My Truant Pen

I’m verbing my noun

It’s been quite a week for me and I’m near incoherent tired. SOME silly people wouldn’t blog when they can’t get noun-verb agreement, but I’m far more cavalier than that! We took a four day weekend and went Camping! In New Hampshire! With a 4 year old and 18 month old! Now that most of the scars have faded, it was a lot of fun. Thane has a death-wish, of course, which seemed most evident in the water. He loves it when he has a bath and lays his head back in the water. The same move in a foot of lake water, on the other hand, has predictable effects — at least to the grownup mind. He got pretty bored at the campsite. I realized, as we packed up, that we brought umpteen toys for Grey, but hardly anything for Thane. No wonder he attempted to drink the dishwater.

Anyway, so Thursday was ALL PACKING and Friday through Sunday were ALL CAMPING and Monday was ALL DOING CHORES.

Normally, work would seem vacation-like in comparison, but this week we flew in a bunch of colleagues from several different continents (bonus French accents!) and spent extensive time in windowless conference rooms discussing the relative merits of SAP and Siebel. And a good time as had by all. But it involved like all my time and brainpower. I mean, I didn’t even get to read my blogs! Or my advice columns! THE HORROR! This is probably the longest I’ve gone without updating in, er, a long time.

So instead of a nice and detailed summary of camping with three maniacs and some meeting notes, I’ll simply leave you with a portfolio of pictures:

Parks, backyards & camping

My Truant Pen

I don’t think I’ve ever explained here where the name of my blog comes from. In college, I tried to memorize one scrap from every English class I was in. It was the Clerk’s Portrait from Canterbury Tales for Chaucer. For Medieval Epic and Romance, I picked my favorite sonnet by Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella.

Sonnet 1:
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That the dear she might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe:
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay;
Invention, Nature’s child, fled stepdame Study’s blows;
And others’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:
“Fool,” said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart, and write.”

Sir Philip Sidney 1591

Let me introduce you to my BFF…

There are all sorts of ways that the new digital paradigm is changing how we relate to each other. If you read Advice Columns, there are lots of questions about how to deal with your wife’s ex-husband on Facebook, or what to do if your boss sends you an invite to be friends. It’s all in flux, and many of the old rules of relationships need to be rewritten to deal with new venues.

The other day, a friend of mine posted on Facebook about Dragonbreath: Attack of the Ninja Frogs (which I highly recommend, by the way). I had the moment of “Squee!! I know the author of that book, Ursula Vernon!” And in some ways I do. I can tell you that her cat, Ben, has had some health scares lately. I know that she has an enormous chicken statue in her garden. I know all about her divorce, how much weight she lost through the stress of it, the amount of time she spent recovering, and her apparently pretty awesome new boyfriend. I know what she’s planted in her garden, and her favorite boots to wear to a Con. So I definitely know her. The thing is, she very likely does not know me, at all. I could walk up to her and tell her all my online identities, and she’d likely get a confused but polite expression. This happens to her a lot. She’s a very popular blogger/author/painter, and there are thousands of us who read her musings. Of course she doesn’t know us all back.

Then there’s my other BFF (Best Friend Forever), Amy Storch. Her sons are the same age as my sons! She’s gone through lots of the same things, but plenty of unique challenges too. Dude, Levar Burton once replied in Tweets to her post about the traumatic experiences she suffered with Reading Rainbow! She’s the friend you go to for advice about moisturizer choices, or who you want to get a pedicure with. We totally hang out all the time! Or, well, we would. Except once again, she may not even know who I am, although she did answer one of my questions in her advice column once.

Now, I might be feeling a little “oh woe is me no one knows who I am!” but this is an experience I’m encountering from both ends. I’m a small-time blogger (even smaller since I stopped being able to update daily). I average fewer than 75 hits a day (although much better when Boston.com puts me on the front page!) I suspect that 90% of my regular readers are people I know in real life. The rest of them are looking for radish recipes or night life advice for the Indian city of Thane. (Sorry googlers!) But I have definitely encountered people who know me quite well from my writings, who don’t write themselves. While I have some vague ideas about who they are, they know everything about me. That’s what it means, when you put yourself up here on the internet, and your friends, family, enemies, acquaintances and complete strangers can all see your life, laid out plainly.

