We have settled in.

We decided to live in the pornographer’s house. He accepted our offer for a low rent (3,000 francs per month). We will be here until May. It’s a pink cottage, with a swing set and a long, wooded yard that I don’t mow often enough. Inside is an oversized fireplace, which we have already used since the weather got clammy in mid-September. I find sticks and pine cones in the grass and burn them with cardboard pizza boxes. I arranged cement bricks inside the fireplace to create a smaller and hotter burning space, mostly because it was our only heat until today, when we received our shipment of heating oil. The movers brought our irreplacables from Los Angeles and we have hung our pictures and clothes. I also hung a heavy punching bag in a shed by our front gate. I do my jab-cross-hook-up-hooks, but if it’s too dark or chilly outside Serena does sit ups with me on the kitchen floor.

In late August, we visited Mont Blanc. We hiked up to a small chalet near the mountaintop. A French dwarf lived there and made hot cocoa for weary travelers. He had short legs like Perry from In Cold Blood. It was a gorgeous spot. Still, it never fails - whenever I get to the top of a trail, someone either lights up a cigarette or starts blaring crappy music. And so it was with Tom Bombadil. He went into the chalet to boil water, and then began playing a Buddha Bar disc he’d probably bought on Kao San road. I slumped in my chair, groaned, but let Europe be Europe. He came out with the cocoa. We chatted. He told me that he is a ski instructor. I didn’t ask him if it was easier to take the moguls with a low center of gravity.

All summer, we got around in a six-speed turbo-injected Volkswagon Golf rental. It took me a while to relearn stick. Serena closed her eyes and prayed and Emma was happily ignorant whenever I jammed the gears at intersections and screamed obscenities.

Eventually, I got the hang of it, and really felt like Jason Bourne. In fact, any time I cut off other cars, sped through red lights or narrowly swiped pedestrians, we’d say that I had just “Jason Bourned” it. I guess it was a matter of time before I drove up onto a sidewalk and shattered a fruit cart, so Serena wisely bought a Prius. It’s an automatic with air bags.

We found a nanny, or “maman du jour,” for Emma. The nanny is a retired woman with a three-room apartment, two dogs, one cat, and a fifty-gallon fish tank. There is not much room for the six children she monitors. So, she takes them outside to play in a park located just next to her building. At first, leaving Emma at daycare was both heartbreaking and terrifying. The nanny would open her door and Emma'd be run over by a German Shepard and tackled by a Spaniel. It was pretty much Saving Private Ryan every morning.

Then Emma would start crying desperately. She'd reach up, pleading that we take her with us. Some days we’d try to stay a few minutes to help her settle in. We noticed that the nanny left her sewing on her kitchen table, along with scissors and needles and thread. The cat batted them one by one down onto the carpet. But hey, tough love, right? She’s seems to have adjusted over time, and even happy to have playmates. We see it each night in her rosey, bloodshot eyes.

Two weeks ago, I downloaded the autobiography of Frederick Douglas from the internet. It is actually a recording of one of those computer programs that reads text for blind people. I learned that Mr. Douglas suffered the bonds of “slah-ver-y” at the hands of “slahve dash holders”. It’s not exactly a beach read – more Schindler’s List than Porky’s. It was also weird to get upset over something that doesn’t even exist any more. But like the good, compassionate Republican that I am, I finished it, and am now enjoying a novelized version of Harold and Maude. The book’s original English text is on the left page and its French translation is on the right. I read it with a light hearted spirit, and hum Cat Stephens to myself. I don’t know why the writer killed himself in 1988.

I read each morning on the bus to Ecole Schulz, where I am taking intensive French lessons. It’s basically me and a bunch of Russian mail order brides. They keep leaning back and stretching while I conjugate. After three hours of that, I go home to conjugate some more and punch my heavy bag. I’m sending out resumes and setting up meetings for coffee with UN types…hopefully, I’ll find a job soon.