlier in the day, they wear those scary green-glasses masks, but not for the afternoon parade (trading them for the ostrich-feather headdresses). So I was happy and unfrightened.

Oh, and they all carry narrow straw baskets of blood oranges, which they hurl into the crowd one by one. We lugged home about three kilos of oranges, and fortunately managed to avoid being injured by flying citrus. I wondered aloud as to why the oranges, and the Mister replied: "You know how Belgium is known for its sunshine and its orange trees, right?" The streets after the parade were cobbled with muddy, crushed fruit. I fully expected the oranges to be rather tasteless, but on the contrary, when we finally ate some at around midnight, they were fantastically sweet and tart, and bright red inside. Yum!

How I do go on. Instead of trying to explain the bizarre spectacle, I should show you some pictures.

Before the parade, we caught some of the Gilles leaving their house. Each one has a sort of entourage, people to carry backpacks full of oranges (for refilling the baskets), people to help out with the feather hats (from the looks of it, they were heavy and tough to hang onto in the wind, and were thus only worn for short stretches at a time), and people to ratatat-tat on drums everywhere they went.

This little Gille didn't want to go with his dad and brother. He was crying, and I felt kind of bad for taking his picture, because that's probably why he didn't want to go in the first place: all those scary tourists snapping flashy pictures.

A group of Gilles heading to the parade.

And here's me, with one of the oranges we caught, just before the camera battery died.

After a crowded train ride back to Brussels, we went on to the "super" portion of our superfat Tuesday: a big primaries party thrown at one of the nice hotels in town. There, the signage insisted on calling it a "Mega-Tuesday party" which may be a French way of saying it, who knows? The Mister and I really just wanted to follow the primaries on CNN or something, and since we are TVless, we asked some friends where to go and they recommended this party. We paid five euros to get in, only to discover that: food and drinks were not included (to be paid for apart, at exorbitant rates), all of the rooms were intensely noisy and overcrowded, and there was no TV. Instead, there was an endless (and endlessly boring) parade of pseudo-debates, people trying to get you to sign up for Republicans or Democrats Abroad, and eurocrat "celebrities" talking about how the elections were important (duh), none of which you could hear over the crowds anyway. We just wanted some news!!! And the friends we'd thought we'd see there never showed up, so the whole shebang was one big superbust.

We went home, ate some blood oranges, and scoured the internet for some news. There was precious little, so we went to bed. I do have to say, though, HOW exciting this primaries race is. Regardless of your political affiliation, is it not AMAZINGLY awesome that a woman and a man of color are neck-and-neck as frontrunners? This, my friends, is history in the making. Who would've thunk?

I find myself feeling hopeful about American politics for the first time in a long time, and Obama has a lot to do with those hopes. If he is elected, and can deliver on his messages of hope and change, the nation will be in for a major turnaround, one that is badly needed.

Anyway, I've gone on for superlong, and you're probably supersick of me, and supertuesday is over, so I can stop using superlatives. Hee hee!

Dilemmas and quandaries

Having just finished Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma, I'm hyper-aware of the hidden costs of the things I buy and eat. But the book, while it was illuminating in many respects, and well-written, leaves me with just as much of a dilemma as ever when I shop. Perhaps MORE of a dilemma, because it has made me question what I too often before took for granted: organic? great! Plop it in the basket!

Pollan's useful distinction between "industrial organic" (the kind of organic that relies on the traditional industrial market processes and [inter]national supply chains) and local organic (grass-fed cows, multi-species farms, local supply chains) has made me question some of the claims of organic foods. Is that chicken really free-range or does it just live in a giant, smelly, chicken shed with a tiny door where it can spend five minutes on a little patch of green grass?

Throughout the book there are tantalizing hints that the situation is better in Europe: stricter regulation of the term "organic" (here it's "bio"), closer ideological ties among farmers, fresh-food markets, and consumers, and greater pride in traditional foods and cuisines. At several points in the book, Pollan mentions some absurdly poisonous or otherwise detrimental product or method that is allowed in American processed food, and then, to underscore its toxicity, points out that it is outlawed in Europe.

This cheers me up. For a long time after I moved here, I missed places like Trader Joe's and even the variety of organic food and vegetarian products that one can find in any regular supermarket in the US. But on my own at first, and then after reading Pollan's book, I started to realize that I was lucky to find fewer processed corn-based items (do I really need a cereal aisle that stretches as far as the eye can see?) or even industrial-organic processed foods and to find more local produce and artisanal breads, cheeses, etc. Here, the markets happen every day of the week and the local supply chain has never really been interrupted.

That said, I still find it a confusing juggling act to go shopping. I find myself balancing the relative importance of health (eat lots of fresh fruit, even if it's not in season?), organic, and local claims. Is it better to eat the non-organic local tomato? Or the organic tomato that's been shipped farther? Is it better to eat the local tomato that's packaged on a foam tray and wrapped in plastic, or the tomato flown in from Spain that is unpackaged? Oh, and not to mention habits: I like to eat a banana every morning. But the bananas have to fly across an ocean to get here! Is it better if they are free-trade organic bananas? They still have to gobble up a whole lot of fossil fuels to get to my fruit bowl.