In a real conversation there’s a back and forth. You learn some things, you share some things. In this new paradigm of online conversations, it ain’t necessarily so. Some people are only consumers of other’s writings…. they listen but they never share. My husband is one of these. Others only talk and never read. Most people do a balance of both. But all throughout the world, not only are people wrestling with what to do about the knowledge they obtained due to a drunk post by their former coworker, but they are dealing with these asymmetrical relationships, when the people they know best are not ones who even know they exist.

What about your online life? Are you a balanced creator/consumer of content? Do I know you? You know me, or you can know me pretty well with a cruise through my archives. Do you like the anonymity of reading? Do you wish it was more reciprocal? Comment, and turn my monologue into a dialog!

The order in which things happen

So often, through fortune and fate, things transpire like this.

1) You get unexpected money (raise, bonus, birthday)
2) Something unexpected and expensive happens (cat breaks his leg)
3) You curse fortune

Consider the same features, but a different order

1) You sign up for an expensive vacation to Istanbul
2) Your cat breaks his leg and needs emergency splitting (and xrays, and medication, and a radiologist, for crying out loud)
3) Your oil change arrives with word that you need new brakes
4) Your husband comes home with news of an unexpected bonus and raise
5) Midas says you don’t really need new brakes after all

Theoretically, the brake stuff would neutralize each other, and the unexpected costs and unexpected extra moolah would be just the same as if you’d gotten the moolah first and the costs second. But no! When it happens the other way around, instead of bemoaning fate that has wrested your so-recent money from you, you bless fate for providing you with an unexpected windfall with which to pay your cat’s vet!

So much of life, the joy or the annoyance, is wrapped up in the perspective from which you look at it. Your cat comes home with a broken leg. Do you focus on the joy that your cat came home, or the troubles of the broken leg? You need to do yardwork. Do you focus on the unfairness of spending Saturday afternoon mowing, or rejoice that you have a home with green grass for playing on? I try to remind myself often that I have only a certain degree of control about what happens in my life, but I have quite a lot of control about how I view and approach the facts I can’t change.

In more concrete terms, you’ll be glad to hear that Justice is doing quite well. We’ve made Justice and Grey roomies, so that Justice doesn’t do stupid stuff like pick fights with his sister or attempt the stairs. He’s eating, drinking, using the litter box and sleeping quite a lot. He’s ungainly when he tries to move — he can’t get far without resting — but I’m guessing once it starts to knit he’ll look pretty funny tearing around with this big blue cast on!

Launch all zig for great Justice

In the fine tradition of mommy bloggers everywhere, I made a few cryptic posts in online forums (see also: facebook, twitter) where I said things like “Justice’s life as an indoor/outdoor cat just likely came to a close. $500 later….” and “Justice is missing. I’m guessing someone has taken him in. Time to canvas the neighborhood.” and “Good news: Justice made it home. Bad news: his leg looks broken. At the animal hospital now with an unusually quiet and calm cat.” and “$500 later, the news is not so good. Looks like multiple fractures & torn tendons.”

Then, of course, I was silent all day. Well, here’s the full scoop.

Justice is an indoor/outdoor cat. For years he was an indoor only. The thing is, he’s super duper social. He was literally going berserk before we got a second cat, and even with a playmate, he still seemed really unhappy inside. A few years ago, cognizant that this was likely a trade-off between quality and quantity of life, we started letting him out. And he’s loved it. The other day we were walking in the neighborhood when one of our neighbors, whom we’d never met, called out, “Hey! It’s Justice!” Justice loves people, attention and scritches. He follows us on walks. He’s a dog in a cats body, and extremely popular.

Usually, he’s great about showing up at mealtimes. Once in a while he misses one, for reasons I’m not aware of, but shows up again promptly. He’s gone missing a few times, and he’s usually been “taken in” by someone entranced by him. One woman accused us of letting our pregnant, declawed cat wander loose. HE may have needed a diet, but he’s actually a great hunter (too good, really, he keeps catching squirrels) and has a fully functional set of claws, as my stairs attest.

