Tuesday, May 24, 2011

happy birthday to me

Yep, yesterday was my birthday. 38. Mmph.

While talking to my sister this weekend, she asked me if I was going to wait another month to post something on the blog. Oh dear.

So what's been going on? Well, the biggest thing going this month is that Fry is signed up to start school in the Fall! That was a very surreal moment. Obviously it's not Kindergarten but State-supported pre-school called Maternelle. I'm really excited for him to go, I know he's going to do amazingly well and he's going to get to play with loads of other kids, which is something he desperately needs, he's not a kid that does well on his own for long periods of time. As for his language skills (which continue to improve everyday but he's still a bit behind for his age), I was very much relieved to get positive feedback from the school's director about my speaking English at home and she assured me that it wouldn't be a problem. I have heard some horror stories from other bilingual families so now that we've got that out of the way, I'm totally ready to let him get out in the world a little bit!

After months of talking about it, Stéphane ended up buying a tablet computer (running Android) for my birthday, and couldn't wait for the actual day to give it to me so I've already had a week to play with it. It's super fun and will be definitely useful when we go on vacation (or when I do my stage in October, yay!). We haven't let Fry play with it as he's totally in a throwing toys period, but I reckon eventually he'll have a go since he's pretty much mastered the full sized PC already.

So my actual birthday didn't feel like a real birthday, really. Maybe that's a sign of finally growing up, when it just feels like another day? That's ok, I can still make magic birthdays for my son. And I got lots of birthday wishes from my friends and family, so that's always nice.

OK, back to the same old same old, with hopefully not another month between updates!

Thursday, May 05, 2011

skipping april

My god, I can't believe I completely skipped over the entire month of April! I'm incredibly embarrassed. And it's not even because things have been so bad, or even so great. That dang 365 photo blog is taking up all my online energy. Ok, here's the lowdown on what happened in April:

I decided to put my sewing machine back to work:

100 : 365

We had our first overnight guest in the apartment, prompting me to try, for the first time, to make my favorite cocktail from scratch, whiskey sours (Grandma, I know you're reading this, I always think of Grandpa Eddie when I have whiskey sours and raise my glass to him! xoxo):

103 : 365

I went to Paris for the weekend and saw Eddie Izzard live and in French! It was everything I thought it would be, but better, as we were exactly front row and center. He was five feet away from me! I laughed till I cried and had a great evening out with the girls (we went to a karoke bar and I sang in front of people for the first time in years! I really miss singing!!).

106 : 365

We've also seen some progress in the kitchen! The tiles are done, Stéphane did an amazing job! (The grout is done too, I don't seem to have taken a photo of it though, don't worry, will definitely do that when that wall is painted!)

109 : 365

Plus the painting is well underway. We're doing one wall at a time, this way we can work just during Fry's nap time. It's not like we're in a hurry or anything!

111 : 365

Work is going fine, it's going to be quite busy for the next few months, straight through summer, but extra hours means extra cash so I'm not complaining!

Oh, one more thing: I had mentioned a couple of posts back that I was going to meet a professional bookbinder that has a workshop half an hour away from here. I did in fact go and meet her and walking into her shop was like walking into a shrine. She had set up step by step examples of each phase of the bookbinding, and after ages of just reading about them, being able to pick up and touch these examples and watch her do some thread work on a few signatures was like a dream come true! We were able to chat a bit and I told her about my plan to do a stage before signing up for an official course and she was very receptive to the idea. She took all of my contact information and I am on the list for the stage in October and she's supposed to contact me at the beginning of September with more details.

I am, obviously, over the moon about this new development, and the only terrible thing about it is having to wait so long to move on to the next step! It's funny - it's taken me years and years to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, and now that I've figured it out, it's killing me that I can't start immediately. I never was very good with the whole patience thing...