Down The Rabbit Hole

Mougins Kitteh is Fotogenik

Bad Dog

After a hard day of drinking wine and strolling around medieval French villages, there’s nothing like watching a movie on your laptop in front of a roaring fire.

This family is a living commercial for Apple.

We had a wonderful dinner at Le Tilleul again last night. I had a salad with fresh asparagus, prosciutto and parmesan shortbread to start, poulet farmier (Farmer’s Chicken) with potatoes in a spiced cider broth, and molten chocolate cake with coconut cream and pistachio drizzle for dessert. We were the only people in the restaurant last night, and it’s the type of place you dream of finding in France. A tiny little hole in the wall where the food is better than anything you’ve ever tasted. Yum.

Right now it’s 2:30pm and I’ve only been up for an hour. Thanks to my Ambien’ed, snoring husband, I didn’t fall asleep until 7am. Stupid stupid jet lag. We’re not sure what we’re going to do today, I think maybe go into Antibes, or a little village near Grasse called Mougins.

The stairs that lead from our backyard down into the village of St. Paul de Vence.

Hawk and Lawrence walking down into the village for breakfast.

View back up the hill from halfway down.

Jeremy at breakfast

Lawrence at breakfast

We had a lovely mellow day yesterday, going into Nice for lunch, and then a wonderful dinner at the Colombe D’Or, a very well known restaurant here in St. Paul. It was Danielle’s birthday, so we did it up right. A big table in front of a roaring fireplace, three bottles of the most delicious Sancerre blanc I’ve ever had. I had shrimp cocktail for a starter and Sole Grille Dijonnaise. Louise ordered the crudités for a starter and they brought her an enormous basket of vegetables straight from the garden – radishes, green peppers, celery, even artichokes (which the maitre’d cut up for us when we asked him how to eat a raw artichoke, apparently you just strip it down to the heart, which, even when raw, is still tender and delicious. I said that it tasted like a garden.) Most everyone had fish, but Nick’s friend Nick had rabbit with red wine and blood sauce. I had a bite and it was one of the most fabulous things I’ve ever tasted – so rich and savory. For dessert, Hawk and I split the Ganache de Chocolat and it was yummy. Danielle had the fluffiest Grand Marnier soufflé ever.

St. Paul de Vence by Day

…and by night

We got to Nice yesterday afternoon, and are staying at the same villa where we stayed last summer. This time we have a pretty full house though. My in-laws, Lawrence and Danielle, my husband’s brothers, Jeremy and Nick, his aunt Terry and her partner Louise, plus Jeremy’s friend Tim (who is visiting from Paris for a couple days) and Nick’s friend Nick (who is visiting from Spain for a couple days).

We had an absolutely delicious dinner last night at our favorite little restaurant up in the village, Le Tilleul. I had grilled scallops with stir fried vegetables, and an unbelievable lemon meringue tart, and we had a bottle (or two) of a lovely rosé.

It is currently 6:30am here and I’ve been up since five. Stupid jet lag. I did get a chance to look at pictures from the Oscars last night and let me say that I hated almost every single dress on that red carpet. I think I liked Diablo Cody’s the best because it showed off her tattoos so well. The rest? Boooooooring for the most part, and Nicole Kidman? What the fuck, girl, seriously.

I had my follow up ultrasound on Monday to make sure that I had passed the gestational sac and all seems well. We’ll have a meeting with my doctor when we get back from our trip (oh yeah, by the way we’re leaving tomorrow for two weeks in Europe!), and at that time I’ll also have an hCG blood test to make sure my levels have dropped. I was kind of glad on Monday when he said that he wasn’t going to bother doing one this week. He was satisfied enough that things were progressing as they should when he saw the sac was gone. I’d rather leave on our trip blissfully ignorant of my hCG level – just assume that it is dropping as it should and not give it another thought for the next two weeks.

He also gave me a very nice rah-rah speech about how confident he is that I am going to have a baby, it’s just a matter of when and how. He told me, “You are fertile.” That was nice to hear. Now there’s a part of me that’s like “Yeah! Damn straight I’m fertile! I’m gonna have me a baby!” Now it’s just a matter of how…

As I was sweeping up cat litter in the bathroom this morning, I had a bit of a vision where all of a sudden I thought to myself, “I’m not going to have a baby this year, but I am going to get pregnant this year”. It just sort of seemed like a done deal, like I’d made up my mind and that’s that. And I think it’s true. I think this year, and maybe that doesn’t mean “2008″, but the next twelve months, that I will get pregnant and I will have that baby.

But first I’m going to go to France with my husband. I’ll be posting pictures and updates from abroad, so check back!

À Bientôt!

Someone found my blog by googling “my husband is a stud”. Love it.

I threw my back out today by SNEEZING.

What am I, a hundred and fifty? Good lord.

Totally exhausted today. Took my second dose of misoprostol Sunday night and it worked this time. It wasn’t nearly as dramatic as it was first time I had taken it for my first miscarriage (when it felt like I was hemorrhaging for eight hours), but it’s still clear that it worked. Plus, I have to remember that this time I found out I was pregnant after already having had my period, plus I had several days of spotting and light bleeding at the beginning, so there probably just wasn’t as much to come out. I’ll go in next week for an ultrasound and a blood test to see how my hormones are dropping.

Yesterday was a pretty hard day, mainly because I was home alone, and I think my hormones are going down and therefore leaving me a weepy, snotty mess. Plus I made the mistake of watching “Knocked Up”, and all those ultrasound shots of babies kicking and heartbeats thumping really didn’t do much for my self esteem.

I felt better enough in the evening for Hawk and I to go out and grab some dinner, so that was nice. While we were eating, I told him I’d been thinking some more about finishing up my diploma in Aromatherapy that I started on, like three years ago. A friend of mine is an acupuncturist and she keeps wanting to refer her clients to me, but I don’t want her to until I’m officially certified and registered with the Aromatherapy Registration Council, but haven’t taken any more steps to become so. So I decided to take the last two classes I need to get my diploma, then I can take the registration exam. I called my school today and signed up for “Holistic Pathology and Protocols” and “Holistic Health Consulting & Business Skills”. The first one starts in March, the second in June, and they are both three month classes. So, by mid September, I will have all my coursework done and can start preparing to take the exam! So that’s exciting.

Off to take a nap…

Just in time for Valentines Day, I updated my CafePress store to include a sale on these notecards with a beautiful photo I took of roses in a flower shop in Zurich. Regular price is $12.49, but now they are 10% off.

I’ve ordered myself some of the notecards from my shop and they are really very good quality. Nice, heavy paper stock and the picture is clear and vibrant.

Visit Down the Rabbit Hole Photography today!