Earlier this week, I stopped at a grocery to quickly grab some things for dinner. While I noticed that the lettuce I put in my basket was Belgian, my thought process for the grapes that I picked up was: Ooh! grapes! I haven't had those forever! And these look so good and tasty! We can have fruit for dessert tonight! When I got home, I noticed that the (admittedly delicious and sweet) grapes were from South Africa. Again, aaargh...the fossil fuels.

Another example. I sent away for a free guide to local and organic merchants and markets, which promptly landed in my mailbox. I read that the Monday market just up the street hosts one of the farmers known for his great organic produce. So I went there, and the man was charming, and I felt so great buying from him! The zucchini was beautiful, the potatoes wholesome and friendly.

Then I spotted some kumquats and asked for a couple hundred grams. The guy was surprised that I asked for such an unusual fruit and said so, asking if I was familiar with them. I said I was, and that I liked them very much. I was so wrapped up in the little charming conversation and the effort involved in speaking French, that I didn't stop to consider: kumquats--an Asian citrus fruit--in January? Who knows, maybe they are in season and were grown locally, but I didn't ask. My French limits my endeavors in this respect, sometimes. I barely was able to express the elementary assertion that yes, "I like kumquats."

And the dilemmas extend from food into the realm of other products and purchases. Pollan's principles could probably apply to organic clothes just as well. I look at purchases in terms of the packaging I'll have to end up throwing away.

I bought organic clothes (50-70% off!) for the first time in my life the other day. I'm betting that organic cotton is better for the environment than regular cotton, having avoided that much more chemical fertilizers and waste runoff with crops that are grown organically. But as Pollan's book convincingly shows, the organic industry is still just that--industrial--and as such includes hidden costs of transporting goods far and wide, and isn't necessarily better for the soil (due to aggressive plowing and the dominance of monoculture). But for clothes, what other options are there?

I also wondered why organic clothes are A) always yoga-style tees and comfy pants and sweats and B) in light "earthy" colors? It's not that I don't like these options--au contraire, my favorite clothes ever are comfy swingy yoga pants, and my favorite colors are peaceful blues. BUT, why should the organic clothes option be limited to these kind of clothes? Shouldn't we be able to buy, say, organic dress pants and structured jackets? Organic dresses?

Anyway, you're probably tired of reading by now. My own head hurts. It's frustrating that it's such a struggle to live in this world in a way that does the least harm to the good resources we've been given.

Discord

Still no piano. After several hours, and several phone calls unanswered to the delivery man who called me in the first place, I spoke with the piano company man, who told me that the delivery men had attempted to pick up the piano "three or four times" over the last week but they hadn't ever let them take it because they didn't have "the ticket" (i.e., the sales receipt). It was absolutely necessary, it transpires, that I go down to the store in person and bring them the receipt.

What I want to know, is why I only found this out after THREE attempts at pick-up, over the course of TWO weeks, and why they never CALLED us to get the receipt instead of banging their heads repeatedly against the same difficulty? Why, during ANY of the several times M. e-mailed or called in an attempt to move things along, did they not mention this detail? (At one point they even told us--patently untrue--that they had already picked the piano up from the secondhand place and was being stored at their piano shop.) It all boggles the mind.

It's tempting to blame such blatant demonstrations of ineffeciency and incompetence (repeated over and over again in our day to day life in Brussels) on the government. Or, I should say, the non-government. Belgium just celebrated (with a big sparkly cake) the 100th day of having no elected government.

Everyone's talking about whether the country will split in two or not; certainly we've been astounded by the palpable sense that there is greater division between the two parts of Belgium than any two neighboring countries. But evidently Belgians are fond of their monarchs, and besides, Brussels would be an unsolvable mess: a mostly francophone city in the midst of Dutch-speaking Flanders.

The complexity of regional, city, and town governments are astounding; nothing gets done because there's just too much governance. Especially because it's just a little sliver of a country not much bigger than my home state, Vermont, it's hard to imagine why it is so difficult to smoothly run a bilingual and multicultural country.

Anyway. I just want my piano.

PS: for a nice recent review of the Belgian-split problem, see this NYTimes article.

Why I don't eat meat

I've been a vegetarian for over five years now, although not a terribly strict one, because I eat any and all fish and seafood. I've been thinking about eating meat again, and while I've eaten a bit here and there--even trying my mom's classic sloppy joe while I was home in May (flavors of childhood! could...not...resist!)--I think not having an overwhelming desire to continue eating meat after doing so means that I shouldn't rush into it.

As part of the process, I've been mulling over how my reasons for not eating meat have evolved over these few years, covering the gamut from political reasons to personal taste to questions of health and lifestyle. Thus, when people ask me why I don't eat meat, the answer is never easy, especially (as is often the case) when I'm explaining it to Europeans and in Spanish or Catalan or French. (Although, hands down, the hardest three people to explain it to are M's grandmother and my grandparents, who live in corn-and-cattle country. M's grandmother has resigned herself to strange food requirements, as our Senegalese brother-in-law and our two nieces don't eat pork.)

While the "easiest" reason to give, and the one people most like to hear, is that I just don't "like" meat (because it absolves the interlocuter of any implied judgement), this is only partially true. I've never been a huge fan of red meat in the form of a juicy steak or ribs, and poultry is all too often a bland white canvas for real flavors (and thus can be abandoned altogether), but I've got quite a weakness for a tasty German sausage, or a flavorful pork tenderloin, or a sweet and salty baked ham. So in many ways eating vegetarian has indeed been a sacrifice, and the smells of cooked meat are often terribly tempting.

