The Best Worst Pie Ever

       I went running with EuroSMAC last week. As I may have mentioned, it's been a little wet around here, and the trail was a little splashy. We slogged through some serious mud, baptizing our fancy running shoes. Then we charged up a rocky and uneven hill at a speed far zippier than my usual trot. This is what I get for running with teenagers. So I decided that, as revenge for their efforts to improve my fitness, and since I was hearing a little whining about the mud and hills, I would share some of the wisdom that comes with age.
       "Girls," I began (pant . . . gasp). "Did it ever strike you that sometimes the worst experiences make the best memories?"
       I was thinking about the run, made both more difficult and more memorable by the adversity. Then I thought about how many of the experiences I've shared in this Blog are memorable because they were difficult. Climbing the Salève wasn't fun at the time. Neither was being lost in Italy. Being locked in a subterranean garage was certainly no picnic. But how much more memorable were those experiences than all the times I have successfully parked the car, all the pleasant hikes along flat trails, and all the smooth car trips we've taken (actually, I don't think there have been any of those). When I told the dad of EuroSMAC's other member my musings, he said that adversity is memorable because our lives are easy. If life was full of adversity, it would be the moments of respite that we remembered. I'm sure he's right, but that's more philosophical than I really want to be right now. Right now, I want to write about The Pie.
         It was Thanksgiving, and I was probably in my early teens. We were at my Grandma Emy and Grandpa Bob's house in Indiana with all the aunts, uncles, and cousins. My dad and his sister, my Aunt Jane, decided, with no discernible provocation that this year, they would bake a pumpkin pie. This was not a decision made lightly. Pumpkin pie is my dad's favorite dessert. He often asks for it for his birthday, which is in July. In addition, our family includes several experienced and fully competent pie makers. Nevertheless, Dad and Aunt Jane would make the pie. And they would do it right. From the beginning. From scratch. No Libby's canned pumpkin for them.
          I think the first mistake was the pumpkin they chose. Whether from pure lack of knowledge or from a desire to use up leftovers, they cooked up a Jack O'Lantern pumpkin, rather than the small variety usually used in pies. Actually, maybe the choice was motivated by a good old American love of the large. Without a blender, they simply cooked and mashed the pumpkin flesh. They then mixed in the Carnation milk, spices, eggs, and heaven-only-knows what else, and poured it all into a crust they had made. Probably the crust was made from stone-ground whole wheat flour, in some sort of misguided effort to make the pie healthful. Then they slid the whole thing in the oven.
           The pie was stringy, chewy, with crust like cardboard. In an effort to redeem the whole thing as a joke, they covered the top with shaving cream and set it out on the sideboard. No one was fooled. As a culinary experience, the pie may have been among the worst I have seen; it is, nevertheless, one of my favorite holiday memories. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Cozy

      It is November in Geneva with a vengeance. Saturday night, it was raining so hard that even I didn't want to go out for dinner, so we decided to order pizza. Dominos exists here, and, if one is a COMPLETE BABY about making telephone calls in French, one can order pizza online. Further, if one does not want to venture into the rain to withdraw cash from the bank machine down the street, one can pay online with a credit card. Perfect. Except that when I tried to pay, I was directed to a page that informed me that all the redirects required by the payment process had left my computer lost in cyberspace. I tried again, received the same message, and started to worry that perhaps somehow I had just ordered two Hawaiian pizzas (and cheesy bread and Cinnastixs -- hey, we're hungry over here). So I nicely asked Drew to call Dominos and ask if we had ordered twice. He nicely did, only to be informed that they had no order from us. Pas de pizza. I tried one more time online (I am not a quitter), then called the other Dominos in Geneva, just to make sure. Nothing. So I did what I should have done all along and told the patient man on the telephone what we wanted. In my flusteration over trying to repeat my phone number in French, I forgot to ask if I could pay with a credit card, so guess what . . . we had to go out in the rain anyway. Later, I saw a message in my email from a company called Saferpay, telling me that my credit card payment of 57 chf had indeed been successful. Twice. We kept waiting for the doorbell to ring with our other two pizzas, but they never came. The lesson here seems to be, "Quit being such a coward about the phone calls, and you'll be able to stay inside where it's warm. And save hundreds of francs into the bargain."

