On Saturday a ginormous tempest blew through the region. That is not an exaggeration. People died in France and Spain because of it. Airports were shut down. Roof tiles were lifted and sent crashing into the street. Forests flattened. The wind pushed rain underneath all the doors and some of the windows. Birds didn’t have to flap their wings to fly – they just hung on for dear life to the current carrying them.

On another front, we’ve been trying to figure out what we’re going to do with ourselves, where we’re going to go. We’ve had some serious discussions on the topic – the full orchestra booming and crashing Wagnerian style. It’s been heavy.

But, now that peace has been restored we’re heading to Spain for a week. First the Costa Brava and then the Costa Blanca. A) We hear it’s warmer. B) We hear it’s warmer.

In 2007 I experimented with a project called the 31 Days of Self-Congratulations which was a blog dedicated to turning the New Year’s tradition of repentance and penance on its head. Instead of greeting the new year focused on what needs fixing, why not highlight what we like, where we made headway, what’s already working. In other words, with a focus on the positives that already exist. So, the challenge then was to name one positive thing for each day of January, even if it was something small, like picking up the pennies that have fallen into dusty crevices rather than just vacuuming over them. Or flossing more. Several readers contributed their self-congratulations, too. Unfortunately those comments were lost in a database snafu, but from notes I pieced together that I self-congratulated for the following:

1. For rekindling a relationship with my impulse to write, something  I thought was was ruined beyond repair if not outright lost.
2. For divorcing my credit card — cold turkey – after having been married to that piece of plastic for 20 years.
3. For becoming a pretty good saver of money after the credit card divorce.
4. For the nutritional expedition that led me to appreciating vegetable soups.
5. For canceling our yard service and doing the work myself, despite several unpleasant run-ins with mosquitoes, prickers, and other various forms of stinging, hostile insects.
6. For noticing my isms, the words and phrases that make my voice distinctly mine.
7. For saying No More to crazy workouts, like kettlebells, that have made muscle aches a fact of my life.
8. For my learning to appreciate my pragmatic creativity, for fusing these two opposing qualities into one happy blend.
9. For forming a habit of removing lint form the dryer – the dryer was happier because it could run more efficiently, and my significant other because he had one less fire hazard to fret about. (If only life lint were so easily dispensed with.)
10. For stepping away from the computer to take “family walks” in the afternoon – Tim, the dog, and me. We’d stop at the coffee shop, cut through the parks, and chat with neighbors.
11. For remembering to bring canvas bags with me to the store after learning about the Northern Gyre, an area of the Pacific Ocean that’s wice the size of Texas and where the plankton to plastics ratio is 1:6.
12. For getting past my baking phobias and learning to make this: an open-faced plum cake. Who needs pancakes when you can have Breakfast Cake?
13. For not blowing matters out of proportion when my little cat bit my big toe. (Long story; strange set of circumstances.)
14. For surviving a vacation with a toddler in the midst of her “terrible twos” and potty-traiing.
15. For optimism that seemed to be utterly reliable even at the most ludicrous times.
16. For meeting the National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) challenge to blog daily — even through the twists and turns of weekends and holidays (i.e. Thanksgiving) for the entire month of November 2007.
17. For not getting a head wedgie about how much I don’t know, and acting as if I know enough. Otherwise, I wouldn’t get anything – anything – off the ground.
18. For recognizing the errors of my golf course behavior (the potty mouth, the hissy fits, the shaking of the club), and choosing to chill out rather than opt out.
19. For being a part of an unofficial but vibrant neighborhood pet watch, whereby my neighbors and I keep a protective eye on everyone’s pets.
20. For taking a stab at learning to knit, and copping on that knitters are not the fuddy-duds I assumed them to be.
21. For being keeping our heating and cooling bills within budget by being a stern Frau Thermostat. Not to mention the environmental benefits.
22. For disentangling from the notion that focus and productivity and creativity aren’t dependent upon having the perfect workspace, that they really need to flourish is air and faith.
23. For the monthly Girl’s Nights Out.
24. For buying fewer magazines yielding an estimated annual savings of $540.
25. For allowing myself to fraternize with spirituality.
26. For holding my morning ritual as sacrosanct.
27. For no longer feeling apologetic about what I feel.
28. For having made friends with some wonderful, funny, interesting, big-hearted people.
29. For accepting that my process is my process.
30. For deciding to uproot from everything familiar and move to the south of France for at least a couple years.
31. For sticking with my 31 Days of Self-Congratulations project from beginning to end.

