So, the day that began so badly yesterday ended rather pleasantly. Nathan went on one of the school's field trips--a visit to a local organic farm (post on that soon), and the kids and I laid low at the apartment and took a walk to pick up a few things for dinner. The photos below outline our day.

We stopped at a children's bookstore and couldn't resist a few cute postcards featuring brightly colored cartoons and French-language captions (my intent is to frame them for the kids' room at home) and a little book titled Un Poisson d'Avril. The poisson d'avril has an interesting history, and is the root of our April Fools' Day (literally translated, this phrase means "the fish of April").

The book is engagingly illustrated, and tells a silly little story about a fish whose jumprope is stolen, and a snake who offers himself as a replacement rope. Then, using the snake, the fish jumps so high he flies and drops back into the sea.

We also bought some things for dinner -- ratatouille (below in the pan), the most delicious little strawberries I've ever tasted, a freshly baked baguette, and a cookie for dessert.

These strawberries reminded me of a line in the Anthony Doerr memoir I mentioned the other day here on the blog. He writes of buying a carton of strawberries in Rome, each berry "like a tiny glowing lamp." Exactement!

The other major task of the day was laundry. At home we do roughly one load of laundry each day. Doing the laundry fits easily around the rest of our lives, as I can dump a load into the washer, set it going, and return to the rest of the day's work while the washing machine does its job. And, of course, the same goes for drying clothes at home.

Here, however, the chore is a bit more complicated. It seems no one in our little portion of the village has a clothes dryer (most likely due to conservation efforts and the cost of utilities, which the French seem not to take for granted as we Americans tend to do), and the laundry is instead hung out on lines to dry. I've posted here other photos of our street, with the laundry lines of our neighbors strung across the alleyway or along the length of the stone houses, just below the windows so that people can lean out of their kitchens or dining rooms and pin their wet clothes to the line.

We are lucky in that our landlady (a lovely woman who Finn calls "Madame Pomme," though her name is actually Mme. Hulman) will wash our clothes for us (for 4 euros per load), and then we hang them out to dry on the line ourselves. Being a little particular about my clothes (and, okay, a little embarrassed about someone else handling my unmentionables) I handwashed as many items as I could in the tub before sending two loads of jeans, towels, and tee-shirts downstairs to be washed.

The clothes came back to us in what I suppose is here a laundry basket (though at home would be called a basin). Nathan and I then took turns leaning out the bathroom window and pinning up our clothes on the line. Honestly, though I know how silly this sounds, I found the whole thing really charming. The sun was bright, the wind warm and constant, and the laundry smelled clean and fresh. When I later pulled in the dry clothes, they were stiff with having dried outside and seemed to have soaked up the scent of the honeysuckle plant growing below the laundry line.

Here's Vivi "helping" us hang out the clothes:

Here's the "laundry basket" (above) and the clothes on the line (below).

Following that, the kids were tuckered out, and actually spent a good solid hour sitting like this, snuggled up together in the single armchair in our apartment, watching Curious George.

All in all, the afternoon well made up for the bumpy morning.