we're not in the same boat

Saturday's evening rainbow

Last week I wrote this really long stupid post complaining about people who complain about things that I don't complain about, left it up for a few hours, thought better of it and deleted it. If you read blogs via an RSS feed then you'll be able to see it but if not, tough luck!

My Instagram friend Rebecca shared this graphic a few weeks ago that I should be thinking about more often:

I read another post today that really resonated with me—the poster said something to the effect of, we are all weathering the same storm right now but we're not in the same boat. I feel extremely blessed that I don't feel insecure in a lot of areas right now. I feel a sort of panicked claustrophobia grab me every now and then, but I don't know what it's like to live with persistent anxiety or depression, or to have a job that you can't do remotely, or to live in a country where the president seems proud of the fact that he has no idea what he's doing. One thing that I'm having a hard time coming to terms with right now is that I cannot control how others react in a crisis. It's so bad and it's a long-time problem that was around long before the pandemic was. So, I'm going to spend my energy for the next while working on my attitude and how I can be kind and serve people who are being affected differently than I am right now. (Even if they are complaining about lockdown and have an enormous house and/or backyard. ;) I am trying to spend more time writing about my feelings than stewing about other people's feelings so this is totally self-serving, but it helps me work through my emotions and I find the writing process really helpful in giving me some perspective. 

Today I had such a fun day with my kids. I expended a little too much of my fun mom energy and snapped like a rubber band at bath time (also when I walked in the living room and saw Ralph had colored all over the wall and couch) but my kids were still smiling when I tucked them in so I'm calling it a win. I used to have a really bad yelling problem and lockdown has been a good chance for me to work on that, which is surprising. I think it helps to be around my kids all day and know exactly what it is that is making them feel off, which helps me be more compassionate when they're losing it. I wish that I had that luxury with everyone! So I'm going to try and think about things from that perspective while I try to be more empathetic with people who are not my kids.

I don't really have anywhere that I'm going with this post but I'll leave you with everyone's favorite Rilke quote that has helped me so much over the last few years and is back helping me now: "Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final." When I've relied on that quote it has been under entirely different circumstances, but it's true—those old feelings are gone and have been replaced by new ones. I've just got to keep going to find out what other feelings, good and bad, are waiting in my future.

my corona

Well, that escalated quickly.

the family that masks together...

Maybe the thing that will get me back to updating my blog will be 24/7 mandatory confinement. But, as we've all learned, we don't not do things because we don't have the time—we apparently don't do them because, well, we don't want to! Okay, that's not true. Even though I am spending lots more time at home, I'm still prioritizing other stuff over sitting at my desk and trying to figure out WHERE  DO I EVEN START.

I have to thank my mom for telling me on the phone the other day that I should be documenting that corona life because my memories will fail me and someone will want to know what life was like during this strange period. There is no shortage of articles, think pieces and memes about our first (well, for most of us anyway) experience with a pandemic, but here's what's been happening chez Hamill.

this view is a 2 minute walk from our apartment #blessed

The first I thought about our lives being possibly impacted by COVID-19/coronavirus/SARS-CoV-2/could we have please come up with a more uniform moniker? was mid-February, just after we'd come home from a trip to London. Winter break in France usually means that a lot of French families go skiing on the French border or to Italy, and the outbreak in Italy meant that the spread in France was pretty much inevitable. I had a small surgery scheduled for February 27th (I had a polyp in my uterus that needed to be evicted), and when we showed up at the hospital we were questioned about our whereabouts over the past two weeks—which is crazy because I had just been there three days before without any questioning. The 27th is also when my family text chains started getting a little more panicked and I started hearing about toilet paper shortages in the US... and the French were still very much going about their daily lives. Our upstairs neighbor is a doctor and was dismissive of the panic which seems so comical now.