The Irish Times ran a piece on the first of January that offered “nine positive ideas” for 2009.” Number 5 on the list – I kid you not: “Be Nice to Americans.”

Read the article by Michael Parsons here.

Growing up money was always tight in our household, but certain things were always considered non-negotiable, such as all the appliances normal for American families:  a dishwasher, a big refrigerator, a clothes dryer.  My mother loved her dryer – a gadget her parents hadn’t been able to afford until they were empty nesters.  Still, she would still hang the washing on a clothesline in nice weather three seasons out of four.  She said this was just one of a thousand ways she tried to save some money so that we lived within our means, kept a roof over our heads, kept food on the table, and made piano lessons possible.  She also said we had absolutely no idea how easy we had it, and clearly no concept of how grateful we ought to be.

She was right.  But, you can’t nag people into being grateful.  At least not in my experience.  So suffice it to say my siblings and I never met the gratitude bar she’d set, and we didn’t try all that hard in all honesty.

Fast forward many years later (not saying how many), and my mother’s eldest ingrate  – who in her single days used to rely on a laundry service that charged per pound – has uprooted herself and moved to a rented house in a tiny and very rural French village.  It’s an old house but recently renovated with a modern appliance inventory as follows:   dishwasher – check;  refrigerator – Euro-sized but big enough;  clothes dryer – no cigar.

I moved to France knowing this.  When I’d inquired about the dryer situation with the owners of the house, they paused before answering, and it was one of those pregnant pauses.  (I think they nearly busted a gut trying to not laugh.)

Anyhow, I’ve had to get the hang of laundry-doing sans clothes dryer.  There are new little twists to the proceedings that hadn’t been there before, like the need to know the five-day weather forecast, calculating how many shirts, socks, and shorts will fit on the two lines of rope we’ve strung on the back terrace, estimating how many hours it takes for a load of towels to dry.

My days of letting the laundry pile up until we’re desperate are over.  Laundry is now kind of always on my mind.  All because I don’t have a clothes dryer at my disposal.

And to my surprise I’m glad of it.  You could even say that I’m grateful – in the exact way my mother always wanted me to be.  Because I have to work just that much harder at an every day matter that was once easy enough for ease to be taken completely for granted.

Before we left for France we sold our cars.  We decided it would be better to take our chances on a used one from a French dealer than trying to ship one from the states and hope it could be made EU compliant.  So I said goodbye to my nice, new white Toyota RAV4 automatic and later said bonjour to a blue Peugeot 1007 stick shift.

It had been, oh, about 22 years since I’d learned how to use a stick shift, so maybe I was just freaked out by having to relearn how to drive.  Or, I was experiencing a mild case of PTSD from moving abroad. Or, the narrow, windy country roads and the busy roundabouts put me on my last nerve.  For some reason I couldn’t make myself get behind the wheel of our car for over two months.  Me, Ms. Independent!  Frozen solid to the passenger seat.  Unthinkable. Embarrassing.

Irritating, too.  Because if I had to rely on Tim for a lift to the hair salon, he’d get nosy and opinionated about how often I went and how much it cost.  That would become a pain in two distinctly different areas.

Finally the hump I had about driving in France collapsed, and I had a driving lesson in the empty parking lot of the Abbaye de Fontcaude, a 12th century monastery near Cazouls-les-Beziers.  Actually it was more a refresher than a lesson, because the how-to’s of using a stick shift came back in a snap.  It really was as easy as riding a bike.  So, didn’t I just feel too silly…