The next most commonly assumed response, especially in the US, has to do with "animal rights." Again, this is only true in part. I don't have any problem with killing animals for food, and I believe that if animals are kept in a healthy environment and killed humanely (see the work of Temple Grandin on this problem) then there is no moral obligation not to eat animals. More on this in a moment.

In actual fact, what prompted my somewhat sudden decision to eat vegetarian was the influence of my housemate at the time (I was living in Ipswich, Massachusetts), and a book she had on her bookshelf: Diet for a Small Planet, by Frances Moore Lappé. (You can find information here on the book and the organization set up by her and her daughter.)

One Sunday afternoon, at home by myself, I read the book from cover to cover, and decided then and there to stop eating meat. I remember that I even called some "vegetarian hotline" number I found online to receive information about where to begin. I think I wanted to make it official, and since no one was around, I had the urge to call someone!

At that moment, the decision was a political one, wanting to do my part in re-adjusting the huge and injust imbalance of food distribution in the world, also addressing the environmental costs of food production. To put it very very simplistically, I think it makes much more sense to use acres and acres of wheat to feed a hungry world, instead of putting all of that equivalent energy and fuel into one cow. In other words, eating vegetarian is a more efficient way to eat, especially for fat Westerners who aren't exactly lacking in alternative sources of protein.

I still wholeheartedly endorse this point of view, and support the work of the Small Planet Institute (link above). But I have to admit that I find myself wondering if my unconsumed meat really makes a dent in all of this. I wonder if eating meat that has been produced locally and organically, not as the base of my diet but as an occasional treat, would be just as effective. (Here, of course, the problem is access. It seems easier just to be "vegetarian" in order to avoid what would be perceived as a snobbish insistence on local/green meat, questioning every restaurant chef and market vendor, dinner hostess and mother-in-law who provides my meat.)

But then I go back to some of the other reasons I have for eating vegetarian, the reasons that kept me going after the initial zealous decision. First of all, after meat dropped out of my diet, I felt great! I got more slender (although, ahem, I have certainly gained it back in the intervening years!) (oh, let's be honest: it was this year), and as an added bonus, I really learned how to cook. Because the experience coincided with my first on-my-own apartment, and my first real attempts to cook for myself, I was forced to get more creative with my meals and learn how to make some excellent dishes from my housemate's vegetarian cookbooks.

And then, of course, as I found out more and more about the meat-production industry (see, for example, Fast Food Nation, and any number of exposé articles on the unhealthy practices of feed yards and slaughtering houses), I became more and more glad that I wasn't eating meat. I won't go into any more detail, but the thought of the chemicals and waste products that go into making a chicken or a cow churned my stomach. And they still do.

So if I do start to eat meat again, I will try hard to know where it comes from, and what goes into caring for and feeding the animal before it becomes "meat." This is going to take some doing, as I don't exactly live next door to a farm. And I might have to retain a "vegetarian" cover so I don't have to be quite as pesky when we are guests at someone's home. But I feel encouraged by the fact that Europe in general has stricter guidelines about meat production, and the farm-to-market system in every neighborhood promises better quality meats than the plastic-wrapped supermarket stuff.

I guess I'm a little worried that if I do start to eat meat, it will become harder and harder to maintain these standards, and I'll eventually just end up giving into my bottomless appetite and willingness to try about anything by eating whatever kind of meat is offered to me, whether it is street food or at a cocktail buffet or even--gulp!--a McDonald's sandwich. Because the irony of the self-imposed vegetarian limitation is that I am SO NOT a picky eater, and I always want to try everything. (This was then and is now the principle objection of the Mister--who, by the way, has continued to eat meat all the while. We once had the wide-eyed owner of the restaurant in Barcelona called Organic pronounce our vegetarian-carnivore matrimony true love, because she could never marry across that--in her view--immense gulf.)

Anyway, the question of more easily maintained boundaries makes me wonder if I should just stick to not eating meat. In any case, I'm sure you can see why this already long process will likely continue to be drawn out for a while, and why I'm not even sure that I will go back to the meat-eating ways of my Iowan forebears, or my Iberian--um--postbears.

Ire

You know that feeling of finding a passage or a description in a book and thinking "that is so me," or "that is so true"?

I had that feeling some time ago, when I was reading Ian McEwan's Enduring Love. I'm a big McEwan fan lately; he's quite brilliant on the subtle motivations, emotions, desires and fears that go into any human interaction. The moment that flashed out at me this time was about anger, the psychology of arguing.

Mid-way through the book, a couple have an argument, a serious one, compounded by both coming home after a terrible day and neither being able to give or receive what they need from the other. Their attitudes towards arguing are described:

"She is especially bad at arguments. She has never been able to accept the rules of engagement which permit or require you to say things that you do not mean, or are distorted truths, or not true at all. She can't help but feeling that every hostile utterance of hers takes her further not only from Joe's love, but from all the love she's ever had, and makes her feel that a buried meanness has been exposed that truly represents her."

