When I mention my fifteen-year-old son is going to Military school, most parents give me their sympathy look. “Oh, you poor thing, your son has behavioral problems.”
I know this look and before they utter a word, I add, “He wants to go. It was his idea.”

Why do so many in the U.S. perceive these schools as a place to send “bad” kids who need discipline and view military school as a form of punishment? Can it not be regarded as a reward? It certainly costs enough to be considered a huge reward in receiving a better education.

I remember asking my own parents to allow me to attend boarding school in England, when I turned fourteen. Why? Because my school in Paris did not offer the subjects I wished to study. There was also another reason; perhaps the same reason why my son wants to leave home.

As an only child, I felt the need to get away from home. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the close relationship I had with my parents, especially my mother, but in order to grow up and make my own decisions, I felt the need to get away. I think my almost sixteen-year-old feels the same. Now that his two older brothers are out of the house, he misses the camaraderie he had with them. Living with other young cadets, will fill him with
long-lasting friendships and a sense of purpose: belonging to a group that studies together with duties and sporting activities on a daily basis.

I am disappointed with public education in California. 2011 is going to be worse than 2010 due to lack of funding and increasing classroom sizes, 40+ students and teachers who no longer have time to motivate those who are average. My youngest son is one of those, and I hate to see his growing lack of interest in school and college. Disgruntled teachers are not going to create a positive school environment, and I cannot blame them.

Over the Easter holidays, my son and I flew to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and drove 200 miles, southeast to Roswell where the New Mexico Military Institute is located. Driving along a ninety-five mile stretch of road without a gas station, building, or human, with winds blowing my car off the road, made for an eerie start to our adventure.

I would not call Roswell a pretty town. It’s isolated, dry and spooky, and apart from NMMI, and the UFO museum, there really isn’t too much to see. (That’s my opinion.)

A replica of an alien found near Roswell on a ranch from UFO crash in July 1947.

After a morning at the UFO museum, my son had a one o’clock interview and test at NMMI. He passed the entrance exam, and I was pleased to hear that NMMI checks students are not being forced to go there against their will.

Ninety-five percent of all NMMI graduates, both high school and junior college, go on to premier 4-year colleges and universities such as Princeton, Cornell, Stanford, Texas, Temple, VMI, The Citadel, and the nation’s Service Academies.

This is therefore not a school that pushes Cadets to enter the military. The first 21 days are not easy: no electronics, only contact with parents is via good old-fashioned letter writing. They wear uniform, they learn structure and discipline, they have study hall every night, and they also have to earn privileges. What a concept in today’s world of entitlement. The school is co-ed, and they have a beautiful gym and game room for kids to enjoy. My son can paintball every afternoon, as a sporting activity. This is his passion.

So I hope he thrives during the last two years of high school and learns the importance of receiving a good education, despite his desire to become a professional paintballer.

What are your opinions regarding military schools, boarding schools etc?

I know this may not look like much to you, but to me it’s a sign that my husband loves me. Almost every morning, before I stumble into the kitchen, Duke has boiled the kettle, filled up my stainless steel coffee pot and two mugs (one for coffee, one to heat up milk) with boiling water, and placed small covers on each, with a towel to keep the warmth inside.

When I walk into the kitchen, I dump the hot water out of each receptacle and have steaming hot coffee. Yes, I do microwave the milk, and go one step further. I use this device to froth it up. I bought it at Peet’s.

But that’s not all he does for me. Duke also counts my four pills and places then in a nice bowl. (OK, I made this up. He does take my pills out, but I put them in the nice bowl for decoration.)

I believe actions, not gifts, are true signs of love. What do you think? Any loving actions to share?

As a young woman living in Paris, I dreamed of becoming a journalist. Travel and interviewing people from around the world sounded exciting and meaningful. I hoped to be one of the faces on NBC, CBS or ABC, in the U.S., with visions of sharing news from around the world: stories about different cultures, ways of thinking, and making people feel they belonged to a planet that shrank to the size of a marble, the more we learned about one another.

Today I realize how miserable I would be to step in the shoes of Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer. Don’t get me wrong, I respect those two ladies, however, what we see on prime time television, is in my opinion, not news. Yes, I know, we get coverage on Iran, Iraq, Israel and Afghanistan, but when you compare U.S. news to BBC news, or other European channels, we get such a limited perspective on what happens outside the U.S. We learn more about blood pressure medicine, arthritis, viagra, acid reflux, loss of bone density and all the drugs we can take during ten minutes of commercials which interrupt the news, making it seem even more banal. Whenever we hear about other countries, it never seems to give us a positive view on what’s happening there, but rather a positive view on what the U.S. is doing for others.

I realize how ignorant I am about what’s going on around the world, including the country I live in when I visit my family and friends in France, Britain and Denmark. They quiz me on U.S. politics and I never really know what’s happening. I’d have to spend hours reading and doing my own research on various issues to feel informed enough to vote on a proposition, yet many voters base their decisions on thirty second ads they see or hear. That’s the wrong way to vote.