Things did NOT start feeling serious in Paris until the week before our confinement started, which officially happened on March 17th. Up until that point the only difference I noticed was that Ralph's crèche teachers were fastidious about hand-washing (very unusual for France where personal hygiene habits are, uh, different than they are in the US) and they had signs posted in the building about travel restrictions and self-quarantine. President Macron announced that schools would be closing indefinitely after Friday March 13th, and then an estimated 30% of the city left—since most people who live in Paris aren't actually Parisian, there are plenty of spacious family homes to go to all over France, and most French families have two working parents so there needed to be grandparents available for childcare. That Sunday, we had the MOST beautiful weather that we'd had all year and Parisians were out in full force, not respecting social distancing warnings at all. Restaurants were ordered closed after that. I'm sure everyone knew that confinement was inevitable, but it was pretty crazy seeing everyone just flout the recommendations so openly.

Monday the 16th was the day that Macron made the lockdown announcement, and I started to feel a mounting sense of dread. Our friends had offered to let us stay at their (empty) house in southern France, which felt like a godsend and we were serious about taking them up on it. But the lockdown went into effect much more quickly than we thought it would, and there would not be time to pack up our lives and make the ~9 hour drive before the noon deadline on the 17th. I feel for all the people getting flak for fleeing NYC because we were in the position of having to make that decision too, but I'm pretty sure I felt dread because deep down I knew it was a bad idea to leave our familiar surroundings, even if it meant that we'd be stuck most of the time in a tiny 60 sq meter apartment (about 650 sq feet). Here we've got better access to hospitals, grocery stores, and other essentials that would have been difficult to manage in a small town.

After day 1 we fell into a routine pretty quickly, and I've stopped counting the days because I'm not going to torture myself, and I'm not winning any awards for staying inside. Under the current rules we are allowed to go outside with an attestation stating why we are outside. You're allowed to walk freely for exercise for one hour per day within a 1 km radius of your home, alone or with people you're quarantining with. (I'm not sure yet how they enforce the 1 hour rule other than on your honor, but now they have a computer generated attestation with a QR code that police will scan if they stop you, so maybe they track that?) Other acceptable reasons for going outside are to go to work, to go to the doctor, to shop at essential shops (grocery stores and pharmacies are open, as well as an assortment of "essential" establishments including tabacs and wine shops), or to help family/friends that fall in the "vulnerable" category. They just passed a ban on daytime running between 10 am and 7 pm, presumably because heavy breathing increases virus transmission, so 7 pm every day looks like a marathon is happening because suddenly everyone's a runner.

So, here we are! Not much has changed in the last month or so, except that tonight we just learned that the confinement is supposed to end on May 11th and kids are going to slowly start going back to school and crèche (fingers crossed!). I go through various stages of grief, but overall I am overwhelmed with how blessed we are, and I do not mean that in any trite way. I am advantaged in a lot of ways, the main one being that I was already a stay at home mom and am used to spending a lot of time 1) at home and 2) with my kids. It can be drudgery for me in my chosen situation on a regular day, so I really feel for the people who were thrown into that scenario and still have to work from home. My kids are doing so well and playing great together, though we have our bad days (also true in non-corona times). Rhoda's schooling has been tricky since I don't speak great French and she's supposed to be studying for a French proficiency diploma, but she's a good sport and only complains sometimes. Thankfully we're on week 2 of spring break so I don't have to think about school again for a few more days. Her teacher is really sweet and made it a point to let everyone know NOT to stress about school, but she's still really prepared and sends a lesson outline with activities every day that makes it easier for me to organize mine and Rhoda's time. Robbie's working from home, which means that I have NO SPACE TO MYSELF. (I'm telling you, our apartment is tiny.) Everyone is eating all the time! ALL THE TIME. Rhoda used to get a huge lunch every day at the school cantine and I really took that for granted!

I'm getting overwhelmed by the amount of text here so I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Ralph's out of diapers! My number one quarantine goal checked off the list.

Everyone's still holding themselves to a very high dress standard when going grocery shopping

Boo is the happiest to have everyone at home all the time. He's never lacking a warm body to snuggle.

One of Rhoda's school assignments. School is fun when you're six!

Ralph during a rare moment when I gave him a specific activity. I just can't trust him alone with any craft materials so I just don't do it! Sorry kid.

Robbie's so happy to have a puzzle companion

Made some masks for grocery store runs and walks outside (tbh I'm not sure if we really need them on walks??)

Lots of scooting during our (almost) daily walks

Another school assignment

Look, I'm a fun mom

Mixed feelings about missing Paris in bloom. My allergies are thanking me for staying indoors.

