The kittens wandered out of Camille’s bedroom for the first time, the mom saw and carried them all back in. It’s hilarious when she carries them in their mouth. We are little worried about the mom, she is so skinny, and lizard is her preferred food. And we refuse to catch them for her.
place2place
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three weeks
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ceci pas une chouette
Camille is doing a report on owls so we’ve all been reviewing owls, the pellets, the fixed eyes, the round ping-pong ball eggs. In French they don’t call a barn owl an owl hibou, they call it a chouette, like it’s a different kind of bird. Also, as you know, chouette means cool, or neat. Camille and I think it’s funny that when you’re saying, c’est chouette you are saying, “that’s cool/barn owl.” In her report she talks about the difference between the chouette and the owl. Barn owls don’t have the feathers that look like ears.
Last week her class visited the zoo, and a visitor had something in a bag squawking. He pulled it out and here’s what it was:
I think he wanted to sell it to the zoo, all the animals in the zoo here are local animals, but they already have an owl. Three species of owls live in Niger, owls are quite a successful species!Last night I stayed up way too late stenciling this t-shirt dress for Camille to wear when she does her presentation: (although I’m not sure how cool it is to walk around wearing a dress that says “not cool.” I’m not sure how much 5th graders are into irony. Hmm, maybe I’ll do a chouette lower down that says, “c’est chouette.” Oh god, back to the freezer paper.)
Later. Okay, I added it and she loves it, although she had me cut it off so it’s a shirt, not a dress. I took that dress out of the hand-me-away bag anyway, so it’s least it’s having one more go-around. Of course Stefan wanted in on the owl love.
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penmanship
I love Stefan’s handwriting. I think it’s so nice for a first grader.
The other day he said, ” I want to be an animal scientist, but I also want to be a rockstar. Can you be more than one thing? Because I know this is a little weird, but I also want to be a cheerleader.”
“President Bush was cheerleader,” was my response, although MANY other questions have come to mind since then, but he doesn’t want to elaborate. Is it a way to meet girls? Or the spangly costume?
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same as last year on january 27th
Oh, just another weekend when you hire a guide to lead a group, including the Ambassador, on camels to a village famous for its pottery, watch someone make pots from the river clay, look for hippos as you float back in boats, then have lunch of grilled capitaine on the bank of Niger river. Same old, same old.
And the kittens are two weeks old.
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les tomates
One of my favorite things about living in Niger is the quality of the tomatoes, and the produce in general. The tomatoes are this gorgeous in January. The produce here is just super fresh and hasn’t been genetically altered to transport well, it’s grown for flavor by small farms. Le Pelier, an Italian restaurant here, inspired me to make a salad they serve, it’s just tomatoes with basil–we have it in the garden almost year-round–oil and vinegar, salt, pepper and pressed garlic.
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does anyone still say, “gives me the willies?”
Driving down one of the main roads in town, Camille pointed out that she’d noticed when walking that the clumps in the trees are not tangled branches, like I thought, but hundreds, maybe thousands, of bats.
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sunday
Didja think I’d make it whole week without a kitty cat post? They are one week old today. The white ones are starting to show faint markings, but look mouse-like and aren’t really as cute as the tabby one, don’t you think? I’ll think the white ones will get cuter. I hope. Or I’ll never find anyone to adopt them. They haven’t moved from this spot in about five days. They can’t really walk yet and they’re eyes aren’t open. So the first week, they just nurse and sleep, –as Craig Fergason says, remind you of anyone?
And Stefan reading one of his favorite books, an animal picture encyclopedia. The puppet is afraid of the snakes.
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les fraises
Stefan had two bowls of sweet, ripe strawberries at lunch, he was so happy he did a little strawberry dance. We’ll have them for about a month. We will make ourselves sick on them, because they are the only berries we will have until we go home to Portland this summer. I can’t tell you how much it cheered me up to see these today. I bought a couple pints and they are already almost gone, I had to hide some for Camille. They are picked ripe, are delicious and go bad by the next day. This year I’m going to buy some to freeze for smoothies. Leopold knows where there is a farm and he can buy me a flat. Strawberries. -
we have kittens!
“The cat had her kittens!” Stefan came running into my room this morning, more excited than Christmas. She had them in the night under his bed. One, two, three, four. Three that look like her–yea!–and one funny striped one. Giselle is eating like a maniac and wants a lot attention herself. One of us sneaks in to check on them about every five minutes. “They’re milking!” Stefan reports.
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is it over yet?
The best part of Christmas this year was having visitors. Ana, Elliott, Camille and Stefan decorated the tree, I had a control freak mini-attack, but they did a great job. They also made a fabulous gingerbread house that looked like it was inhabited by a family with a hoarding disorder. I made a plate of lemon bars and the kids ate them as fast as they came out of the oven, before I could snap a photo. Christmas morning I made my sister’s orange-cranberry muffins, and some maple sausage I brought from Trader Joe’s and had been hiding in the freezer in the land of no sausage. We enjoyed opening presents together–I especially love my pincushion Ana made. Here is Stefan loaded down with just some of his new swimming pool toys, then they tried them all out for the rest of the day. We keep marveling that next year, it’ll be so different.
twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?" 