"His emotions are slow to shift to anger in the first place, and even when they have, he has the wrong kind of intelligence, he forgets his lines and cannot score the points. Nor can he break the the habit of responding to an accusation with a detailed, reasoned answer, instead of coming back with an accusation of his own. He is easily outmanoeuvred by a sudden irrelevance."

The funny thing is that I saw myself in both descriptions: the cost of uttering untruths or accusations seems far too much to bear (in that it breaks down a relationship that I value, in that I can't stand for anyone not to like me, and in that it might reveal how mean I really am); but I am also horrible at verbal repartee and always feel myself floundering in the flow of an intense conversation, trying to respond to one point when another one has already taken its place.

Friends have asked me, Don't you ever get angry? The answer is that I get angry, like anyone else, but I can't really remember ever having arguments or fights, those of the screaming match and slammed-door variety (mom, am I blocking out anything from the teen years?). When I do get angry, I almost always find it easy to get over on my own, or else bottle it up pretty successfully. I'm far more likely to cry than to yell. So even getting to the point of an argument is hard, and when there, the reasons described in McEwan's book prevent me from being a "good" arguer.

So, what books have given you a "that's me" moment?

American justice

Even if I did believe in capital punishment, which I categorically do not, I think I would have to be swayed by the statistics about prisoners who have been wrongfully condemned, and then proven innocent by DNA evidence. According to The Innocence Project, an organization committed to vindicating the wrongfully accused, "DNA testing has proven that 203 innocent people spent nearly 2,500 years in prison for crimes they didn't commit." And these are just the people whose case has included some kind of DNA evidence, whose evidence has been kept on file, whose files have been revisted.

I am thinking about this because I just listened to an episode of This American Life on the subject, an episode called "Perfect Evidence." It's heartbreaking. The first is "the story of how one tragedy becomes two." In brief, this is how it goes: in 1986, a young, white woman is raped and murdered in Chicago, and the murder is heavily covered on the media, so the pressure to find the killers is great. Four young boys are considered as suspects.

Under police pressure, one of them unwittingly signs a confession that gets him a lighter sentence (the police tell him if he signs, he "can go home"). It later turns out the "confession" is taken directly from a crime profiler's description of what he imagines the murder scene to be like. The police copy the profile nearly verbatim, stick it in front of a suspect, have him sign it, and call the case solved. The confession fingers the three other boys as well, who are all convicted, even though there is little physical evidence, and what physical evidence there is doesn't add up (the blood type of the semen found on the scene does not match the blood type of any of the four: an "expert" witness lies about this in court, implying that the blood type does match). They go to jail, and spend fifteen years appealing their case, while they routinely get beat up because their crime is considered so heinous by the other inmates. One of them is stabbed repeatedly with an ice pick.

One of the (no-longer) boys reads an article about DNA evidence and a lawyer who is working on cases like theirs. They contact the lawyer, who spends hundreds of hours and $50,000 of her own money to prove that these boys did not commit the crime they are in jail for. She is told the evidence had been destroyed, but finds a contact within the police department who retrieves and shows her the physical evidence. Finally, they are released.

The story of these kids is so amazing for several reasons. First, because of the messed-up way in which the police conduct the investigation and the legal system conducts the prosecution of the innocent. Second, and this impressed me even more, because they aren't cynical about it afterwards.

After being released from prison, this is what one of the guys, Omar Saunders, says about his perspective on the American system of justice: "...the concept and principles on which the country is founded has always been on our side." The interviewer, surprised, says that it seems like he actually has more respect for the system since he's been in jail. His reply?

"...it's a lack of understanding the system that caused it. It's like if the police do something to me, I ain't gonna say go blow up the whole Chicago police force, because you got a lot of good Chicago policemen. That's why I always...they, the media said that we got out and that we spoke vehemently against the system. I never spoke against the system. I love America! I understand that the system don't operate itself. It's people. There ain't nothing wrong... America got one of the greatest jurisprudence systems in the world. In some countries, when you do something, they kill you. That ain't nothing to talk about.

"See, so my whole view today is I understand that, if we want to make America a greater place, it's gonna take people like us, to understand what the nation is based on, and do what the founding fathers did, when they thought that their freedoms were being jeapordized, and that their rights were being infringed. You do that by knowing the law. When you don't know something, people can take advantage. This is a beautiful different kind of republic."

This second story on the episode is about a 14-year-old boy who confesses to the murder of his sister. Yet, he didn't do it, and fortunately, is never even convicted because the real killer is found before the trial. Ira Glass and an expert on police questioning listen to the tape of the police interrogating this poor boy. The policeman talking to him, in a slow, kind voice throughout, tells him they have a machine, a "computer stress voice indicator" that registers the "tremors" in his voice and can detect if he's lying (which does no such thing but is a common psychological interrogation tool used on the naïve or ignorant), then tell him that the machine shows he is lying about knowing whether he knows who killed his sister.

There are many references to the "hard cold science" of the situation, saying that "technology is on our side." The computer doesn't lie. (But of course, humans do.) After hours of interrogation, they tell him that they have found his sister's blood in his room. This freaks him out. By this point, the poor boy is absolutely broken, sobbing in the most wrenching way, and instead of believing himself, is convinced that he killed her without his knowing. He has "confessed." It was difficult even to listen to, and according to the academic Ira Glass has on the show with him, these kind of interrogation techniques are perfectly acceptable to the law and commonly used.

