FRENCH WORD-A-DAY

Quelle idée! = What a crazy idea! Or was it?

Normally, when panhandling for website donations, I post an attractive picture (a window decked with geraniums, a field of poppies, a stone cabanon). Looking at today's photo, I notice the pan is smudged with fingerprints and should have been polished before the snapshot was taken, haphazardly.

Before the last-minute photo was shot, I could be found at my desk, canceling all of the automatically scheduled donations to my blog....

Well, now how dumb is that? The thought did cross my mind, but I brushed it aside.

And when the 45 readers who'd signed up in 2009 for a scheduled yearly donation to my word journal--when they began emailing, moments after the cancellation--I wondered once again. Well, how dumb was I?

Now I'm busy emailing everyone back, with this explanation:

Hello Cate (and Roger and Sandy and Lee and Denise....)

Many thanks for checking in. I have decided to change the yearly automatic donations to "donate when and if you like" :-)

 

I will be sure to mention it [future "support opportunities"] in the newsletter, jingling my tip jar loudly when I'm feeling bold!

 

Take care and many thanks for all of your help over the years.

 

Amicalement,

Kristi

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I hope I have made the right decision. I must have--for it comes as a relief to have released certain readers from what could have felt like an obligation. 

Re boldness, I'm feeling it now as I rattle my tip jar! If you enjoy this word journal and would like to help support it, then you can pitch in here, via this donation link.

As for the photo: those sweet petits pois are a gift from my neighbor, Annie. Despite horrible back pain, she planted a beautiful potager this year. And the muguet de mai, or lily of the valley, is from Aunt Geneviève, who offered an additional potted version: "You can plant it in your garden," she said. "It will spread into a carpet of little white bells!" Now there's a lovely thought or two--a little more poetic than my rattling tip jar.

apprendre à se connaître

From left to right: Kristi, Carole, Nancy, Bernd, Jill, Agnès, Charles, and Jean-Marc. And behind the camera, Charles's wife, Martha. We are in the Crêperie du Hameau, which overlooks the sweet fishing port of Madrague, just east of Cassis. Don't miss Jill's wonderful write up--and you'll love her "vintage buying in France" blog--click here.

apprendre à se connaître

: to get to know one another, oneself

Audio File: Listen to Jean-Marc read: Download MP3 or Wav

Apprendre à se connaître, à comprendre sa personnalité, ses réactions, ses ressentis, ses blocages, c'est une autre façon de grandir et de profiter pleinement de sa vie. To get to know oneself, to understand one's personality, one's reactions, one's feelings, one's mental blocks, is another way to grow and fully enjoy one's life. --psychologies.com

A Day in a FRENCH Life... by Kristin Espinasse

Do you know that feeling when you wake up in the morning and, still dumbed by sleep, you are eerily at peace?

And then, petit à petit, reality creeps in. You remember the lab test that came back positive or the dogs that went fugitive or the person beside you--the one you are no longer speaking to. 

Seized, you wither like a stolen rose--circumstances are out of your control. A familiar voice whispers to you: "The doctors will screw up, traffic's run over your pup, and your husband's had enough!"

The trick, Fellow Traveler, is to run faster than the rose-petalled robbers! Hope is your engine. Get out of bed and keep moving through your day UNTIL YOU HEAR BARKING ON THE HORIZON.

Everything will come back to you if it's meant to: health and loved ones--including your damn husband. 

(Chou-chou, if you're reading--this song's for you: Like To Get To Know You Again by Edie Brickell)

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Comments welcome here. If you are new to this journal, catch up on our cross-cultural story in the books Blossoming in Provence and First French Essais. 

French Vocabulary:
  petit à petit = little by little
  chouchou = sweetie

Damn handsome, and I can't argue there :-) I made a video of him on his vintage tractor. Don't miss it here.