Mishmash

This particular series of events defies my best organizational attempts. I'm just going to blurt it out as usual. No finesse.

Saturday night we hopped on a TER train to get to Lionel and Sophie's house, completely unaware that TER models are the oldest on the line. Okay, so lesson learned--because when our train made a brief 30-second stop at our destination without any prior announcement, we quickly discovered that the exit door was BROKEN.

The doors didn't want to open, their tracks seemed rusty. Dustin had to rip it apart with both hands and dive through. Then, to my horror, there wasn't enough time to get myself and the baby off the train before the doors clunked shut again. Dustin ended up clinging to the side of a moving train and had to jump. Talk about an adventure.

There we were, separated. Dustin is starting to learn French, but to leave the poor thing on his own is a bit strong. Everything turned out okay because I regained presence of mind enough to use a cell phone and we met up in Toul, then drove back to the Claus house.

But I was still rattled to say the least, and have wondered many times since then exactly how brain damaged that conductor must be. He broke at least 3 rules I can think of: announce your stop, give a full two minutes to exit (which still isn't much), and check your sides for passengers before you start the train again!!!!!! Well, I guess we're in the boonies. To put it politely.

Thankfully, Sophie and Lionel are stuck here with us or it might be insupportable. We had an awesome time at their house Saturday night, beginning with a huge animated conversation wherein we discovered that Lionel was an army sergeant in Africa, on the Somalian border.

He was sort of like "Oh, silly me, I can't believe I forgot to mention that! Now let me just casually tell you how much I bench press and let's talk about guns." Unreal. He's going to dig around and try to find his slides so that he and Dustin can bliss out even further on the topic.

Lionel is extremely friendly. Once on the subject of motorcycles or bench pressing, he's apt to do crazy things like suddenly shout out "Dustin my boy! You better show up next weekend in your workout clothes cause I'm going to whip you into shape!!!" And oh, by the way, that totally happened. I'm now torn between conflicting anxieties over mud quad riding versus home gym injuries, whichever happens first.

And then, to make my Alice-in-Wonderland experience complete, we ambled upstairs and played billiards.

Yup. English billiards. I had no clue how to play and I now do reasonably well, further proof that some sort of alternate dimension warp must have taken place Saturday night. The very idea of me playing a game that requires hand-eye coordination is definite proof that something ain't normal.

So, it was great. Sophie barricaded the staircase with coffee tables until it looked like the second coming of the French Revolution and Lionel turned on Lady Gaga, of all things, and also what sounded like the French version of Lady Gaga. Henry toddled around with a stuffed animal grinning his head off and stopping frequently to shake his booty like a party girl. And I got balls into pockets. And there is no double entendre there so stop looking for it.

All in all, magical. And that concludes our broadcast day.