      The good thing about nasty fall weather is that it makes staying inside where it's warm that much more blissful. So, in the spirit of warmth, here are some things that make November cosy.

1. The sugar bowl. I don't know what it is about a sugar bowl. I don't even like sugar in my coffee. But there is something about this piece of crockery that just says, "come in and curl up."

2. The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir. I heard about this group and how it survived through years of communism in a radio segment called, "The Singing Revolution" (The World and Everything in It, Nov. 10. http://www.worldmag.com/podcast/worldandeverything.cfm if you're interested). The story was so lovely that I looked up the group on Spotify. The music perfectly captures the feeling of being inside in candlelight watching rain run down the windows.

3. And speaking of candlelight, the darker days allow for more hours of candle burning. This one, with the candlestick made in my grandfather's furniture factory from the tulip tree that grew near his home, makes me feel connected to my forbears and so is particularly comforting. The marshmallow-scented one from Migros isn't bad, either.

4. The Thanksgiving Tree. Years ago, in an effort to extend my favorite holiday, I started having the kids attach leaves to a paper tree that we taped up in the kitchen. Each leaf bore something for which we were thankful. The idea has evolved, and now we use an actual tree . . . okay, a branch, but it's 3D, anyway. So far, we've been thankful for football, friends, memories, an available God, running, and, I'm pretty sure, video games. We range from the sublime to the trivial by the minute.

5. Soup. It's such a great meal. On Saturday, a person could cook up a pot of say, chicken vegetable soup with gnocchi, and on the following Wednesday, the family could still be enjoying a tummy-warming dinner in a pot. I did promise to make something different for dinner tonight. Chili?

The Aliens Visit the Old Country, Part One

       Spurning all advice from people who had actually visited the country, we spent the last days of October and first days of November in Sweden. Turns out, our advisors were right. The country is cold and dark this time of year, even though we confined ourselves to the southern 20 percent. The truth is, we just couldn't manage a summer trip, and as it turns out, the purpose of the trip wasn't really sightseeing, anyway.
        For those of you who may not know, my mother's parents are both from Sweden, having moved to the U.S. as adults and met and married there. Many members of both families stayed in Sweden, meaning that I have a host of relatives there, mostly of the second-cousin-once-removed variety. I've met many of them at reunions in the U.S., and I was in Sweden as a 7-year-old, but Eric and the kids hadn't met most of the family. We're a 2-hour, 35-Euro plane flight away, and clearly, it was time to go.
        Because of the time of year and because we are not entirely loony, we decided to focus on my grandfather's family, who mostly live in southern Sweden. My grandfather Martin spent the last years of his life in Göteborg, which is Sweden's second-largest city (about the size of the greater Geneva area). He apparently shared my enthusiasm for public transportation, spending his days riding the tram from one end of the line to the other with stops for lunch and coffee. We planned a tour that began with a flight into Copenhagen and a train ride across one of the longest bridges in the world (16k from the Danish coast to Malmö, Sweden, where a cousin lives with her family). We were then going to take the train to the other side of the country (a ride of only 1 1/2 hours, as opposed to something like 24 hours from top to bottom, which, if you haven't seen a map lately, gives you a good idea of Sweden's shape). My mom's cousin, Tonnie, lives in Sölvesborg on what has to be one of the world's loveliest properties, sitting on about 3 miles of Baltic coastline. Then we would take the train to Göteborg to visit the trams and some other cousins there.

At Nyhaven in Copenhagen. We actually had sunny weather the first few days,
and Copenhagen is well worth seeing, even in the cold. 

Nyhaven again.

The Little Mermaid of Hans Christian Andersen fame. She sits in the harbor in Copenhagen, and is the city's most famous landmark. She's also one of the world's most disappointing landmarks, because she is really unexpectedly little. We were saved from devastation by the fact that my dad had forewarned us.

