By making your brain explode from spending too much time trying to study "regular" French and verlan & French slang at the same time, even before breakfast! (And then after breakfast, working non-stop on revisions of a now 550-page novel, and walking 3 miles a day and doing your ab workouts because, yes, you're getting old now, and trying to find time to actually read the manual for the Final Draft software because it doesn't just start talking to you once it's been uploaded, and then weeding the many gardens, and keeping the lovely little house clean... and then when that's done, some yoga so that you can relax!)

But mostly it's this French stuff that really challenges my brain. For career/work reasons, I have really had to double-up on finally getting a grip on this language. Speaking it, primarily, because my reading skills are pretty okay. Loyal readers of this lofty blog know full well by now that I have been studying French since before recorded history began (which means "since when I was 9"), and now I am forty-plus-9 and you are all probably as perturbed as I am by my inability to really grasp the language and to speak it. Especially since I did (in all honesty) remarkably well teaching myself Mandarin Chinese. What is the deal?  I just don't know.

I do get very discouraged but then I have to sort of remind myself that most people on the planet, if you go strictly by the sheer numbers of humans out there, don't even try to learn French. So just carry on...

I am making very good progress with the revisions of the novel but I have to say that, daily, I am astounded anew by just how long it is. I've been at it for several days now and I still have 300 pages to go. (By Friday.) (Insert canned TV laughter here.)

So this morning, I awoke at 6 AM, made breakfast, brought it back to bed and decided I was just going to lie there and stare, you know? Because I'm exhausted and also very lonely. But within moments, Fluffy and I were once more studying French. And suddenly it was already 8 o'clock! So I hopped out of bed and into my walking gear and went and walked for 3 miles because, especially on really gorgeous mornings like today, it is as close as I can get to God and my Soul when I'm awake.

While I was walking, I was of course thinking about everything under the sun (appropriately enough -- it was so sunny out), and it occurred to me how many of my acquaintances here in Ohio truly hate the French; the entire country of France, everyone in it and all things French. This is because they are a lot younger than me, they are hardcore Republicans and are holding that Iraq-War grudge indefinitely. One guy that I kind of actually enjoy talking to (I'm older than his mom & dad), told me the other day, in all seriousness, that the only reason we shouldn't nuke France is because it makes more sense for the environment and the overpopulation problem to nuke China instead. He's only 23, so I don't actually get engaged in these types of conversations, I just sort of look at him and smile and say, "Well, okay," because what else can I possibly say to that kind of nonsensical barbarism?

I have one sort of "very good acquaintance" who is about my age; she's from Croatia and I really like her a lot. She struggles with English sometimes, but we still communicate well and we laugh a lot. She's had a very hard life; she had to escape through the forests with her baby during the war. She and her husband have a nice home here now, jobs doing cleaning & yard work, etc., nothing like the jobs they had back in their homeland but at least they are alive and their daughter is now in college; they survived and a lot of people in the Serbo-Croatian War did not. Even though I didn't leave my life in New York because of a war, she and I both understand that bittersweet feeling of having left behind the people we knew best and having to start over and just adjust all the time; try to stay positive and forward-thinking.

Mostly I miss laughing with my friends who knew me so well & loved me anyway -- they're insane senses of humor; their love of old movies; their abilities to speak foreign languages; their tastes in wine & in books & art. But life goes on. One nice thing that happened not too long ago, 3 male friends of mine in NYC -- filmmakers, writers, deviants; both gays & straights-- were out having dinner together and the next morning, all 3 of them emailed me and said they'd wished I'd been with them at dinner. Knowing that in spirit I was there, if only in their high esteem, made me feel really happy.

Meanwhile, I just have to keep writing. I've narrowed it down to that.