Ducks at our boulangerie practicing social distancing

Boo loving being Robbie's coworker

A typical scene: crap everywhere and ALWAYS LAUNDRY

Got the kids a huge Duplo set for Easter and I have not had to intervene for the past 48 hours

Easter chez Hamill

Belated Easter egg hunt in our courtyard on Monday afternoon, which was sort of improvised because there are no plastic Easter eggs here! I printed and cut out a bunch of tiny bunny boxes just to see them thrown away after hours of work. Definitely planning ahead for next year and finding some Easter eggs before April...

It feels a bit silly to share regular updates when there isn't anything to update! I'm feeling a little nervous for the next month because I've been using little milestones to look forward to, and I've kind of run out of them now that Easter has passed. But Ralph's birthday is coming up on May 10th and we have a possible end of confinement after that, so fingers crossed that we all stay healthy and happy till then!

bienvenue, again

Hi again! Remember how I said I was going to be back into blogging this year? I'm just barely making my deadline, because now I'm really back! (Really.) And moving to Paris is as good a reason as any to jump-start my favorite pastime, as it was my main mode of venting the last time we did this. I still love the ease of posting my favorite pictures to Instagram, especially since I don't take nearly as many photos as I did when it was just the two of us and I don't have a lot of photos to sort through (isn't that supposed to be reversed when you have kids?) but I'm getting a little tired of writing really long captions on my phone that are better suited for blog posts. I also need a place to put pictures of things that aren't immortalized on Instagram for my scrapbooks, like this, um, unique lamp found in one of the apartments we toured in Paris:

Oddly enough that was not the weirdest thing in that particular apartment.

I am also positive I will forget someday that a transatlantic move with two kids and a cat is not very fun (reading through my old Paris posts reminded me that I was really not excited to be there most days, which I had forgotten) so I need to write it down to remember why it was crappy and why I can laugh about it now. "It" being things like Ralph getting hand foot and mouth the week before we moved:

That was great. In the weeks before that incident our hard drive crashed and I had to spend the amount of a new computer to recover all of the data that I hadn't backed up (yes I have 100 backup services running now thanks for checking), I spent about a million dollars getting overcharged by our friendly neighborhood vet for services getting Boo ready to move overseas, and Robbie pulled a week of all-nighters finishing up his last work project in Seattle, where he was working for 6 weeks before our move date. Whee!! My parents are amazing and came to Redwood City two times in a month to help us pack up, watch kids while we ran errands, and generally be a source of support during a time that I should have been crying more. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop because I haven't had a meltdown... yet. My kids have though!

Okay but SERIOUSLY. Things are cool! Really. My kids have had a normal amount of melting down for being uprooted at the beginning of the school year from the home that they've known the longest. Kids are very resilient and I'm so grateful for Ralph and Rhoda who are not only resilient but also love all kinds of food and saying "bonjour madame" whenever possible, which are two things that French people love so they're fitting in already. TBH I'm slightly worried about Rhoda, who has developed a fair number of nervous tics in the last week since she started school (French public school deserves its own post) but she is enthusiastic, curious, and generally excited to be doing something new so I think these growing pains are going to be fleeting until they come up in therapy when she's an adult.

Enough typing. How about some pictures? I think these will accurately sum up our first three weeks here.

Amazing view from our hotel in Republique, where we stayed for a week before we moved into our current apartment (which is in the 5th arrondissement... post about our neighborhood and apartment forthcoming!)

I think we logged an average of 12,000-15,000 steps per day during our first week and I'm still napping for recovery

Some murals seen on one of my aforementioned walks, this one in the 13th

Okay, this might only be funny to me but I snuck a picture of our internet technician who came over to check the installation of our fiber setup because he looked old enough that I should be teaching him how to use the internet. Guess those early retirement benefits in France aren't as cushy as they used to be! He also reeked of cigarettes and was missing most of his front teeth. Don't judge a book by its cover because it might have to teach you how to use the internet.