But last night when we came home, he wasn’t waiting at the steps. Yesterday morning, when we woke up, he wasn’t strolling in looking non-chalant. (Note: he is of course fixed.) And then yesterday, after a very long day, when I got home he still wasn’t there. I called and called at the door. (Thane chimed in, which was cute but a little heartbreaking.) I had to wonder if he’d been permanently adopted by someone, despite his collar and chip? If he’d fallen afoul of a coyote or a car? Just as I was prepping to go call through the neighborhood and see if anyone had seen our local celebrity, I heard the tinkle of his bells. Slowly.

Justice and Grey meet for the first time

From under the car there emerged a familiar figure. (He likes hanging out under the car.) But only three of his four legs were touching the ground. He looked quite bedraggled and ungroomed. And he had a serious air, quite unlike him.

I got him inside and took a look. The angle the leg was at looked anatomically improbable. 8 pm. I heaved a big sigh and called our vet, who had information on a local 24 hour animal clinic on the phone. Justice and I, and my husband’s Kindle headed out to spend a long quality evening in a vet hospital waiting room.

The vet said that yes, it was broken. The X-rays show that he fractured multiple tarsals and snapped the tendons in his leg. He’ll never have normal use of it again. We’ve splinted it, and he’s in a cast for 6 to 8 weeks. (Note: cat in a cast = very pathetic sight.) But he’s eating. He looks tired, but ok. He’s still trying to move around, and he’s purring and interested. Hopefully the damaged joint will fuse. It will never be as strong as it was. He’ll probably always have a limp, but cats are very adaptable.

We’re not really sure what happened. I suspect it took a great deal of grit for him to get home — I’m grateful that he did. The vet said it didn’t look like anyone hit him with a car. Most likely his leg got trapped, and it was the weight of his own body that did the damage. So I guess we’ll see how this turns out, and how he recovers.

To be a lover of books

What gifts and passions do we hope our children have? If we were fairies at a christening, what would we bestow? I’m coming to understand that the answer isn’t the same for all parents, that the “of course” attributes that I value are not the same ones other parents do. That’s part of what makes us so wondrously different. For me, there are some key attributes. Kindness. Integrity. Courage. Joyfulness.

But then there are the other things, the ones that I secretly really hope for, but know it’s not fair to expect. Love of music. The willingness to sing in public. Caring about what’s fun more than what’s cool. A love of nature. A disdain for hurting others. Stopping to watch the ants. Memorizing poetry for fun. And, critically, a love of books.

For that last one, at least, my parenting hopes look like they’re on track.

Last night, Grey requested the opportunity to read Thane on of his bedtime books. He selected his favorite from his room: Luke Skywalker’s Amazing Story. Starting with the title page, he read through it. He read about droids, and the Force, and Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, and Obi-Wan Kenobi and “rebel leaders”. Of course, many of the hardest words he’d remembered from other circumstances. Let’s be honest, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a bit tough to guess phonetically. But he pronounced “Aunt Beru” differently than I did. He corrected himself when he misread a word. He paused and analyzed some of the hard words. He read with inflection and meaning, and understood the words as he read them. And I sat there, hiding tears, amazed to learn (spoiler alert) that Luke Skywalker’s father was Darth Vader! You could see the effort he put in — he actually got tired towards the end and started making mistakes out of the fatigue of his effort. But that by itself points to the reality. My son is reading! He’s a reader! He loves it! He does it out of joy! I can almost see the doors of a vast new world opening to him, whether he sees it or not.

Now let us speak of my youngest. About a year ago, Thane went into a book stage. It was one of his first words. He showed unusual focus for a small child on listening to the stories. But, probably not coincidentally, around the time he started getting the ear infections, his love was transferred over to cars. Vroom! Clearly we continued reading to him at night and sometimes in between, but it was no longer “his thing”. Then, a few weeks ago, it all changed. Thane is having a passionate love affair with books. Specifically, books that you are reading to him. And woe betide all moments not happily consumed in book-ishness. Today was a tight morning, schedule-wise, so we ONLY read him about 5 books before breakfast.

