Dirty Water

This list was started months ago with a few things that I was all fired up about and really missed at the time. Things that we couldn’t wait to get back to Boston to enjoy. Now, I have to say that I am having a hard time thinking of things to include. As our departure day draws near my mind is clouded with all of the things we will miss here in France and that is making it hard to leave.

* Seeing our friends and family (this has been extremely hard).
* A dryer – soft clothes and towels (crunchy clothes and deformed, stretched-out shirts are not cool).
* Warmth – old stone farmhouses in Southern France are DRAFTY. A room that is well insulated and easily maintained at a comfortable 68 degrees. Heck, I'd settle for 65. We've been living life at 60 degrees. It's chilly. You could store meat in here.
* Not having to work hard to understand the gossip of people waiting to pick up their kid at school.
* Putting the kids to sleep in their bedroom with out having to walk the Somerville equivalent of the distance to our neighbors’ house to get back to the living room.
* Sushi, Greek, Mexican, Indian, BBQ, heck diversity of any kind in terms of food. While we’re on topic of food - a GOOD Steak! Cows over here are grass fed and are just… they’re not good.
* A practically-designed kitchen and OUR cooking equipment and related gear. The beautiful, stylish kitchen with only three burners and minimal workspace that looks like a Food Network studio kitchen is not necessarily the optimal cooking experience for us.
* And speaking of food, plastic wrap with an actual metal cutting edge – they have an inverted bread knife here to cut paper towels but when you buy a box of saran wrap there is but a flimsy cardboard corrugated ridge that is supposed to cut the wrap. It does not, of course, and you end up with a wrinkled ball of plastic in your hand and a mangled pile of cardboard on the floor. It’s not pretty.
* Being able to drive out of my driveway without having to roll down my window. Seriously, we’ve been here almost 7 months and I am the primary driver of this rather large car for European standards – you’d think I’d know it by now. The driveway in our hamlet has a weird turn and it VERY tight in one spot. I have to roll down my driver window and make sure I am not going to hit the side of the house. Now our city driveway is skinny, but not this bad!
* Rolling around on the floor with the kids and not coming away with bruises and a low-grade concussion from the stone floors. A rug… just a nice, soft rug.
* Stepping outside and seeing… life. People, cars, bikes, buses, just some indicia that the rest of humanity did not vaporize overnight.
* TV. I’m sorry but random celebrity talk/variety shows and dubbed-over reruns of CSI and Law and Order SVU does not constitute legitimate television.

I’m sure there has been a list of other things that we’ve barked at each other over the past seven months but somehow we can’t think of any more at the moment. For now, we’re buried in bags and boxes and counting kilograms and sitting on suitcases to get them zippered and it is nice to think about sitting in our warm, cozy living room and flipping on a Sox grapefruit league game. I just hope it isn’t snowing outside.