The Jardin des Plantes, which is an enormous garden/museum/zoo situation just a few minutes from our house

Our apartment's parquet floors deserved a shoutout

Many people have asked how Boo has handled the move. We should have moved AGES AGO. He is so much less anxious than when we lived in California! I don't know if the trauma of the move jumpstarted his system but he's way less skittish than he used to be (he's always been super cozy and cuddly with me, but frantically ran out of the room whenever Robbie entered) and spends his days staring at pigeons outside our bedroom window. He is so, so happy.

I took this picture at the end of a day when Ralph was being a real pill and I needed to remind myself that he's still just a squishy baby

A squishy baby who can't resist the urge to climb on everything

Seine walk before dinner (this path is also just a couple minutes from our apartment)

Scooting to church, since it's only a 15 minute walk for us now! We apparently live close to a lot of things.

Last weekend we found out that there is a six year old girl named Sarah living in the apartment above us with her mom, and they also just moved here! She and Rhoda have been exchanging very cute notes and finally met in person this week.

Okay, that's it for now. Hoping that future updates aren't as much an information dump but I knew I needed to get it out there before I forgot more details than I already have!

Paris, je t'aime

I've been packing up our apartment today. It's kind of a bittersweet feeling. I'm so, SO excited to go back to the states. But I'm sad to leave everything here behind just as I'm starting to get used to my routine. And as Robbie said tonight, the end of our summer is kind of signaling the end of our youth. I think that might be what I'm most sad about.

Being in Paris for the summer has brought on an interesting range of emotions that I haven't really experienced in such a short amount of time. I was thinking about this monologue from Paris, Je T'aime the other day:

"Sitting there, alone in a foreign country, far from my job and everyone I know, a feeling came over me. It was like remembering something I'd never known before or had always been waiting for, but I didn't know what. Maybe it was something I'd forgotten or something I've been missing all my life. All I can say is that I felt, at the same time, joy and sadness. But not too much sadness, because I felt alive. Yes, alive. That was the moment I fell in love with Paris. And I felt Paris fall in love with me."

Of course, my experience hasn't been that dramatic, but I understand feeling joy and sadness at the same time. It was a struggle to adjust, to get to know a new place, a new language, a new people. Getting to know Robbie was also an interesting experience. (Sharing a multi-purpose room that acts as a bedroom/closet/kitchen/bathroom is something I don't want to do ever again.) Getting to know myself was the most interesting experience of all, I think.

Posting on my blog was a really therapeutic activity these past few months. It has been for the past 7 or so years, but especially this summer. Not because I complained or vented (I don't remember complaining or venting, sorry if I did, you can find more of that in my archives from high school), but because I was able to reflect on the good things that I was experiencing instead of focusing on the negative parts of my adjustment (which Robbie got the brunt of most of the time).

Thanks for sharing my summer with me. (And for sharing all of your positive comments.) I hope that you all don't stop reading just because I won't be in Europe. I have so many more exciting adventures to share with you.

(I hope.)

Last day of museums

Museum I enjoyed (umm probably my favorite in Paris, actually): Musée des Arts Décoratifs. This museum houses a fashion and textile museum, a toy museum, a jewelry museum, an advertising museum, and the GIGANTIC decorative arts museum. Seriously, so huge. It spans from the middle ages to contemporary design. It's pretty amazing. AND if you are a student, it's only 6.50. For five museums! What a deal.

Musical toys exhibit. In case you were wondering, the fourth picture IS, in fact, an opera for 100 smart rabbits.

Decorative arts tour

"As Red As Possible" exhibit

Highlights from the Madeleine Vionnet exhibit, the designer that I didn't know that I loved. Come on--who wouldn't love the "queen of the bias cut"?

Museum that left something to be desired: Musée de la Poupée. (Who else loves the word "poupée"??) We all saw that coming, let's be honest, even though I went because I feel like I owe it to girlkind everywhere. The "museum" is basically the private collection of a father and son who also run a doll hospital (which is cool). I DID see my Barbie and the Rockers Barbie in the "Dream Your Life with Barbie!" exhibit. That was a real accomplishment for me. My mom just needs to set up shop in the living room and charge 5 bucks a head for neighborhood kids to check out our old Barbie collection, and we're in business!


I should have known. It took me about 4 hours to get through the first museum, and 25 minutes to get through the second.