Just when I thought Lille couldn't handle any more awesomeness...

... my aunt & uncle & three tiny cousins came to visit!  Which made me remember what I always forget: BABIES DON'T STAY BABIES.  In the same way that slim orange kittens become fat, glorious orange cats, tiny dudes become BIGGER tiny dudes! 

Milan & Rishi a few years ago, capable only of sitting around looking fatally adorable:

Milan & Rishi now, capable of creating mass chaos while STILL looking fatally adorable:

Not to mention their baby sister, conveniently known as Baby, exhausted after hours of holding her own in the midst of her big brothers' Tasmanian Devil-like energy:

Oh man.  Doesn't it kind of HURT a little bit to look at them?

Speaking of hurting a little:

I hope that they will always be able to laugh that hard.

There we were, a chaotic little flock of Ontarian ex-farmers (and my Aunt Padma, who is from India, but is also Ontarian and ex-farmer by association), parading through the streets of this big France town, among demon babies and boulangeries and beer parlors.

Demon babies, you say?!

For very mysterious reasons they just sort of appeared one night, and haven't left.  Lille people act like this is completely normal so I'm trying to do the same... but they give me the creeps nonetheless.  

So.  Other news.

I reached the point last week where I could no longer ignore the fact that I really needed a haircut.  And I got one, and it's a good cut, but it's SHORT.  Shorter than I'm used to.  I think it still classifies as "long hair" because it's not like you can see my ears or anything, but it's definitely something new.  I'm hoping that it's short & sexy, short & sophisticated, even short & cute, but it might be just short & short.  Too short to tie up when I go jogging, so it just kind of flies around everywhere, Medusa-like, which at least clears the sidewalk of people as I approach.

(that was my coy way of bragging that I am a jogger now!  No longer the black sheep of my marathoning family!  Except that I can barely wheeze through five consecutive songs on my playlist... but you have to start somewhere.  Also they are long songs.)

The jogging, while somewhat motivated by the memory of all that chocolate and wine that fuelled my first, let's say, five or so months of living in France, is mostly a clever avoidance technique.  As long as I'm concentrating on not hyperventilating or throwing up, my brain doesn't have time to dwell on the various uncomfortable questions it has recently been volleying around, like what it will feel like to leave France and come home, and what I should do when I get there, and where I should do it.  

Answering the first question is easy: it will feel fantastic, because I will finally see people I've gone far too long without seeing, and because I'm flying straight to Montreal where an extremely fun itinerary with the girls and guys I've missed so much has already been suggested.  

And it will also feel wrenching, because I will have to say goodbye to a life I've lived for the last eight months, and the people I've come to love, and all of that delicious, inexpensive wine & chocolate.  And I will have to answer the next two questions.

And I KNOW that this is irrational and silly, but since this is my blog I can air out whatever irrational and silly worries occur to me: what if I am peaking right now?  What if going to France to teach is the coolest thing I'll ever do, and after this I will get an acceptable job and start saving acceptable amounts of money and eating acceptable amounts of acceptable food, and accepting an adventureless life?  

I can't imagine that ever happening, because I can't seem to keep drama and adventure out of my life for longer than five seconds even when I try, but that's still a bleak question that creeps into my mind now and then.  

The answer, I think, will come to some extent from writing.  While I write I usually have this flickering movie reel in my head showing all of my friends in suits and cocktail dresses, helping me celebrate my first book launch.  Someday soon.  Someday in my twenties.  I am confident enough in this that I even know which dress I will wear (it is pink and if you've ever gone anywhere formal with me then chances are you know the one I mean!).  

This dress, which Pauline leant me for a party in Stockholm, might not make it to the future book-launch party... but that apple crisp definitely will, in some kind of delicious reincarnation

In the meantime, there's the mangled mess of everything else in my brain to be sorted through, and it looks something like this:

Two nights ago I had a dream where I found a job in a cavernous warehouse containing millions of Oprah-like self-help books, which would be a bleak prospect except that THIS warehouse offered free back rubs to its employees before and after every shift.  There was a whole room full of massage tables, with tabletop stone waterfalls artfully arranged around the perimeter and an Enya CD on endless repeat, and professional masseurs who would gently press you back onto the table if you tried to get up too early to start working.  MOST RELAXING WORKPLACE EVER. I'm afraid the whole experience of that dream has set a new & impossible standard in my job search, as if the whole thing wasn't impossible enough already.

For reasons big and small, it looks like I may live in Waterloo, at least for the summer and start of fall.  For a long time, right up until two weeks ago actually, I thought vaguely that I would go back to Montreal, find a French-speaking job to keep myself polished, and live among that famously loveable crowd, but the advantages of living in Waterloo, at least at first, are growing & growing.  A big one is the prospect of living close to family again, after three years of being at least eight hours away from them, first by train and then by plane.

And, of course, there's always the ten-dollar Coach Canada bus between Toronto & Montreal!

 

But... wow.  Sometimes I wish I could pay someone to quickly and expertly figure this all out for me.  Barring that possibility, I just keep telling myself that it doesn't have to be all figured out TODAY.