This would be a happier thing if Thane wasn’t quite SO upset between readings. He regularly throws epic, grand-mal tantrums with 15 minutes of loud, disconsolate weeping, arching of back, and pounding of hands because you have cruelly and viciously REFUSED to read him a fourth book! Look! He has it right here! “Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive the Bus”! If he says “happy” enough times, surely you’ll understand and read it!?!? (NOTE: Books are identified by their loudest phrase. So “10 Minutes to Bedtime” is identified with “Bedtime”. In one of the Pigeon books, the Pigeon says he is “Happy, Happy HAAAPPPPPYYY!!!!” therefore all Pigeon books are “happy”. There’s a certain irony as he, tears streaming from his eyes, holds up the book and urgently says through his weeping “Happy! Happy!”) If you do not immediately oblige, the bitter crying starts. Last night when I was rapt listening to my eldest read a book, I was bouncing on my right leg a disconsolate Thane who kept bringing me different books in the fond hope that I’d finally read one to him, as he screamed and howled his disappointment.

This is, of course, a stage. You can’t multi-task and read “How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Dinner”. I’m pretty sure that’s the point. Thane has figured out how to get whole and undivided attention from the people he loves: grab a book and plop your little diapered butt in their laps. Works every time. And of course, he really does love the books. Grey loved the alphabet at that age. He actually knew it all by 18 months. Thane? He loves the reading, specifically the one-on-one time with his parents. I don’t begrudge him, even as much as sometimes it would be nice to have him sated by, oh, three or four books.

One of the memorable moments of my shared childhood experience was a car trip where my parents and siblings and I talked about all the books that the younger of us had not read and the jealousy of the elders that they would be so fortunate as to experience them for the first time. My sons’ feet are on that road. Oh, what stories await!

Constantinople, not Istanbul

Today I bought tickets for Istanbul.

In August, my husband and I will have been married ten (10) years. That seems momentous somehow. How can I possibly be old enough to not only be married, but to have been married a DECADE. So although this isn’t the time of life of the greatest free cashflow (hello daycare!) sometime last summer I decided that we would go.

In our decade of marriage, we’ve really had three kinds of travel vacations: family, beach and exotic. Family speaks for itself. That’s our backpacking, trips to Victoria, hanging out in Atlanta, etc. That usually happens once or twice a year, although perhaps not this year. Beach? We’ve made three of those. We went twice to Cozumel, Mexico — once before we had kids and once when I was pregnant with Grey. We really like snorkeling. When I was pregnant with Thane, we went to Belize to snorkel there, which would’ve been more fun if I hadn’t been wrestling with a herniated disk.

Three times, we’ve done “exotic” travel. When Grey was about 6 months old, we went to London because I’d never been and because (I think really) I wanted to prove to myself that my life of adventure wasn’t over because I’d procreated. Grey threw up about 6 times a day every day we were there. We have not traveled internationally with kids since. For our honeymoon, we went to Greece. We spent two? Three days in Athens? Then another blurry 5 or so on the island of Aegina, discovering that we liked snorkeling together and could be entirely content with a schedule that had us both reading two books a day. Then, in 2004, we went on a trip that was the best week of my life. We went to Vienna for a week. Ah! What can be said! There were museums and weapons and friends and Hungarian Goulash and alpine meadows and fortuitous pfeiffer-steak and it was just the best week I’ve ever had. We took a train through the alps to Vienna, because I had longed since my sophomore year of college to gaze up at the glimmering tongues of flame of the Pentecost, writ in gold, on the mozaic-strewn St. Marks, where Giovanni Gabrieli wrote music to fly over the heads of worshippers. And we did. We stood in St. Marks and heard music and saw mosaics and it was amazing.

We have figured out, with this scope for comparison, those three exotic and three beach vacations, that the journeys of the mind (and museum) are more worthwhile. Beach vacations are fun. It’s enjoyable to read and relax and snorkel. But it’s like the difference between candy and a meal… the nourishment of the other travel is so much greater. It may not give quite the quick hit, but it’s worth it.

On reflection, the destination for this adventurous 10th anniversary trip was decided by a pair of books, the Sarantine Mosaic series by Guy Gavriel Kay. I read them in Victoria last summer. In college I’d taken a course in Early Christian and Byzantine Art, and amazingly we’d studied Byzantium as part of it. I’d loved it. I drank it in. I dragged my new husband to every church I could find in Athens, including quite a few that were by no definition Byzantine. These two books really touched on an authentic feeling of what it was to be Byzantium (although it’s a fictional setting, it’s clearly Byzantium. I highly recommend the series. Keep your eyes open for Procopius!) And I wanted to dig deeper, and drink more fully from that history.