While the story of Saunders and his friends, despite it all, left me hopeful, the shuddering sobs of the boy who confesses to his sister's murder will stay with me for a long time.

The episode, first broadcast in April of 2002, can be listened to here on the This American Life webpage. The stories on This American Life--and lately I've been working through my TAL archives--have consistently left me bowled over, like nothing else I read or hear.

Ten things I miss about America

Here's the caveat: I think if I made a list of the things I don't miss about America, it would be a lot longer. A lot. Oh and also? My family and friends are what I really miss, more than all of these things together, and since it's not really a "thing," it's not on the list.

I guess I've been thinking about America because I'm going there! In three days! To see the new baby niece or nephew who is going to be born, possibly on my birthday! To deliver a very great, but as-yet unfinished paper at a conference! To attend a cousin's wedding and hang out with the humongous clan that is our family! Ahem. Yes, the ten things:

1. Front porches. I suppose there are places in Europe where people have front porches, like maybe on farms? But mostly, not so much. I miss the big front porch of the House of Love in Bloomington, which had a saggy green velvet couch where we would sit in the fall and spring and read the things we had to read (being English dorks and all), and watch the people rattle by in their muffler-less trucks and motorcycles (being Indiana where there are no car inspections and all) and that scruffy shirtless sunburned guy with a big belly and tiny shorts and a bandana around his neck who would ride by on his bicycle every day, his knees akimbo because it was too short for him. And I miss sitting on the wicker furniture on the front porch of my parent's house in Vermont, which in the summer is just blanketed in my mother's flowers.

2. Cinnamon gum. Did you know that Europeans don't chew cinnamon gum? I bet you didn't! Now you do. Cinnamon Trident is my favorite, and I stock up in the US. I gave some to a friend the other day, and she screwed up her face and wasn't happy about the burning sensation in her mouth.

3. Public radio. Yes, I can stream it online, which is fine and dandy. And yes, I can upload a whole bunch of NPR podcasts and listen to them. All of which I do. But there's something disappointing about being six hours away, and hearing Morning Edition in the afternoon, the morning weather in the evening. Some evening shows will play in the wee hours of the morning. Thus, the podcasts, but they are also sadly disconnected from all of the little bits and pieces that surround them; you can, for example, choose to hear a whole bunch of NPR snippets about food. But what you miss out on is the serendipitous: I love public radio for introducing me to music I would never otherwise hear, to news I would never otherwise know about, to voices I would never otherwise listen to. Self-selection sort of wrecks that.

4. Grocery store baggers. Here, after your groceries come through the checkout chute, they land in a postage-stamp sized area, where you scramble to shove them into bags yourself, and get your wallet out and pay, all at once, because there is barely room for one bag, let alone several. And when the purchases of the next person in line come barreling down the chute while you are still fumbling with your purse or stuffing the bananas into that grocery bag, there is nowhere for them to go, and everything gets jumbled and the next person gets annoyed. I think the unwritten rule in Europe is that you buy five or less items at any given time.

5. Shoes in my size. I have a hard enough time finding shoes for my size 11W feet in the States. But here, it is impossible. The upper limit of what some stores have in stock, and this only rarely, is size 42, and I can only sometimes fit into a 42, depending on the brand. So I guess I am fated to do all of my shoe shopping Stateside.

6. Yard sales. Pop quiz: Q. What do people do with used furniture and used clothes here? A. They leave it on the curb. There are a few thrift store-type places, but they are oversaturated with goods, and I think they are considered to be for "the poor" to shop, not anyone who thinks reuse/recycle is a good thing (or one man's trash is another man's treasure). We had a houseful of furniture in Barcelona to give away, and no one could take it. Where did it end up? On the curb for the trash truck. It's disheartening. There is no such thing as the yard sale phenomenon, because first of all, no one really has a yard, and second of all, the whole concept is quite alien. I think in part, or in the past, people tend to buy and use their things more carefully and keep them longer, but this is changing, what with 5-euro shirts at H&M and 3-euro lamps at houseware stores.

7. Religious freedom. This may sound strange, being that the states of Europe, like America, are democratically pluralistic, and nominally, one can practice any religion one likes. However, I have the feeling that, more than in the US, there is a deep secularism and a real skepticism about religion. This is in part understandable, given, to take just one example, what the conservative Catholicism associated with Franco did to Spain. Those kinds of legacies play out in many ways, but in part results in fewer young people involved in Christianity, and also the embattled stance towards practicing Muslims, as seen in the veils-at-school debate. Increasingly, religion of whatever kind is seen as something belonging to immigrants, to "others," faith seen as something suspect and dangerous, and not something positive, something that brings people together. When in the US, I feel that people who don't share my beliefs are at least respectful and even curious about them, but here, the attitude is more of derision and even anger. Fortunately, we have been lucky to find some wonderful spiritual communities where we are living, but the sensation is that these are fewer and farther between than in the land of born-again Bush.