       My initial impression of Sweden is that it is much more like America than Switzerland. First of all, nearly everyone speaks English. My cousin Lotta said that Swedes like Americans, like America, and like to practice their English with Americans. My young cousins told us that they speak such good English because they watch a lot of YouTube and play a lot of video games. Hmmm. When I mentioned that in Geneva one kind of has to know a little French to get around, one young cousin was shocked, telling me that in Sweden, if you are making a doctor appointment, you can talk in Swedish, English, or even Italian if you want. In addition to the language, Sweden has adopted some parts of America about which I am not so crazy . . . there seem to be McDonald's and Burger King restaurants on every corner, and shopping malls and traffic abound. Convenient for sure, but I have to say that I like the quaint bakeries and narrow streets in Switzerland and France. Nonetheless, I do appreciate the larger cups of coffee up north, but I think the Americans probably adopted that from the Swedes, and not the other way around. It's a chilly place.

       The Swedes, or my relatives at least, are also outstandingly hospitable. One cousin made wonderful dinners every night, then invariably apologized for them, saying, "I hope you can eat this."  Another cousin insisted on driving us the four hours from Sölvesborg to Göteborg, even though we had planned to take the train. Everywhere we went, people opened their homes and took time to visit with us. We weren't allowed to pay for anything -- not even our toothpaste and shampoo at the grocery store. Strangers were friendly, too, asking where we were from, offering directions, and generally being far more open and smiling than the Swiss (which, okay, isn't difficult).

Tonnie's place on the Baltic. It's called Bjorkelund, though I'm not sure I have the spelling right.

Lucas braving the rocks at Bjorkelund.

Our guesthouse. The hot tub on the porch was a highlight for the kids, especially Lucas.

While we were in Sölvesborg, Tonnie took us on a tour of Småland, which is famous for glass factories. This was taken in the Kosta Boda factory, which also has an outlet mall. He's making wine glasses, I think.

The Småland tour included some family history, as that is where my grandfather (and his brother, Erik, who was Tonnie's dad) grew up. Anne Svensson was Martin and Erik's sister, who died quite young. Their father is also buried in this cemetery, but we didn't know where to find his grave.

          In Sweden, we also realized how much French we actually know. While we can conduct daily business in French, our Swedish is sorely lacking. Despite the fact that most people there speak English, a few of my older relatives do not. I had foolishly underestimated what a barrier this would be. We spent one whole morning driving around with Tonnie, and about all we understood was "titta," which means "look." I, and I think the rest of the family, too, felt bad that we couldn't communicate to Tonnie (and a few others) how much we appreciated their hospitality and how interested we were in them. A few of the younger members of the family plan to remedy this problem at some point in their lives. Until then, a big "Tack så mycket" (our other useful phrase) to all the wonderful people who made the trip one of our favorites.

Johanna, typically, found little friends everywhere, from Isa in Malmö . . . 

       

. . . to Esther, whose family (nobly representing my grandmother's side) traveled 12 hours
from Umeå to see us in Göteborg.

The boys made friends, too. Drew is way happier to be eating Swedish pizza with
 his third cousins than he looks . . . really.

       

News from the Collège de Tirelonge

      One of Johanna's recent lab reports for Physical Science bore the conclusion: "We should find out the names of supplies in French before we go shopping." Here's why:

      The experiment called for hydrogen peroxide which -- silly me -- I assumed would have a name that sounded similar in French. I couldn't find anything of that description, so I picked up a brown bottle of something from the first aid section of the supermarket. The bottle looked like a hydrogen peroxide bottle, so I thought we'd give it a try. Well. The experiment involved filling a balloon with oxygen, which was going to be produced when we mixed the hydrogen peroxide with yeast. We were then going to release the oxygen near a candle burning under a glass jar, at which point the candle would burn brighter, demonstrating an important property of oxygen. Whatever I bought produced nothing when mixed with yeast, which I suppose is better than the alternative (that I bought something explosive). I then had an inspiration. We would mix vinegar and baking soda, which produces some kind of gas, fill the balloon with that, and see what happened. Those of you who know more about chemistry than I can already guess the results. The balloon filled nicely with gas, we released the gas into the jar with the candle, and the candle sputtered out (actually, it didn't even sputter, because some vinegar had gotten into the balloon as well, and it doused the candle immediately -- and made a mess of the kitchen counter). A quick visit to Google informed me that what we had produced was carbon dioxide gas. I comforted myself with the knowledge that Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, and even Oprah Winfrey were at one time considered failures. (I learned this from a blog entitled "50 Famously Successful People Who Failed at First.")