So it came together — a journey to a place of great history and depth. Byzantium. Constantinople. I want to stand in Hagia Sophia, great wisdom, and see what she has become and imagine what she once was. My husband has placed a vote for The Sinking Palace. We’ll be staying at a hotel that overlooks the Bosporos. I’ll likely bring along the Iliad, and perhaps we’ll make a day trip to Troy.

Can we catch lightening in a bottle? Can anything ever be as amazing as Vienna was? I don’t know, but it seems like there’s no better place to find out than Constantine’s New Rome.

Pictures and Vignettes

My digital life is all behind. My work life is very, er, fulfilling these days. And my personal life is what Professor Willauer used to call “rich and full”. (Read: I’m still doing bills at 10:45 on Tuesday nights.)

But the thing is, I’m not using euphemisms. My life is fulfilling, rich and full. There’s laughter, giggling, serious discussions, rough-housing, beautiful spring days (at least through a window), lilac-sniffing, Miso-soup-eating, meeting-attending, project-planning and baseball-watching. Sure, I had 492 pictures to go through last night, multi-tasking as my husband and I watched Red Dwarf (we’re up to Season 6). Granted, I haven’t ordered prints in like a year, and my digital picture frame shows a little immobile bowling-ball of a Thane. And yes, my retirement funds need to be reallocated and the IRS sent me a nasty notice (I believe I’m in the right on that one, which just makes it worse. It’s easier, although much more expensive, to be wrong.) But hey, I’m never, ever bored. And really, it’s quite a joyful tumult, except the bit about cat vomit in the morning.

In the vignette department, I would like to record for posterity that this week marks the first time Grey begged for a cell phone. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. If you ask me now, in the throes of preschool and my own fuddy-dud-ness, I’d say that maybe 14 would be an appropriate age for a cell phone. One without a camera or digital plan. That’s 10 years from now. Do you remember where we were 10 years ago telephonically? It was my senior year of college. We had an outrageously expensive plan in our dorm rooms, and I remember one or two people my senior year actually had their OWN cellular phones. For real. One of my very friends had a (wait for it!) car phone! It was so expensive you only used it in extreme emergencies, of course.

So that is to say that in 10 years from now, who knows what telephony looks like? I can’t predict what will be normal and expected. (For example, in less than 15 years email has gone from a cool thing that some people had to pretty much mandatory for civilized life.) So I can’t say what choice I’ll make about when it is appropriate for Grey to have his cell phone. All I can say with confidence is: not now.

In other communication news, Thane has started speaking in very short phrases this week. I will record as his first sentence this one, used to communicate key information to a babysitter on Monday night: “Dis Mama” (pointing at me). Yes Thane! I am proud to be your mama!

In funniest baby phrases of the week, Grey was asking what a copy was. You try defining a copy with out using a synonym. So my husband, reaching into a vast store of knowledge, explained that a copy is like “Echo Echo” on Ben 10. Grey got the concept, but Thane immediately blurted out “ECHO ECHO!”. Perhaps you had to be there, but the irony of your little echo saying echo was, er, ironic.

So with no further ado, the pictures. I didn’t have time to caption them or to edit them quite as much as is my wont, but I did shut my computer off for the second episode of Red Dwarf, so I regret nothing:

http://picasaweb.google.com/fairoriana/May2010#

Celebrations of a jet-lagged mother

I still owe you some summaries of my trip to Europe. It was really a neat experience. Basically, we’d spent about 10 hours in a windowless conference room discussing projects. This does not merit blogging upon, except to touch on the fact I must be doing ok at the new job since they gave me a second high profile, big-deal project to manage. Not code, manage. Since that’s the direction I wanted to go, I’m trying very hard not to go into actual-coding withdrawal. Anyway, after 10 or so hours of complete senescence, we’d rise in order to drive to that night’s restaurant. And then we’d spend three or four hours eating. OH MY GOODNESS. I actually did gain 3 pounds in a week — a combination of lack of activity and 3 to 4 hour French dinners. I had beef, duck, white asparagus & rabbit. Yum!!!