8. Black beans, decent salsa, refried beans, good tortillas...oh wait. What I mean is, I miss Mexican food! And I miss Annie's Macaroni and Cheese. I discovered a little "American" shelf at one of the grocery stores here. The food that is on it is: marshmallows, peanut butter, marshmallow fluff, barbecue sauce, brownie mix, Hershey's chocolate chips (6 euros a bag!), real vanilla extract, Arm and Hammer baking soda, Old El Paso enchilada sauce, salad dressing, microwave popcorn. I wasn't really excited about any of those things except the vanilla extract and the outrageously expensive chocolate chips, but it's an interesting portrait of someone's idea of American food.

9. Space. Now, generally I think it's a good thing that Europeans have found how to live compactly. It's better for the planet for us not to assume that we can use up as much space as we want, from big SUVs to big houses to lots of trash and the space to bury it, from big box stores to things spaced farther apart so we have to drive to get there. But... I sometimes miss the feeling of openness that exists, even in cities, in the US. I miss not having to squeeze in everywhere.

10. The right to complain. And doggy bags. And free water. These are grouped together because they all have to do with restaurant etiquette. The last of them I've basically gotten over, but it also means I end up drinking less water when we go out, because if a glass of wine is the same price as a glass of water--what am I going to order? The second means that I eat more, because there's no taking it home. Fortunately portions are more reasonably sized. And the first one is related to the fact that waiters are paid well, which I think is a good thing. And not that I'm a regular complainer anyway. But it's the feeling that you could if you wanted to. We ate at a restaurant in Strasbourg with M's parents that we chose not for its stellar menu but because of its proximity to the train station. And after perusing the placemat menu, I announced, "this place is so American!!" What made me say so? Right there on the menu, four clues: 1. a big welcome and a free salad! 2. all-you-can-eat side dishes! 3. a note to the effect that, if your meal isn't ready on time, it's on us! 4. a note to the effect that, if you aren't completely satisfied with your meal, please let us know! It was a little dizzying, I have to say. I had the momentary sensation of what Europeans must feel upon arriving in America. Too ... much ... faux ... cheerfulness... beep beep beeeeep...

Fortunately, these ten things I can live with, especially because there are definitely more than ten things I love about living here, and thus rather tips the balance towards being happy with where we are. I remember having a discussion with my brother when we were backpacking around Europe for a month, back in 2001. He held that I wouldn't like living in Europe, and I maintained that I would. We sort of got stuck at that, and I don't remember what our supporting arguments were, but here I am, and here I will be, at least for a good while.

If you check this blog regularly, I apologize

How scandalous of me to have not written for so long. Easter has happened, and with it endless choices for the kitchen we are putting in the apartment in Barcelona. Trips to the glass store for glass, the marble store for marble, the cabinet store for cabinets, and so on and so forth. Plus, lots of catalogues for the things there were no stores for. How is one supposed to know what it will look like when all of the pieces are put together? We hope good taste + good taste (times 46)(times tiny catalogue pictures) = a kitchen and bathroom in good taste. It was a hectic week, but progress is underway; most notably, there was a whole wall knocked out where we are putting the kitchen.

We spent our twelve days of Easter break in Barcelona first with my brother (in town for a visit the first weekend) and his girlfriend, then with our contractor, and then with M's parents on the Costa Brava. It rained the whole time, pretty much, but we have been amply rewarded since our return (two weekends ago already?) with beautiful weather in Brussels.

What of note in our little Bruxellois household has happened?

First of all, the girl whose furniture we are babysitting never showed up to get her stuff! We thought that we'd return from Easter to an empty house, but upon not hearing from her despite our e-mails, suspected that she had abandoned the idea. Sure enough, we later discovered that she still hasn't found a new place in Madrid, and so is putting off the moving truck. This is not exactly a problem, since we rather like her things, it's just that it would have been nice to know, as we are trying to figure out replacement furniture.

Second of all, I'm in the process of joining a large amateur choir called the Brussels Choral Society, and it's making me deliriously happy just to be able to sing (I've rehearsed with them for two weeks now). They're working on an upcoming concert of Fauré, Rachmaninof, and Duruflé, some of my all-time favorite music, so I'm pretty excited. My audition is this Thursday. Fingers crossed! Oh, and guess where the next concert will take place? The church of Chant d'Oiseau, which is of course the French for Cant d'ocell.

I've already gotten a nice perk from the choir: this weekend M and I got free tickets to see the Brussels Symphonic Orchestra that were offered to any BCS people who wanted to sing "Land of Hope and Glory" from the audience, during the final Elgar Pomp and Circumstance number, and we had a ball. They performed the Elgar Enigma Variations, a piece that I also adore, and the encore was the Colonel Bogey theme, which, as the conductor said, they would only perform "à la condition que vous sifflez"; we had to whistle the tune, conjuring up visions of cheerful campers wearing neck kercheifs, and leaving everyone with a smile.

This week we made a trip to the US Embassy here in Brussels, as we needed several documents notarized: a form to get a US taxpayer number for M so I can pay my NOT overdue taxes (living abroad you get a two-month extension, which I found out only ON April 16 when I remembered about taxes), and a form for me to get a new birth certificate from the State of Iowa (because the birth certificate with my date of birth on it is, according to the Spanish government, outdated, and they need a "current" one in order to process our Libro de Familia and recognize us as married. Makes sense, right?). Anyway, although once inside everything was as friendly and bureaucratic and waiting room-y as could be, the process of getting inside gives you the sense that the good old US of A is not exactly the picture of friendliness, even in matronly Brussels.