      I will be making frequent returns to that blog, as homeschooling in Switzerland does present some unique challenges. Yesterday, Luc, Jo, and I had a meeting with the children's doyens. These people are basically guidance counsellors, who are each assigned to work with one grade level of children in the local public school. They follow that particular group all through their middle school years, which I think is a nice idea. Anyway, we should have met with them earlier, but it takes me a while to work up to making French phone calls, and I had some others earlier on the list. The two worst things about going to meetings which I have set up on the telephone are: 1) I am always a little nervous that I have the wrong time, since in addition to the numbers being in French, they also use 24-hour time. So I had written down 16h30, but you never know. 2) Unless I remember to ask for the spelling of the person's name with whom I am meeting, I usually have no idea what it is. This time, I had forgotten to ask, so all I knew is that we were meeting with a woman whose name sounded like it began with "s." Before the meeting, I had written down the things I needed to find out or obtain: Scope and sequence for history, geography, and the sciences, so the children could choose paper topics; French textbooks, which I had been told I could get for free; and previous-year copies of the Evacoms, which are the standardized tests the kids will take in May. I gave myself a strict pep talk about not leaving the meeting without answers to my questions, and I told the kids to look as happy, smart, and well-adjusted as possible. They had to go to running practice right after the meeting, so in their Stade Genève track suits, they at least looked sporty.

       The good things about the meeting: There was a nice big sign hanging from the ceiling directing us to the secretariat, where we were supposed to present ourselves. The staff mailboxes were in plain view, and only one doyenne had a name that began with "s." The doyens spoke less English than I do French, so they were very patient with me. Best of all, I did not have to ask a single question, as they were outstandingly prepared with website recommendations, a calendar of test dates, and textbooks for not only French, but math and English as well. Also, all of this took only about 20 minutes.

       The bad thing about the meeting: The kids hopped on the bus to Stade Genève right outside the school, leaving me to walk the mile home carrying a stack of 15 textbooks.

       The good thing about the textbooks: Whenever we start to develop inferiority complexes, we can open up the English workbook and knock out a few exercises.

Forme des phrases complètes avec les mot suivants:

a) can/speak/I/French/.

b) Julie/the/Can/piano/play/?

c) can/Denis/not/baseball/play/.

I'm feeling smarter already!

       

The Cows Coming Home

      I'd like to open this post with a few random observations, each a propos of nothing and none interesting enough for a blog of its own. Then I will move to the real topic, which involves more pictures of cows than you've ever seen (probably), and certainly more than I've ever taken. (In the spirit of crediting sources, thank you to a dear friend for the "observation" idea. I do realize that it was yours first.)

      Observation #1: This has been a really successful cooking week. I baked brownies from scratch that actually tasted as good as brownies from a box. I also welcomed the autumn chill with risotto and my first run at polenta (with pumpkin -- so yummy). To top it off, Johanna, Lucas, and I stretched the meaning of nutrition class to allow us to make our own Asiago cheese bagels on Friday. Although the project did involve several steps (including boiling before baking -- who knew?), it was actually surprisingly easy, and the bagels, though not Panera, were outstanding.

     Observation #2: All of a sudden, our family is consuming astonishing amounts of food. I understand that this state of affairs is considered normal for households with (almost) three teenagers, but still . . . . I am at the grocery store daily. Good thing it's a short walk.

     Observation #3: Every time we meet someone's grandmother, she comments on how handsome Drew is. He is beginning to develop a complex about this; while it's always nice to be complemented, he'd prefer to hear about his good looks from the teenage girls. I told him that the phenomenon is due to the fact that he is handsome, but in a very non-threatening, "I will have your daughter home by 10 p.m." kind of way, rather than in that smoldering, dangerous way that may attract the younger set. Someday, he will appreciate this. Perhaps.

      Observation #4: As with everything else about the Swiss, the Swiss chapters of Boy Scouts of America are not kidding. Lucas just returned from a 9-hour hike up a mountain in Kandersteg. Even allowing for 12-year-old exaggeration, that's a long hike. Amazingly, he said he'd do it again given the opportunity. Clearly, there is some brainwashing going on. Actually, it was probably the outdoor cooking that made it all worthwhile for him.