On our way home, we flew about 50 miles north of the volcano. I watched the ash plume and the southward streamers heading to disrupt other planes. It was a quite a sight to watch.

When I got home, 100% of the human males were running temperatures. Thane scored triple medication during the week: otic eardrops with antibiotics, oral antibiotics & an antifungal cream for a diaper rash. Poor kid. Grey had gotten sent home with a 101 degree fever, which would’ve been worse if my husband hadn’t come home with a fever feeling terrible. So deeply jetlagged as I was, I was still in the best shape. Yesterday, we mostly vegged. There was lots of tv. And Wii. And computer games. Because really? There are times when it is appropriate to do your best lump-impression, and a rainy, stormy day when the entire family is sick counts as a good lump-day.

But today, against my more realistic expectations, everyone seemed fine. Great even! Amazing the impact that two naps can have on a body. So we went to church. It was a really awesome service. The kids are just an overwhelming force in the sanctuary. We were doing this Genesis creation play we’ve done before. There are about 20 elements of the play that the kids wave over their heads. We ran out.

Then after the service I got to chat with a new family who was visiting the church. It warms the cockles of the heart to see the congregation grow and thrive, and to watch those joyful and energetic young faces! I’d also like to say on the record that we don’t pay our preschool Sunday School teachers nearly enough. (Side note: I’ve discovered that our young adults are usually surprised and shocked to learn that the position of Sunday School teacher is an unpaid one.)

After service, I figured the kids would start wilting, but they were doing quite well, actually. My heart had been longing to go to the Arnold Arboretum for their annual lilac festival that happens on Sunday of Mother’s day. I had thought yesterday it was out of the question, but at the last minute on a whim (as you could tell by my inappropriate garb) we decided to go. We had a ball. There were the Morris dancers (I love Morris dancers). The sun was bright, but it was cool and windy. There was ice cream. There was wandering. We wandered through scads of fragrant lilacs. Grey rolled down a grassy hill about 10 times. You might hear rumors that I rolled down — in my Sunday dress. Mere rumors, I assure you. I’m far to dignified and well-socialized for such tomfoolery.

Of course, the remainder of the day was dinner and cleaning and grocery shopping and antibiotic dosing, etc. But you know what? I’ll take it. My Grey is so super snuggly and affectionate. I love this age, and I love who he is. He is so loving towards me, and the rest of the family. Today he made up a song about how much he loved Thane. And he gives me such great kisses and hugs — I wish I could bottle them against future adolescent dignity.

And now the Red Sox are actually winning a game against the Yankees (wonder of wonders!) and we have tickets for tomorrow (look for us in the Bleachers) and life is just good.

Postcard from the Alsatians

I’m sitting right now in the middle of a town, Obernai, in the Alsatians on the French/German border. The first written reference to the town dates back to the 9th Century. How much before that it was inhabited is anyone’s guess. The hotel I’m in, Hotel Gouvernuer was, as far as my French holds, the headquarters for the General of Louis the XIV. It’s a sixteenth century building, built into the town wall, with wattle and daub, and dark walnut staircase with boards 18 inches wide. LOVE!

Tonight for dinner we went to Strasbourg, and in an ancient restaurant, the Maison Kammerzell, with truly historical murals on the wall and leaded glass intermixed with stained crests in the windows. (We sat right under this mural). I had escargot, duck confit and a dessert I could not pronounce (as well as a glass each of Gewurztraminer and Pinot Gris). On expense. With the rest of my team. We then came back through the dark and misty agrarian countryside, to the cobblestone streets.

So yeah, I spent the day in a 10 hour meeting in a conference room that could be anywhere in the world. And yes, it so happens I have to present at (eep!) 8 am tomorrow morning. And trust me, we’re getting a lot done and much of it is done much better for our connection and proximity.

But man, I’m not complaining. I’m having a fantastic time. My only regret is that I can’t roam as I will, am WAY underslept, and wish my husband was here to enjoy it with me. History, food, companionship and lilacs in bloom in France? These are a few of my favorite things….