Midnight Musings

As tired as I've been all week, I'm really really ticked off to be awake at 3 a.m.
(Since Hubby is on Spring Break, it is nothing for him to stay up til almost midnight since he can sleep in. Which means I'm up as well. But the last two nights I've put my foot down and gone to bed early. Fat lot of good it does when I wake up in the wee hours. sigh.)
When I first woke up, I was actually having dreams about my freelance article, in the form of dreaming of my Gmail account and sifting through other possible sources. This is silly because I'm actually in pretty good shape on it. But stress manifests in strange ways.

What's Wrong With Flannel?
Then, as I was laying there, my mind seized on that commercial for the dating website where the woman goes "I promise never to wear flannel pajamas to bed" and the guy responds "Can we just make that no pajamas?" or something cute like that. It's all very titillating. And I thought to myself, "What's wrong with flannel pajamas?" I have flannel pajamas.
Hubby gave them to me.
Granted, I don't usually wear them to bed.
But at the same time, the couple in the commercial have obviously never been to my in-laws house during the winter.
At Christmas time it's so fraking cold up there I not only wear my flannel pajamas to bed, I do my best to sleep under Hubby, and invite the dogs up with me. (Usually I'm fighting the dogs for space on the bed. It's hard not ranking high in the pack.)
Anyway, I just think that woman needs to qualify her pledges regarding wearing pajamas or she might regret it later.

Have I mentioned I'm going to France?
Then, of course, my mind turned to our trip.
There are several months to get through before we leave, but it's still pretty all consuming.
It's a good thing Hubby is on break as he is devoting most of his days to planning.
He has the broad outline in place.
I land Sunday around noon. We spend that afternoon and evening in Paris. He's got that hotel booked.
Monday morning we pick up the rental car and head to Versailles. That afternoon we head toward Bordeaux where we spend the night.
Tuesday we wake up, hit the wineries north of Bordeaux and wander out of town, sleeping in the general vicinity of Montpellier.
He, of course, is rattling these areas off in terms of their wine appellations, but fell back on the big city names for my benefit.
Wednesday we make our way up to Lyon.
Thursday we head toward Dijion.
Friday night will be spent somewhere in the Champagne area, but I don't remember where.
Of course the goal in all these areas is to hit as many wineries as we can.
Don't worry, when we do these wine tasting trips, Hubby tastes and I drive.
I figure he's the one who knows what he's drinking, so he'll get more out of the experience and I stay sober.
He mentioned something about trying to swing out to Verdun to see the battle site (he is a history teacher after all. He's fairly disappointed we won't have time to swing up to Normandy).
Saturday we head back to Paris, arriving in time to return the car by 6 pm.
Sunday morning we fly home, and return to our boring lives.

A Place to Rest
Although it all sounds good, he's actually stuck in Bordeaux.
He is trying to book hotels ahead of time so we don't have to worry about it when we're in country.
Sadly, he found a nice sounding bed & breakfast located amidst the wineries he's aiming for. But when he called, they established in his broken French and her broken English that we'd have to stay for two nights, which doesn't fit in our schedule.
So he has embarked on an elaborate system of punching addresses into the French version of Google Maps trying to establish where other hotels/b&bs are in relation to where we want to be.
Then he found a nice sounding resturant for dinner, but it's not open on Monday. sigh.
It's not easy being the activities director.
In the mean time, I figure I'm going to start poking around in order to determine the best way to bring wine home with us.
Carry-on luggage is obviously out because of the no liquid rule. I'd be worried about checked luggage. Have the stuff shipped seems the most sensible, but I don't know how easy it would be to pull off. But there is time to nail down the details.

Yarn?
I, on the other hand, was able to give Ravelry a few pokes and shake loose a three page list(password required) of yarn stores in France.
I couldn't remember where the list was, hence the poking. If you are wondering, the dialog box to search for a Local Yarn Store is on the "Yarns" tab.
Closer to our departure I will have to figure out how to print this list with street addresses that we can punch into the GPS unit.
There are, as you might imagine, several stores in Paris, but others seem to be scattered through the areas it sounds like Hubby says we'll be transversing.
Still, I might have to content myself with one of the Paris shops.

Parlez vous Knitting?
Hubby was asking last night whether there was a universal language that I would be able to go into one of these stores and be understood.
I said it's all knitting, but they'll have French words for it that I don't know. I figure it will be a matter of pantomiming what I want.
On the other hand, the labels are universal, and I know enough that I would be able to help myself to enough yarn to, say, make a scarf.
Still, it might be a good idea to learn the French words for hat, scarf, and socks so I can move things along faster.
I also seem to remember seeing on a blog once a few years ago that someone made a knit chicken that looked like those rubber gag chickens from a Phildar pattern. Maybe I should try to find that...hmm.