     And now, on to the cows. Last weekend was the Desalpes festival in St. Cergue, which is a town in the Jura mountains about 45 minutes from here. The Desalpes celebrates the cows coming down from their summer pastures in the mountains to their winter pastures at lower elevations. I had heard that the cows have flowers on their head and come down in troops, led by the herdsmen. Last year, when I suggested that we go see this spectacle, I was met with moaning about getting up early on a Saturday and who wants to go see a bunch of cows, anyway. So this year, I announced that I was going, and people could come or not, as they wished. This, as it turns out, is a brilliant strategy. Everyone except Drew bit (he has a Saturday morning job teaching English, so he had a legitimate excuse).

We had pictured the cows ambling slowly down a grassy path. Instead, they thundered -- or at least jogged -- through the streets of the village. Apparently, they were eager to reach their winter pastures.

The herdsmen all had matching outfits, which I assume were traditional Swiss cowherd garb.

These two were leading the troop, carrying a sign with the name of their family or farm.

You can see one of the flower-bedecked cows here. They didn't all have flowers; just the ones in the front of each herd.

The bells were huge and loud, in a nice, pastoral kind of way. They had them for sale for 300 chf a piece.

Here's my best cow picture. Lots of them had evergreen branches with tissue flowers on their heads, rather than actual flowers.

Some of the herdsmen seemed kind of nervous that their cows would run out of control and trample someone. Also, there were signs everywhere disclaiming responsibility for adults, children, or animals injured by the cows. We didn't see any injuries, though. When the loudspeaker announced the next "troupeau,"  people pretty much moved to the side to give the cows their space. And to avoid being splattered with . . . well, I'm sure you can guess.

More cows.

And still more cows. This was my favorite herding family, too.

Between the parading cows, dancers performed traditional Alpine dances.

It looked very much like Dutch dancing, except that they didn't wear wooden shoes, and they shouted a lot in the middle of the dance.

A band accompanied the dancers.

Leading a herd.

Cows with headdresses.

      This is about half of the pictures I took, but I think it is adequate to get the general idea of the concentration of cattle. We did not invest in a 300 chf cowbell, but we did buy some local honey and some cheese . . . emmentaler, of course. We returned home cold and wet from the rain, but I don't think I was the only one who was happy to have experienced the Desalpes.

The Gold Star

I don’t cook on Sunday evenings. Sometime’s we’ve had a large and late lunch. Sometimes the kids are at youth group. For whoever is around and hungry, though, we have a rule for Sunday supper: “You’re on your own.” The kids actually love it, as it is permission to make a dinner of anything from a bowl of cereal to ice cream and salami. When we moved to Switzerland, however, we discovered a broader application of the whole “you’re on your own” principle. Want to know where to dump your garbage? “You’re on your own.” Interested in your kid’s progress in school? “You’re on your own.” Wondering  how to turn the heat on, where to sign up for the local 5K, or what the neighborhood noise policy is? On. Your. Own. That is, of course, until you break a rule. At this point, depending on what you have done, you will (1) hear a sharp rap on your car roof as you are stopped at a red light, and roll down the window to have the angry bicyclist demand, “Didn’t you know this street was for residents only?” (2) receive a polite letter in the mail informing you that the piece of correspondence that accidentally blew out of your trash bag into the street is INTERDIT or (3) be informed -- in March -- that someone in your family has hardly turned in any math homework all year. In Switzerland, a friend recently quipped, everything is either mandatory or it is forbidden. The only problem is that, for newcomers, it can be difficult to figure out which is which. 
Sometimes all this mystery gets to me. Johanna and Lucas have been running with a team for about a month now. I still don’t understand how races work -- if there are any. It took repeated emails to get someone to explain how one purchases a uniform. And frankly, I’m still not sure we’ve payed the appropriate enrollment fees. Likewise, for homeschooling, I was helpfully directed to Planet Études, the website where I was told I would find all I needed to know about scope and sequence for the Swiss public schools. I set out last week to plumb the depths of this website -- or at least to try to figure out what concepts I needed to make sure we covered in math -- only to be met with an impenetrable fog. My understanding of French was less a problem than the organization of the website, which has math topics listed, not by grade level or any other discernible system, but in a huge chart with labels like “M11” and “M34.”
So, after navigating the uniforms, surviving without a washing machine, writing innumerable emails trying to track down the Geneva Boy Scouts, successfully finding a TUMS substitute for a physics experiment, and facing an hour of coffee in French, all with a husband in either Moscow, Frankfort, or Madrid, I was feeling like maybe someone should notice my efforts to get along, fit in, and FIND SOMEONE WHO WILL TELL ME SOMETHING. What I wanted, in fact, was a Gold Star. I told this to Drew, who was both unimpressed with my achievements and unsympathetic to my desire for a reward sticker. But really, sometimes I think I have a Gold Star coming, and I wish someone would recognize it and give me one. It would be a reward for effort, of course, not necessarily success, something kind of like a participation ribbon for the science fair. 
I realize that I am not the only person in this situation. Geneva is full of expats, many with far larger challenges than finding a Boy Scout troop. I recently heard about a woman who had her wallet stolen and then was in a head-on car collision, all in her first month here. And I don’t think for a minute that it is any more difficult to have a broken washer, a traveling spouse, or a confusing website in Switzerland than it is to have any of these issues in say, Cincinnati. We all face innumerable hurdles every day. Sometimes, just getting something that looks like dinner on the table feels like a notable accomplishment. So, to anyone reading this, I would like to say, “Good try. Nice effort. Keep it up.” And here’s a Gold Star. You know what it’s for.