Unlike any other embassy on a whole street full of embassies, they had a huge swath of the avenue blocked off with manned police trucks and big X-shaped iron rods strung with barbed wire. As we approached, an armed guard approached us and in three languages asked if we were "just passing by?" or if we "have any business with the embassy?" We explained what we wanted, and he showed us which gate to enter. Several guards inside just stared at us when the door wouldn't open. Evidently, they only let one person in at a time, and you just have to wait your turn. Once inside, the screening of your belongings is much more personalized and detailed than in an airport, and they held onto my iPod, lipstick, and a tube of lotion while we went inside. The guard kept telling me that I didn't look at all like my passport picture (taken last year), and I didn't know if he was joking around or quite serious. I said I had gotten new glasses, so... He asked, are you sure this isn't your sister? Again, was he joking? Not sure.

Speaking of the Great States, I finally got tickets to fly there for three weeks in May. I'm giving a paper in Halifax, a new niece or nephew is due to be born, and a cousin is getting married. I plan on doing lots of hanging out with family and soaking up of New England. I also plan to buy shoes in my size (nonexistent here), file my taxes, and buy other random things that are more expensive or nonexistent here. Oh, and I guess I'll have to work! This week also brought a firm resolution to improve my working habits and get some tangible results. For one, I've got to write the paper for that conference!

What else? This weekend we saw both a high-speed police chase (two police cars swerving after a zipping motorcycle that then sped into a neighborhood park) and some sort of assault downtown at the Bourse (a guy running away, a guy covered in blood). We actually just missed seeing what had happened because M had stopped to buy me a rose. You see, on Saturday we celebrated Sant Jordi, the Catalan sweethearts' holiday that is actually today (but today M is in Strasbourg). Traditionally, on this, the day of Shakespeare and Cervantes' births, the day of Saint George, lovers give one another a book and a rose. To celebrate, we went to the English bookstore and each chose two books, one for ourselves and one as a surprise for the other. We actually ended up with a few more books than that (because after all, there was that 2 for 3 deal , and there was that half-price cookbook!), but ah how gleeful the feeling of coming home with an armful of new books! I can't wait to read them. I'm going to finish the Umberto Eco novel (The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loanna) I'm reading at the moment as soon as possible, especially since I'm not terribly enjoying the ending, so I can dive into The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, or maybe the Ian McEwan novel, or the Orhan Pamuk novel (he was this year's Nobel Prize winner).

Also this weekend I learned more about French politics than I had ever known. Just for starters, I had no idea that the elections were in two phases: first to establish the two front-runners, and then a second phase to choose the president. We went to the "Café Ségolène," the designated place in Brussels to watch the elections for supporters of "Ségo," although we were late and didn't arrive until after the big moment, with the closing of the polls and the first tallies announced. So it's going to be a race between "Sarko" and "Ségo," and it's going to be a traditional showdown between Right and Left. Speaking of "Ségo": why is the nickname for the woman candidate her first name, and the men all are known by their last? I can't help but be suspicious, because I've noticed this before. We have "Hillary" on one hand, and "Giuliani" on the other. My students would infuriatingly refer to any woman author by her first name, whereas there was no problem referring to the men by their last. Why is this?

Anyway, there's little doubt who I would vote for, if I was to vote, but I've admittedly watched little of the run-up and don't know enough about either candidate. I do know Royale (see, she has a last name!) is a buddy of both Dean and Zapatero, but I don't know enough about the details of her campaign promises, and I also know she's not favored to win, as the hype and enthusiasm surrounding her campaign has diminished quite a bit. At the café, where unbridled enthusiasm for Royale and rampant derision for the other candidates prevailed, it was fun to watch the commentaries, and see some of the presidential hopefuls from the pool of 18 or so appear on the news roundtable to speak to the French version of Diane Sawyer. These of course, were the candidates with somewhere in the range of 1 or 2 percentage points of the vote, the Green Party leader, and the Communist leader, for example. Oh, and I can tell my French is improving, because I could understand the post-election podium speeches, if not the whirlwind of commentary afterwards. C'est la politique.

So there's my update. I'll try not to go so long without writing before next time. A very belated Happy Easter, and a perfectly on-time Happy Sant Jordi!

Putting my movie critic hat on

A pseudo-review of two movies recently seen, one with the Mister this weekend, and the other this evening with an old Salzburg friend who has recently moved to Brussels and with whom it is really really awesome to reconnect. We followed the movie with a meal at the charming little Moroccan place around the corner, and couldn't stop talking...finally we had to make ourselves leave because it is possible that the waiter was waiting to go home himself.

Anyway:

In the "Highly Recommended" category, "Little Miss Sunshine." I am probably the last person in the whole WORLD to see this movie, because I think it has been playing for ages already in the States and here ('cuz they equal the whole world, duh), but it was SO good that I actually found myself crying and laughing at the same time. The actors, including the guy from the Office, Greg Kinnear, and Toni Collette, are all solid, every one. The little girl who plays Olive, a children's beauty pageant contestant, is convincingly winsome, as is the guy who plays her brother. The best thing about the movie is the ending. I was quite certain that somehow Olive would be made to triumph over all the big hair/fake smile contestants and win the hearts of all the judges by her genuine talent. Or, that she would not win the contest but that she would have some heart-to-heart with her family about how winning isn't that important, after all. A message something along these lines comes through, but in an amusingly unexpected way. It's not a half-hour television sitcome wrap-up, at least.

