French Kid Update

Le French Kid, AKA Randy the Unpronounceable, has arrived. We have made the following observations:

1) He folds his dirty laundry.
2) He speaks three words of German. We are still trying to figure out which three.
3) He's very shy, and mumbles when he talks (which is rare enough). He only mumbles in French.
4) In the event that the subject is brought to smile, (we have only managed to elicit this phenomenon once) he has killer dimples.

Even though we are supposed to speak German to him, Bearded One took pity on him and tried to speak to him in French at dinner last night; the kid is 12 and it was a 10 hour bus ride. (Their driver got lost and wound up at the Hospital. Prima's teacher went to rescue them and guide them to the school. It was eight by the time they arrived back at our house.) Anyway, Randy did not seem to understand Bearded One's French, which is scary because Bearded one had nine years of French in school and worked in the French speaking part of Switzerland for two years speaking what he had always assumed was French.

Will keep you bloglodytes posted on Randy's progress. Perhaps we can get him to fling his dirty socks at the laundry basket like a normal kid by the time he leaves.

Junior Polyglots and Fun with Babel Fish.

We live in the German speaking part of Switzerland. Prima's school has come up with a mad scheme to truck a bus load of kids over from France for a week and deposit one in our house. We'll call him... ok, lets call him Randy. He seems like a nice kid. Prima wrote to him (in French) to ask him what he wants to do when he's here. He wrote back in German. Any senior polyglots out there?

"Das Schokoladenwerk werde wirklich sein, weil wir dorthin mit der Klasse nicht gehen. Sonst für dich, werde du gern haben, nach Paris zu gehen, wenn du dort noch, nicht zu gehen. Wenn du noch nicht kennst, ist das nicht ernst, wir werden sehen, wenn du kommen wirst. Auf Wiedersehen und in in ein in den Wochen."

So. This doesn't entirely make sense. We decided to run it through Babel Fish and make it French again to see if it made more sense:

"Le travail de chocolat sera vrai, parce que nous n'allons pas là avec la classe. D'ailleurs, pour te, tu auras volontiers aller à Paris, si tu là encore ne pas aller pas. Si tu ne connais pas encore, ce n'est pas sérieux, nous devient voit, si tu viendras. Sur revoir et dans les semaines."

Prima claims it makes more sense this way, but I don't understand a word of French, so we ran it through again:

"The chocolate work will be true, because us n' let us not go there with the class. D' elsewhere, for you, you will have readily to go to Paris, if you still not to go there not. If you do not know yet, this n' is not serious, becomes us sees, if you will come. On re-examining and in the weeks. "

This is going to be an interesting week. Reckon Randy talks as good as he writes?

Towel Day!

Ok, everybody. It's towel day, and in honor of a great man who died much too early and suddenly, I urge you to grab a towel and knock back a few pan-galactic gargle blasters. If you can't find any, try tequila and lemonade. Man with beard is, alas, not on the continent this week, but Thirdling has the right spirit, doing her homework.

Time to Dry Up a Bit

I don't have much to say. I would like to complain about the weather, but I find that topic very depressing, plus the picture speaks for itself, I think.

So, in an effort to dry things off, I would like to remind all interested parties that YOU HAVE ONE WEEK TO FIND YOUR TOWEL! Yes, in honour of the late Douglas Adams, May 25th is once again Towel Day. We're with you, Douglas.

Chicklit At Its Headlocking Best

Ok, I have to admit, I totally nicked this from Elizabeth Dulemba.  But it's too good not to pass on.

Kids in the Shed

The offspring think it's cool. Middlekid said, "Mommy, it's good that you're writing in the shed now. You can just wad them up and throw them straight into the old trash can like they do on TV." Sometimes kids are funniest when they don't realise the full implications of what they are saying. :)

Proactive! (No, I don't mean that yogurt that makes sure you poop regularly.)

Maybe it's the kids being home, or the pollen, or fill in the blank, but in any case, I've haven't written more than 1000 words in the last two weeks.  The clouds of volcanic ash have ruined my plans to slither off undetected to the Faroe Islands.  Since they were purely fantasy anyway (my plans, not the clouds of volcanic ash) this is perhaps all for the best.  So what to do?  I just don't seem to be getting any work done at my desk, and renting a room close-bye hasn't worked out.  That leaves- yes:

The Garden Shed.

The mess.

The new space!

Prima is still off today, but Thirdling and Middlekid are back to school, so I tried out my new space.  No phone, no computer, nothing.  (Also no heat, so this is likely to be a summer thing)  For the most part, I'm pleased.  There were some minor hitches today - the cat thinks trotting around on the roof while I'm inside trying to concentrate is fun, and they decided to clean out the drainage sewer in the street right next to it, which made so much noise it literally rattled the shed, but these are small things.  And I even wrote a couple of pages!  So, we'll see what comes of it.

Take that, all you evil rejections!