When I travel to Europe, I finally understand what’s going on in the U.S. Is that because I understand French better than English? I don’t think so. Often I see debates and interviews that never appear on U.S. television. When I return to the U.S., I have a fresh view of what’s happening in the world, in the U.S. and even in California. Why is that?

So how did this blog post start? From my European blogger friend, Phivos Nicolaides who sent me a YouTube video of a singer from Portugal. I’d never heard of this singer, and when I told him that, he made a comment which I agreed with:

To tell you the truth, in States they know very little about the other world…
When you are on the top of the world, you think there is nothing else to see, listen and learn…
This happens to every country when she becomes powerful. In the end of course things change one day dramatically…

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Welcome to Naples, Florida, where the people are friendly, dogs wear Doggles, and we now own a second home. On I-75 between Fort Myers and Naples, I saw something unique: a motorcyclist with two unusual passengers standing in an open trailer. Their ears flapped at 70 mph. I think the dogs were smiling at me.

 Look for Naples to the west of Miami. That’s where we now own a house to rent until we retire.

My husband and I have six days to repair and get our house ready to rent. Why? Because we’ve been brainwashed to believe that as long as you work hard, you can achieve anything you put your mind to.

Day 1: Land at Fort Myers airport at 4:30 p.m. Rent a car, plug in GPS and pick out a  slab of “affordable” granite in 15 minutes. Hope we picked the right slab and right guy to replace our kitchen counter-tops. Spend night in an inexpensive motel, since house is empty.

Day 2: Get Starbucks–there is no Peet’s in Naples, sob, sob–drive to beach and breathe in some early morning salty air, while looking for that one special shell.

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The beaches on this part of the Gulf Coast are a shell collectors’ haven.

Buy a mattress from Craigs list and hope the guy will deliver the same day.
Two Brazilian guys measure our counter-tops. The sky decides to throw buckets of LOUD rain on our roof. We can’t even hear each other speak. I have a pounding headache. Duke gets a fever, and we both wonder if we made the right decision. Is the weather really this cold and gray in Florida? Rent a wallpaper removing steamer and realize this is more work than I thought.

 This is me hard at work for 4 days removing wallpaper. No I’m not a plumber showing off my derriere.

Dinner at Randy’s fish house is excellent. A two hour wait, but Duke gets two barstools and we eat potato-crusted salmon in the lively crowded bar, and meet people from Chicago and Boston. Great atmosphere.

Day 3:

SUNNY!!! Remove wallpaper, replace fans, decide to rip out old bathroom and update. Many trips to Home Depot, buy paint, paint walls, get two more guys to yank old tiles off wall.

View from our back yard. We have 12 pineapple bushes and an orange tree. 

Same routine of painting, and working.
Granite guys remove old counter-top.

Old kitchen

New kitchen

Day 4: Freaking out. Still lots to do and only two days left.

Two guys remove old bathtub, dating from 1970.

Day 5 and 6: Paint two bedrooms and baseboards. Run back and forth to Home Depot and other stores to get things we forget we need.

New bathroom:

Photos of new bathroom kindly taken by my blogger friend Nancy, who lives in Naples, and checked on the final touches for us. We had a lovely dinner with Nancy and her family. Thanks for all your help. Thanks to my blog, I now have a new friend in Naples.

New bathroom:

Duke and I returned exhausted from six days of hard work. Well worth it. We still have more to do before we can rent the house out. There are two sunken boats, and a pool that need some attention. My husband did so much with a fever and chest congestion. The day after we returned to California, he put on his lawyer’s suit, and was back at the office.

 Now back to reality and my memoir revisions. Entering edits on computer.

Please share anything you wish to, perhaps a project you’ve worked on? 

On the last day I started making mistakes from lack of sleep, and my body saying enough.

I often see a recurring theme in books written by U.S. female authors in their forties and fifties : How to find purpose in life? Am I fulfilled? and, Who am I? Or some variation on this topic.

In memoir, I have seen this in books like:

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.”Is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty?”

Devotion by Dani Shapiro. “I had reached the middle of my life and knew less than I ever had before.” she writes. “From the outside, things looked pretty good. But deep inside myself, I had begun to quietly fall apart.”

In fiction:

Distant Shores by Kristin Hannah. “You’re forty-five years old and your kids are gone and your marriage has gone stale and you want to start over. My practice is full of women like you.”

Now I admit, the above mentioned books relate to women questioning their faith and/or their marriage, however, I’d like to know if you think there is a cultural difference between the U.S. and other parts of the world as far as women questioning their level of fulfillment with their life?

I have noticed my conversations with women are so different in the U.S., than among friends in Europe. I do not recall a single conversation with my Danish, English or French friends revolving around finding “purpose” in life or being “fulfilled.” I have a few opinions as to why? but I’d like to hear from you first.

Do you agree this is more of an American theme among women or do you find the same type of conversations among women in your part of the world?

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