In the "Not so Recommended" category, "The Holiday." I thought it might be redeemed by the fact that Kate Winslett is one of the leads, but in this double-couple romantic comedy, I was more touched by a side story, an old guy receiving a Hollywood lifetime achievement award, than anything said by the couples. In the Cameron Diaz/Jude Law pairing, nothing came off as genuine amore at all. In the Kate Winslett/Jack Black pairing, Kate Winslett came off as light years older due to the adolescent jokes of the latter. And she wasn't very convincing in the portion of the movie where she was meant to be wallowing in self-pity, because she's way too self-possessed for that.

The thing that really got to me was a schtick about how the Cameron Diaz character has an inability to cry (this is indicated in the opening scenes of the movie, when she tearlessly breaks up with her boyfriend, and throughout, as she attempts to make herself cry, which is supposed to be funny but is not). The Jude Law sensitive-widower-with-cute-children guy, however, is a real weeper (this by his own admission, never actually crying onscreen). I think there is an attempt to break gender codes that say the girl is weepy and the boy is stoic. But what, of course, is the whole goal of the movie? To make Cameron Diaz cry. To show that she's really a girl who has a heart. Or in other words, that she's really a girl. And, as I said, Jude Law never actually cries, and only once appears saddish.

This reminds me of some of the scholarly work done on nineteenth-century sentimental novels: as critics have pointed out, the novels are all about inducing tears in the reader. Everyone cries in these books, tears and weepage and fluids everywhere, men included. (Think Uncle Tom's Cabin, if you've read it.) If I remember correctly, it's meant to cause proper fellow-feeling and bind society together and clearly demark the right and the wrong, the belonging and the not-belonging. Writers like Poe and Whitman do some interesting things with these tropes of tears and fluids, as well. But back to the movie: it's interesting (and blatantly manipulative) how we're supposed to find an emotional release in the release of Cameron Diaz's tears. It fits in quite well with the whole tears and sentiment thing, except in this case it is very gendered indeed. And when she runs back into Jude Law's arms (see, I wasn't even wrapped up in the movie enough to remember the characters' names), it's just, well, kind of slow and boring, and is the one time in the movie that he is supposed to have been crying. But isn't.

Now I am going to take my movie critic hat off. It had a feather in it, and was a little bit itchy.

Extra, extra, read all about it

So, this morning the Mr. left for Naples, where he will be speaking for five hours (FIVE hours!!) on the subject of Turkey's accession to the EU. This is one of the reasons HE works at the Parliament and not ME. I don't know if I could talk about anything for five hours straight, even books.

Sans the Mr., I am planning to work much, and perhaps start packing some boxes. First I need to get boxes. Oh, and also I would like to make something to eat that is tasty.

Also, I am going to avoid the internet, because it is currently crawling at a dying-in-the-desert-without-water pace. I can't figure out how it is that we download 1 G of stuff, which is our limit (are there limits in the US? I feel outraged by the whole limits thing), after which we are bumped down to a pitiful crawl. All I do is download a few songs (mostly the free ones from iTunes because I'm cheap like that and also haven't found a place here that sells iTunes cards...any suggestions?) and my e-mails. Is it possible that I reach 1 gigabyte with just that? 1 gigabyte, as I found out through googling because I don't know these things offhand, is over 1,000 megabytes. A thousand! Surely it would take longer than a month to reach that. Someone who is tech savvy, please advise.

Besides these clearly headline-worthy bits of information, I have nothing to report. So I will direct your attention instead, to some actual recent headlines.

*A girl was found in the Cambodian jungle who, sensationalists are claiming, has lived in the wild for eighteen years (her parents claim to recognize the scars of a daughter who disappeared that long ago). She doesn't seem to speak any recognizable language, and refuses to wear clothes. Yet, strangely enough, her hair is short and was when they found her...hmmm.

*Several EU states boycotted the meeting held in Madrid to discuss the EU constitution. Basically, scuppered again.

*In Sunday's New York Times, there is an excellent article by Michael Pollan about food, and what he calls "nutritionism," basically an overly strong faith in scientific findings about our food. One of his most interesting points is that even if they can tell us about one nutrient that is in an avocado, there is still exponentially more that we don't know about how it interacts with other nutrients in that very food, and the nutrients in the foods that we eat it with. Science tends to look at things in isolation. So his advice is simple: "Eat food [as opposed to processed pseudo-foods]. Not too much. Mostly plants." Amen.
Link to the article.

*The Doomsday Clock is now at 11:55 pm.

*Which probably has something to do with the fact that a whole bunch of scientists got together to tell us what we already knew--that global warming exists, and that furthermore, it's going faster than we thought. The ice in the Arctic is likely to melt entirely over the summers of the near future. (Both of these last items are from today's Times.)

Happy Tuesday! Go eat whole food, and don't make any greenhouse gasses if you can help it. For the sake of sea-level citizens everywhere.