Great Is Thy Faithfulness

The sermon last Sunday was on Gideon. I am feeling a bit like that particular Bible character these days. God keeps proving faithful, and I keep going around with this knot in my stomach like maybe he won’t the next time. “No, but could you just make the fleece wet . . . ?” I think I am so stupid and keep making such a mess of things that even God won’t be able fix it this time. Oh me of little faith.

This time, it started with the washing machine. It broke on a Friday after 5 p.m., which around here means no hope of reaching any repair people until Monday after 9. So on Monday at 9, I did what any homeowner would do and called the service number on the machine. The lady on the other end nicely reminded me that I am no longer a homeowner, and if I wanted my washer fixed, she had to deal with the landlord. Here in Geneva, one does not deal directly with the owner of one’s rental. Instead, one goes through an intermediary known as a regie. So I emailed our regie, only to receive the all-too-ubiquitous automatic out-of-office response. Was I supposed to let the dirty clothes pile up for a week while Valerie sunned herself in the Canary Islands? Well, no, she had left the email of a compatriot, Jacques, whom I could contact in an emergency. That gave me a moment of pause, until I decided that 3 kids + 4 sports - any desire to familiarize myself with the genevois laundromat system = EMERGENCY. I emailed Jacques, who promptly replied that he would send a “bon de travail” either to or for me (in French, as in English, the indirect pronoun can be the same).I looked up the term, discovered that it means “work order,” and paused again. Was he sending the work order for me to a company who would then appear at my door at some unspecified date? Or was the work order coming to me, and then I would . . . do what? Fix the washer myself? I emailed my friend Carol, who, having lived in French-speaking countries for seven years, often knows the answer to these kinds of questions. She said (1) the work order would go both to me and the company, probably by mail; (2) then I would have to set up the appointment; and (3) this whole process could take a long time, and I needed to throw a fit in order to get action. I decided to begin with a very small sniffle, and sent a deferential email to Jacques asking how long this whole bon de travail business was likely to take, because I have three children and, after all, we already established that this is an emergency. Jacques, whom I was liking better with every email, sent the work order as an attachment with the words “TRÈS URGENTE” on the bottom. I don’t know if he was laughing in his sleeve or not, but it got the job done. When I called Proménagér, the lady said she’d send someone over in the morning. She also mentioned that the parts for our refrigerator, which the same company had been working on fixing for about a month, were finally in.

When the repair man showed up, he said he was there for the refrigerator. I said great, thanks, but what I really want fixed is the washer. He seemed confused, but when I showed him the all-powerful bon de travail, he said he’d take a look. To shorten the story, his diagnosis was grim. Madame, he said, I cannot fix it. You need a new washer. By this time, of course, what with all the emailing and calling and fixing of refrigerators, it was Thursday morning and my washer had been broken for more than a week. Despite a few trips to the laundry rooms of understanding friends, the piles were beginning to mount, and I was beginning to hear things like, “Mom, where is my P.E. shirt?” and “Mom, I have no clean socks.” 

