Thanksgiving with some Frenchies.

To anyone who has ever been a foreigner in the US, you may have realized that Thanksgiving is a very cultural event that comes with some serious obligations regarding traditions. Since this is my first time cooking an entire Thanksgiving meal, I started asking around to see, for example, what dishes I should make to impress my husband's entire family (from France, the haute cuisine capital of the universe). I was met with some good ideas (sausage in stuffing) and some bad (marshmallows in sweet potatoes). I decided to make an herb butter rubbed turkey stuffed with traditional stuffing (bread, spices, celery, apples, sausage), mashed potatoes, kale, corn pudding, corn muffins, roasted turnips and sweet potatoes, gravy, lingon (Swedish cranberries), pumpkin and pecan pie.

I got several comments about my Thanksgiving shopping cart. Why the English muffins? Because my French in-laws eat about 17 each a day. They LOVE them. Way more than they like corn muffins.

We recently had a conference in our department entitled "L'idée de la France/The Idea of France". The presenters, showing the instability and ever changing "Frenchness" from the Hexagon and other Francophone countries had nothing on my in-laws set-in-stone ideas of what is acceptably "French". Pumpkin is not human food in France and Antonia's great -grandmother told me first thing that "chez nous" they feed pumpkins to pigs. So with the baby food consistency and brownish colors of the food, the Thanksgiving feast wasn't exactly an easy sell.

Luckily I had my sister to help out in the kitchen. She's a comedian so she was happy to spend Thanksgiving in a place that no one would ask her for an impromptu stand-up or "roast" since she wouldn't have been able to do one in French anyway.

Everything turned out spectacularly I must say. And the meal was a hit (sort of). I can only imagine it was something like having Gordon Ramsay over for Thanksgiving.

Antonia LOVED the turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes!

A day in the life

Oblivious to the fact her mother has papers to grade, a comp to read for, classes to plan, and a country to frame for it, Antonia continues to go about her daily routine.

Nicknames

Antonia has a gazillion nicknames. Among them: Babis (from the Swedish word for baby "bebis" then babyfied even more) Coo coo pigeon (it's a long story) Baby bear, Tia, Nonia, Tonia, Coo coo Babis... what? I'm losing you? Well anyway. More importantly I've decided I need to learn to sew. So I bought a sewing machine and tried it out last night. The first picture shows, as you can see, that I do not actually know how to wield this crazy contraption. The second is... A coo coo pigeon coming in for a crash landing! (I chose the "early bird" wash on instagram. I thought it appropriate) Please bear with me as until I make something really good. Then please shower me with praise. Thank you.

Dada

No, this was not Antonia's first word. (It was Mama!) Plus she calls her Dada "Papa" since he's a frog.

I'm reading the Dada "Manifestos" and Tristan Tzara's poetry. It's a mess. I'm a mess. Here's a little sample... Dada is not supposed to mean anything besides being an attack on all conventions and bourgeois ideals. But like surrealism, it calls for a return to the spontaneity and active simplicity of childhood. I feel like it accomplishes just that. I wonder what my 10-month-old understands out of the jumble of words we throw at her in different languages (there's a whole other blog coming on bilingualism) and I want to thank Tzara for unknowingly bringing me back to the frustrating forgotten time of wide-eyed language learning. Enjoy and don't understand! Tzara said: "We need strong, straightforward works that will forever be misunderstood!"

"Le Dompteur de lions se souvient"

regarde-moi et sois couleur

plus tard

ton rire mange soleil pour lièvres pour caméléons

serre mon corps entre deux lignes larges que la famine soit lumière dors dors vois-tu nous sommes lourds antilope bleue sur glacier oreille dans les pierres belles frontières — entends la pierre

vieux pêcheur froid grand sur lettre nouvelle apprendre les filles en fil de fer et sucre tournent longtemps les flacons sont grands comme les parasols blancs entends roule roule rouge

aux colonies

souvenir senteur de propre pharmacie vielle servante

cheval vert et céréales

corne crie

flûte

bagages ménageries obscures

mords scie veux-tu

horizontale voir

No interruptions here!

I sit down to start reading when Antonia seems enthralled in something other than the paper thin pages of my Pléiade edition library book. I can usually read about 3 minutes before being interrupted.

We do what we can.

Repeat

Another morning obstacle. Woke up to a text from the babysitter (she lives down the street and has 3 boys) saying her oldest has pink eye and a sore throat. So guess who's coming to school with me today? Another day, another 10-month-old class mate! Luckily I have a friend who can watch Antonia while I teach. Finding time to read for my last PhD comp which is in a month is an entirely other matter.

Today I'm teaching the Graphic Novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi in my "Approaches to French Literature" class. I'm looking forward to it and I hope my students don't notice that I'm giving them only 75% of my attention. The other part of my brain will be wondering if Antonia is eating pebbles or having a poosplosion leak that I didn't bring extra clothes for...

Facebook troubles.

I like facebook. I really do. I'm not one of those people who roll their eyes at peoples' need to update their statuses and tell the "world" they went to the gym. However, I use it sparingly. I've found that sticking to safe topics is better for everyone. Having family and friends from around the world I don't want to offend means I'm limited in my output. In general I thought safe topics were: the weather, pets, food, and baby. I was wrong. And I found this out when one of my so-called friends "un-friended" me because I was putting up too many pictures of my gorgeous and incredibly edible daughter. Some 30-somethings are just anti-baby. Another grad-student, doing his PhD in Italian lit at NYU jokingly said to me tonight while we were chatting, "Get a blog already!"

So this blog is for all the people who want to see how a PhD student in French Literature at the University of Pittsburgh juggles life, baby, dog, cat, husband, and social life. And in a way it's a way to prove that being a Mama doesn't mean I'm not a person anymore either.

So here goes.