So, again reverting to my American do-it-yourself spirit, I called Conforama and ordered a washing machine. After all, that’s what homeowners do when the repair man says they need a new washer. Ah, but madame, you forget that you are not a homeowner, and you have no control over the destiny of your laundry. This is what Jacques informed me when I emailed him to say what I had done. Actually, what he said was, “You aren’t allowed to order a washing machine.” Well, darn. I just did. Now what will I do with this 700 chf piece of equipment due to arrive at my house? If it had been Wal-Mart where I bought the washer, of course, I would just call and cancel the order. In fact, if I had bought the washer at another store five years previously, Wal-Mart would still probably take it back. This, however, was not Wal-Mart, but Conforama, a Swiss appliance chain. How gracious would they be? How expensive a hole had I dug this time? This would not have been such a big deal if I didn’t find myself in situations like it so often. The Swiss Athletics Championships. Climbing a mountain, the angry family in tow. Lost in Paris. In a coffee shop sitting across from an elderly woman who speaks no English. 

The Conforama website contains the comforting words, “satisfied or your money back.” Buoyed by that hope, I called the store. Sure, I could cancel the order, but I had to do it at the store, not online or by phone. By this time in was Saturday, and my forbearing husband offered to come with me on this quick errand.  Armed with my printout of the sale, we approached the customer service desk, waited in line, and were told that, actually, we needed to be in the other customer service line, just around the corner. We followed the people who had been waiting in front of us (at least we weren’t the only clueless ones). At the next desk, the clerk helpfully created a receipt, which we were to take, he explained, into the store, to the welcome desk. At the welcome test, we were told, naturally, that we were going to have to take our documents to the other welcome desk. Clearly, this was all part of a plan to frustrate people into keeping their unwanted merchandise. My hypothesis was confirmed when we arrived at the other welcome desk and found no one there to welcome us. Eventually, a woman showed up and told us we could only get store credit. Emboldened by impatience, guilt, and absolutely no desire to spend 700 chf on anything else in the store, I told her we didn’t want store credit, and that the website had said money back . . . money. She nodded, seemed unperturbed, and said we’d have to talk to Michelle, who would be over by the televisions. She then uttered, in English, the words, “no hair.” The picture that leaped into my mind -- of a tall, slender, bald woman with several tattoos and piercings -- was not what we saw by the televisions. This was, of course, because it was bald Michel whom we sought, a stocky man with a white beard and no hair on top. I have got to stop thinking like an American.

“We don’t want store credit. We want money,” I told Michel, regretting my inability to phrase this request in a more elegant and persuasive fashion. I was anticipating an argument, but he nodded, signed the receipt, and handed it back. Sure that our ease in accomplishing this mission meant we had actually failed, we headed next to the cash register, with Eric planning all the way the big TV he would buy with the store credit, since we clearly were not getting our money back. I was paying attention to my stomach, which had begun its familiar churning about the time we reached the second welcome desk. At the register, however, the cashier looked at the document and opened the drawer to give us -- not store credit or even money back on our credit card -- but 700 chf in cash. 

A few weeks ago, the pastor said that God loves seeing us get ourselves into trouble because he loves to get us out of it in surprising ways. The worse trouble, the more fun it is to rescue us. Of course, a broken washer or even foolishly wasting several hundred franks hardly rank as serious trouble. But still. They are poor things, but mine own. 

My authorized washer from the regie is supposed to come tomorrow . . . sometime. The piles are getting pretty high. When I think of all the folding to come . . . that is, if the machine gets here . . . and when I wonder what it will cost and who will pay for it, I feel that sickish feeling in my stomach. 

"Come on, God, now if you could just have the ground be wet . . . .”

I’m still waiting for the moment when we conquer the Midianites with nothing but a flashlight and a canning jar. 

“Greetings, mighty man of valor.” Ha, ha.

But it’s only a farce if you don’t know how the story ends.

The alien with the defunct washer on what I hope will be the washer's last night at home.